The Baltimore Ravens will play the New England Patriots on Monday Night Football in a battle of two of the most successful franchises since 2000.

It makes you wonder how the fate of these teams would have been different if not for a change of heart 20 years ago.

Two days after Art Modell announced he would move the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, he delivered another declaration:

"Bill Belichick will be my head coach in 1996."

That vow came on Nov. 8, 1995, and Modell even informed his players that Belichick was coming along with a franchise that would soon be renamed the Baltimore Ravens.

A few days later, The Baltimore Sun published a 1,180-word profile on Belichick being the city's next football coach that touched on his love for music and featured the line: "Expect Jon Bon Jovi to attend several games in Baltimore."

All of that changed after the Browns lost six of their last seven games and Modell became convinced that Belichick's dour public demeanor would have negatively impacted the team's effort to sell season tickets and stadium suites in Baltimore.

On Valentine's Day 1996, Modell fired Belichick in a short conversation over the phone and soon replaced him with Ted Marchibroda.

How would Belichick's remarkable career have been different if he did become the Ravens' first coach?

"I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it," Belichick said in a conference call Wednesday with Baltimore reporters. "I try to look ahead and make the best of the situation that I'm in."

Belichick has become the greatest coach of his generation, turning the New England Patriots into a perennial playoff team and leading them to four Super Bowl titles. The Ravens have won two Lombardi Trophies, and Belichick played a part in one of them despite not becoming their coach.

In 1995, Belichick traded out of the No. 10 spot with San Francisco and received a first-round pick the next year as part of the compensation. Belichick never got to use that pick, but it turned out to be Ray Lewis.

On Wednesday, Belichick said the Ravens would've been "competitive" if he had been their head coach.

"Look, I have a lot of confidence in my ability and I had a lot of confidence in the coaching staff and the players that we had at the time," Belichick said Wednesday. "We had a good team. We had a good staff. We had a lot of good players. Ozzie [Newsome] did a good job with that team and made it better. They won a championship five years later with some of the same players that we started with. Look, it wasn't my choice."