The 2002 New England Patriots season was the 33rd season for the team in the National Football League and 43rd season overall. They finished with a 9–7 record, good enough for second in the division but not a playoff berth. As of the 2012 season, this was the last time that the Patriots failed to win 10 or more games in a season.
Following their victory in Super Bowl XXXVI seven months earlier, the Patriots played their first game in the new Gillette Stadium in the NFL's prime-time Monday Night Football opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers, a win for the Patriots. After an additional two wins to begin the season, including a 44–7 road win against the division rival New York Jets, the team lost five of its next seven games, allowing an average of 137 rushing yards a game during that span. In the final week of the season, the Patriots defeated the Miami Dolphins on an overtime Adam Vinatieri field goal to give both teams a 9–7 record. A few hours later, the Jets, who defeated the Patriots the week prior, also finished with a 9–7 record with a win over the Green Bay Packers. Due to their record against common opponents, the Jets won the tiebreaker for the division title, which eliminated the Patriots and Dolphins from the playoffs.
Read more about 2002 New England Patriots Season: Staff, Opening Training Camp Roster, Notable Games, Week 1 Roster, Standings, Final Roster
Famous quotes containing the words england, patriots and/or season:
“and you undid the reins
and I undid the buttons,
the bones, the confusions,
The New England postcards,
the January ten o’clock night,
and we rose up like wheat....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Let us have a good many maples and hickories and scarlet oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village is not complete, unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. They are important, like the town clock. A village that has them not will not be found to work well. It has a screw loose, an essential part is wanting.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)