Five Rings

by Jerry Thornton

  Because I was living in Hell, the Giants took it right downfield and scored to make it 9–0 at the end of the quarter. Again, though, as they had in the last Super Bowl, the Patriots got on the scoreboard at the start of the second, this time with a field goal. Only when a Giants’ punt pinned them at the 4 did the Patriots’ offense seem to get into sync. Rob Gronkowski was so clearly slowed down by his ankle that Giants defenders were picked up by NFL Films saying, “Eighty-seven is a fucking decoy! Did you see how he tried to run that route?” Regardless, Brady completed a deep pass to him good for 20 yards. The he began to spread the ball around to Danny Woodhead, to Welker, and four completions to Aaron Hernandez, eventually tossing a short TD to Woodhead with seconds left on the clock to give his team a 10–9 lead at the half.

  It got better. Chad Ochocinco, who was a healthy scratch in the Baltimore game, actually caught a pass, good for 21 yards, giving him 16 total on the season. Aaron Hernandez finished off the 79-yard drive with a 12-yard touchdown to make it 17–9. Now I wanted to find the actual Florida Gator who shared his weed with Hernandez and make him Grand Marshal of the victory parade.

  On the sideline, Brady congratulated Ochocinco by telling him, “This is why we got you!” I thought maybe they got him for 70 catches and 8–10 touchdowns and more than one catch in the postseason, but I can appreciate that you say crazy things while caught up in the excitement of the moment.

  With just about 4 minutes to go and the ball on New York’s 44, Brady found Welker unaccounted for, running up the seam between zones in the Giants’ defense, and unleashed the throw. It was a little behind Welker, he had to reach back for it, but it was there. The kind of catch that he would make if you woke him up at 4:00 in the morning out of a dead-drunk sleep. But not this time. It was one of those plays that you see develop and you jump off the couch to celebrate before it’s over because, after 122 receptions in the regular season and 23 more in the postseason, you were just conditioned to seeing Welker make it. But not this time. This time everyone sat back down on the couch, sinking into the cushions and into despair.

  Even the referee knew it. “Whoa,” John Parry said as soon as the ball hit the ground. “That was the ball game.”

  Technically, he was mistaken. But in fact, he was right. The Giants took over at their own 12, with 3:46 remaining and one time-out. Belichick was heard on the TV feed telling his defensive backs to pay attention to Manning’s primary targets, Victor Cruz and Hakeem Nicks, and force him to try to put the game in the hands of guys like Bear Pascoe and Mario Manningham. They followed his instructions.

  As did Manning.

  On the very first play, he lofted a pass up the right sideline toward Manningham, who was well covered by Pat Chung. It was perfect. A high, soft touch pass that he dropped right into the bucket of Manningham’s arms, as he hauled it in and got both feet in bounds, good for 38 yards. Belichick challenged the ruling, but more out of desperation than any actual hope the call would be overturned. It wasn’t.

  It was nightmare fuel. Another pass to Manningham was good for 16. Another to Nicks netted 14. Eventually, it was first and goal from the Patriots’ 7-yard line, and in what Sports Illustrated called one of the weirdest plays in Super Bowl history, the Patriots tried to let Ahmad Bradshaw run it in for the quick touchdown that would still leave them some time on the clock for them to mount a comeback. Bradshaw tried not to score. But instead of stopping at the 1, he fell into the end zone to make it 21–17.

  A couple of completions and some penalties on the defense got the ball to midfield and made it possible to take a desperation heave at the end zone. The Patriots had bodies down there. Brady’s pass was tipped in the air. It hung there like a piñata for what seemed like the length of a kid’s birthday party waiting to burst. Gronkowski made a dive for it, extending his six-foot-seven frame, but on his torn-up ankle he just could not get the push-off he needed and it fell just beyond his grasp.

  It had all happened again. To the same team. In the same manner. With the same kind of impossible play. And in a shout-out to the 2003 Red Sox, with the opposing team’s hero’s brother sitting up in a booth for the stupid, insufferable reaction shot.

