Patriot Reign

by Michael Holley

  When the Patriots returned to Foxboro on Wednesday, December 18—Tuesday had been their day off—they were greeted by a large drawing near the bulletin board. It was a scale, with the logos of all the teams they had played in the past on one side and the green-and-white logo of the rival New York Jets on the other. The message was simple: the Jets were all that mattered.

  The Patriots were 8–6. They could take a very direct route to the play-offs by winning their last two games, against the Jets and Dolphins. They would still be able to win by splitting the games, but that would put them in a maze of tiebreakers and mathematical possibility. It was easier to just win twice in two weeks.

  It was the week before Christmas, but it was hard to know that in football operations. Downstairs the players and coaches were trying to figure out a way to beat the Jets, and upstairs the scouts were holding their early draft meetings. There wasn’t a lot of joy after the Monday night loss to the Titans. Belichick wasn’t in the mood for a lot of talking. He knew the Jets were not the same team the Patriots had beat in September, 44–7. Like Tennessee, New York had opened the season with a win and then lost four consecutive games. The Jets had a 2–5 record on October 28, but they were 7–7 as they prepared for their Sunday night game with the Patriots. Belichick clearly made those points at a noon meeting.

  The next day he read some of the comments that Steve Martin had made to the New York media. Martin was a former Jet, so he was asked if he was surprised that his exteammate, All-Pro center Kevin Mawae, had been involved in a fight at practice.

  “Yeah, I heard about that,” Martin told the reporters. “That’s what he does. He plays dirty. He used to do that when I was there. Someone probably got mad because he did something dirty. He did that the whole time I was there.” Martin also reported that he was brought to New England to help out against the run and be effective on third down. But it appeared, he said, that his role had been reduced to standing around, since he had lost his starting job after the Patriots lost to Green Bay at home.

  That week, Martin had lost his starting job. Now, before the Jets game, he lost his employment altogether. He was fired three days before playing his old team.

  Belichick was tired of him, for sure. He was also tired of being pushed around on defense. He was tired of the helpless feeling that mediocre teams have. It’s the feeling that success is out of their hands, that some other team will have to come in for things to be right.

  That feeling would become tangible fact on Sunday night. Later, in the off-season, Belichick would use the second New York game as a piece of evidence during an animated speech in a coaches’ meeting. This, he would argue, was why things had to change in Foxboro. He would point to poor coverage, particularly on third down. He would point to players’ “giving up” opportunities to make tackles. He would note that quarterback Chad Pennington completed his first 11 passes against the Patriots and, once again, another back—this time it was Curtis Martin— rushed for more than 100 yards.

  The Patriots lost to the Jets, 30–17. And now, an hour after the game, Belichick was in his office. His family and friends were either in the office with him or just outside, talking with each other. His parents were standing against a wall, a few feet away from the drawing of the “Jets scale,” a drawing that was now moot. Belichick’s mother, Jeanette, is a small woman who is as passionate about communication as her son is about coaching. When she was in practice, as she puts it, she spoke seven languages. In different ways—and in different places—she sometimes has the same analyses as her son. Once, on a trip home to see his parents in Annapolis, Belichick was giving some of the reasons for poor player performance. Near the top of his list was “shitty coaching.” When he got home and was speaking with his mother in the kitchen, she gave her reasons why some students don’t do well with foreign languages. “Bad teaching” was her quick answer.

  She knew a lot more than languages. She knew football too. She turned to her husband and said, “You know what I don’t understand? I don’t understand why they don’t call roughing the passer more. I thought Brady was going to be a bag of bones out there.” Brady had completed just 19 of his 37 passes. He may have been hit well after he threw, but that wasn’t why he was hurting. He still had discomfort from the shoulder injury in the Titans game. “I’m going to tell him that you feel sorry for him,” Steve Belichick said to his wife. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear that.”

