Five Rings

by Jerry Thornton

  From that game forward, the offense found 1.21 jigowatts of power and took off. The next week they went to Buffalo and crushed the Bills 37–22, in a game that only remained close thanks to a long touchdown from Bills quarterback Kyle Orton to their tall, rangy deep threat, Chris Hogan. They paid a price for this one, losing power back Stevan Ridley for the year to an injury. But Brady was 27 for 37 for 361 yards, four TDs, and no picks, probably the best stat line ever for a quarterback whose career ended 13 days earlier.

  Two weeks later, the Pats dropped 51 points on the Bears. In Brady-Manning Bowl 16, it was 43. Since that cataclysm in Kansas City, they were averaging over 40 points a game. And still, their best football was yet to come.

  After the bye week, they went to Indy to face the Colts. In the absence of Ridley, the Patriots’ starting running back was Jonas Gray, an undrafted third-year player out of Notre Dame whose career had consisted of three games and 131 yards on 32 carries. So it only makes sense that he would cleave Indianapolis’s defense for 201 yards and four rushing touchdowns. It was incomprehensible. But at the halfway point of a season that had turned around so quickly, it was still not a surprise, if that makes any sense.

  Even with Peyton Manning now in Denver, the Patriots had once again annihilated the Colts of QB Andrew Luck and head coach Chuck Pagano, and this time with an unknown rookie who looked like vintage Jim Brown, against the team that GM Ryan Grigson had built on the back of a season that they tanked in order to draft Luck. In Luck’s career, the teams had met three times, including the playoff game the year before. The Colts had lost them all by a combined score of 144–70, an average of 48–23 per game. It was humiliating. But there didn’t seem to be any solution.

  The very next day I started full time at WEEI. I was starting one week before I had to take a previously arranged Thanksgiving week off to see my older son graduate from Marine Corps boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina. I’d told the station ahead of time that if it were a deal-breaker, I’d wish them well and stay at my old job for good. To their undying credit they had no problem understanding.

  My first day was a Patriots Monday, to be broadcast from the remote studio located inside Gillette. Dale Arnold, Michael Holley, and our producer Ben Kichen met me there. They had been doing this together for years, and went over the ground rules. Bill Belichick would be coming in to sit down with us. They warned me not to get too familiar or ask any wiseass questions, because he would shut me down. And not to ask any questions where I was trying to be too smart, because he would shut me down. Great. So somewhere in between was the narrow little target I had to hit. Perfect.

  I had no idea how this would go, and I’m not ashamed to say I was like a five-year-old about to meet Santa at the mall. I might be fine. Or freeze up. Or piss my pants. And the three were not mutually exclusive. Then, live on the air, Belichick walked in and said, “Dale, good to see you. Michael, great to see you. And Jerry? It’s an honor to finally meet you.” As God is my witness, that’s how he opened the segment. The rest is a blur. Bless them, the station never told me not to fanboy or that I had to be objective or anything of the sort. Just be myself. Have fun. Be prepared.

  But nothing prepared me for that. Or for the way Belichick ended the segment, saying, “Jerry, I can’t wait to do this again.” I’d been standing up for the guy for years. Now I was ready to jump in front of a bullet for him.

  29

  Maybe They Oughtta Study the Rule Book

  For his part, Jonas Gray had the instant fame that comes to a nobody who ends up being the talk of the football world, wins Player of the Week awards, and winds up on the cover of Sports Illustrated. And in no way did he handle it properly. He was late for team meetings, a sin that the quarterback with three Super Bowl rings didn’t make the day of a freak snowstorm when his son was less than 24 hours old and still had that New Baby smell. For a noob who had literally one significant game on his résumé, it was unforgivable. Gray himself only made it worse by blaming the fact his phone ran out of battery.

  Unfortunately for Gray but most fortunately for the Patriots, LeGarrette Blount was picking the perfect time to metaphorically shoot his way out of Pittsburgh. Back in August, Blount and the Steelers’ franchise running back Le’Veon Bell were caught smoking weed in Bell’s car the day of a preseason game. Bell was enough of a star to be forgiven. Blount wasn’t. He was put on the team equivalent of academic probation until he got his metaphorical grades up. He didn’t. In fact, he basically quit on them toward the end of a game and was given his unconditional release. Within hours, he was back in New England.

