Five Rings

by Jerry Thornton

  But the Vrabel trade was just the appetizer for the Surprise Move Salad and the Shocking Trade Entree that were about to be served up.

  Watching one of the preseason games with my brother Jack, one play stood out to us. We even played it back a few times to make sure we were seeing it right. Tedy Bruschi was in a shallow zone in coverage on a running back, who caught the short throw and ran away from Bruschi. He just took off, gaining ground on Tedy with every step like Bruschi was standing still even though he was giving maximum effort. He just had lost a step to the point where he couldn’t keep up. As Troy Brown put it, “You can’t outrun Father Time.” Sadly, on that one play, Bruschi looked like he couldn’t outrun Grandfather Time. A day or two later, he was announcing his retirement. A few years later, he said in his book that he was watching the game film, saw how slow he looked, and that if he saw it, that means probably everybody else noticed too, and it was time for him to move on with his life. I’ve always assumed that he was referencing the same play Jack and I had talked about.

  Sad as it was, Bruschi’s retirement presser was a celebration. He looked great. Clear-eyed. Comfortable with his decision. He said he regretted not retiring with that fourth ring, but he said it with the confidence of a guy who had the self-awareness to know the time was right. The emotional one was Bill Belichick. “How do I sum it up? How do I feel about Tedy Bruschi in five seconds?” he said. “He’s a perfect player. He’s helped create a tradition here we’re all proud of. He’s a perfect player. He’s a perfect player.” “That’s something you’ll never hear during your career,” Bruschi laughed, and the two hugged it out. It was a good thing Tedy broke the tension because I for one get all onion-eyes just thinking about that moment.

  Richard Seymour should’ve been so lucky. Barely a week after Bruschi’s send-off, Belichick swung a deal with Al Davis to send him to the Raiders for a first-round draft pick—in 2011. So not even that next draft, the one after that. Again, the most shocking thing about it was that Belichick still had the ability to shock us.

  Seymour was only 29. He was coming off a down year for him, relatively speaking, but as we’d find out later, he was playing injured and under orders not to talk about the injury. So he was getting killed in the press for his ineffective play, and not at all happy that the reason for it had to be treated like a state secret. Plus, his contract talks were getting increasingly more difficult and bitter. Still, he was the ultimate five-technique defensive lineman in Belichick’s system, and in my opinion, the best player in the Three Ring Club not named Tom Brady.

  So in the span of one off-season, the defense lost Vrabel, Bruschi, Seymour, and Rodney Harrison, who did, in fact, retire to go work for NBC on their Sunday Night Football package. Plus on offense (and sometimes defense), Troy Brown. It was a sudden, massive loss of not only talent but also leadership. Of proven winners who’d made too many season-saving plays to even begin to make a list. And those losses would show.

  They had made some additions, quality draft picks who would become core players in time. Jerod Mayo paid immediate returns. They’d used the pick they got for Cassel on Pat Chung, a tough, hard-hitting safety out of Oregon to help replace Harrison. They took an enormous offensive tackle named Sebastian Vollmer, from the University of Houston, who even though he was originally from Germany and not considered worth anywhere near the second-round pick they used on him, wasn’t the most unusual draft move they made. Unquestionably, that went to their decision to take Julian Edelman, the five-foot-ten quarterback out of Kent State, and convert him into a wide receiver. As weird as that sounded, he was only the 232nd overall pick anyway, so it was no loss if it didn’t work out. But it did. He made the roster as a rookie.

  The problem with all of these guys is that by 2009, they were still too new to take any kind of a leadership role. Unfortunately for the team, one guy who did was uniquely wrong for it.

  The Patriots had a leadership vacuum, and Adalius Thomas stepped in to fill it—and not in a good way. In his three years in New England, he had become a malcontent. Tedy Bruschi later described positional meetings where Thomas increasingly started questioning what the coaches were telling them to do, pushing back against the very coaching that had helped put three rings on Bruschi’s hand. I had a Pats beat writer confirm to me that Thomas had become that “negative leader” the team felt Lawyer Milloy was back in 2002. That he was the guy in your office who’s always bellyaching about how everything is done and brings the mood down, and who never stops bringing up the union rules anytime he’s asked to do something. As in, “Well, they can tell us to run this play again, but we’ve already been practicing as much as we’re contractually obligated to.” As a former member of a public service employees’ union, I knew That Guy far too well. And they are miserable to be around.