  The one person who summed up my reaction perfectly was Gisele. As we prepared ourselves for yet another round of the world making our existence miserable, she took the first shots fired in this new verbal war. Some drunken asshole Giants fans lit into her. And she didn’t build a modeling and fashion empire by taking crap from anyone, so she put them on blast, while expressing what we all were thinking. “My husband cannot throw the fucking ball and catch it at the same time!” she screamed. If it’s wrong to have repeated that line using the exact tone each time one of his receivers has dropped a pass ever since? Then I don’t want to be right.

  The New York football Giants, the team I hated from the age when I was just figuring out what hatred was, had put together only their second good month in five years, and both had cost my team championships. There was no avoiding the fact that thought would haunt my every step.

  As is always the case in games of that magnitude, careers were made, reputations were set in concrete. For Tom Coughlin, it confirmed that he was as good a “big game” coach as there had been in the history of football, college and pro. Eli Manning won his second Super Bowl MVP, virtually assuring he’d be in the Hall of Fame someday.

  For anti-Patriots forces, the loss was more ammunition that was used to lay down a suppressing fire calling into question everything they’d ever accomplished. Over a decade spent at the top of their profession was now reduced to one PowerPoint slide discrediting all of it. “Tuck Rule. Spygate. Giants. Giants,” and so on that would never go away.

  26

  A Tale of Two Tight Ends

  Rob Gronkowski’s reputation was getting a little harder to nail down. It was getting more subjective all the time; how you saw him was almost becoming a reflection of how you looked at the world. Gronk had become this oversized frat boy character who was becoming polarizing. You either embraced it, or you were among the growing numbers who claimed they were getting sick of it. There was not much in between.

  Gronk’s reputation took the biggest hit in the hours immediately after the Super Bowl, when he was at a club, up on stage dancing like his team had just won. That set a lot of older fans and media types’ teeth on edge. Still, you either loved Gronk for the goofy fun he was getting out of life, the nude photo shoot for ESPN The Magazine’s “Body Issue” and the “69” jokes, or you wanted him to just go home all off-season, sit in a comfy chair, and read poetry books. I know where I stood. To those of us putting content on Barstool Sports every day, he was achieving godlike status, just handing us blogs that practically wrote themselves almost daily.

  What no one could argue was what Gronkowski and his bookend tight end Aaron Hernandez meant to the Patriots on the field. They represented an evolution in the game, two versatile weapons that could be utilized in so many ways they’d have defensive coordinators swallowing antianxiety meds for the foreseeable future. And they had a new offensive coordinator to figure out how to use them. Well, technically an old coordinator.

  Bill O’Brien had coached through the playoffs as Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel had in 2004, knowing he had taken a new job. In his case, it was to try to rebuild the smoldering wreckage of Penn State football in the wake of Joe Paterno resigning in disgrace. O’Brien was being replaced as the coordinator by the guy he had replaced, Josh McDaniels.

  McDaniels had been with the St. Louis Rams but was fired at the end of the 2011 season; he immediately signed on with the Patriots as O’Brien’s assistant/heir apparent. It worked out perfectly for the Patriots. But to the Conspiracy Theory crowd, it seemed suspicious somehow. There were actually people arguing that a coach shouldn’t be able to join a team in the middle of a playoff run, like it somehow gave them a competitive advantage or something—even if said coach had just been declared not good enough to coach for the 2–14 St. Louis frigging Ram
s.

  The biggest off-season issues were the desperate need to improve on a defense that had been in decline for years and to address some veteran contracts. The first was helped by the team using both their first-round picks on front seven players, defensive end Chandler Jones from Syracuse and physical inside linebacker Dont’a Hightower out of Alabama. I don’t think I was alone in celebrating the fact that they still had five picks left and had already added two guys with names from the Police Academy movies. But I looked it up, and there were no Mahoneys or Tackleberrys available in the later rounds.

