When he walked off the field a 23-17 loser at Cincinnati in the 2001 regular season opener, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick had no clue about how his team would respond to the defeat, or what would transpire over the balance of the campaign.

Belichick had a much better handle on things Monday night. He knows that the defending Super Bowl champions are a good team. And he knows, just as well, that the team the Patriots defeated at the new Gillette Stadium will not come undone after one loss.

"That's an excellent Pittsburgh team," said Belichick of a Steelers outfit deemed by many pundits as the AFC's premier assemblage. "I don't think anyone over there is reaching for the panic button."

	Bill Cowher will have plenty to yell about if the Steelers start the season 0-2.

Probably not, since the Steelers seem adept at creating adversity in season openers, then bouncing back strong. That said, Pittsburgh is among a group of teams that faces a pressure situation after only one weekend of play, and whose rebound from an opening defeat will be much scrutinized.

The Steelers and St. Louis Rams, after all, were the favorites of most of the pundits to be the premier franchises in their respective conferences. Neither looked the part of Super Bowl contenders, however, in weekend losses. And while players from both teams parroted an old adage, that the opening game is just 1/16th of the season, Steelers coach Bill Cowher and counterpart Mike Martz of the Rams certainly don't want their clubs to ignore the significance of a potential early season losing streak.

St. Louis and Pittsburgh are still strong bets to be playing in January, but it never hurts to validate expectations in September, either.

With a short work week, the Steelers can't afford to have long memories of their Monday night implosion, given that Pittsburgh now hosts the Oakland Raiders in a Sunday prime time matchup. The Rams would seem to have an easier draw, facing the Giants in the Edward Jones Dome, but New York nearly knocked off St. Louis last year and defensive end Michael Strahan is matched against young right tackle John St. Clair, whose start on Sunday was his first ever in regular-season play.

There is, acknowledged Rams players, no time like now for a turnaround.

"Losing is just a mindset you don't want to get into," said Rams quarterback Kurt Warner, "and Mike has emphasized that. Yeah, it's a long season, and there is plenty of time to recover from one loss. But the last thing you want to do is take your time getting over it. You start thinking like, 'We'll be OK the next time out,' and you're looking for trouble. You can become history real fast in the playoff chase."

In fact, recent history indeed indicates that teams which begin a season with losses in the first two outings have a difficult time recovering. An 0-2 start seems relatively benign, especially for quality teams, but the hole has been a lot tougher to dig out from than it should be.

Since the NFL adopted the 16-game schedule in 1978, there have been 176 franchises that started a season 0-2, and just 17 of those clubs qualified for the playoffs. That's an eye opening failure rate of 90.3 percent.

The Patriots were the most recent team to defy the odds -- New England followed up its opening loss in 2001 with a defeat at the hands of the New York Jets -- but are one of just a handful of franchises to advance to the Super Bowl after a pair of season opening losses. And veteran players on the New England roster allow that the club was on the brink of disaster, without starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe and uncertain if Tom Brady could perform well enough to win, when fortunes were reversed.

Said cornerback Ty Law: "Somehow the light just went on for us. But the teams that think they can just throw a switch, and that things will suddenly be OK again, they're fooling themselves. It doesn't happen very often in this league, I can tell you."

He needn't tell the Steelers players, most of whom realize that seasons won in December are just as often scuttled in September. "I'm sure 0-2 wouldn't be the end of the world," one offensive player told ESPN.com on Tuesday afternoon. "But at 0-2, you can sure see the end of the world out there."

That is probably a sentiment shared at this juncture of the nascent season by players in the Philadelphia, Tampa Bay, Dallas, Cincinnati and Cleveland locker rooms. To varying degrees, all those teams were thought to be either favored in their divisions or regarded as much improved. All lost, though, in the opening weekend and face difficult bounce-back matchups.

The Bengals and Browns, in fact, face each other knowing that one of them will leave Cleveland stadium with its tail between its legs. The Eagles lost not only a game but several players to injury and, down on manpower, now must face division rival Washington. Dallas hosts resurgent Tennessee and the Bucs face a Baltimore team still capable of playing exceptional defense.

So much pressure so early in a season isn't unusual, especially for a Steelers team that has now dropped five of its last seven openers, but familiarity with early failure doesn't make dealing with it any easier. Likewise, the players in the Dallas locker room after Sunday's loss to the expansion Texans, are aware that 0-2 could mean oh-no for a season of promise.

Funny how the perception of a team can turn on one defeat. Viewed as a legitimate playoff contender by many, the Cowboys are suddenly seen as a club that might have been overhyped. But in the wake of the opening loss, Dallas veterans are more concerned with pressure than prognostications.

"The heat," said defensive tackle La'Roi Glover, "definitely is turned up a notch because of (the opening) loss."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.