  You might assume that now that Tom Brady was back, he would’ve been the guy to assume the leadership role. But things had changed during the time he was away from the team. He hadn’t been around in a long time. His life was different. He and Gisele Bundchen had gotten married back in February and had a baby on the way. He had to reacclimate himself to football. In that complex web of group dynamics, it just wasn’t the right time for him to be the one players listened to.

  The lack of strong, positive voices in the locker room had a negative effect right from the start. The second week of the season found the Patriots in the Meadowlands to face the Jets, who had made a coaching change. Eric Mangini was gone and now coaching in Cleveland. In his place, they’d hired Rex Ryan, the son of Buddy Ryan, the architect of that great 1985 Bears defense and the defensive coordinator in Baltimore whose badly timed time-out call kept the Patriots’ perfect season alive.

  In Ryan’s first press conference in New York, he announced, “I’m not here to kiss Bill Belichick’s Super Bowl rings.” Then in the week before the game, he recorded a message that was robocalled to every Jets season ticket holder, asking them to show up and cheer really loud in order to “make it miserable for Brady and company.” It was some real, amateurish high school booster club bullshit. “Let’s come on out this week and really cheer on those kids who have worked so hard. And let’s hear it for the band!” Instantly, I was in love with Ryan. Like if he hadn’t been born, I would’ve had to invent him.

  Jets safety Kerry Rhodes said the focus going in wasn’t just to win the game, but to “embarrass” the Patriots. Nose tackle Kris Jenkins called it “the Jets Super Bowl.” For real. It was perfect: exactly the kind of talk that had fed the Patriots’ aggression and turned them into enraged Berserkers hell-bent on revenge so many times before. You couldn’t have asked for anything better.

  Except for them to actually respond, which they did not. Led by the stifling, attacking defense that was in Ryan’s family DNA and rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez, the Jets backed it up. They held the Patriots without a touchdown for the first time since 2006 for the 16–9 win.

  In the week 6 game at home against Tennessee, Thomas was a healthy scratch, and he was not happy about it. Calling it “a surprise” when he was told he wouldn’t be dressing for the game, he told reporters, “If someone has a problem with you, they come talk to you. Nobody’s said nothing to me.” Months later he’d tell Boston’s Felger and Mazz show, “After the Buffalo game, the first game of the year, something happened and I was like, ‘I really don’t understand this. . . . I was used totally differently this year than I was last year.”

  The game itself had a surreal feel to it. A freak October storm left just enough snow on the ground that every step left behind a perfect footprint, so the field looked like one of those Family Circus cartoons where Jeffy wanders all around the neighborhood on his way home from school. With Adalius Thomas’s absence and the weird weather, the Patriots managed to squeak by with a 59–0 win. And while you wouldn’t know it to look at the score, they actually eased up as the game went along. They took a 45–0 lead into half, the largest in NFL history. They scored 35 points in the second quarter alone,
thanks to five touchdown passes from Brady, also an NFL record.

  They followed that up with a 35–7 domination of Tampa Bay at Wembley Stadium in London, a game most notable for the fact that it was entirely predicted by a 2006 episode of Family Guy, the major differences being that this game was against the Bucs and not the London Sillynannies, and that Peter Griffin wasn’t there to drive Brady crazy with his incessant showboating, breaking out into a version of “Shipoopi” from The Music Man. Besides those minor details, it was eerily similar.

  But those games covered up some major flaws that began to reveal themselves later on, especially on defense. For the third straight year, the Patriots faced the Colts on prime time in November. It was television “sweeps” month, when ratings set the ad rates, and the NFL wasn’t going to pass up on the chance to cash in with the Manning-Brady rivalry. Once again, the Pats were utterly incapable of slowing Manning down. The Colts scored 21 points in the fourth quarter, thanks in large part to the most controversial single play call in Bill Belichick’s career.