  For the next game against Detroit, Gray got a teachable moment by not being dressed. Blount got the football for 12 of the 20 times the Patriots ran it, good for 78 yards and two touchdowns. Brady did the rest with 349 yards in a 34–9 victory. Gray would have 20 more rushing attempts the whole rest of the season while Blount carried the load.

  Back when the 2014 schedule first came out, it looked like the toughest test would be the end of November game at Green Bay. And we were by no means mistaken. The Packers were 8–3 and 6–0 at Lambeau Field. Aaron Rodgers was at his most Aaron Rodgersy, throwing for 368 yards and running for 22 more. And while the Patriots hung in there, it wasn’t enough. Down by five and with the 2-minute warning approaching, the Patriots got the field goal unit onto the field while the play clock ran, trying to preserve another time-out for a comeback. Stephen Gostkowski’s rushed attempt failed and the game was essentially over. But there was no shame in losing 26–21 on the road against a team as good as Green Bay. None at all.

  There was one moment in the game that escaped everyone. Just one of those thousand little conversational asides that pass the time during all the inaction of a football game. The CBS broadcast team of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms were discussing, as they always do, their weekly sit-down with each team’s quarterback and told a funny story about Aaron Rodgers and how competitive he is. Rodgers, they said, is so laser focused when it comes to game preparation that he’s even particular about the air pressure in the footballs. For real! They explained how he told them he likes the footballs overinflated, even above the legal limit according to the rules. Then he just hopes the officials don’t catch it. Then they had a good laugh. Just one of those charming anecdotes to add a little color to the telecast. A bit of harmless fun, forgotten as soon as it’s mentioned.

  From Green Bay, the Patriots flew direct to San Diego for their game against the Chargers, rather than cross the country twice. By this point I was at WEEI full time, both on the air and writing daily content for their website, just as I had for Barstool (minus some of the language). A story came to my attention that the Chargers were congratulating the football fans of San Diego for selling out the game. I kid you not. An NFL team in 2014, surprised to have a sellout and thanking the fans like they were some NCAA basketball mid-major thanking the kids for turning out to support the student/athletes as they make their tournament run. Then San Diego papers handed me the gift of publishing a guide instructing fans how to cheer when they got there. It was humiliating. And blogging gold.

  Which only got better when the Patriots came running out of the tunnel and the source of all those ticket sales became painfully obvious: New Englanders travel, typically to a warm-weather road game. It’s been proven time and time again. But this season, the Miami game was in early September, and nobody needed out of New England then. So tens of thousands of Patriots fans had circled their calendars, booked their packages, and flew out to San Diego in December. It was beautiful. Interviewing Vince Wilfork the next day, he said it felt like a home game. And the Pats played like it, coming from behind with 10 points in the fourth quarter to win 23–14.

  They won the next two games to clinch home field throughout the playoffs and essentially took the final week off. With each passing week, “We’re on to Cincinnati” was evolving from defense mechanism that annoyed everyone to a running joke to finally, a sort of rallying cry. By the end of the sea
son, it was part of the national lexicon, and something that gets used by athletes in every sport on a weekly basis.

  With the offense taking off after that horror show in Kansas City and the defense perhaps the best it had been since the 2004 champs, they had only lost one meaningful game in their last 12 to finish 12–4. And there wasn’t a New Englander with Internet access who wasn’t reminding anyone they could that this was what “not good anymore” looked like. That only ramped up even more after the Wild Card round when Baltimore won their game and we were getting yet another epic rematch of the Patriots’ biggest rival, at Gillette.

  The divisional round game did not disappoint. As a matter of fact, it stands as one of the best, most memorable games in franchise history. Which isn’t to say that, for long stretches, it didn’t suck miserably.

