Bill Belichick turned OTAs into a lesson on the history of football

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What an eventful week it’s been for the New England Patriots.

After a field trip to Fenway Park on Monday, the team was in for even more of a treat on Tuesday.

Head coach Bill Belichick is a history buff who also is an advocate of the military. So he decided to take a unique opportunity to turn back the clocks at Gillette Stadium on Tuesday – incorporating leather football helmets on the practice field, covering up digital clocks in the meeting rooms, playing black-and-white recordings of old football games and offering a plain and simple lunch menu similar to the ones they may have eaten in the 1930s and 1940s.

“It was a lot of fun. We walked in and you could tell something different was going on than the normal practice day,” said one player who took part in the history day.

"It was cool for him to get a chance to teach us about the sport that we're in, the National Football League and kind of how it started. We got to watch some old clips from football back then -- the '30s and '40s -- that I had never seen before. I didn't know what type of offenses were run, so it was really neat to see. We even looked at high school football back then, all the way up to NFL."

Belichick has been really focusing on camaraderie and team building amongst his players this offseason, treating them to a visit with Kobe Bryant earlier - to a field trip to Fenway on Monday - to a unique history lesson on Tuesday. He even decided to cancel the last two OTAs – giving his players a break until training camp.

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