Five Rings

by Jerry Thornton

  The obligatory controversial acquisition of the late season was wideout Michael Floyd, the former high pick out of Notre Dame who hadn’t lived up to his draft status for the Cardinals. He was made expendable by Arizona after a drunk driving arrest where police found him passed out at an intersection, engine running and his foot on the brake.

  There was plenty of blowback for the move, in spite of the fact the Patriots were thin at receiver with Danny Amendola battling injuries. It was seen as enabling someone who probably needed help, a claim that got exponentially worse when the police in Arizona released footage of a sloppy, practically knee-walking drunken Floyd slurring his words and barely coherent. It was hard to watch. But in the cold, unfeeling calculus of an NFL season, the immorality of signing Floyd was put on hold when he caught a touchdown pass against the Jets on Christmas Eve, and then forgotten altogether in the game against Miami on New Year’s Day when he laid out a Dolphin defender with a clean but devastating block that freed up Julian Edelman for the longest pass play of his career, 77 yards.

  The Patriots ended the season 14–2 with playoff bye and home field advantage yet again. This isn’t a franchise that measures success by divisional titles. (Unlike, say, the Colts, who hung a banner from the roof of their dome that said “2016 AFC Finalist.” It might as well have a banner next to it reading, “OK, All You Flying Monkeys from New England, Please Read This and Ridicule Us without Mercy.”) And yet, just by way of perspective:

  The 2016 AFC East first place finish meant they’d won the division 14 times in 16 years.

  They led, or were tied for the lead, in wins in the division each of those years, losing tiebreakers twice.

  They had double-digit wins every season except 2002.

  They’d never won as much as 12 games in any season prior to 2003, but they’d done it 11 times since.

  They won 12 or more each of the last seven years.

  Not a bad record for a coach the Jets thought had lost his mind and the Boston writers called “duplicitous pond scum.”

  The Patriots finished 14–2, with the lowest scoring defense, a quarterback with an astonishing touchdown/interception ratio of 28/2, the best coach in the league, and a huge score still to settle. They were clearly the class of the AFC playoff picture. Just behind them were Pittsburgh and a couple of teams with good records but who hadn’t proven themselves in the postseason in Kansas City and Oakland. But given the Pats’ track record against them, most of New England was hoping to see the Houston Texans in the first round again.

  The NFC picture was a lot muddier. The best record belonged to the Cowboys, who had a good defense but were built around Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott, rookies at quarterback and bell cow running back, so all bets were off. Green Bay and Seattle were both legitimate threats. And the highest scoring offense in the league by far belonged to the Atlanta Falcons.

  But then, lurking in the shadows to turn my days into waking nightmares, were the Giants, 11–5 on the season and back in the playoffs for the first time since the Super Bowl That Shall Not Be Named II. In 2014 they had finished 6–10 and I was still afraid they would somehow show up to play in Phoenix, so the last thing I needed was for them to be a legitimately serious threat. Fortunately, they took care of that themselves. With a day off before preparation began for their Wild Card game at Green Bay, a group of Giants players took a private jet down to Miami and partied. In the morning, they got on a boat and posed for a group photo. Some of them were in jeans, some shirtless. There were some Air Jordans and at least one pair of work boots and what looked like a joint. We know this because it hit every sports site and the front and back covers of both New York tabloids with the headline “Ship Wrecked.”

  This is how they got acclimated to the conditions at Lambeau Field. In January. It laid the foundations of a 38–13 stomping in the cold. The Giants wouldn’t be my problem now or ever again.

  Patriots fans got their wish when Houston beat Oakland in the Wild Card round. J. J. Watt, arguably the best defensive game changer in football, was injured. Brock Osweiler was still the quarterback and hadn’t gotten any better. And even when the Texans were at their best and on their own field, the Patriots had never had any problems matching up against them. The teams had met four times since 2012, including a playoff game, and won them all by a combined score of 144–106, an average of 36–26 per game. So there’s good reason the home team was a 16-point favorite.

