Belichick

by Ian O'Connor

  Rookie linebacker C. J. Mosley came scrambling over to help on Vereen’s side as Brady snapped the ball and found Michael Hoomanawanui—an eligible tight end lined up in the left tackle’s spot—in the vacated space for 14 yards to the Baltimore 10. Harbaugh was so incensed that the officials, in his mind, weren’t giving his defense enough time to adjust before the Patriots snapped the ball, he took his argument onto the field and drew an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty. The Patriots scored, and then scored again on their next possession when Brady threw a pass behind the line to the former Kent State quarterback, Edelman, who fired a perfect strike to a wide-open Danny Amendola for a 51-yard touchdown.

  Harbaugh had a hard time digesting this 35–31 defeat. “It’s not something that anybody has ever done before,” he said of the bizarre (but legal) formations. He criticized the officials for not giving the Ravens more time to identify the eligible and ineligible Patriots, and later said he felt that Belichick’s status and reputation had overwhelmed the officiating crew. “And I absolutely respect that,” Harbaugh said. “I have no beef with the Patriots or Coach Belichick.” The Ravens’ coach did have a beef with Brady for saying after the game, “Maybe those guys gotta study the rule book and figure it out.”

  When Harbaugh and Belichick communicated in the days to come, Belichick apologized for what Brady had said, according to a Patriots source, and Harbaugh assured the New England coach that the Ravens hadn’t mentioned anything to the Colts about underinflated footballs. The Ravens would later say that their only communication with the Colts before the AFC title game had been a call between assistant coach Jerry Rosburg and head coach Chuck Pagano about another New England trick play (sending out its field goal unit and punting instead) and a text from kicking consultant Randy Brown to Pagano advising him that the Ravens weren’t given the proper kicking balls during the divisional game.

  This case was never about Baltimore. It wasn’t about Indianapolis, either, even if the Colts would face some ridicule for lodging a fair-play complaint in a game they lost by 38 points. It was about the integrity of the most dominant franchise in the sport, same as Spygate, and it was propelled into a different orbit by a tweet from ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reporting that the league had found 11 New England balls to be underinflated by 2 PSI. Belichick had a prior on his record; if it was found that he’d violated the rules again, he would be suspended by Roger Goodell and his reputation would be in tatters.

  This was some way to begin preparations for a Super Bowl matchup with the defending champs, the Seattle Seahawks, and their top-ranked defense. On his weekly Monday appearance on WEEI’s Dennis and Callahan show, Brady had called the early reports of underinflated footballs “ridiculous” and laughed when asked about the case that would come to be known worldwide as Deflategate. “I think I’ve heard it all at this point,” Brady said. “That’s the last of my worries. I don’t even respond to stuff like this.”

  Only Brady would have no choice but to respond that Thursday, in his first press conference since the story broke. That same day, Belichick offered his first expansive remarks on Deflategate, opening with a long statement about how shocked he was Monday morning when details started coming in. He said he knew nothing of the process that delivered game balls from the officials’ locker room to the field. He said he often used wet, sticky, cold, and slippery footballs in practice to make ball security more challenging than it would be in games, and to ensure that no Patriot ever used the condition of a ball as an excuse for not making a play. He said that in his entire coaching career he’d never once discussed a football’s air pressure with any player or staffer.

  But the most consequential words Belichick spoke that Thursday were these: “I think we all know that quarterbacks, kickers, specialists have certain preferences on footballs. They know a lot more about it than I do. They’re a lot more sensitive to it than I am. I hear them comment on it from time to time, but I can tell you, and they will tell you, that there is never any sympathy whatsoever from me on that subject. Zero. Tom’s personal preferences on his footballs are something he can talk about in much better detail and information than I could possibly provide.”

  Yes, Bill Belichick had just thrown Tom Brady under a double-decker bus.

