Five Rings

by Jerry Thornton

  I call that good news because by the time this was going on, I was all in at Barstool Sports, and we were in the beginning stages of transitioning from a twice-monthly printed paper to a daily Internet blog. We could not have been handed a better story if we wrote it ourselves.

  Even in those early days of our evolution, our shop was set up on that busy intersection of sports, pop culture, celebrities, beautiful women, and irreverent humor. The idea of the quarterback who had changed the landscape of Boston sports going out with the gorgeous supermodel who had not only graced the cover of the lingerie catalog every guy’s girlfriend got in the mail but was also a one-named international superstar who had built a fashion empire? It was too good to be true.

  The story took sort of an odd turn a few weeks later when Moynahan confirmed what the gossip rags were reporting: she was having a baby, and the baby was Tom’s. In my own circle of friends and relations, the women were livid. To them, the shorthand of the story was that guy we all love so much had broken up with his pregnant girlfriend. It’s fair to say most guys were spinning it as he had met someone else, so his ex decided to have his baby on the way out the door. The Boston sports columnists acted stunned that two super-attractive, young single people would make a baby together. Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe said Brady “has taken a hit.” Gerry Callahan of the Boston Herald called Bridget’s baby bump, their future bundle of joy, “a bump in the road.”

  I readily admit the Brady-Moynahan pregnancy was an unexpected development. A lot of them are. I just look back now and think about how easy life was back then, when an out-of-wedlock baby announcement was considered the height of a New England Patriots “scandal.”

  Somehow, through all this organizational and personal turmoil, the Patriots cobbled together a 12–4 regular season and won their first playoff game. To put that in perspective, prior to 2003 they had never won 12 games in their history, which made the growing Yankeefanification of New England that much more frustrating.

  Most years, a 12–4 record will get you a bye week in the playoffs, followed by a home game. This was not one of those years. The top seed belonged to the Chargers, so the Patriots had to fly to San Diego for the AFC divisional game.

  The Pats were five-point underdogs, and deserved to be. Once again, they’d be facing the league MVP in the playoffs. In 2003 it was co-MVP quarterbacks Steve McNair and Peyton Manning. This time it was all-purpose running back LaDainian Tomlinson. He was joined on the Pro Bowl team by eight other Chargers and on the All Pro team by four others, including pass rusher Shawne Merriman, who led the league in sacks and whose signature “Lights Out” sack dance was the sort of thing that not only fired his team up but was also the kind of instant marketing success that sold T-shirts by the gross.

  There were a few things that went in the Patriots’ favor, though. One was their experience when it came to being underdogs in a big game. Another was the Chargers’ history of not performing well in the big games. And yet another was that San Diego was coached by Marty Schottenheimer, in his 21st and final year of coaching. He had been with Cleveland, Kansas City, Washington, and now San Diego and gave a name to winning a lot of regular season games but then folding in the playoffs that is still in use to this day: “Martyball.”

  The Chargers were 8–0 at home on the season. They rushed for almost three times what New England did, 148–51. They outgained the Patriots, 352–327. They intercepted Tom Brady three times. And still somehow they found a way to lose.

  They lost thanks to Schottenheimer moves like going for it on fourth and 11 in the first quarter instead of trying for a makeable 47-yard field goal. They lost because they turned the ball over three times, leading to three Patriots scoring drives. They lost because, after making a stop on a Patriots third and 11 try, they got flagged for a taunting penalty that gave New England a first down that led to a field goal.

  And they lost because they turned those three Brady interceptions into exactly zero points, the last of which saying everything there was to say about both franchises. The Patriots were trailing 21–13 with 6:25 to play when Brady got picked off by Chargers safety Marlon McCree, who tried to return it. He got no more than 3 yards when Troy Brown, rather than go for the tackle, attacked the ball and poked it free, recovered by New England. Just to emphasize how one team knew what to do in Crisis Time and the other didn’t, Schottenheimer challenged the play, arguing that his guy never had possession of the ball he’d carried for 3 yards. He lost, and cost his team a time-out. A few plays later, Brady threw a touchdown pass to make it a two-point game. And once again, Kevin Faulk converted the direct snap play that had worked in the Super Bowl, and it was a tie game.

