It's been so long I don't but it's out there you can find the stuff.
If you rewatch the SB and look at the defensive alignments of the Patriots they were all but ignoring the run. Had Martz started pounding Faulk like he did in Philly the Patriots would have been forced to drop the 7 DB alignments and then they would have had to face the Rams with a conventional defense.
When they played mid season that same year in cold weather Warner lit them up because there was the threat of the run from Faulk. It was a kind sloppy game on both sides because of the field and the weather but the Patriots weren't dropping 7 DB's into coverage and ignoring the run.
I don't buy into the conspiracy about the Patriots being red white and blue and that's why they won. Nobody gave a rats azz about them back then and the Rams were the darlings of the NFL.
And when the Rams started running the Patriots would have stopped playing pass defense. That's why I don't agree that going away from what we were doing would magically work.
Plus, whether you want to agree there was a conspiracy or not, the reason the pass defense was working was because the receivers were getting mugged and the referees were ignoring it. So I don't doubt the same refs would start calling imaginary holding if they needed to as well.
As far as the "no one cared about the Patriots" thing... the remark about "Wouldn't it be great if a team called the Patriots won the Super Bowl after 9/11" was flying around at the time. Pissed me the hell off because it's not like the Rams were Al Qaeda's team.
That makes more sense if the team only wants to get rid of the guaranteed money, but if that's the case, this makes little sense:
Such a scenario could enrage Bears fans, but to get a team to take on so much guaranteed money that could be used on valuable free agents and contract extensions, the Bears just might have to compensate a team with more than Cutler to do it.
Salary cap room shouldn't be affected by this move (as we just discussed) so this could only be talking about real money on hand... and if the Bears are lacking enough real money to sign a team with Cutler's contract, that's flat out incompetent.