Belichick, celebrated for his cerebral approach to football, took a cruder stance. He wanted a brawl and he instructed his players to hit the Colts’ receivers hard every chance they had. The strategy was called rerouting, and what it meant was that instead of Colts receivers going unimpeded to where Manning expected them to be, the Patriots rerouted them — shoving is a more precise term — until the timing of the pass patterns was so off that the plays were useless.
“This was probably the most simple game plan we had,” cornerback Ty Law, with the Patriots at the time and now with the Kansas City Chiefs, said after that game. “Just beat them up.”
Bill Polian’s face tightened when he recalled the game. Polian, the Colts’ president, was angered by how the Patriots played. No wonder. When it was over, when Marvin Harrison had been jostled out of the game plan, when the Patriots had intercepted Manning four times, the rest of the N.F.L. had its blueprint for stopping the Colts. The Colts also had their reputation for finesse play cemented, the Patriots were on their way to building a dynasty — they went on to win their second of three Super Bowls — and the National Football League had a rules issue on its hands.
“I give the Patriots great credit for what they did,” Polian said in an interview this week. “I won’t go beyond that.”
The National Football League eventually did, with Polian’s prodding. The following off-season, the league issued a point of emphasis edict from the compe ion committee about how defensive holding and illegal contact would be officiated. Since then, defenders have had to be more careful about touching receivers beyond the first 5 yards of a play.
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