  They just didn’t play like it. Not on offense, anyway. And certainly not Brady. Having thrown only two interceptions in 437 attempts all season, he threw two to Houston on just 38 tries. But to go back to what I said during those dark days of 2009–2012 when you dreamed of a day where someone other than the quarterback would carry the team to a win when he struggled, this was the game.

  Dion Lewis bailed out the offense. He became the first player in postseason history to rush for a touchdown, catch one, and return one, a 98-yard job late in the first quarter to make it a 14–3 game.

  Houston never actually led, but they hung around far too long. They were trailing by a point until a late Gostkowski field goal made it 17–13 at the half. A Brady pass to James White, whose importance was growing by the week, capped off a 90-yard drive to put New England up 11. Then Lewis’s rushing touchdown put it away.

  Although that Lewis touchdown was set up by a Logan Ryan interception, just as other drives were set up by other interceptions, one by Devin McCourty and another by Duron Harmon. Belichick was positively beaming when he got to the microphone and opened his remarks with “Big night for Rutgers.” He was just ear to ear, something for everyone who mocked his Scarlet Knights picks.

  Overall, it was not a good performance. And, to a person, the locker room was saying exactly that: that it wasn’t good enough and it won’t get the job done. Julian Edelman had a 44-yard catch and passed Wes Welker on the team’s all-time postseason career list with 76 catches. But he was as sullen as everyone—even though they’d gone in with a historically big point spread and still covered. Despite the fact they were on their way to an unthinkable sixth straight AFC championship game appearance, they were beyond dissatisfied. They were miserable. Which is why I realized they were going to Super Bowl LI before I even went to bed the next night.

  The Houston game was the Saturday nighter. The next day the Steelers played at Kansas City, with the winner going to Foxboro. It was a terrible game to watch. Sloppy. Neither offense could get going. There were only two touchdowns scored in the entire game, both by Kansas City. But on the basis of six field goals, the Steelers prevailed, 18–15.

  Then immediately after the game, so immediately that players were still taking their pads off, Steelers All-Pro receiver Antonio Brown got on Facebook Live and for close to 20 minutes, just mugged for the camera. Not really saying anything beyond “Uh huh. Yup. That’s right. Yeeeah . . .” and whatever. At one point, his phone picked up coach Mike Tomlin in his Serious Grown-Up Voice telling his players to watch what they do and say on social media this week—while his best player was broadcasting it on . . . social media. The money shot was when you could clearly hear Tomlin talking about the Patriots. “We spotted those assholes a day and a half,” he said. “So be it. Let’s be ready to whoop their ass!”

  The Patriots were miserable about a 17-point win. The Steelers hadn’t scored a touchdown and had a guy treating the locker room like a teenage goth girl giving her 137 Facebook Live followers her theories about Manga.

  I could not have been more correct. The Steelers played Brady the way they always did, with a combination of blitzes, zone coverages, and ineffectiveness. Every time a Mike Tomlin team faced the Patriots, it was like that running gag in The Brady Bunch Movie (criminally underrated movie, Certified Fresh on Jerry Tomatoes), where every building Mike designs looks exactly like the Brady house, and some client tells his boss, “I think you’re pumping a dry well, here.”

  The Patriots had four possessions in the first half and scored on three of them, inc
luding touchdown catches of 16 and 34 yards by Chris Hogan. After underperforming against Houston, Brady produced the yin to even out that yang by having a near-perfect, mistake-free night, 32 for 42 with 384 yards and no picks.

  The defense made a few huge stands, the best of which was a set of downs on their own 1-yard line where the Steelers took three shots at the end zone hoping to make it a 17–13 game, but the goal line defense held and they settled for the field goal.

  In between, Josh McDaniels mixed in some LeGarrette Blount, including one of the great all-time highlight package plays where he was driving across the Pittsburgh 15 with two Steelers trying to bring him down. Then three. Then five. Finally, there were like eight guys on his back while his feet were still churning, and a half dozen Patriots were trying to push the whole pile into the end zone. It looked like one of those Animal Planet shows where a colony of ants swarm a larger insect but he won’t go down. Finally they stopped him at the 1, and there was no way they were going to let anyone else finish the drive after that. Blount Force Trauma made it 27–9 with just over 17 minutes to go in the game.

