Patriots coach Bill Belichick offered some insight into how he built the New England dynasty that included a somewhat surprising assessment of how long it took: Belichick said he really hadn’t built his roster to his liking when he won his first Super Bowl with the Patriots, after the 2001 season.
Belichick was hired in 2000 as head coach of the Patriots, having previously served as their assistant head coach in 1996. Belichick says that when he arrived, it was immediately apparent that the Patriots needed a multi-year rebuild, much like the Browns team he took over in 1991 that didn’t make the playoffs until 1994.
“When the opportunity came in 2000, even though this team was nowhere near the team that we left in ’96, it had declined quite a bit, there were still a few pillars here that we could build with,” Belichick told The 33rd Team. “And I’d say by ’03 — even though we won in ’01 — by ’03 this was a pretty good football team in all three phases of the game. It kind of took the same basic four-year window that it took in Cleveland. Again, we were fortunate to win in ’01, but I’d say by ’03, ’04, we had one of the better teams in the league.”
The 2001 team that won the Super Bowl in Belichick’s second year had plenty of luck, from Drew Bledsoe’s injury revealing that Tom Brady was more ready to lead the team than Belichick realized, to the infamous tuck rule. Only by Belichick’s fourth and fifth seasons in New England, when they went 14-2 and won the Super Bowl both years, had Belichick built the kind of football team he wanted.
