It never would have happened under Bill Belichick.

But it was a different era back in 1972 when I, a political reporter, was assigned to spend two weeks with the New England Patriots, who had just come off another losing season.

The rules in the NFL were loose back then. Some of the coaches were too.  The only constant was a losing Patriot football team.

I had only recently joined the Boston Globe as a State House reporter after the old Boston Herald was bought by the Hearst Corporation.

Being a sports fan, I just had written a  Globe Magazine August cover story about boxer Joe DeNucci making a comeback in the ring and winning six fights in a row.

I had gotten to know DeNucci at the State House where he worked for the Legislature as a court officer. He later would become a state representative and state auditor.

Since the piece was a success, some brain at the paper thought it would be a good idea to do a similar comeback story about the sorry Patriots. I balked.

I didn’t want the assignment but being a newcomer, I accepted it, even though as a Patriots fan I knew the team would be lucky to win six games period, let alone six games in a row.

Their record in 1970 was two wins and 12 losses. With newly acquired Heisman trophy winner Jim Plunkett as the new quarterback, the team record improved to six wins and eight losses in 1971.

The teams played 14 games back then plus two then called exhibition games.

So, I go out to Schaefer Stadium to meet the late great Globe sportswriter Will McDonough, who knew more about football than did the coaches. We hit it off. Will is from Southie and I’m from Somerville. Will is going to show me around.

In what would be unthinkable today with a coach like Belichick, coaches often asked McDonough for data on players and plays and not the other way around.

Can anyone possibly conceive of Belichick, who in his usually irritable manner only mumbles to the press, ask a reporter anything?

“I’ll introduce you to John Mazur, the coach,” McDonough says. “He’s not going to be around much longer.”

Will also introduces me to Upton Bell, the 33-year general manager and football wizard who is determined to fire Mazur before he gets fired himself.

In the end they both get fired. But football coaches and general managers are like politicians. They always land another job.

Meanwhile I am thinking that Shaefer Stadium is getting to look like the State House.

We meet the half-dressed players in the locker room. Since it is pre-season and the cuts have not been made, there are a lot of them, all huge and healthy.

Plunkett and his go to wide receiver Randy Vataha, both Stanford graduates, are standouts and stars. But it is Plunkett, the Heisman trophy winner, I want to write about. He is 23 years old, tall, strong and handsome.

He was born to Mexican American parents. His mother was blind, and his father was also afflicted with progressive blindness, but still had to work to support their three children.

He later would quarterback two teams to the Super Bowl, neither of which were the Patriots, but were the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XV and the Los Angeles Raiders in Super Bowl XVIII.

But there is no time. We are off to Denver for an exhibition game with the Broncos.

To get the feel of the game, McDonough takes me down to the field at Mile High Stadium. There is nobody around but me and McDonough. We go to about the 20-yard line. It is dark but the football lights are on.

He looks down the field and says “Think about it. You’re 20 years old. You’re waiting to catch the kickoff. There are fifty or sixty thousand fans screaming. The ball comes. You hold your breath. You catch it catch it. Then all hell breaks loose.”

The football players are in bed by 10 p.m. to rest before the next day’s game. Mazur, the coaches, the assistants, the traveling crew and the reporters do their own preparation by drinking and partying all night in the Denver hotel lounge.

It never happened on Belichick’s watch.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Patriots vs. Colts at Harvard Stadium, circa 1966. The Colts won that one 14-6. (Herald archives)