  The final was 36–17, thanks to a meaningless Pittsburgh touchdown toward the end, but the Patriots dominated from start to finish. They were one win away from total vindication. Maybe they just saw it as the chance to win another championship. But to their still enraged fans, it would be nothing less than the team satisfying their righteous, vengeful bloodlust at the expense of the world.

  35

  28–3

  From a Big Picture historical perspective, there was something peculiar happening. The Patriots were going to the Super Bowl for the second time in three years. The last time that had happened was 2001 and 2003. In ’01, they beat the NFC West champions, the Rams. In 2014, they beat the NFC West champions, the Seahawks. In ’03, they beat the NFC South champs, the Panthers, at NRG Stadium in Houston. This time, they were off to face the NFC South champions, the Falcons, at NRG Stadium in Houston.

  Maybe it wasn’t one of those weirdo coincidences like Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy and Kennedy had secretary named Lincoln. Or Lincoln was shot in a theater and the gunman hid in a book warehouse while Kennedy was shot from a book warehouse and the gunman hid in a theater. But it did point to a kind of historic symmetry to this era of Patriots football. If they could win, it would lend a pattern to this dynasty. The early championships balanced out by these (theoretical) championships, with that nearly perfect season in 2007 as the fulcrum.

  The Falcons weren’t chasing history, because they didn’t have one to speak of. They had been to one title game in their existence, Super Bowl XXXIII in Miami at the end of the 1998 season. That one is forever remembered for the time Falcons’ defensive back Eugene Robinson accepted a community service award on the Friday night before the game, and the following day was relaxing by the hotel pool with his wife and kids and said he had something to take care of and would be back. That “thing” that needed taking care of was in his bathing suit, because he proceeded to get arrested near South Beach for soliciting sex from an undercover cop. He then got burned for a long touchdown in a blowout loss to the Broncos. As legacies and memories go, Atlanta’s was not quite Adam Vinatieri and Malcolm Butler.

  But these Falcons had a lot going for them. In the playoffs they pulled off two convincing wins against legitimate championship-caliber teams, Seattle and Green Bay. Again, they had the most prolific offense in the NFL. QB Matt Ryan was the league MVP. Ryan had an arsenal at his disposal in receivers Julio Jones (perhaps the best in the game), Mohamed Sanu, and Taylor Gabriel and a versatile backfield that included Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman.

  The problem with Atlanta was they had some inexcusable losses on their permanent record. If the playoffs were done NCAA style, those losses would be getting them sent to a bowl named after a muffler shop. At one point they were only 7–5 before making a playoff push. Their defense, while quick, athletic, and young, was probably young to a fault. They’d drafted well, but most of those picks were still in their first or second years.

  I’ll interject here that by this point, I had left WEEI, amicably, to go back to Barstool Sports full time. It wasn’t an easy call because I loved my job and they had offered me a contract extension. And two-years-then-done was not how I’d drawn it up. But by now Barstool had been bought by Chernin Group, a communications giant that was taking the little pirate ship I used to sail on into the stratosphere, and it made it a perfect fit for me. While I stayed home to stay on top of Patriots news for the week, Barstool had a major presence in Houston, throwing parties, doing a half-hour show on Comedy Central, and basically dominating everywhere except where the NFL could ban us. Roger Goodell had issued an edict saying no Barstool reps were allowed at press conferences, on Radio Row, or any official NFL events, all while saying with a straight face that he had never heard of us and did not know what we are. NBC’s ProFootballTalk called our banning the biggest story of Super Bowl Week. I knew for certain I’d made the right career choice.

  I had the same family and friends over that had helped guide me through the pants-staining panic attacks of Super Bowl XLIX. And aside from my older son, now a corporal, still down in Camp Lejeune and unable to attend, I really felt fine. I was in a good place, literally and figuratively. President George H. W. Bush came out in his wheelchair for the opening coin flip. And because we didn’t know his signature move was groping ladies’ asses against their will, it was a touching scene. All was right with the world.