  Clinging to a 34–28 lead with just over 2 minutes to go and facing a fourth and 2 from his own 28, Belichick decided to go for it rather than punt it away and rely on his defense to make a stop. It was wild. Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth couldn’t believe it. Nobody could. It was either sheer madness or the ballsiest decision ever, but those two things are not mutually exclusive.

  Brady threw a short pass to Kevin Faulk, the kind of completion that Faulk had made a career out of turning into first downs. But not this one. He was hauled down just short of the mark. Frankly, I think he had it, mainly because he was Kevin Faulk, who always had it. The officials disagreed. The Colts wasted no time punching it in for the game-winning score.

  It was the biggest story of the NFL season. It led every sports show, and both Boston sports radio stations talked about it nonstop. More importantly, it was immortalized with a much-coveted suffix: “4 & 2 Gate.”

  That season, NFL Films cameras were following Bill Belichick around to do a special on him called A Football Life. Years later we’d get treated to footage of Belichick defiantly explaining it to his team in the film study session: “You can say a lot of things about me as a coach, OK? You do, and so do a lot of other people,” he began. “I’m just telling you guys something. One thing I’m not, is scared. Does that mean I’m going to go for it every time it’s fourth down on our 20? No. But I’m not afraid to go for it if you guys give me the confidence that we’ll pick it up. . . . But if we call this, you better fucking get it.”

  A few weeks later, whatever confidence Belichick might have had left was probably shattered by his team’s performance at New Orleans. Saints quarterback Drew Brees not only produced one of the rare games ever with a perfect passer rating of 158.3, but I’ve also seen analysis that determined it was the greatest single game in NFL history. Brees produced 371 yards and five touchdowns, even though he only threw the ball 23 times, with 18 completions. In other words, you could have not even bothered to put a defense on the field and the results would’ve been only slightly worse. On the sidelines, Belichick stood next to Brady, and NFL Films captured this exchange.

  BELICHICK: “We just have no mental toughness. . . . I just can’t get this team to play the way we need to play. I just can’t do it. It’s so goddamned frustrating.”

  BRADY: “We do it in spurts. We just don’t do it for four quarters.”

  The generally bad attitude revealed itself in all its inglory before the week 14 game against Carolina. Four players—Randy Moss, linebacker Gary Guyton, defensive lineman Derrick Burgess, and Adalius Thomas—were all late to team meetings and sent home. In fairness to them, there was a massive traffic jam everywhere due to a snowstorm. In unfairness to them, the storm was in the forecast and everyone else in the organization planned accordingly. Of those four, three came back later to work out and catch up on film study. One went to the press.

  Of course it was Thomas. Asked if being sent home would motivate him, he was livid. “Motivation is for Kindergarteners. I’m not a Kindergartener,” he answered. “Sending somebody home, that’s like, ‘He’s expelled, come back and make good grades.’ Get that shit out of here. That’s ridiculous. Motivation?

  “I didn’t know it was going to snow. There was traffic. I can’t run people over getting to work,” he continued. “What do you do? It’s not the Jetsons, I can’t jump up and just fly.”

  It was the stuff of sound bites legend. An instant classic. With the nickname to go with it. From then on he was Adalius Jetson to me. And to this day if you start to type his name into a Google search bar, you only have to get to “Adali” before the suggested search has “adalius thomas jetsons” as the fourth item from the top.

  The major problem with Jetson’s “there was nothing I could do” defense is it ignores the fact that Tom Brady, his one teammate who could probably get away with being late if he wanted to, was at the stadium early. And he would’ve had a decent excuse. Gisele had given birth to their son the day before.

  Jetson was benched again for the Panthers game, which the Patriots won, 20–10, making the total combined score from the games they played without him 79–10. From then on, I needed done to him what Mr. Spacely always threatened to do at Spacely Space Sprockets, but never did. I wanted Jetson fired.

