by Ian O'Connor
Jets quarterback Chad Pennington, who had great respect for the Belichick-Brady Patriots, stopped short of saying the videotaping had provided them a significant advantage. “I think the right phrase is, it creates a more consistent advantage,” Pennington said. “You still have to execute, but in our league the talent is so close, and for teams like New England who have been fantastic at playing with average NFL talent and getting great NFL results, that can become a great advantage. So even though you still have to have that execution, those small things can really separate teams in the NFL, because . . . these games come down to minuscule mistakes. It’s different from a college or high school game, because the talent and preparation level is so high. So it’s certainly an advantage. It’s not the only reason a team wins, but it doesn’t hurt.”
If Belichick deserved the benefit of the doubt before Spygate, he’d surrendered it forevermore. Many prominent NFL figures and voices thought Belichick should’ve been suspended and didn’t buy Goodell’s rationale for not putting the coach on the bench. The prevailing thought in competing front offices? The commissioner had cut a break to Robert Kraft, an influential supporter who had endorsed his candidacy to replace Tagliabue. Many were also outraged that Belichick never answered material questions about his Spygate methods, and about the number of games and teams he improperly videotaped over the years. As it turned out, the commissioner was among the outraged. Years later, he’d tell Sports Illustrated’s Peter King that Belichick had assured him he’d apologize and hold himself more accountable than he did in his prepared statement, which focused too much on his alleged misinterpretation of a rule and the notion that the alleged misinterpretation hadn’t helped him beat the Jets.
“I was given assurances that he would tell his side of the story,” Goodell said. “He went out and stonewalled the press. I feel like I was deceived.”
When the Patriots played San Diego the Sunday night after the penalties were announced, Belichick was treated to a standing ovation from the Gillette Stadium crowd. A franchise that was once barely an afterthought in the market had won enough to challenge the Red Sox for Boston-area supremacy and to develop a fan base with the passion and blind loyalty of those in the biggest college towns in America, and Belichick, who had just received a contract extension through 2013, was the people’s choice. The Patriots won one for the skipper, prevailing by a 38–14 count for the second straight week, and in the locker room afterward the players came together in a huddle. “Bruschi would lead the postgame cheer,” said Chad Brown, a linebacker in his 15th season, “and it was always ‘How do we feel about blah-blah?’ and the whole team would say, ‘Aww, yeahhhh.’ That Sunday, Bruschi said, ‘How do we feel about kicking butt and having the greatest coach in the league?’ And he got one of the loudest ‘Aww, yeahhhhs’ all year from us.”
Brown had played for Pittsburgh and Seattle before first arriving in Foxborough in 2005, and Super Bowl champions Bill Cowher and Mike Holmgren were among his coaches. “I played in the NFL 12 years before I became a Patriot,” he said, “and I think I learned more about football in year 13 than in the previous 12 years combined.” Besides, the longtime linebacker said, he had firsthand knowledge of some of pro football’s most prominent figures bending or breaking the rules. “I know very few athletes and coaches who have not pushed things to the line repeatedly,” Brown said. “I know Hall of Famers who put silicone on their jerseys. Jerry Rice, I played with in Seattle. Maybe the greatest football player of all time. He used stickum.”
After beating the Chargers in the first game of the rest of his coaching life, Belichick called the crowd’s response to him “awesome.” This was a good night across the board. Tom Brady had thrown two more touchdowns to Moss, suggesting that they were about to terrorize the league, before giving the beleaguered Belichick a pat on the ass. “After everything that went on this week,” Brady said, “we wanted to do our best for him.”
Bruschi was most vocal in how the Patriots felt about their coach, and this moment. The linebacker had suffered a stroke a few days after playing in the 2005 Pro Bowl, and he shocked many in the medical and football communities by returning to play a little more than eight months later. Bruschi was another Parcells guy turned Belichick guy. Belichick came to think of him as an exceptional player, not in terms of size and speed and physical talent but in terms of grit and reliability and intelligence—the things that separated the Patriots from the NFL pack. And Bruschi described this Week 2 victory as no less meaningful than the franchise’s biggest postseason victories, because everything New England had accomplished was under siege.
But storm clouds were still gathering around the best coach in football. Fox’s Jay Glazer had obtained a copy of the Matt Estrella tape and played it on the air; the video showed the Patriots’ staffer shooting the hand signals of Jets coaches and then capturing the down and distance on the scoreboard. Glazer’s colleague Terry Bradshaw, a four-time Super Bowl champion with the Steelers, called Belichick a “cheater” who had hurt his team and his fans “all because of your arrogance.” Goodell was demanding that the Patriots turn over all tapes and notes relevant to any illegal filming of signals that took place before the 2007 opener, and warning that he could increase the team’s penalties if the league discovered that the Patriots hadn’t been entirely truthful and transparent during the investigation. Asked if he’d turn over all additional materials, Belichick said, “Of course.”
