Imagine spending an entire week preparing for a history exam about Thomas Jefferson's presidency, focusing heavily on the Louisiana Purchase, and discover that most of the exam questions are about that topic.
Surely New York didn't know how much guesswork it took out of the Patriots' efforts; all New England had to do was remember what it studied and answer accordingly.
"When you do a two-minute drill in practice at the end of the week you obviously can't cover every situation," said Patriots coach Bill Belichick. "So, whichever [situation] you pick out, the chances of that one coming up exactly that way in that game are probably not real good.
"But somewhere along the line you are going to need a field goal and have no timeouts, you are going to need a field goal and have three timeouts, etc. What was interesting this week was that the situation that we had on Friday was identical to the one that came up at the end of the half. Identical.
"That was the way Charlie [Weis, offensive coordinator] scripted it, and that was exactly the way it turned out. As it happened we really got into some red area [inside the opposition's 20-yard line] plays on Friday and we didn't like exactly where we were.
"So we kind of took a look at it Friday and revised it a little bit, and we went back over it on Saturday. Ironically, it came up exactly the way that we had planned it. It was a good thing we went in and talked about it. It probably resulted in more points than we would have had otherwise."
The result was that New England took the ball from its 38 with 1:55 left in the first half and drove to the New York 7 on seven plays.
The Patriots capped the drive with a 7-yard touchdown pass from Tom Brady to David Patten with 5 seconds left before intermission for what would be the game's final score. The touchdown drive amassed 62 of New England's 201 yards of total offense in the first half.
The teams played a scoreless second half, enabling the Patriots to improve to 6-0 and extend their unbeaten streak to an NFL-record 21 games entering this Sunday's game at Pittsburgh.