  It was as if Steve Belichick were reading from a cue card. A couple of seconds after the comment was made, the lanky Brady turned the corner. He was walking slowly. His shoulders were slumped. He was well dressed—his sister Nancy likes to pick out the clothes he wears on game days—and he was wearing a floppy newsboy hat. Belichick’s daughter, Amanda, was there with a friend, and they watched the handsome quarterback walk by. He looked to his left and recognized Steve and Jeanette. He leaned over to kiss the coach’s mother. “They’re killing you out there,” she said. “They should call roughing the passer more.” Brady blushed. He said he just wasn’t playing well. He smiled at Amanda and her friend—a smile that excited the friend—and walked out to the players’ parking lot.

  It was well after midnight. Soon Belichick would step out of his office and walk down the hall. He had been rough on the team following the game, much tougher than he was after the loss to the Titans. He spoke to his friends. He stopped, briefly, next to his parents. His mother hugged him. “I love you,” she said. Softly, he said, “You too.”

  A tough season had come down to one game. The Patriots would have to defeat the Dolphins and hope that the Packers could beat the Jets. If that happened, the Patriots and Dolphins would be 9–7, the Jets would be 8–8, and the Patriots would win the division on a tiebreaker. If not, the Patriots would simply fall back to being an average team, just one year after being the best team in football.

  Late on Christmas night, a Wednesday, a snowstorm hit greater Boston. It had been raining earlier in the day, the rain turned to sleet, the wind blew—in some areas at sixty miles per hour—and about five inches of wet and heavy snow fell in Foxboro. It could have been the snow or it could have been the wind, but when the Patriots returned to work on Thursday, they found that their practice bubble was not usable. Because the bubble was at risk, the New England Patriots were going to have to take a road trip up Route 128 to Boston College.

  A few players got a kick out of this as they saw three buses parked in front of football operations. “You mean to tell me that this organization can spend $325 million for a stadium,” one of them said, “and they can’t put out a couple of million for a new bubble?” Variations on that sentiment were expressed throughout the buses. (A new practice bubble would be in place for the 2003 season.) The Patriots arrived at Alumni Stadium, walked through the snow and ice, and entered the bubble. There appeared to be a baseball meeting going on at the end of the field. Belichick went to speak with the group, they applauded after a few minutes, and then they dispersed.

  The field was free of kids, and that was a good thing. It was a parental advisory atmosphere. Weis yelled at rookie David Givens, who had dropped a pass against the Jets that could have turned the game. Belichick, who was still disgusted with his team’s inability to cover, yelled at the defensive backs through coach Eric Mangini. “Hey, Eric,” the coach shouted. “Why can’t we cover anybody on ‘Cover 5’? Someone is running free every fucking time. Every fucking time!” Mangini told his group to line up and try the coverage again.

  The Patriots were injured—Tedy Bruschi and Deion Branch were out—and desperate. In a season that was nothing like the previous one, it seemed appropriate that they were in this position: on a college campus, in a bubble, competing for practice time with a group of baseball players. It would have been purely amusing if they had beaten the Jets. But in the context of the 8–7 season, the practice situation felt ridiculous.

  When the session ended, the defending NFL champions returned to Foxboro to find ribs, cornbread, greens, and sw
eet potatoes in the cafeteria. For a little while their moods lifted. They had a good time together, as usual. They were a close team, something that Fauria had noticed as soon as he arrived in Foxboro.

  “It wasn’t like this in Seattle,” he says. “I’ll use training camp there as an example. There was a serving tray where they had the salad, and it was kind of like the divider in the room. There were tables on both sides. I’m telling you, all the white guys were on one side, and the black guys were on the other. Now, I’m not saying it was prejudice or a race issue, but it always seems to happen that way.

  “I don’t see that here at all. You see those domino games in the locker room? You have guys like Marc Edwards and Mike Vrabel saying, ‘Slap the domino, motherfucker,’ just like everyone else. Seriously, I think it’s a credit to Scott [Pioli]. He really brings good guys in. And I felt that right away. All the guys are generally good guys, with the same emphasis on winning.”