Reports surfaced suggesting that the Patriots might’ve been miking defensive linemen to steal quarterback audibles (other teams had been accused of the same), that they might’ve been using an alternate radio frequency in the coach-to-quarterback communication system to override the 15-second cutoff on the play clock (a league official was responsible for that cutoff), and that they might’ve contributed to the communication system breakdowns that were hindering visiting teams at Gillette Stadium. It seemed the sturdy walls of the Patriot program were closing in on its founding father.
The broadcasting of the Estrella tape inflamed the crisis, and Goodell sent three league representatives to Foxborough to determine once and for all the full scope of New England’s videotaping operation. Two days later, on September 20, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello released this statement: “The Patriots have fully cooperated and complied with the requirements of the commissioner’s decision. All tapes, documents and other records relating to this matter were turned over to the league office and destroyed, and the Patriots have certified in writing that no copies or other records exist. League policies on in-game videotaping and audio communication will continue to be closely monitored and strictly enforced with all 32 teams.”
The commissioner found no evidence that New England had committed audio or communication system infractions. But the questions that owners, executives, coaches, and players leaguewide were asking were ones that Goodell didn’t have satisfactory answers for. Why in the world did he destroy New England’s tapes and notes? Shouldn’t the teams that were victimized by the cheating have a chance to see them? Didn’t NFL fans have a right to know exactly what the Patriots were doing to alter what was supposed to be a fair-and-square competition? How many games and seasons were affected? Were New England’s three Super Bowl titles, won by a combined nine points, the product of brilliant coaching and playing or the result of fraud?
“Let everyone know what was on the tapes,” said the Steelers’ Porter. “Why would you destroy them so fast?”
Indianapolis Colts president and GM Bill Polian said the question of why the Spygate tapes and notes had been destroyed was ultimately raised at a competition committee meeting. “They said they felt it was best to do so, and everyone shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘OK,’” Polian said. “In retrospect, almost immediately in retrospect, that probably was not the wisest course of action. I think those [teams] that were taped deserved to know what was done to them.”
Like the vast majority of his peers, Polian rejected Belichick’s assertion that he’d merely m
isinterpreted a rule, since the league had twice emphasized it within the 12 months preceding Spygate. “And the idea that boys will be boys and everybody does it was refuted as only Marv Levy could refute it, by saying, ‘No, everybody doesn’t do it.’ I think that’s the appropriate statement . . . We had every reason to believe we were one of the teams taped, and as a result we felt we had the right to know what had been done to us, the scope and nature of it . . . You could point to any number of games, but without knowledge of the tape, how and when it was done, there’s no way exactly to know how much it affected us.
“It’s a great advantage,” Polian continued. “The irony is that the people who did it legally, and we were one of them; we were great at stealing signals, and it had a significant advantage. No doubt about it. We had our advance scout watch the signal caller—that was one of his duties—and if you do it manually . . . you record on a tape recorder what signal is given and then you watch to match it on tape, it’s laborious work. It takes a lot of time and effort, and many times you’re wrong . . . Nobody cared that they were trying to get other people’s signals. Shame on us if we don’t take precautions to cover them up. But the fact it was done in a way that was patently illegal is the issue. We don’t even know if it was used in the same game. That remains unanswered, though they contend it wasn’t.”
Goodell said he destroyed the tapes and notes to ensure that New England could never again use them, and to ensure that no other tapes could end up in the hands of a network partner looking to air them. If another video surfaced, Goodell reasoned, he’d know that the Patriots hadn’t fully complied with his instructions. The commissioner minimized the advantage a filming team had over its opponent and maintained that the tapes and notes recovered were consistent with what New England claimed was in its possession—another reason, he said, that they were destroyed.
It was hard to find many people who were buying Goodell’s explanation. The commissioner clearly wanted to stuff this scandal inside a box, tape it up, and store it in the deepest, darkest corner of the league’s attic so it was never again seen or heard from. It would be eight years before a pair of investigative reporters uncovered exactly what had happened when those three league representatives descended on Foxborough—what they found and how they disposed of it—as Goodell saw no reason to offer any more specifics than he had to. He liked the idea of being the NFL’s answer to Clint Eastwood, and he could deal with Michael Vick’s dogfighting and Pacman Jones’ run-ins with the law. But he couldn’t deal with the notion that his three-time championship team amounted to counterfeit goods. He couldn’t deal with New York Giants pass rusher Michael Strahan comparing Spygate to the NBA gambling scandal involving referee Tim Donaghy.
Goodell had to make it go away. But very few people outside of New England wanted that to happen. Spygate raged on as a tsunami of a sports story, and the man who started it all, Eric Mangini, came to regret the toll it took on his former boss’s standing in the game. The day he was hired by the Jets, Mangini said of Belichick, “He was my mentor, my teacher, and I consider him a close friend that I will have for the rest of my life.” This was the same Belichick who had locked Mangini out of his own office as payback for taking a job offer he told his assistant he should decline. Their families had been close, and Belichick had given a reading at Mangini’s wedding. Mangini gave his son Luke the middle name William in honor of Belichick. He didn’t want to firebomb the most important relationship in his football life, but that was what he did—for keeps—the day he turned in the Patriots over a system of cheating that he had profited from.