  With 3:30 to go, Brady orchestrated another drive, keyed by a 49-yard completion to Reche Caldwell. That set Stephen Gostkowski for the chance to win it with a 31-yard field goal. The rookie, playing in just his second career postseason game, Vinatieri’ed it. A subsequent desperate San Diego drive with no time-outs left gave them a shot at a 54-yard field goal to tie it. The attempt failed. Ball game.

  With a little bit of business to attend to, several Patriots ran out to midfield, stood on the Chargers’ helmet logo, and did Shawne Merriman’s “Lights Out” dance. The one he’d done dozens of times standing over quarterbacks he’d put on the ground and turned into a money-making marketing enterprise.

  LaDainian Tomlinson, for one, would not sit still for such disrespect. He took the podium for his postgame presser and put the Patriots on notice that Merriman’s disrespect of others was one thing. But this, he would not tolerate.

  “I would never, ever, react in that way,” he began. “You guys know me. I’m a very classy person. I wouldn’t have reacted like that. So yes, I was upset, very upset. Because when you go to the middle of our field and you start doing the dance that Shawne Merriman is known for, that’s disrespectful to me, and I can’t sit there and watch that. So yeah, I was very upset. Just the fact that they showed no class at all. Absolutely no class. And maybe that comes from their head coach.”

  Typically, it’s never a good start, having to remind everyone how classy you are. And when you then follow it up by defending someone else’s classless gesture, which is being classless toward your own teammate’s classless gesture and blaming it on the head coach who has no class? That’s just—well, the opposite of class. But he did say he’s a classy person, so who were we to argue?

  This one was a game changer to a lot of people. One of Belichick’s most vocal media critics was Patriots’ beat writer/drive-time sports talk host Michael Felger, who had killed the team all season long for the personnel decisions that left Reche Caldwell as Brady’s “best” option. But he went on the air Monday and admitted that he was dropping his protest on the logic that any time you reach the final four of your sport, that is a successful season and a validation of the Patriots’ system once again.

  That good feeling wouldn’t last long.

  The AFC title game was inside the dome in Indianapolis. The Colts had the tiebreaker over the Patriots thanks to a 27–20 win earlier in the year. They had the second best offense in the league and a defense that ranked in the bottom 10. In fact, their run defense was historically bad, finishing last in the league by almost 30 yards per game. But they had won two playoff games in a very un-Colts-like fashion, giving up a total of 14 points to Kansas City and Baltimore, whom they beat 15–6 thanks to five Adam Vinatieri field goals.

  The Colts had actually started out 9–0, but stumbled badly down the stretch, losing four out of six at one point to fall to second place in their division. Given that, Indy’s defense, and the playoff history between the two teams, there was plenty of justification for thinking the Patriots had this.

  That feeling was confirmed when Laurence Maroney fumbled a sure touchdown into the end zone, only to have Logan Mankins fall on it for the score. When your first touchdown is scored by your second-year guard, all optimism is totally justified. With the game 7–3, Corey Dillon showed the
rookie running back how not to screw up a red zone carry with a 7-yard score to make it 14–3. Then Asante Samuel did what Patriots defenders had always done in January: he read Peyton Manning’s eyes, stepped in front of his pass before the intended receiver broke on it, and hauled in the interception. Only this one, he took all the way for the pick-6 that made it 21–3 in the second quarter. History was repeating itself. All was right with the world.

  Unfortunately, that was the last time anything made sense in a season that had made no sense from the beginning. Indianapolis punted on their next possession but, getting the ball back again, managed to get the shift into that gear they had always found against other teams, but only recently found against New England. A 15-play drive went 80 yards for a field goal just before the half. After the half, the Pats were utterly defenseless. There’s just no other way to describe it.

