Five Rings
Page 17
It was for the best. In the Patriots’ first Wild Card round playoff game since the Pete Carroll years, they beat the Jaguars on another frigid Saturday night playoff game in January. The game was close in almost every statistical category except the scoreboard. Brady threw three touchdown passes to three different receivers, the last of which was a 63-yard strike to Ben Watson. Asante Samuel later added a 73-yard interception return off Byron Leftwich that made it a 28–3 final. That was never in doubt. It made both Belichick and Brady 10–0 in their Patriots postseason careers.
For that week at least, all the biblical plagues the team had endured since the moment the duck boat parade ended seemed to be over. It was playoff time. And this was a team that did not know how to lose playoff games.
The following week’s divisional playoff game at Denver started out with the feeling that they would never lose one. Early in the game, the Broncos drove down to inside the Patriots’ 5. Head coach Mike Shanahan—whether he was trying to make a statement or deciding he needed to take chances in order to win this one or simply because he was trying to get into a Johnson-Measuring Contest against Belichick—decided to go for it on fourth and 1 and failed to convert.
On the next Denver possession, Asante Samuel intercepted Broncos QB Jake Plummer, and Brady hit receiver André Davis for 51 yards to set up a field goal that made it 3–0. But then, things just started to go the opposite of how everyone was used to Patriots playoff football going.
Kevin Faulk was the most dependable player on the planet. If you were leaning out a third-story window with the house on fire and 50 guys were on the ground waiting to catch your baby, he’s the one you’d aim for. But this time, he fumbled; Denver recovered and turned it into a touchdown to take the lead. On the kickoff that followed, Ellis Hobbs fumbled, leading to three more points and a score of 10–3 at the half.
Later, with the score 10–6 and the ball at Denver’s 5, Brady made one of the costliest decisions of his career, forcing a pass into the end zone that was picked off by future Hall of Famer Champ Bailey, who returned it all the way back to the Patriots’ 1. I say “to the Patriots’ 1” instead of “for the score” because Ben Watson, in one of the greatest displays of hustle + athleticism × determination, stayed with the play. He chased Bailey from the opposite field all the way to the goal line to knock the ball out of the end zone. I was convinced then as I am now that it should have been ruled a touchback, Patriots ball at the 20. The Patriots challenged it, but the ruling stood, the reason being that the NFL uses the TV network cameras instead of setting up any of their own. (Because, you know, who can afford that?) Because the line of scrimmage was 95 yards toward the other end of the stadium, there were no cameras available at that end to provide a decent angle. A play later and Denver put it in for the 17–6 lead.
From that point on, the game was just the Patriots learning they could no longer get away with violating the Law of Averages. It felt like every break they got in those 10 straight playoff wins was being slapped down on the table with a “I’ll take that when you’re ready, sweetie.” And expecting a healthy tip.
It seemed like every guy they could count on before messed up. Adam Vinatieri missed a kick, his first in 21 postseason attempts. Troy Brown muffed a punt. Brady hit Deion Branch on a 73-yard bomb to set up a touchdown that made it a 14-point game. But then he threw an interception to John Lynch, the team’s fifth turnover and the one that finally pulled the plug on the 2005 Patriots’ life support.
For the first time in a long time (by football standards, at least), the Patriots were bounced out of the playoffs early (by their standards). The one bright spot for Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli was that at least this would give them a jump on the off-season they needed with so much roster turnover still to come.
19
Martyball
Just like in the previous off-season, there were major changes on the coaching staff. When Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel moved on then, everyone saw it coming. This time, they only anticipated one change. The other was a total blindside.
On the first, Belichick made it official that Josh McDaniels would now be offensive coordinator in rank, title, and rate of pay, instead of simply the assistant who calls all the plays. The other was not so positive. Eric Mangini, after just one year as defensive coordinator, was leaving to take the head coaching job of the New York Jets.
Belichick never said anything publicly. Not one word. Which said everything. Because when Weis and Crennel left, he couldn’t stop gushing about how much he respected and appreciated them. With Mangini’s announcement, there were crickets. He didn’t have to say it. You knew. This wasn’t being glad your friend was getting a career opportunity. It was betrayal. The former ball boy Belichick had hired, mentored, rehired, advanced, promoted, and befriended was not only rewarding all that grooming by leaving after one year, but he was also going to work for the organization his mentor hated more than anything in this life.
It was obvious that while his earlier coaches would always be part of what the Patriots had built and welcome back any time, Mangini was dead to him. And to the entire organization.
To replace Mangini, Belichick promoted linebackers coach Dean Pees, then moved one of his offensive assistants, Matt Patricia, over to the defense to coach the linebackers. Pees not only slid right into the role and delivered one of the best defensive seasons in team history, but he would also later become a part of journalism history. After a game in which his unit didn’t play up to their standards and the coordinator took full responsibility, a local paper immortalized the moment with one of my all-time favorite headlines: “Dean Pees Hard on Himself.”