“If Eric had turned them in against Team X—Dallas or the Miami Dolphins or someone else—that violates the line of loyalty and family secrets,” said one Jets official. “However, the thing that people miss a bit, Eric was employed by the New York Jets, and he had a loyalty and responsibility to the team he was employed by. To do it in our stadium against us—Eric would not have been doing his job for us if he didn’t alert us. It’s that fundamental.”
Belichick didn’t speak another word to Mangini. He had more important relationships to rebuild anyway, like the one with the man who hired him. Robert Kraft sat his coach down and asked him how much the illegal taping had helped the Patriots on a scale of 1 to 100. “One,” Belichick said.
“Then you’re a real schmuck,” Kraft responded.
Opponents were calling Belichick far worse names than that. Yet he had something at his disposal that none of his antagonists had. He had Brady and Moss and an offense ready to do to the league what the Chicago Bears’ defense had done to it in 1985. More than anything, Belichick had a locker room’s worth of players planning to clear his name by delivering the greatest season the NFL had ever seen.
15
Imperfection
The night before his Patriots played their first post-Spygate game, against San Diego, Bill Belichick figured he needed to lighten the team’s load. He liked to show his team epic boxing matches, among other great sports events from the past, but this time he wanted to try something different. He thought a Boston-area comedian named Lenny Clarke could loosen up his players after an extremely tense week, and Clarke was a hit.
“It was just exactly what the team needed at that moment,” Chad Brown said. “He was very funny. He poked fun at Bill and Tom. No one was unscathed by this guy’s jokes.” Belichick had come a long way since his less mature days in Cleveland, where two exotic dancers were once brought in to entertain the team.
The coach had so much equity built up with his players, largely due to his relentless work ethic. Brown said he had played for coaches who were out the door and heading home by 6 p.m. Belichick? Brown had spent parts of three seasons with the Patriots, arriving early and staying late. He had a key card to the facility and was there at all hours trying to extend his distinguished career. He would be released and re-signed three different times in 2007, his final season, and through all his comings and goings, there was one figure he couldn’t escape. “Only one time in all the times I went to the facility was Bill Belichick’s car not there,” Brown said. “And by the time I left, it was there.”
The hours devoted to his craft, to finding that elusive edge, were why Belichick was coming up with things other NFL coaches weren’t. For one, he deployed an interesting, commonsense approach to critical short-yardage situations when the Patriots were on defense. “Bill would say, ‘Let’s go for a Kodak moment here,’” Brown said.
“We’re going to let the other team break the huddle, start their cadence, go in motion, and right before they snap the ball we’re going to call a timeout. Fourth and one, third and one—there are only like three or four plays on the offensive coach’s play sheet, and that situation is only going to come up a few times in the game. So chances are he called his best play for that situation. By taking this Kodak moment, we’ve now seen the personnel, the formation motion. We got all that information. We’ve taken away their best play . . . We practiced that. ‘Chad, you’re calling signals in this part of practice. OK, Chad, we’re going to have a Kodak moment here. Practice it. Call time out right before they snap the ball.’”
Belichick had different, behind-the-scenes ways to reach and inspire his players. Gemara Williams, undrafted free agent out of the University of Buffalo, said there was a reason why players who were troubled elsewhere (Randy Moss, Corey Dillon) immediately conformed to the culture in New England. Inside Belichick’s office, Williams said, lived a man the media and the fans almost never saw at a podium. “You go into his office and he’s one of the coolest guys ever,” Williams said. “He’s not afraid to be a person. He’s not afraid to connect with his players outside of football. He’ll joke with you and laugh with you and tell you stories about his personal life that relate to something you’re going through. He shows you that human side of him.”
Brown said the coach allowed linebackers with at least ten years of experience to have rocking chairs in the meeting room. When Belichick showed his pla
yers films of his great Giants defenses, he allowed them to respond with firm, good-natured jabs. “We always pushed back,” Brown said. “We were like ‘Come on, Bill, that guard is 265 pounds, and Harry Carson is 250. The guard I’m playing this week is 335. I know the structure and A-gap and B-gap, but I can’t do what Harry Carson did there. My guy is 80 pounds heavier.’”
In the team facility’s auditorium, before he worked the room with his ample supply of sarcasm and dry humor, Belichick often opened his meetings with New England’s most recent transactions. One player explained, “He would say, ‘We cut so-and-so this morning,’ or ‘We signed so-and-so and he’s in the room now.’ He would do it in such a business-attitude way. It doesn’t matter who it was or how surprising the move was. And oftentimes, after transactions, he would have news clippings.”