  Brady’s friends and family members were not at all happy with this sudden turn of events. “I thought Bill handled it terribly, especially when it involved a guy who’d done everything to help your career as a coach, and you hung him out to dry,” said one close Brady friend. “You weren’t supportive of him, you didn’t have his back, and you basically said, ‘I don’t know, ask Tom, I had nothing to do with it.’ And you pushed it on him. When you think about it, that’s not how [Belichick] ever wants players to act when they’re asked questions in the media. It’s the exact opposite of that. Bill tells them, ‘Don’t talk about in-house stuff, and don’t talk about something that involves one of your teammates. Don’t answer those questions.’ And yet that’s exactly what Bill did.”

  Belichick was angry at Brady, according to people in the Patriots’ organization. He was angry at Brady because he had serious doubts about the quarterback’s denial and because this crisis was the last thing the coach needed. Belichick had taken the full hit on Spygate, even though Brady and others benefited from the information gained through the illegal videotaping. The coach knew his legacy couldn’t weather another damaging ’gate. If Spygate belonged to Belichick, Deflategate was going to belong to Brady.

  The coach had come off as credible in his presser when he said he’d never had a single conversation about PSI in 40 years of coaching; it seemed that even rivals around the league were inclined to believe that Belichick had nothing to do with Deflategate. “There’s no question they did it,” one head coach said of the alleged ball deflation. “Tom was clearly lying, but I don’t think Bill knew anything about it. Bill did his press conference and he was being honest, and I think he was really pissed about it.”

  Given the facts of the Spygate case and the leaguewide suspicions of continued black-ops tactics, it was odd that some inside the Patriots community viewed Belichick as a stickler for the rules. Chris Simms, the former NFL quarterback and a Patriots coaching assistant in 2012, called Belichick “the greatest rules follower I’ve ever been around in my career. Bill knows the rule book back to front. If we had a five-dollar pool on who’s going to win the Masters and Bill got word of it going on, he put the kibosh to it. He sends an email, ‘Hey, there’s no gambling on the premises of any NFL facility.’ He nixed our NCAA Tournament pool as well . . . I believe Tom did it, and I believe Tom did it by himself and with the ball boys. Of course he did it. We all know he did it. And I don’t think Bill Belichick had anything to do with it.”

  Not every former NFL quarterback was so certain of that. Chad Pennington was the only starter not named Tom Brady to win the AFC East since Brady took over early in the 2001 season. (He won the division for the Jets in 2002 and for Miami in 2008, the year Brady missed.) In a 2008 meeting in Foxborough, the Dolphins scored four touchdowns on six snaps out of the Wildcat formation, which calls for a direct snap to a skill-position player other than the quarterback. New England wasn’t prepared for that alignment and had no earthly idea how to defend it. Pennington maintained that in all his years of competing against Belichick’s Patriots, that day represented the only time he saw a look of doubt on the faces of their defensive players. “I was almost in shock myself,” he said. “They’re always prepared for everything.”

  Pennington said that when he first met Eric Mangini, after the former Belichick coordinator took over the Jets, Mangini pulled out the Patriots’ book on how to defend Pennington. The quarterback couldn’t believe the detail. He also couldn’t believe that a detail freak like Belichick wouldn’t know his team was using underinflated footballs. “The only reason I can speak on that is because Mangini was my coach for almost three years,” Pennington said, “and I know the level of preparation and detail the organization goes through
. I have seen it with my own two eyes within the Jets organization when Eric was the coach. And, to be honest, I learned so much from Eric and the New England Way, and it made me a better player. And so it’s just hard for me to fathom that they were unaware, or the coach was unaware. I can’t fathom that, knowing I’ve never seen a stone unturned when it comes to the Patriot Way. To say you were unaware was an indictment of the Patriot Way, because the Patriot Way is to say, ‘We’re not unaware of anything. We know everything, from what we’re eating in the cafeteria to who’s serving food to who’s coming to the complex to the amount of air in the football, to everything.’”

  In that context, Brady also had an awful lot of explaining to do when he showed up in the team’s interview room for his own Thursday press conference. His business manager, Will McDonough, had already emailed him an analysis of the Deflategate comments made by himself and Belichick. The Boston-based company Business Intelligence Advisors had concluded that the coach and the quarterback had “raised all sorts of behavioral flags” and had likely engaged in “an effort to withhold information” in their initial responses. “You should read this prior to any interviews you do about this,” McDonough wrote Brady. “Belichick has really dropped this in your lap just now. Don’t take this lightly.”

