Bill Belichick and the Bullseye Gameplan

It was easy to see why St. Louis rolled into Super Bowl XXXVI as 14-point favorites. Only a year earlier Bill Belichick's maiden New England season had ended in a 5-11 disaster. Just past the midpoint of 2001, the Patriots' record sat at .500, the offense was led by a rookie quarterback named Tom Brady, and a third of the roster consisted of first-year players and waiver-wire pickups. The Pats got to the playoffs by winning their last six games but rarely overwhelmed their opponents during that stretch. Winter weather and a controversial referee's decision as to whether Brady had fumbled the ball late in the fourth quarter had given them a playoff win many people felt they did not deserve over Oakland in the infamous "Tuck Rule Game." Even New England's championship game victory over Pittsburgh was closely contested, with the Patriots staving off a Steelers second half comeback to win by a touchdown.

On paper, I didn't see the Patriots matching up very well with St. Louis. You go man-for-man across the board, and it should have been lights out in the Rams' favor. I truly thought the game would be a blowout. But as we've all since learned, you can never count out any team coached by Bill Belichick.

By now, Belichick's career path is well known, even to casual fans. He's been around the game all his life, as the son of Steve Belichick, a former NFL player and college assistant at the U.S. Naval Academy. Bill played football at Wesleyan University, and after graduating in 1975, he turned to an old family friend for his first NFL job. "Don Shula and my dad went back a long way," Belichick recalled. "They both played college football in Ohio and had a relationship going back to the 1940s. When I talked to Coach Shula, I knew the Dolphins didn't have anybody doing film breakdowns on the staff, and I offered my services to him. I asked, 'Could I break down game film for you? I'd just like to learn your system and understand your organization.' He told me, 'I'm sure you'd do a great job, but I prefer my assistants do it so they'll learn those little details themselves, and not try to pass it off on somebody else.' I respected that. I think when you don't handle the details yourself, then sometimes things slip through the cracks and you miss something. Since then, I've always tried to keep that in the back of my mind. Even though we do have people handle those breakdowns for us now, I still try to be detail conscious myself, so that the 'little things' don't end up becoming 'big things' you miss."

Belichick ultimately landed that same job assisting head coach Ted Marchibroda with the Baltimore Colts, starting out at $25 a week. From there, he quickly moved up the coaching ladder, with stops in Detroit and Denver before joining the Giants in 1979. In New York, Belichick spent a dozen years coaching the defense for Ray Perkins and then Bill Parcells. Two of those seasons, 1986 and '90, ended with Super Bowl championships. That second ring got him his first head coaching job. From 1991 through 1995 he directed the Cleveland Browns but then resigned to go back with Parcells for stints with the Patriots and Jets before being named New England's head coach in 2000. After a rough first year, Belichick put together a run that has made the Patriots arguably the decade's most dominant team: nine straight winning seasons, seven division titles, four Super Bowl appearances, and three league championships.

Bill's blueprint for success is built on core philosophies, beginning with his approach toward acquiring personnel. I've heard him say again and again, "It's not about collecting talent, it's about building a team. Some players fit better into one system or style of play than they do in another." Belichick assigns specific tasks for each of his players. He wants those tasks completed the way they're taught in practice. If each player does his job as instructed, Bill's team usually wins.

This approach makes a lot of sense, but plenty of today's teams prefer stockpiling as many Pro Bowlers as possible. Good strategy is important, they'll concede, but ultimately they believe that better talent usually wins out in the NFL. And there are also a number of NFL coaches who are steadfast in going with the same strategies all the time. They arrive at the stadium each Sunday and basically declare, "Here's what we do. We do it pretty damn well. We're going to run things like we always do -- and it's the other team's job to try to stop it."

It's not about collecting talent, it's about building a team. Some players fit better into one system or style of play than they do in another.

--Bill Belichick

Belichick's view is much different. "Every week is its own challenge," he emphasized. "Every game brings its own set of circumstances, adjustments, play style, and matchups. We focus on what we want to do for that week, not what we did two weeks before or ten weeks before." Super Bowl XXXVI put that philosophy into action and showcased it as no game had done previously.

A little more than two months earlier, the Rams beat New England, 24-17, during the tenth week of the regular season. The Patriots played pretty well but ultimately failed to achieve their main goal: disrupting the precise timing of Mike Martz's offense. "They only scored twenty-four points," said Belichick, "but I never really felt like we had control of the game. It seemed like every time they needed a pass, they could hit one."

"We thought going in that night we couldn't just let St. Louis settle in and throw. We wanted to get them out of their rhythm, put pressure on Warner, force incomplete passes. So we blitzed -- a lot. Unfortunately for us, their offensive line was great. By my count, we blitzed them forty-three times and never really got much heat on Warner."

Even though the Patriots were frustrated about losing, they weren't totally discouraged. In the locker room afterward, the mood was surprisingly upbeat. Mike Martz also had high regard for the team he had just beaten. "That was the most physical game we played that year," he praised, "and I mentioned to the media at the time that this was a Super Bowl team. The Patriots were the best opponent we had played to that point."

One reason why New England was so tough was the versatility and flexibility of its defenders, the perfect example being Mike Vrabel, a free agent addition who hadn't found a home in Pittsburgh but was a perfect fit for Belichick's schemes in New England. He was equally adept coming out of a three-point stance or standing upright, and could attack from any angle. Another waiver-wire pickup, the highly intelligent thirty-three-year-old Roman Phifer, filled a specific role as New England's pass coverage linebacker. In Lawyer Milloy and Ty Law, the Patriots had defensive backs that were physical and tough, with the versatility to defend the run at the line of scrimmage and execute their responsibilities in pass coverage. They were also extremely effective blitzers.