 For the opening round of the 2006 AFC playoffs, the New York Jets faced the New England Patriots, a team that had beaten them seven straight times until a rain-soaked mid-season meeting in Foxboro produced a 17-14 Jets win, a win that launched the Jets on a winning streak that carried them into the playoffs for the fifth time in a span of nine seasons. The Patriots responded to this mid-season loss by re-sodding their field with Field Turf, high-quality artificial grass that gave the players excellent footing. Much was made before the game about the match-up between Bill Belichick and one of his former assistant coaches, Eric Mangini, now coach of the Jets; there was a particularly bitter enmity between Belichick and the Jets organization that partly extended to Belichick s relationship with Mangini, and the two teams, founding members of the AFL, were thus set for only their second playoff meeting in their history.