  When the Ravens scored touchdowns on their first two possessions to take a quick 14–0 lead, this one felt for all the world like that Wild Card game back in 2009. Once again, a good-but-by-no-means-great Baltimore team was going to the postseason and shape-shifting into the 1989 San Francisco 49ers. It was bizarre. The Ravens were the lowest seed of the six in the AFC playoffs. The very average Joe Flacco already had two touchdown passes and was looking to extend his streak of consecutive postseason games without an interception to six. But unlike 2009, these Patriots had fight in them. A 46-yard bomb to Rob Gronkowski set up a Brady touchdown run. Brady later hit Danny Amendola to tie the game.

  But just when you started to get the feeling that maybe there was a benign and all-loving Creator after all, the two most talented players on the Patriots’ roster took turns failing. Brady threw an interception, and Darrelle Revis committed an illegal contact penalty, just his second of the season, that handed Baltimore 20 yards and put the ball at the New England 24. With 10 seconds left in the half, Flacco hit tight end Owen Daniels and the Ravens took a 21–14 lead into the third quarter.

  That feeling of being abandoned by your deity came back early in the half, first when Ravens linebacker C. J. Mosley (“Special Agent Mosley” to anyone worthy of calling himself a Midnight Run fan) committed a flagrant pass-interference penalty, bear-hugging Gronkowski from behind while the officials stood and watched like they’d never heard of the Colts’ rules “emphasis” from a decade earlier. The non-call forced a punt and in a few plays, Flacco was incredibly throwing his fourth touchdown. And there was still 25 minutes left to play.

  The Patriots were losing by 14 for the second time. Belichick knelt before his defense, not so much firing them up to do more as imploring them to do less. To simplify things. “Look fellas, it’s just about doing your jobs,” he said. “Cover your man. Do what you’re supposed to do. . . . They’re not giving us anything we haven’t seen before. There’s no scheme plays.”

  He was right. The Ravens weren’t doing anything unusual schematically. Neither were the Patriots, and they found themselves in a 28–14 hole. So it was time to change that. Josh McDaniels approached Julian Edelman who was sitting on the bench and whispered to him, “I don’t need any lead time for the double pass, do I?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, I don’t need to tell you it’s coming?” The answer was no. McDaniels was considering letting the former Kent State quarterback throw a pass, and was checking to make sure Edelman was ready for it at any time.

  But there was even a more complicated magic trick up McDaniels’s sleeve. Through film study, the Patriots coaches had come upon a formation the Detroit Lions had used. It involved putting a running back up on the line of scrimmage, but as one of the five offensive linemen who are ineligible to catch a pass, while putting a tight end at tackle who would be eligible. So they scripted a few plays of their own using similar formations and stuck them in a box marked “Break Glass in Case of Emergency.” This was the emergency.

  They lined up in a five-man offensive line, but with Shane Vereen in the right slot, reporting to the official that he was ineligible. At the left tackle spot was tight end Michael Hoomanawanui, as a tackle/eligible receiver. The confused Ravens still put a defensive back on Vereen, but left Hoomanawanui uncovered as he ran up the seam wide open and Brady hit him with the pass. Terrell Suggs stood on the field yelling, “Illegal! Illegal!” But it clearly wasn’t. So the Pats ran it again. This time Vereen not only didn’t go out, but he came back on the ball as if to catch a screen pass. Again, the Ravens took the cheese, even after the official, in declaring Vereen ineligible, literally told the Baltimore defense, “Don’t cover No. 34!” And they did, while John Harbaugh’s head exploded like he was in a David Cronenberg film. He stormed onto the field berating the officials and was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct and 15 yards.

  Edelman, for one, was loving it, telling the officials they were earning their pay. “You’re getting your money’s worth, with all them formations,” he said. Them formations, plus Harbaugh’s penalty, set up a short slant pass to Gronkowski for a touchdown that made it a one-score game again.

  At this point, the defense began to do what Belichick demanded of them earlier: their jobs. The pass rush began to get after Flacco and forced a punt. And the subsequent possession took all of three plays before McDaniels unleashed the full fury of his secret superweapon.

