Confirmed in a primary source: the New England Patriots’ own transcript of Belichick’s press conference at Gillette Stadium on Wednesday, 1 October 2014 records the sentence “We’re on to Cincinnati.” three times verbatim, plus two answers of “We’re getting ready for Cincinnati.” It was his stonewall response to questions about the Patriots’ 41–14 loss to Kansas City two nights earlier.
“We're on to Cincinnati” Bill Belichick, press conference at Gillette Stadium, 1 October 2014 (New England Patriots transcript). Verified at quotle.info · Verbatim: “We're on to Cincinnati. It's nothing about the past, nothing about the future. Right now we're preparing for Cincinnati.”
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In context
Evoking the world of Bill Belichick — New England Patriots head coach 2000–2023 · six Super Bowl titles as head coach. Theme: "We're on to Cincinnati". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
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Provenance
The source
Source
Bill Belichick Press Conference Transcript: ‘We’re on to Cincinnati’
Occasion
Press conference, Gillette Stadium, Foxborough — Wednesday, 1 October 2014
Published
NewEnglandPatriots.com, 1 October 2014
In the transcript
“We’re on to Cincinnati.” three times verbatim, plus “We’re getting ready for Cincinnati.” twice
Q: Your team has been successful for so long. How difficult is it to adjust to the adversity of Monday night’s game and get back on track? BB: We’re on to Cincinnati. Q: You mentioned Tom Brady’s age at the draft – BB: We’re on to Cincinnati. Q: Do you think having a 37-year old – BB: We’re on to Cincinnati. It’s nothing about the past, nothing about the future. Right now we’re preparing for Cincinnati.
Transcript excerpt
Transcribed and published by the New England Patriots. The deflections continue past this point: asked whether he had done enough to help Tom Brady, Belichick answered “We’re getting ready for Cincinnati. That’s what we’re doing.”
Monday 29 September 2014 — the Kansas City Chiefs beat New England 41–14 on Monday Night Football, the loss that set the week’s agenda (2014 Patriots season ↗).
Wednesday 1 October 2014 — at his regular midweek press conference at Gillette Stadium, Belichick answers five consecutive questions about the loss by redirecting to the next opponent; the Patriots publish the transcript under the headline the phrase earned (Patriots.com ↗).
Sunday 5 October 2014 — New England beats the Bengals 43–17 at Gillette Stadium, and the line turns from stonewall into slogan (2014 Patriots season ↗).
September 2015 — Belichick explains himself on camera for NFL Films’ Do Your Job: “24 hours after the game, you’ve got to move on” (CBS Boston ↗).
These are extemporaneous remarks made in 2014 and first published that year, so nothing here is in the public domain under US law — the transcript is a copyrighted work of the New England Patriots. The four-word sentence itself is almost certainly too short to be protected on its own, but we make no claim to the transcript, and quote only the exchange needed to document the attribution.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What the retellings get wrong
The attribution itself is solid — this is one of the rare famous-name quotes that survives contact with a primary source intact. What drifts is everything around the line: when it was said, where, and how many times.
✕
The dateWikiquote and many retrospectives 29 Sept vs 1 Oct
Wikiquote ↗ cites it as “Press Conference, September 29, 2014.” That is the date of the Kansas City game. The Patriots’ own transcript is captioned “his press conference at Gillette Stadium on Wednesday, October 1, 2014.”
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The settingThe Cincinnati Enquirer, among others not post-game
The Enquirer’s retrospective calls it “the post-game press conference” (via Fox19 ↗). It was his routine midweek presser two days later — he opened it with a long, unprompted scouting report on the Bengals before any reporter spoke.
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The countCBS Boston and other outlets 13 times?
CBS Boston ↗ says he delivered it “13 times.” In the official transcript the sentence “We’re on to Cincinnati.” appears exactly three times, followed by two answers of “We’re getting ready for Cincinnati.” — five straight deflections in all, which is the count Wikiquote ↗ gives.
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The wordingHeadlines, shirts and merchandise clipped
It is routinely shortened to “On to Cincinnati.” Belichick’s actual sentence begins with the pronoun: “We’re on to Cincinnati.”
✓He really said it, on the record, and his own team published the proof: the sentence is right there, three times, in the Patriots’ transcript of 1 October 2014 ↗.
Context
Why it mattered
On Monday night, 29 September 2014, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Patriots 41–14 on national television. Tom Brady was benched in the fourth quarter. The consensus that week was that New England’s dynasty had finally run out. When Belichick took the podium on the Wednesday, the reporters — led, per Wikipedia’s account of the week, by Albert Breer — wanted him to litigate all of it: the collapse, Brady’s age, whether the roster was good enough. He opened instead with an unbroken scouting report on the Bengals, and then simply refused.
The Patriots beat Cincinnati 43–17 the following Sunday and won the Super Bowl that season, which is why the line stopped being a deflection and became a slogan — printed on shirts, borrowed by politicians, and reused by Brady himself on social media after a later loss to Kansas City.
“It’s nothing about the past, nothing about the future. Right now we’re preparing for Cincinnati.”
What Belichick said about it afterwards
Interviewed for the NFL Films documentary Do Your Job: Bill Belichick and the 2014 New England Patriots, he was unapologetic: “I could have done it three times. I could have done it 53 times. It could have been 103 times if that’s what they wanted to keep asking because we had to turn the page,” he said in a preview quoted by the Cincinnati Enquirer ↗.
In another clip from the same documentary, reported by CBS Boston ↗ in September 2015, he added: “24 hours after the game, you’ve got to move on.”
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Born 16 April 1952 · New England Patriots head coach 2000–2023 · six Super Bowl titles as head coach
Bill Belichick coached the New England Patriots for 24 seasons, winning six Super Bowls — the record for a head coach — before the two sides parted ways in January 2024. He then became head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels. His podium style is its own genre: flat, minimal, and famously allergic to any question about a game already played, which is exactly what produced this line.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Bill Belichick, press conference at Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, MA, 1 October 2014. Transcript: “Bill Belichick Press Conference Transcript: ‘We’re on to Cincinnati’,” NewEnglandPatriots.com, 1 October 2014.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We're on to Cincinnati’?” Last verified 8 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/were-on-to-cincinnati/