He was told to be at the main entrance of the Sheraton Music City Hotel at 8:15 on Sunday night, and he was there at 8:00 idling in his black sedan. He was just following instructions. He didn’t know that the hundred-mile trip he was about to take would hold so much significance for the head coach of the New England Patriots. He didn’t know that this trip from Nashville to Monterey would jog a lifetime of Bill Belichick’s memories and, eventually, sadden his heart. It was December 15, 2002, about twenty-four hours before the Patriots would play the Tennessee Titans on Monday Night Football. Belichick’s day, which began in Foxboro, had already been full. He had overseen a Gillette Stadium practice at 10:45 that morning. There was a flight out of Providence at 1:30, an arrival at the hotel three hours later, a production meeting with ABC’s John Madden, Al Michaels, and Melissa Stark, and finally a meeting with the coaching staff. Now he was sitting in the backseat of a car, being driven eastbound on I-40 toward a small town near the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains.