  Belichick defined exactly what that emphasis was on Friday, in his most revealing production meeting of the season. Phil Simms and Armen Keteyian of CBS were at the meeting—Greg Gumbel would meet them later at practice—and they caught the coach in one of his unguarded moments. If it hadn’t been so spontaneous, it would have seemed staged: Belichick flopped onto a brown coach and began joking with Simms and Keteyian. There were rumors about Bill Parcells joining the Cowboys, so Belichick jabbed Simms by asking if he was going to Dallas to be the offensive coordinator. Simms said he would love to coach if he could be well paid while not being accountable for a team’s record. Everyone laughed.

  The sight of Belichick on the couch was irresistible. “Are we your analysts?” Keteyian joked. He imitated a therapist. “So, Coach Belichick. Tell us how you feel….”Simms told Belichick that he would have to pay for this session, and it was going to be expensive. “I’m just letting you know, Belichick: I’m going to charge your ass a lot of money.” Eventually Bill on the Couch was asked if the Patriots had felt the weight of being Super Bowl champs. He was asked if the season had drained his team.

  “I would never admit this publicly,” he said. “But absolutely. There is so much pressure on this team. Every week. Every single week.” Keteyian began reading off the Patriots’ schedule to enforce the coach’s point. “And even against Chicago,” Belichick interrupted, “we went into their place while they were on a 6-game losing streak. It’s been draining.”

  Belichick hadn’t said anything like that all season to anyone in the media. He tried to find reasons that the Super Bowl didn’t matter. He tried so hard that he may have ignored any hint of Super Bowl hangover. He had been trying to encourage the team to move on from something that not all of them—the rookies and free agents, for example— had experienced. But other teams weren’t forgetting the Super Bowl. They were not going to let the Patriots creep up on them. They delighted in trying to clock the champions. And if the Patriots didn’t treat the Miami game “like a wild-card play-off,” as Belichick said in the production meeting, they were in their last days as champs.

  At what was going to be the final Cabinet meeting of 2002—win or lose—Belichick reviewed the game plan at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel in Norwood. He had concerns about cornerback Ty Law’s groin and asked Mangini about it. He wondered if the groin would become a problem during the game. Mangini said that Law would be shot up. “He won’t miss this,” Mangini said. Belichick reminded the coaches that the sun could be a factor. He compared it to the year before, when a pop kick had been sent toward a Dolphin, in hopes of getting a fumble.

  He told Romeo Crennel that he didn’t want to be too soft on first down. He told Weis that he wanted the Patriots to run against a seven-man box and beat man coverage. “There’s not one play that doesn’t do all that shit, as far as I can see,” Belichick said. “Don’t be afraid to throw it on first down. Things like ‘X Option.’ If those fuckers can cover us on that, it’s going to be a long day.”

  It was one half of a long day on Sunday afternoon in Foxboro. The Dolphins were thirty minutes away from winning the AFC East, leading the Patriots 21–10 at half- time. The problems were not new: Ricky Williams, the NFL’s leading rusher, already had 120 yards by halftime. The Patriots wanted to set the edge and force him back inside; Williams would sometimes dip inside and then bounce outside.

  Outside linebackers coach Rob Ryan called one of his smartest players, Vrabel, on the sideline. “Vrabes,” Ryan said, “I know Ricky is making it look like he doesn’t wanna go outside. But I guarantee you he wants to. Don’t let him do it.”

  It was the third quarter now, and the Patriots were beginning to do a better job on Williams. But they didn’t have much time. They got an Adam Vinatieri field goal in the third to make it 21–13. But in the fourth, with eight minutes left, Brady threw a bad pass that was intercepted by Brock Marion. An Olindo Mare field goal with five minutes remaining made it 24–13. It certainly was looking like an 8–8 season for the Patriots.