  The Colts’ next three drives ended in touchdowns. The second came on a 1-yard touchdown pass to nose tackle Dan Klecko. That one hurt not only because it turned the Patriots’ Mike Vrabel trickery against them, but also because New England had cut Klecko earlier in the year due to health concerns.

  The third TD hurt because it was the result of center Jeff Saturday falling on a fumble in the end zone. When you get a score from your guard and don’t have an edge in the Touchdowns by Interior Lineman column, it’s not your day.

  The second half was one of the wildest 30 minutes of football in anyone’s memory. Saturday’s touchdown tied it at 28. Gostkowski hit a field goal. Vinatieri hit one to answer him. Gostkowski answered him back. It was the young buck of the herd facing off against the old alpha to prove who’s got more velvet on their antlers. And it gave the Patriots the 34–31 lead with 3:49 left.

  The way the defense was playing, that felt like way, way, WAY too much time. It might as well have been 3 hours, 49 minutes. Looking back later, it should have seemed obvious that the reports we’d heard all week were true—that a raging flu was going through the locker room, not helped in the least by being stuck on a plane together for 6,000 miles of round-trip travel to San Diego. It was taking its toll.

  The fatal wound on that final Colts drive came when Manning hit backup tight end Bryan Fletcher on a deep ball for 32 yards that put them deep in Patriots territory. In coverage on the play was Eric Alexander, a career special-teamer pressed into the starting middle linebacker role due to a Junior Seau season-ending injury and illness to just about everyone else.

  A few plays later and Indy completed the comeback with a Joseph Addai touchdown run to make it a 38–34 final. The Colts had scored 32 points in the second half alone. It might sound like loser talk to use the Patriots’ flu as an excuse for the defense being so helpless after halftime, but that doesn’t mean it’s not accurate.

  The next morning, writing a Knee Jerk Reactions column for Barstool, the first thing I did was Google “Eric Alexander,” and all the results were for a smooth-jazz saxophone player. Our Eric Alexander was a high-effort guy who gave it his all, all the time. But when your leading tackler in the AFC championship game is a special-teamer less famous than the artist behind Gentle Ballads II and Temple of Olympic Zeus, you get to use that as an excuse.

  The real kick in the pills about this one is that the NFC representative the Colts got to face was the Chicago Bears. Coached by Lovie Smith and quarterbacked by Rex Grossman, they were one of the worst teams to ever make the Super Bowl. They were so bad that Indianapolis played a mediocre game in a driving rainstorm in Miami and still won easily. There is zero doubt in the minds of anyone watching that night that if the Pats had made one stop, or had Deion Branch around to do Deion Branchy things, that would’ve been Ring IV.

  The immediate impact of losing the conference championship game was that it gave Bill Belichick the punishment duty of coaching the AFC team in the Pro Bowl. While hanging out on the sidelines at a no-pressure exhibition game in Honolulu isn’t exactly like picking up trash along a highway in a safety vest, there’s no doubt he would rather have been spending that time getting his team’s problems resolved.

  So that’s exactly what he did.

  20

  A Van Gogh Underneath

  Bill Belichick turned the week into a business trip, getting to know players from opposing teams, gauging the importance of football in their lives, and sizing them up on a personal level to find players he’d potentially be comfortable working with.

  One such player was Adalius Thomas, a versatile linebacker from the Baltimore Ravens, the best defensive unit in the NFL by far. Thomas prided himself on being able to play inside or out, off the line of scrimmage or on it, standing up or with his hand on the ground, and even some safety. He was agile enough to “spy” some of the league’s most mobile quarterbacks. He was bright and seemed to love the game. He was coming off a season of 106 tackles and 11 sacks, giving him 28 sacks over his last three years. And his own defensive coordinator in Baltimore, Rex Ryan, wasn’t shy about comparing him to Belichick’s former Giants icon Lawrence Taylor. Which was good for Thomas, because he was a free agent. And which was good for Belichick, because Thomas was a free agent.

