The last decade of the NFL has hinged on one big decision by Bill Belichick in 2001.
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Folks in the Bay Area have been saying good-bye to Alex Smith for weeks now, and it came as no surprise for any Niners fan from Modesto to Half Moon Bay to hear that Smith had finally been traded. What was surely the most surprising bit of information was the early word on how much the deal might send back — a 2013 second-round pick and a conditional third-rounder next year — from Kansas City, where Smith will be the No. 1 guy once again under new coach Andy Reid. Colin Kaepernick, who nearly led the team to a historic Super Bowl comeback win three weeks ago, is SF's undisputed starter for the foreseeable future, unless something unexpected happens.
It was fitting, then, that news of Smith's inevitable exodus leaked just a couple of news cycles after we learned of Tom Brady's new contract extension, the one that helps the team stay competitive, gives him a raise, and guarantees that he retires as the greatest New England Patriot of all time and one of the top five quarterbacks in NFL history. And the only reason that sentence doesn't solely reside in some fantasy world penned by a 13-year-old Mainer writing NFL fanfic until 3 a.m. every night is because something unexpected happened in Foxborough on Sept. 23, 2001. In the same way that Alex Smith lost his starting job this past season to a concussion, New England's Drew Bledsoe lost his job late that afternoon to a sheared blood vessel in his chest. Tom Brady, an unheralded sixth-round draft pick from Michigan and one-time chubby kid from San Mateo, California, came on in relief and never relinquished his position. Brady went on to lead the team a Super Bowl win that season, never mind the four more appearances (and two wins) that subsequently followed.
There was some middling, healthy debate in San Francisco about whether it was right that Smith lost his position last season through little fault of his own, though fans had seen enough of Smith and been underwhelmed by six-plus seasons of mediocrity. The Patriots faced a much more delicate midseason quarterback controversy in 2001. In many ways, football fans haven't seen such a great QB battle like Brady/Bledsoe since it occurred. (And no, Tebow/Sanchez in New York doesn't count. For it to be a great controversy there should be at least one decent quarterback.) Furthermore, there's a chance we may never see one again that has such far-reaching implications. Because matters shook out the way they did, Brady, head coach Bill Belichick, and some others will be NFL Hall of Famers one day. But it almost never happened that way, and Bostonians were torn for weeks.
As an intern in the Boston Globe's sports department during the Patriots' 2001-02 season, I was prone to saving certain section covers that caught my eye. For reasons that escape me even in hindsight, I kept two that pertain to Brady. The first came from the days that followed Drew Bledsoe's clearance by the team's medical staff, when Belichick and the rest of the organization had to make the call as to whether Brady, who'd gone a respectable 5-2 since stepping in as the starter, would continue in that role or whether Bledsoe, who'd suffered his "sheared blood vessel" thanks to New York Jets linebacker Mo Lewis, might return as the main man in Foxborough. As you can see from the Globe-conducted polls at the left, public opinion was certainly in Brady's favor, but the consensus was not unanimous. Belichick, who was still fairly unproven in his own right as a head coach at that point, had to make a decision that, no matter what, would be unpopular with some segment of his team's fan base.
He stuck with Brady. The following week, the Patriots lost to the team they would later meet (and beat) in the Super Bowl, the St. Louis Rams, and public opinion had started to turn the other way.