  They needed to do something quickly, so they went to a play that had been a part of their game plan the first time they opposed Miami, in October. On the call sheet that day the seventh item under “notes” read, “Pick on #21 in SUB (include GO’s).” They were talking about cornerback Jamar Fletcher. And everyone knew what GO meant. Go deep. “He doesn’t have deep-ball speed and will struggle against faster receivers,” read the Patriot scouting report. Givens, the rookie from Notre Dame, wasn’t the fastest receiver. He did have an understanding of how to create separation, and he had earned the respect of his teammates with hard work. On first down at the Miami 33, Givens went on a GO route against Fletcher. He didn’t catch the ball, but he did draw a pass interference penalty at the 3. One play later Brady threw across the middle to Troy Brown, who scored. When Fauria caught a 2-point conversion pass to make it 24–21, there was hope again.

  There was the sense that Miami was gasping. There weren’t even 180 seconds left, but that was plenty of time for the Dolphins to make mistakes. They guessed wrong on the kickoff—they thought it would be an on-side kick—and were out of position. So they started with the ball at their own 4. They had the lead, the Patriots were the ones who needed to stop the clock, and Miami had the NFL’s leading rusher in their backfield. Yet, on the first two downs, they called for passes. When they did run, it was quarterback Jay Fiedler running, not Williams. Punter Mark Royals completed the disastrous series with a 23-yard punt.

  The Dolphins had burned all of twenty-eight seconds.

  New England actually got the ball to the Miami 25. But on third-and-1, Smith couldn’t pick up the yard that would have given the Patriots the chance to go for the win in regulation. “Keep trying,” Jason Taylor shouted in the direction of Belichick. The Dolphins defensive end was daring the coach to send Smith into the line on fourth down. “Keep trying,” he repeated.

  Instead, Vinatieri made a 43-yard field goal to tie it at 24. Eleven points in five minutes. Who didn’t know what was going to happen in overtime? Who didn’t know that there would be more Miami mistakes? The first was Mare kicking the ball out of bounds after the Patriots won the coin flip. Who didn’t know that Vinatieri would win it with a 35-yard kick and then shrug later in the locker room, saying, “What can I say? This is what I do”?

  Romeo Crennel called it early. He was watching the Green Bay–New York game, and he had an observation about the Packers. “Green Bay doesn’t want to play today,” he said. The Packers were already in the play-offs, and the Jets needed to win. The Jets were relentless too.

  Brian Belichick was watching the game in his father’s office. When Brett Favre threw a touchdown pass to former Patriot Terry Glenn, Brian had to tell his father. “Hey, Dad. Look who just scored: Terry Glenn!” They all gave each other high-fives and said what a dependable player (wink wink) the notoriously undependable Glenn was.

  But it didn’t matter. It was over. The Jets did whatever they wanted against the Packers. The final score was 42–17, and Crennel was right. Green Bay didn’t
want to play.

  Belichick must have known it too. “I can’t stay here and watch this,” he said. He packed up some of his things and was gone by halftime, when it was still a 14–10 game. At least he didn’t have to see the worst of it.

  As he thought about it later that night and early the next day, he wasn’t that angry about missing the play-offs. “It was probably for the best,” he says. “It didn’t look like we were going very far.” He knew they would have had to go there without Brady, who had reinjured his arm against the Dolphins. He wouldn’t have been available for a play-off game if there had been one.

  But there wasn’t. This was a team that had tried to be what it used to be. The lesson, though, was that none of us can go back. For one game, their last of the year, the Patriots were able to mimic themselves from 2001. By the time they got it right, December 29, 2002, it was far too late.

  CHAPTER 8

  ROOKIES AND

  REPLACEMENTS

  Only the naive didn’t understand what the squad meeting truly represented. And no one in the Gillette Stadium auditorium, at least one season into a Patriots career, was considered naive. It was going to be good-bye for a dozen of them, maybe more. It was nine A.M. on December 30, the Monday morning after Miami. Just a couple of days earlier, in this same room, they had been asked to collectively figure out a way to beat the Dolphins. Now each of them was potentially an independent contractor who might be asked to turn in his ID card and work somewhere else.

  Cold, yes. But each of them had gotten over cold a long time ago. This was what made them professionals: concentrating on doing a good job every day, even though the talent searchers in the organization—the scouts—were in the same building trying to find people who could replace them. It was protocol, not personal. And when the team had gone 9–7, it was something else: inevitable.