The next order of business, once again, was dealing with the guys who would want to get paid—especially the ones at the end of their rookie contracts, most notably receivers Deion Branch and David Givens. Both were two-time champions. Branch was a Super Bowl MVP. And despite the debacle in Denver, he had come through once again in a big moment with eight catches and 153 yards. Givens didn’t have those credits on his résumé, but was also a solid contributor who had the quarterback’s trust. But philosophically, the Patriots simply didn’t value the wideout position as much as the rest of the league did. If the receivers wanted to stay, they’d have to accept less than they could get elsewhere, just as Troy Brown had done.
Givens left for free agency and signed with the Tennessee Titans. Branch’s situation was more protracted warfare, dragging out all summer until the team finally traded him to Seattle for a first-round draft pick the following year.
To replace them, Belichick and Pioli went back to shopping at the Family Dollar Store, buying store-brand Deion Branch, Reche Caldwell, and Jabar Gaffney, who compared to the active ingredient in David Givens. They also added veteran Doug Gabriel from the clearance rack of the Oakland Raiders.
Still, the most difficult good-bye, the “I’m going to miss you most of all, Scarecrow” departure, was Adam Vinatieri. He was nothing less than a legend, an icon identified with some of the most memorable moments in NFL history. A guy paid the ultimate compliment in the complex social order inside a football locker room in that he was considered not just a kicker, but a player. A weapon. But all that respect and accomplishment didn’t come cheap, and the team had built a dynasty on not paying above the retail price, so they let him walk.
What made it industrial-strength painful is where he walked to: the Indianapolis Colts. The New England philosophy worked, obviously, but plenty of people thought Vinatieri was the exception they should make. Regardless of where you stood on the issue, you knew this one was going to sting. What you had no idea was how long that pain would last.
Where the team seemed to have a change in philosophy was the draft. After building a dynasty on safe, unsexy, non-splashy picks who didn’t set anyone’s hearts aflutter, they went in the opposite direction in 2006. All sexy. Total splash. A big neon sign that welcomed you to the Champagne Room by flashing the words “Hot! Live! Skill! Players!”
I’ve always believed that one thing I am cursed with is a good memory. I say “cursed” because it doesn’t allow me to do revisionist history the way other people can. Take the case of the Patriots’ second pick, receiver Chad Jackson from U of Florida. Like everyone else, I was surprised they went with a wideout so high. Unlike the others, though, I still live with the memory of how excited everyone was. And I mean everyone.
Jackson was a physical specimen, with biceps like a T-Rex egg, from a great college program run by another of Belichick’s coaching buddies, Urban Meyer. I have a vivid memory of sitting at Jack’s house, getting our draft geek on, with six mock drafts on my lap, five of which had Jackson going to the Vikings at No. 17. The sixth had him going even earlier. Hindsight being what it is, anyone will tell you they thought Jackson was a terrible choice from the second they heard his name. They are lying. He was looked at as a steal.
He was also a stiff. That was obvious from the beginning. The first warning sign was a team party they did as a kind of bonding exercise to blow off steam in training camp. It was run by the more extroverted leaders on the team. There was good-natured ball-busting and displays of performing talent, if anyone had it. Apparently, Jackson got up, grabbed a mic, and started doing some rap that was offensive only by the standards of the NFL social hierarchy, where rookies are expected to sit down and keep their cake holes shut. And here was this kid, acting like he belonged and turning everybody off from his first impression.
His later impressions were no better. Troy Brown has talked about trying to include Jackson in other, more useful activities like, for instance, trying to get better at this football thing. Like film study with the other wide receivers. The rookie wasn’t interested. Ever. Brown was busy with trying to make his own game better late in his career and it didn’t take long for him to stop asking.
Then the guy with the unenviable task of stepping into Vinatieri’s shadow was Memphis’s Stephen Gostkowski. You don’t want to be the one who follows the legend. But in the indentured servitude that is the NFL draft, no one gave him a choice.
And yet the most fascinating personnel move of the off-season came in the middle of the season. Four days after one of the great linebackers of all time, Junior Seau of the San Diego Chargers, retired, he unretired to become Junior Seau of the New England Patriots. It was astonishing. Seau had given one of the great post-career press conferences anyone ever had. Happy. Enthusiastic about what was to come. He said this wasn’t a retirement; it was a graduation. He was looking forward to the next phase of his life. Whatever wizard spell Belichick cast upon him worked. Within hours he was signing a deal to end his career in New England.
It didn’t take long for the first great media circus of 2006 to hit town. Week 2 of the Patriots season found them in New Jersey to face Eric Mangini’s Jets—a game that will always be remembered not so much for the Pats’ 24–17 win, but for the icy reception Belichick gave his old apprentice at midfield afterward. He put on a perfect demonstration of dismissive body language, never looking within a 90-degree angle at his ingrate former coaching bro, and offering what was not so much a handshake but a light touch. Like if Belichick had actually gripped Mangini’s hand, he would’ve frozen him solid where he stood like Elsa from Frozen. Let the storm rage on; the cold never bothered him anyway.