  The veteran contracts situation was helped when Tom Brady agreed to restructure his contract to free up $7 million of salary cap space, which we all assumed would be used to re-up Wes Welker. But as the weeks turned into months, there was no new Welker deal. There was, however, the offer of the Franchise Tag, which would pay Welker among the top receivers in the league, $9.5 million guaranteed, but for only one year. Eventually, he accepted in the hopes that it would lead to a long-term deal to stay in New England. “I signed my tender today,” he tweeted. “I love the game and I love my teammates! Hopefully doing the right things gets the right results. #leapoffaith”

  Welker’s faith would be rewarded—just not by Welker. The Patriots approached their two young tight ends earlier than they needed to and offered them contract extensions with huge pay raises. In return, they saved some money in the long term by paying them less than they probably would have gotten in free agency. They were the deals you offer the guys you want to build your future around, giving the players financial security while keeping them under your control. Win-win. Gronk’s was for $55 million. Hernandez’s was for just north of $41 million, with $16 million of it guaranteed.

  The players clearly appreciated it. Hernandez signed his contract at a press conference and spoke from the heart about how much it meant to him. He was heartfelt. Genuine. Emotional. He talked about having a baby on the way and how this financial stability would give his loved ones a life a lot of families don’t have, and he thanked Robert Kraft personally. “Knowing that my kids and my family will be able to have a good life, go to college,” he said with tears welling up in his eyes. “It’s just an honor that he did that for me. He gave me this opportunity.”

  Then to pay Kraft back for having faith in him, Hernandez handed him a check. It was for $50,000, made out to the Myra H. Kraft Foundation, to help those less fortunate. Women already loved Hernandez. Based on how often you saw guys wearing his No. 81 jersey, men did too. And there wasn’t a person among us who didn’t watch that press conference and say to themselves, “Gee, Aaron Hernandez is really a sweetheart of a guy.” Or words to that effect.

  As did the Patriots’ coaches. It was obvious from the early part of the season that they were making an attempt to transition away from Welker being the focal point of the offense and more toward the tight ends, Julian Edelman, and newcomer Brandon Lloyd, who had played for McDaniels in both Denver and St. Louis. Welker only caught three passes for 14 yards in week 1. But after Hernandez suffered an ankle injury in week 2, he was back to being Brady’s most cherished target once again. He went on to finish the season only four catches shy of the 122 he’d had the year before.

  Welker’s drops were up, there was no question about it. That drop in the Super Bowl was part of a trend. In his first three seasons in New England, his drop percentage was single digits and among the lowest in the league. In his last three years, his percentage was in the double digits. But if the team was hoping to move away from him, 2012 was not the season.

  The offense that was so good it almost carried them to a fourth championship the year before was actually better now. They scored 557 points, the third most in league history behind only their own 2007 mark and the 2011 Packers. They set a league record for first downs with 444. And they took care of the ball to the point they led the league in turnover differential at +25. They needed every one of them, because once again their defense was not capable of winning games.

  They started just 3–3, thanks to losses to Arizona, Baltimore, and Seattle, by a total of just four points combined. The Seattle loss went viral thanks to a meme of Richard Sherman’s creation. In the postgame handshake, Sherman was photographed coming up behind a dejected-looking Tom Brady (whom he’d just intercepted) and screaming in his ear. Sherman posted the photo with the caption “U mad, bro?” and an instant classic was born.

  For the second time in three years, the Patriots played in London against the St. Louis Rams, a day that should always be remembered as the day Gronk was exposed to the larger world. After catching a touchdown pass, Rob Gronkowski marched back and forth, stiff-legged, before slamming the ball into the ground. Asked afterward what he was going for, he demonstrated the depth of his knowledge of British culture. “The little Nutcracker dude, guarding the house, the palace,” he said. “I like how he just sits there and stays still.” Just so beautifully said. It made me start to realize that if you didn’t love this harmless, fun-loving man-child, you yourself are not worthy of being loved.

  Fortunately for the defense, help arrived in the form of Aqib Talib, one of the best and physically strongest cornerbacks in the league, who came over from Tampa Bay in a trade. The timing could not have been better. Talib’s first game in New England was against Indianapolis, who were now quarterbacked by Andrew Luck, the No. 1 overall draft pick they had tanked the entire 2011 season to draft when Peyton Manning was having surgery to repair the vertebrae in his neck. Talib intercepted the rookie, one of Luck’s four picks on the day, as the Patriots rolled to a 59–24 win.