  Still, the Patriots managed to win the AFC East with a 10–6 record. And yet, whatever momentum they might have had heading into the postseason was pretty much derailed by a devastating injury in their final game of the regular season against Houston. Wes Welker caught a bubble screen from Brady, the kind of catch-and-run play he had been torturing defenses with for three seasons in New England. Only this time, churning his legs to make the kind of move that broke tacklers’ ankles (figuratively speaking) and made them miss, his knee gave out. He had torn both his MCL and ACL and was done for the rest of the season, if not longer. Although it was a noncontact injury and Bernard Pollard, on the field for the Texans, had nothing to do with the play, he was quickly becoming the Patriots’ Typhoid Mary of knee injuries.

  The Patriots didn’t earn a bye week in the playoffs. Even without Rex Ryan, head coach John Harbaugh’s Ravens defense was among the best in the league. Their offense, led by second-year quarterback Joe Flacco and versatile running back Ray Rice, was in the top 10. It took them no time at all to prove that not only were they the better team, but they were also more prepared than the Patriots.

  The Ravens’ very first play from scrimmage was a simple inside run by Rice. He hit the hole, went through the second level of the defense untouched, and raced 83 yards for the touchdown. My enduring memory of that play was defensive end Jarvis Green shooting a gap, penetrating three steps into the Ravens’ backfield, and never seeing the ball because his back was completely turned to Rice as he went through the line. It took 11 defenders to not tackle Rice, so I don’t mean to put it on any one player, but it was the kind of out-of-position freelancing Richard Seymour had never been guilty of in his career.

  On the Patriots’ third offensive play, Brady was strip-sacked by Terrell Suggs, who recovered the fumble, giving Baltimore the ball at the Patriots’ 17. They scored to make it 14–0. On the very first snap of the subsequent drive, Brady was sacked again, this time by Ray Lewis. One drive ended on a punt and the next two ended on Brady interceptions that led to scores. Before you knew what had hit you, it was 24–0, Ravens.

  On the kickoff following that last score, I was doing the Alec Baldwin Glengarry Glen Ross speech (quoting movies is kind of my thing, if you haven’t picked up on that), “Get mad, you sons of bitches! Get mad!” The game was done, even in the first quarter. I just wanted to see some fight, some display of heart. What I got instead was return man Darius Butler drilled into the turf by a completely unblocked Edgar Jones. Then on first down, Brady hit Ben Watson right in the chest with a simple tight end screen. Which he dropped. I was not going to see them get mad or show some fight or anything else. All we got to see was Baltimo
re come into Gillette and push them around, 33–16.

  The humiliation was made exponentially worse by the news the Jets had beaten Cincinnati in their Wild Card game, and then went on to beat San Diego in the divisional round. The AFC championship game featured the absolutely last teams anyone in New England wanted to see: the Jets and the Colts.

  Belichick and his staff understood the team needed to change the atmosphere in the locker room, so Adalius Jetson was released, and he never played another down in the NFL. Chad Jackson wasn’t getting any more mature, so he was traded for a low-value draft pick. And they cut their losses on the running back they drafted ahead of Jackson, Laurence Maroney. Maroney wasn’t so much of a head case as he was a guy they just couldn’t get production out of. An underachiever, he’d developed a bad habit of getting to the line and stutter stepping instead of hitting the hole. It was Riverdance on every play while he decided where he was going to run with the ball. It got to the point where fans stopped calling him by his original nickname of LoMo, and took to calling him SloMo. It didn’t help at all that his replacement, BenJarvus Green-Ellis, with the even better nickname of The Law Firm, was fast and decisive and never, ever fumbled. Plus The Law Firm had gone undrafted, which made SloMo’s underachieving that much harder to stomach.

  They also needed to get more talented in what Belichick has always liked to call “all three phases”: offense, defense, and special teams. In particular, they needed to find tight ends who could give them the versatility they wanted. A good tight end who can run block, pass protect, and be a weapon running routes requires different defensive personnel to account for them, because it’s never known what they’ll do from one play to the next. Daniel Graham’s play had leveled off and he was much more of a third tackle/blocking type. Ben Watson was hardworking and a stand-up guy, but he also had what the coach at my high school used to call “Pizza Paddle Hands.” He was just simply unreliable catching the ball. So upgrading the tight end position was a priority.