Last modified: Sunday, September 7, 2008 11:52 AM EDT Tom Brady and the Patriots take the field against Kansas City today. (Staff photo by KEITH NORDSTROM) Pats open with KC today BY MARK FARINELLA SUN CHRONICLE STAFF FOXBORO - These are the times when Bill Belichick drops the facade of stone-faced football coach, and reveals just how much he loves the game he coaches. "It's the Friday before the opener," he said to start his last press conference of the week before his Patriots were to take on the visiting Kansas City Chiefs today (1 p.m.; Ch. 4, 12), "and I think you can really start to feel it in the meetings. Just the guys coming in this morning, the excitement, just getting ready to play the first game." The coach of the New England Patriots has been down this road before, eight previous times here and another five in Cleveland as a head coach, and another 20 times as an assistant. But the feeling is the same, no matter the rank or level of responsibility. "I remember when I was with the Giants in '79 and I was a special teams coach," Belichick said. "We opened up in Philadelphia with the Eagles. Being a coordinator with the Giants and some of those opening day games with the Redskins and the Eagles and later on in the '80s and so forth, it was the same thing. You get a couple months, several months, to prepare for whoever it is you're opening with and you see all the things they can do and all their good plays, and those are the ones you remember. No matter what you're coaching, all the good plays that they had the year before and they had in preseason ... and you envision them making them against you. "You get nervous about it, and then you worry about all the other stuff that can happen," he said. All that angst was in place for Belichick when his Cleveland Browns opened against Jimmy Johnson's Dallas juggernauts. But years later, when the two were enjoying some time off together, Belichick learned just what all that angst was worth. "We were out there fishing on his boat and we were talking about that," Belichick said, "and he said, 'Well, no offense, Bill, but I don't even think we did a scouting report for you guys in that game. We had a big game coming up ... (and) we really weren't too concerned about the Browns in that opener.' "Which they shouldn't have been," Belichick added, "but that was humbling." What Belichick learned from circumstances like that was to leave the influences of the past behind and treat every game - opener, midseason or playoffs - as an entity unto itself. Preparation includes all of the things that the younger Belichick might have worried himself sick over in the past, but it's not more focused and designed to ferret out trends and tendencies that can be exploited when it's time to play. But the first game, he said, is the toughest one to prepare for. "Each team has held things back in preseason," Belichick said, "whether that's by design, or whether it's just by the sheer number of plays that your top players have played together. So even if you play a quarter in the first game, a half in the second game, three quarters in the third game and a quarter in the fourth game, you still won't even have two full games. "So how many plays can you run? How many things can you show, even if you're not really trying to hide a lot? Everybody will keep a few things back," he said. "You keep things back, they keep things back and then you go out there in the opener and you have a multiple of things that we haven't practiced against or that they haven't practiced against, so how will it all match up?" The situation is compounded somewhat today by the element of unfamiliarity. The Patriots haven't played the Chiefs since 2005, and Herm Edwards' team has undergone a massive turnover since then. He has 15 rookies on the team that invades Gillette today, and there's practically no way to prepare fully for what that might entail. "At Kansas City, you don't really know what personnel group they're going to be in." Belichick said. "You don't know what formation you're going to be in. I think the plays that they've run, basically will be the plays that they'll run, but we don't know how they'll build them or how they'll create them. "I'm sure they'll have some new plays," he continued. "We watched all of Kansas City's games from last year. Some games they're doing more of this, some games they're doing more of that, some games they're doing more of something else, so what are we going to get? Do you spread yourself thin and work on a little bit of everything? Or do you kind of put more eggs in one basket and say, 'Well, we really think they're going to do this' and concentrate in one particular area there? "Then, you better hope you're right," he said. "That's opening day and it's a lot harder to figure that out than it is after two or three regular season games that you've watched, from experience." This will also be a somewhat poignant opening day for Belichick and the Patriots because of the circumstances in which last year ended. With the Patriots becoming the first NFL team to complete a 16-0 regular season and entering Super Bowl XLII with a chance to run the table through 19 games, the 2007 season should have been Belichick's crowning achievement. Instead, the 17-14 loss to the New York Giants and the lingering effects of the "Spygate" controversy - perhaps evidence that one can take preparation for an opponent too seriously - made the 2007 season one to forget. The start of a new season, therefore, might be the best thing possible for a team that stood on the brink of greatness, and fell off. "Every year I walk out on the field before the game and I think, 'This will be a little better this year,' and it never is," Belichick said of the feeling of butterflies in the stomach that he gets at the start of a new season. "I think everybody has them, and then the ball is kicked off, you start playing and you kind of settle into it. It's good to get that first play over with and just get into the game. "But the buildup, the anxiety, and the butterflies; that's the perfect word for it because that's what they are," he said. Butterflies - but with claws. MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com. Read Farinella's blog, "Blogging Fearlessly," at thesunchronicle.com/farinella.