  The bad part was that late in the game, with the outcome decided, Gronkowski was blocking on a meaningless extra point and had his arm broken by the Colts’ Sergio Brown. The odds of that happening were infinitesimal. But to the smarter-than-Belichick hordes in the Boston media, it was further proof of the coach’s (you guessed it) . . . arrogance. Like any other coach would have called on that backup extra point team that doesn’t exist anywhere.

  It was after that game that I made my first appearance on WEEI sports radio, as the guy who reads the sports news every 20 minutes on the Dennis & Callahan morning show. We went on the air at 6:05:00, and at 6:05:10, both hosts lit into me, demanding I explain the coach I love and admire so much being so stupid as to put his second-most important player in harm’s way for nothing. I loved it. It was a baptism under fire. Being able to argue on behalf of this particular football team would prove to be a useful life skill.

  The unquestioned highlight of the season, if not the 21st century so far, came in the Thanksgiving night game at the Jets. It was one play of such perfect grace and synchronized precision, it’s hard to believe it wasn’t choreographed and rehearsed for weeks. But it wasn’t. It happened in real time, improvised all the way.

  Already losing 14–0, Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez turned for a handoff to a running back who wasn’t there. He had turned the wrong way and had to do something. So he tucked the ball and started to run with it. But the direction he chose happened to be the exact place where Vince Wilfork was in the process of driving right guard Brandon Moore right into the backfield. Sanchez’s feet came out from under him and he slipped, his face going right into the crack of Moore’s ass. And while that, in and of itself, would have been funny enough to make everyone’s holiday, he promptly dropped the ball, which was immediately picked up by the Patriots’ Steven Gregory. Then, it became fried comedy gold.

  Instantly, the Butt Fumble became legend. ESPN did a SportScience segment on it. Later, there was an anniversary special on it in which New York sports page editors called it “Tabloid Catnip,” and said it was the first time they began tracking the immediate social media reactions to a live event. Most importantly, the Butt Fumble was immortalized with “The Benny Hill Theme” treatment, to this day the best use of “Yakety Sax” in video history.

  The first great test of the season would come on a Monday night in December. Coming to Foxboro were the Housto
n Texans, owners of a record of 11–1 and a threat to lock up home field advantage throughout the playoffs with a win. Led by second-year defensive end J. J. Watt, linebacker Whitney Mercilus, and offensive studs like receiver Andre Johnson and running back Arian Foster, the Texans seemingly had it all—including the one thing Belichick hated more than anything: swagger.

  It was a blowout. Even without Gronkowski, the Patriots jumped out to a 28–0 lead, with two touchdowns each by Hernandez and Lloyd on their way to a 42–14 victory. A few weeks later, they were hosting Houston again, only this time in the divisional round of the playoffs. This time the final was 41–28, New England.

  After the letterman jackets, the Texans lost three of their last four, and went 2–14 the following season; in that stretch, they lost three times to the Patriots by an average score of 39–24.

  In beating Houston the first time, the Patriots helped secure home field in the playoffs. By beating them the second time, they set up a rematch of the previous year’s AFC championship game, at home against the Ravens. But the results would be very different.

  I hate to sound like I’m repeating myself or saying negative things about an opponent just to say it. Because like I said before, the better team is the one that wins, in 100 percent of cases. Again, that’s how you decide who is better. But like both Giants’ Super Bowl wins, there was nothing special about the 2012 Ravens. Look it up. I know I did. Statistically, they were average on both sides of the ball, middle of the pack on offense, middle of the pack on defense. They were quarterbacked by Joe Flacco, who was middle of the league in terms of his passer rating. The Ravens had been in the hunt for that top seed in the AFC that the Patriots had locked up. But they lost four of their last five down the stretch. And in one power ranking of all 12 playoff teams from both conferences, they were the 10th-ranked team.