There was more to it than just being frenemies. The Patriots were convinced that during the off-season, as Deion Branch was holding out, Mangini’s Jets had contacted him. Because he was still under contract with the Patriots, any team talking to him would be guilty of tampering, and the Patriots reported the violation to the league offices. As a matter of fact, it was one of the first matters that had been brought before the NFL’s new commissioner, who had just taken over from Paul Tagliabue, who had retired after 17 years. The new guy was considered a tough, no-nonsense type who was going to clean up pro football in the wake of all the negative publicity stemming from player arrests, misbehavior on and off the field, and books like Pros and Cons. His name was Roger Goodell.
In this instance, Goodell claimed to have looked into the Patriots’ charges and found no proof the Jets had tampered with Branch, and the matter was dropped. But the bad blood that already existed between the two organizations only got badder.
The 2006 regular season was a strange one for the Patriots. They kept winning games, but it felt like a struggle. Dean Pees’s defense was the second best in the league. As a matter of fact, they only gave up 14.8 points per game. You’ll be able to win a lot of bar bets by knowing that is the lowest total in franchise history, because nobody remembers.
What is remembered was how anemic the offense was. How they had never adequately replaced Branch and Givens. Troy Brown and Corey Dillon had gotten old at the same time. Brady had nobody to throw to. And this was the time that the Belichick/Pioli method of only shopping for the groceries that are on sale and clipping coupons finally failed them.
Offensively, they felt like a bomber plane that had been through too many battles. It was still flying its missions, but it needed major repairs and the crew was barely holding it together with metal plates and rivets. The leading receiver was Reche Caldwell, with 61 catches for 760 yards. On some teams, that would make you the No. 3 receiver. He was followed in order by a tight end, Ben Watson, a running back in Kevin Faulk, and then a 35-year-old Troy Brown. Chad Jackson caught just 13 passes all season, which was one Super Bowl’s production for Branch, the man he was drafted to replace.
It was painfully obvious that Doug Gabriel didn’t grasp the concepts of the offense and didn’t have his quarterback’s trust. In a December game they lost to the Dolphins 21–0 for their first shutout since 2003. Tom Brady threw a pass behind Gabriel up the sidelines that whistled past the back of the receiver’s helmet without him ever looking back for it. That would be his last route in a Patriots uniform, as he was waived a day later.
The lack of weapons was reflected in Brady’s stats, as he was, at the age of 29 and theoretically in his athletic prime, only ninth in the league in passer rating, with 87.9, just one slot ahead of the Redskins’ Mark Brunell, the perfect specimen of a mediocre quarterback. And the Patriots’ media critics let them know it. To most of the football press, this was proof positive that The Patriot Way didn’t work. Managing the payroll was just being cheap. Moving on from your best players when they got expensive to keep was just disrespecting them. The organization’s many beefs with the Jets were just being petty. Mostly they made use of a word that had been thrown around before but had become all the rage: arrogance.
Allowing some of your best skill position players to leave for budgetary reasons was pure arrogance. It was born of Belichick [cliché alert] “thinking he’s the smartest man in the room” who could win with anybody. It was, as Ron Borges was fond of saying, “believing that winning is all about the X’s and O’s, not the Johns and Joes.”
The “arrogance” talk got dialed up to 11 in the days before the next Jets game at a press conferences when it became obvious Belichick wasn’t saying the name “Mangini.” All he would use were pronouns or vague, abstract references to “coaching.” It was almost like a challenge for him, the kind of prank Jim and Pam would pull on Dwight on The Office, as if someone bet him that if he could go the week without saying that word he’d win a Coke but if he did, he’d be jinxed. The public perception wasn’t helped any when the Jets went into Foxboro, held the Patriots to just 14 points, and beat them by three, despite being outgained by 100 yards. It was then t
hat the New York tabloids decided Mangini was the latest in a long line of saviors, their headlines calling him “Mangenious.”
With the regular season rivalry split 1–1, it was only natural that the Jets and Pats would meet in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. That week 2 handshake and Belichick’s sudden obsession with saying “he,” “him,” and “them” weeks later kept being brought up, and with good reason. They were the kinds of gestures that, if they had been between two ambassadors, probably would have started a war. And Belichick probably heard all the talk about arrogance and pettiness because, after his team pounded the Jets 37–16 to advance in the playoffs, he purposefully trudged to the middle of the field looking for Mangini, only to run into the wall created by the assembled media horde trying to capture the bad blood on film. One photographer refused to budge, so Belichick forcefully shoved him out of the way, stepped forward, and took the man who’d named a son after him into his loving embrace.
But all anyone remembered was the shove, not the hug. Or the playoff victory. So the “arrogance” talk just got worse.
It couldn’t have helped Belichick’s general disposition any that for the second year in a row, real-life problems were taking precedence over football problems. The season before he had lost his father. This year, he was losing his marriage, as he and his wife were in the process of getting divorced. Not many people who haven’t been through that could ever understand what it’s like and how it affects your professional life (I hope to never find out), but one guy who might have been able to relate was the most important person in his organization: Tom Brady.
In December, Bridget Moynahan’s agent announced that she and Brady were no longer dating. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it was around the same time that he reportedly started dating Gisele Bundchen.