  That is, for as much time as it took for the Patriots to get nothing going on the opening drive, and for the Falcons’ first play from scrimmage. Devonta Freeman took a pitch, got around the edge, cut back, slipped tackles, and picked up 37 yards. From then on—and I am not lying, exaggerating, or just trying to add color to a story—I did not have a lick of fun the entire game. Panic set in again, mixed with that sense of dread that by now I was all too aware of.

  Stop me if you’ve heard this before: the Patriots couldn’t generate any offense in the early going. It had gotten ridiculous. Through seven Super Bowls, they produced a grand total of zero points in the opening quarter. If I could go back in time and change one thing, I’d go to 2001 and copyright the phrase “And at the end of one quarter in the Super Bowl, it’s Patriots zero . . .”

  But unlike some of those past games, they didn’t immediately put up points once the scoreboard read “Qtr: 2.” They began moving the ball, thanks in large part to a deep comebacker to Julian Edelman, but the drive was stopped by Atlanta’s Deion Jones, who made a great play to reach into LeGarrette Blount’s arms and rake the ball out for the forced fumble, recovered by the Falcons. On the sidelines, running back coach Ivan Fears reminded Blount that they had watched film the day before of the aggressive Atlanta players constantly trying to grab at the ball as a runner goes down. But the damage was done. My pupils started to dilate and my breathing became unsteady. It wasn’t even halftime, and this was starting to take a toll on me physically.

  The Falcons did not squander the opportunity. Julio Jones began to take over the game, first with a typically acrobatic catch by him, snatching the ball away from Logan Ryan, who was playing him almost perfectly, and then with a deep out pattern that got the ball down to the Patriots’ 29. Twice Freeman made cutbacks through the Pats’ defensive line for gains. Then he tried to run the ball up the middle and, finding no gap to shoot through, planted his foot, made a sharp cut, raced around the undefended end, and dove inside the pylon to draw first blood, Atlanta, 7–0.

  And on the subject of blood, at this point I was extremely pale and beginning to suffer cold sweats.

  It was the first time the Patriots had trailed in a game in two months. They’d touched the ball four times, with three punts and a fumble to show for it. Again, this was a young defense, loaded with the kind of inexperienced defensive backs Brady could normally Jedi Mind Trick into doing anything he wanted: Pump fake them out of position. Freeze them with perfectly executed play actio
n fakes and burn them deep. Get them looking outside and then do damage down the middle of the field. But they were playing smart, and nothing was working. As far as I could tell, the Falcons’ coaches had done something rarely done against New England: they gave them something they were not ready for. Those slants, in cuts, and intermediate routes between the numbers that were always the comfort zone of the Patriots’ passing attack simply weren’t open. The Falcons were putting extra bodies where they had never put bodies before and it frustrated the Pats’ offense.

  Meanwhile, as they would’ve put it the last time the Falcons were this close to a championship, Matt Ryan was starting to get his groove back. He hit Taylor Gabriel sitting underneath the Patriots’ deep zone. Jones made one of his typically absurd catches at the sideline, reaching out to secure the ball and tap both toes inbounds. Then on third and 9, Ryan hit tight end Austin Hooper diving in the end zone with Pat Chung all over him for the score. On the extra point, Shea McClellin went for an encore on his leaping the center to block the kick. But this time he was flagged for being on the line of scrimmage and Atlanta converted the re-kick. It was 14–0, and at that point I developed an eye tic I’d never had before.

  On the next possession, the Patriots continued to struggle, but finally started to benefit from mistakes by those sophomores and rookies, for whom this was “My First NFL Defense” by Hasbro. Three different defensive holding calls gave New England first downs. Then a catch by Martellus Bennett put the ball at Atlanta’s 27, and it looked like the Patriots were ready to make a game of it.

  They were. Just not the kind of game we were looking for.

  Brady was looking to get the ball to Danny Amendola, running a skinny post route in the middle of the field, even though Amendola was well covered by Brian Poole. Worse, Brady stared down his target, giving safety Robert Alford a cue to jump the route, which he timed perfectly. He picked the ball off and easily raced the 82 yards he needed for the pick-6. The only man with a prayer of catching Alford was Brady, who lunged for his legs but caught nothing but air before rolling onto all fours with his head hung low.