  On the Saturday the free agency period began, the Patriots wasted no time in signing Thomas to a deal that gave him $24 million in the first three years, with $18 million guaranteed. It was a departure for the team, to be sure, only the second time they’d aggressively gone after a star player in the early hours of free agency, and Rosevelt Colvin had accepted a discounted deal because he wanted to play in New England.

  So naturally, all the critics who had been sniping at the Patriots this whole time for refusing to spend money all stood up, applauded, and with one voice praised the team to the heavens for finally seeing the light, right?

  Wrong.

  The very next day, professional Patriots contrarian Ron Borges published a piece in the Sunday Globe titled “More of the same? Banking on Thomas is no sure thing,” in which he found one NFL personnel guy willing to rip the signing—anonymously, of course. To Borges’s source, Thomas was strictly a product of the Ravens’ scheme. He cited all the players the Ravens’ defense had lost to free agency who did nothing elsewhere while the unit remained the best in the game. He added that Thomas wasn’t strong enough at setting the edge and got pushed around by blockers. “In free agency, the negatives are usually evident, but if you need something bad enough, you minimize them,” he said.

  One problem with this: by early 2007, the media’s relationship with their readers had changed. It was now a two-way street. The public had become Internet savvy, and things writers and broadcasters said before were thrown back in their faces by their target audience. Patriots fans in particular were becoming good at it. Message boards and blogs, including Barstool Sports, were thriving off of being the counterargument to the relentless negativity the old media were still putting out there. In this case, no one had to dig deep to find the blatant hypocrisy on this one.

  The very day before the Pats had signed Thomas, Borges had done a free agency preview piece for MSNBC.com, which ranked him as the most desirable free agent on the market with the “best value” and saying, “Wherever he goes, the 270-pound Thomas appears headed toward making an impact.” It was a turning point in the dynamic between the press and the people they talk to; communication now flowed in both directions, not just from the top down. And fans in the region were sharpening their skills.

  They would get plenty of opportunity to perfect them in the years ahead.

  There’s a revisionist history about the 2007 off-season that talks as if Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli saw the error of their ways, decided to tear up the old manual, and do things completely differently. I’ll concede that was the case with Adalius Thomas. But the rest of the rebuild was exactly according to the methods they’d always used.

  The myth goes that they decided they’d made a horrible mistake with the receiving corps in 2006 and aggressively set out to build the best unit they could, no matter what the cost. The reality is th
at they did what they’d done before. They shopped for bargains. They signed veteran Donté Stallworth, a deep threat who had twice averaged over 19 yards per reception, but his deal was loaded with incentives and only guaranteed him $3.5 million.

  They swung a deal with the Dolphins for restricted free agent Wes Welker in exchange for a second-round pick and a seventh rounder. Welker was the guy most people remembered as the undrafted rookie receiver who did all the kicking in that game back in 2004. Anyone who looks back at this move as “aggressively” trying to corner the market on receiving talent is ignoring the fact that in three years in Miami, Welker had 100 receptions, total. No matter how they remember it now, there was not one person alive declaring the Patriots had just landed the best slot receiver of his generation—although they had. Perhaps the Patriots’ pro scouts knew what they were getting, but anyone else who says they knew is lying. Welker would turn out to be the equivalent of picking up a painting at a yard sale because you like the frame, only to find a Van Gogh underneath.

  By far the biggest news came on the second day of the draft, when it was announced they’d swung a trade to the Oakland Raiders, sending them a fourth-round pick they’d just acquired for Randy Moss. This was the game changer, and everyone knew it instantly. They had simply never had anyone like Moss, most probably because there was no one like Moss. He was six foot four, 215 pounds, with top-end speed and as good a pair of hands as had ever wrapped around a football. But at the same time, he came as part of a package deal. When you put him in your online shopping cart, you got the message that said, “People who purchased Randy Moss’s skills also bought his baggage.” Or his supposed baggage. He had been high-maintenance at times. Things had gone badly for him in Oakland since that time he’d shredded the Patriots’ secondary two years earlier. His production was way down. He had half the receiving yards in 2006 that he’d put up the year before, and on the field he showed the body language of a guy who’d given up.