  The quarterback arrived at his presser wearing a white undershirt, a gray sweatshirt that hung unevenly around his neck, and a red-white-and-blue Patriots ski cap topped by a pom-pom. Given the circumstances and the stakes, Brady looked ridiculous. He faced a bank of cameras aimed his way and a packed room of reporters, not all of them familiar faces. And then Brady took the snap, took a five-step drop, and started dancing and dodging in the pocket.

  He said that he’d much rather be talking about the Seahawks but that he wanted to face the news media’s questions and to “provide the answers that I have, if any.” Brady had answers. They just weren’t very convincing ones.

  He stood there for a half hour and looked uncharacteristically nervous, uncertain, afraid even. One Hall of Fame quarterback who was watching on TV, Fran Tarkenton, would say that Brady “looked like a deer in headlights.” At times the Patriots’ franchise player had a slight tremble in his voice as he told a story that wasn’t being warmly received across most of the country. “I didn’t alter the ball in any way,” Brady said in response to the opening question. He went on to explain the pregame process of picking out footballs he likes before the equipment staffers break them in. He said that the game balls are in ideal condition before kickoff and that he doesn’t want anyone touching them before they’re put in play.

  Fair enough. But the second question was the one that started to move Brady off his spot. “This has raised a lot of uncomfortable conversations for people around this country who view you, a three-time Super Bowl champion, a two-time MVP, as their idol,” the reporter said dramatically. “The question they’re asking themselves is ‘What’s up with our hero?’ So can you answer right now: Is Tom Brady a cheater?”

  Brady laughed, then pursed his lips as he weighed the question. He exhaled and said, “I don’t believe so,” before continuing a response that included six “um’s” or “uh’s” and two “you know’s.” “I feel like I’ve always played within the rules,” he said. “I would never do anything to break the rules. I believe in fair play and I respect the league and everything that they’re doing to try to create a very competitive playing field for all the NFL teams. It’s a very competitive league. Every team is trying to do the best they can to win every week. I believe in fair play and I’ll always believe in that for as long as I’m playing.”

  Not since Roger Mudd, of CBS, asked Ted Kennedy in 1979 why he wanted to be president had an answer done less to help a fair-haired son of Massachusetts. Brady had other tough moments in the presser, at one point saying, “This isn’t ISIS. No one’s dying.” He also struggled to explain how a quarterback who is so particular in preparing a football to his liking had no idea that New England’s balls were underinflated in the first half of the AFC Championship Game.

  Before Brady had stepped into this inquisition, the team’s lead PR man, Stacey James, had wanted to prep him. Brady told James he’d be fine on his own. And now that he was scuffling in the presser, Brady was ignoring James’s repeated attempts to end it by calling for a final question. The quarterback knew he had created a problem, and he wanted to stay out there to fix it. On the 61st question he fielded, Brady decided he’d had enough. “I think Stace said ‘That’s it’ about ten minutes ago,” he said. “So thank you, guys.”

  The reaction was swift and decisive. On ESPN’s NFL Live show, former NFL players Mark Brunell, Jerome “the Bus” Bettis, and Brian Dawkins took turns criticizing Brady for telling a tale that wasn’t believable. “Those who feared Belichick was throwing Brady under the bus by pointing the media to Brady,” wrote Hartford Courant columnist Jeff Jacobs, “had to be relieved that The Bus didn’t believe Brady either.” Some commentators started lumping the quarterback in with noted sports liars and cheaters such as Lance Armstrong and Ryan Braun. ESPN’s Damien Woody, a two-time champion with the Patriots, said he thought Brady was involved; the former lineman was called a turncoat and far worse by Patriots fans who demanded blind loyalty to Brady and the team. ESPN’s Mike Wilbon, a widely respected national voice, had already called on the NFL to remove the Patriots from the Super Bowl if they were found to have tampered with the balls.

  Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman said the league needed to punish the repeat-offending Patriots more severely than it had punished the New Orleans Saints for the bonuses, or “bounties,” paid to players for knocking out opponents in Bountygate. Sean Payton, the head coach, was suspended for a year in that case.

  “It’s obvious that Tom Brady had something to do with this,” said Aikman. “Now the question becomes: Did Bill Belichick know about it?”

  One NFL head coach said he thought Belichick would end up being cleared of any wrongdoing, “because I think he knows the rules so well and he’s pissed that Tom and those equipment guys went behind his back, and because I think he wants to know everything. And he didn’t know it.” On the Brady side of the divide, one friend and former teammate was apoplectic that the quarterback had effectively been left to fend for himself.

  “I think Belichick screwed him, totally left him out to dry,” this friend said. “I don’t think Kraft or Belichick handled it well. Who the NFL was really going after at the start of it was debatable. Were they really going after the golden child of the NFL, or was it Belichick and the Patriots? Ultimately it comes down to Tom being the fall guy. Belichick couldn’t have screwed him more, if you ask my opinion.”

  Brady knew he’d just had a really bad day at the office. More than a few Patriots staffers and officials believed that he had been involved in the deflation scheme, and friends from different parts of Brady’s life found it hard to believe the story he told—given the way he told it. The quarterback knew that he had to control the damage, and when pressed about the news conference—particularly about his weak, hesitant response to the “Is Tom Brady a cheater?” question—Brady had his answers ready.

  He was adamant with co-workers, friends, and family members that he had no knowledge of any ball tampering. As to why he hadn’t responded more forcefully to the cheating question, Brady told friends he was not thinking about Deflategate as he answered, but about the Spygate case and his own belief that at least some of the leaguewide suspicions about the Patriots—such as claims that staffers had pulled the opposition’s stray or discarded scouting and game-plan material from vacated rooms—were likely true. If Brady was betrayed by a guilty conscience, said people close to him, it wasn’t a feeling inspired by deflated footballs.

  “Tom was terrible in that press conference,” said one friend, “but his feeling was he didn’t do anything with Deflategate. He wasn’t involved. They asked him, ‘Have you cheated?’ and he knows the Patriots have not always done everything by the book, to say the le
ast. To me, just come out and say that. Just say, ‘No, I didn’t instruct the equipment guys to do anything with the balls as part of any scheme.’ Just don’t say the second part about knowing the Patriots have done things in the past against the rules. But that’s why he answered it the way he did.”

  The Patriots railed against the idea that they had lifted enemy material out of empty hotel or stadium rooms, but one accomplished longtime NFL veteran said that this was a regular source of conversation among his teammates. “Every team I was on, when we played the Patriots, they’d specifically say ‘Don’t leave anything out,’” the player said. “It was ‘Be careful, don’t leave it out somewhere in your hotel. Don’t leave it in the locker room in Foxborough when you go out for warm-ups.’ I think Bill Belichick would do everything he could to get an advantage. I think he feels if you’re dumb enough to leave it out in your hotel or locker room, that’s your problem.”

  Only now it was Brady’s problem. And it would remain his problem for another 48 hours, until Belichick returned to the team facility’s interview room for what seemed like a Saturday Night Live skit on Saturday afternoon.

  Belichick’s interactions with the media over 15 years in New England were far better than they were over his five years in Cleveland, hard as that was for fans observing this televised press conference to believe. His chief of staff, Berj Najarian, had a lot to do with that, though Najarian could also assume the role of hired muscle—forever lurking nearby—if he felt reporters looking for one-on-one time with the coach were pressing their cases a little too assertively. Over the years, Belichick had shown game films to writers and sent some of them Christmas cards. He joined some TV and print reporters out for dinner during Super Bowl week. He offered background information and off-the-record confirmations to media members he trusted and even occasionally let a columnist know that he’d read his or her most recent piece. Dan Shaughnessy of the Globe, the market’s signature columnist, once wrote about all the old tension existing between Belichick and Bill Parcells, and after his subsequent daily presser, Belichick tapped Shaughnessy on the knee, acknowledged the surprised columnist by name, and said, “That was a great one today.”