After the Patriots lost 41-14 to the Chiefs in Week Four of the 2014 season, Bill Belichick famously said, “We’re on to Cincinnati.” But Bill’s son Steve Belichick remembers some other words spoken after that Patriots loss.
What Steve Belichick, the Patriots’ safeties coach, remembers is that former Super Bowl-winning quarterback Trent Dilfer said on ESPN after that loss that the Patriots weren’t good anymore. And so, after the Patriots won the Super Bowl two and a half years later, Steve Belichick confronted Dilfer on the field.
“The only encounter I had, and I understood it, was on the field after the game against the Falcons [Super Bowl LI],” Dilfer said on WEEI. “That Super Bowl, the great comeback and the late win. Bill’s son got in my face and was pretty adamant reminding me. He must not have heard the 30,000 apologies that I made in owning the stupidity of my comments in the media. That was the only grudge, I guess.
Although Dilfer said, “I thought he was going to try to punch me in the face,” he added that he bears no animosity for the younger Belichick.
“I get it,” Dilfer said. “Hey, if I was an athlete, when I was playing and if people said stupid things about me, I carried it too. I held onto it. I used it as motivation. I resented those people. I totally 100 percent understand it. I have never run from it because it’s part of the job.”
Dilfer, who no longer works at ESPN, is now a high school football coach. He calls his 2014 assessment of the Patriots “a big mistake.”