  The Patriots lined up with three wide receivers to the left. As Edelman stepped back to take the pass from Brady, that side of the defense blitzed, leaving two defenders on the three wideouts. Reading it as a screen pass to Edelman, the corners came after him, leaving Danny Amendola streaking down the sidelines, wide open. Edelman hit him in stride and he raced 51 yards untouched to tie the game. “Just like in the backyard!” Edelman said.

  The Patriots had waited all game for Flacco to make a mistake, just as they had done twice before in playoff games. Finally, he obliged. With Edelman on the sidelines begging, “C’mon, Flacco. Throw us one,” over and over, he overthrew a deep pass into bracket coverage by former Rutgers teammates Logan Ryan and Devin McCourty, and McCourty hauled it down. It was Flacco’s first postseason interception in forever.

  The Patriots failed to take advantage, though, and after punting it back, the Ravens drove it right down their throats, helped by a gutsy fourth-down conversion at the New England 36. They almost took a touchdown lead, but a pass went off Owens Daniels’s hands in the end zone with Pat Chung in excellent coverage. And a field goal put them up three.

  This is where Brady took over. Hitting on intermediate throws of between 6 and 9 yards, he spread the ball around to six different receivers before dropping a perfect, arcing, 23-yard lob over the Ravens’ defense and onto the belt buckle of Brandon LaFell at the cone, as he cradled it for the touchdown that gave New England its first lead of the game.

  But at 35–31, five minutes left on the clock was an eternity, even with a penalty backing the Ravens up to their own 11. They put on a drive that gave everyone in New England acid flashbacks to the Giants come-from-behind Super Bowl drives. Four straight positive plays moved them out of danger. A 17-yard completion to Daniels put the ball into New England territory. Then, facing a second and 5 with plenty of time left, Flacco took a shot at the end zone. With the Patriots playing Duron Harmon as the single high safety, Flacco spotted receiver Torrey Smith get a step on Ryan. What he didn’t see was Harmon read the play perfectly, not commit until the ball was in the air, then break on it as soon as it was. He jumped over Smith and hauled it in, he and Ryan forming another Rutgers Mafia for yet another interception. This one was the final nail. Three kneel-downs, a punt, and one desperation heave by Flacco, and it was over. The Patriots would be hosting the AFC championship again, this time against the Colts.

  The reaction was gracious. John Harbaugh congratulated them on their superior strategy, respected the way they outsmarted him, and wished them well in the future.

  I’m kidding! It was the opposite. He was even more petulant in defeat than he was in 2011. He continued to insist the formations the Patriots used were illegal.

  “It’s not somethin
g that anybody has ever done before,” he said, incorrectly. “They’re an illegal type of a thing and I’m sure that [the league will] make some adjustments and things like that,” he added. Correctly. Because he himself would lobby the Rules Committee to outlaw them, the way the Colts did with the pass coverage rules in 2003. Because time is a flat circle.

  But Harbaugh didn’t stop there. “We wanted an opportunity to be able to identify who the eligible players were,” he continued. “Because what they were doing was they would announce the eligible player and Tom [Brady] would take it to the line right away and snap the ball before [we] even figured out who was lined up where. And that was the deception part of it. It was clearly deception.”

  Brady was asked to comment about what Harbaugh said and was unapologetic. “Maybe those guys gotta study the rule book and figure it out,” he said. “We obviously knew what we were doing and we made some pretty important plays. It was a real good weapon for us. Maybe we’ll have something in store next week.”

  According to reports out of Baltimore, Harbaugh resented Brady’s comments, which is an odd reaction. You don’t expect a coach whose own player screamed “Arrogant fuckers!” into the losing locker room in this same stadium two years earlier to be triggered so easily by harsh words like “study the rule book.” But he was.

  As far as the rest of the Patriots, Vince Wilfork was asked whether his defense had ever prepared for formations like those and his answer was simple. “Oh, yeah.” But Baltimore still harbored resentment—for the strategy and for Brady’s comment. Unlike the Patriots when Terrell Suggs called them “pricks” and wished them fun at the Pro Bowl, the Ravens decided not to ignore it. Privately, they vowed revenge.