As Joe Andruzzi revealed, “When Drew went down, it wasn’t really known to the guys in the huddle that Tom would be coming out. We had [Damon] Huard as the vet…but then came Tom jogging in. We all knew his work ethic, all the work he’d done in the off-season. But it’s not like we’d worked with him a bunch.”
Up to this moment, number 12 had only thrown six passes in the NFL. Everything was happening so fast, and the second-year quarterback was reacting to the moment, yet there was a sense of calm that came over him.
“I felt prepared,” he recalled. “And it really felt like football, like something I had done many times before.”56
Tom entered the game and completed six out of eleven passes and also made a nice nine-yard run. Barely anyone in the stadium that day paid much attention to Brady during those final minutes as concern was focused on the face of the franchise.
Meanwhile, Bledsoe was rushed by ambulance to the hospital, but not for a head injury. He’d complained to Patriots team physician Dr. Thomas Gill of intense pain in his shoulder. Gill considered the possibility that Bledsoe’s C3 nerve, which aerates the diaphragm and allows breathing, could be in distress. The nerve goes to the top of the shoulder, but the real problem was in the abdomen.
Bledsoe’s stomach and chest were filling with blood. He lost consciousness on the way to the hospital. When he arrived, doctors found that he had torn a blood vessel behind his rib, which was now filling his chest with three liters of blood. They managed to drain the blood quickly and stabilize Bledsoe. Had Dr. Thomas Gill not made the initial diagnosis, Drew Bledsoe could have died. The starting quarterback would need more than a month to recover, which meant the team’s playoff hopes would be determined by Tom Brady—even though the team was considering chasing after retired quarterbacks Jim Harbaugh and former Patriot Scott Zolak to fill the void.
Brady’s first NFL start came the following week against the quarterback he would be measured against for the rest of his career—Peyton Manning. To this point, their journeys could not have been more different. While Brady had been largely unheralded, Manning was a former number one overall draft choice coming out of the University of Tennessee. Not only had Manning been anointed by his new team, the Indianapolis Colts, but the league looked at him as the heir to the quarterback throne previously held by legends like Dan Marino and John Elway. The NFL’s future rested largely on the shoulders of number 18 for the Colts, while no one gave more than a passing glance at number 12 for the Patriots.
The only person to discuss Brady and Elway in the same breath at that time was Bill Belichick, and the comparison wasn’t a good one.
“I don’t think we’re talking about John Elway here, but I don’t know how many of those there are,” the frustrated coach told reporters, who wondered why the team hadn’t turned to a more seasoned backup like Damon Huard. “He’s [Brady] got a good NFL arm. I really don’t think I’m going to be standing here week after week talking about the problems that Tom Brady had. I have confidence in him.”57
The game was played in Foxboro in front of a crowd mostly wearing Bledsoe jerseys. Manning’s backup, Mark Rypien, who won a Super Bowl with the Washington Redskins, didn’t see anything to fear in the young, opposing quarterback.
“You looked at Tom and it’s not like anything just stood out about him,” Rypien remembered. “There are kids you see in warm-ups and you go, ‘Wow!’ Nothing Tom ever did was just an awe factor.”58
Patriots star Willie McGinest rallied his troops on the defensive side of the ball. If the team had a chance of winning, it would be the job of the defense to carry the day. Belichick, already considered by most as a defensive genius, devised a plan to pressure Manning from the middle and left side, confuse him, and force him out of the pocket. But it was the Colts defense that drew first blood, sacking Brady on the very first offensive play. After throwing some incomplete passes, he finally settled down and managed the game with handoffs to running backs Antowain Smith and Kevin Faulk. He also completed thirteen out of twenty-three passes that day with no interceptions but no touchdowns either. Manning, on the other hand, had one of his worst outings as a pro, getting picked off three times, including a return for a touchdown. Brady won his first game as a starter 44–13 over Indy and his first head-to-head matchup against Manning in what would become the greatest rivalry in NFL history.
Fans got a glimpse of the future when the team traveled to San Diego for game five and Tom led the team back from a ten-point deficit with just four minutes left and won it in overtime. Brady threw for 364 yards that day and shared star billing with receiver David Patten, who was another player that Dick Rehbein had fought hard for.
Belichick offered a posthumous thank-you to his late coach after the game for insisting they sign Brady and Patten. “Even though he’s gone,” he said of Rehbein. “He’s not forgotten by any of us.”
The Patriots had three wins against one loss over their next four games as fans waited for Drew Bledsoe to heal and return to the lineup. Coach Bill Belichick was having different thoughts. He liked the way Brady managed the game and played within himself instead of relying on talent and instinct the way Bledsoe often had.
Tom Brady played smart, and it seemed to have an effect on the defense, which had come together with an aggressiveness that kept them in games. The team was trending up, so why change things now?
“Brady was out of sorts when he was first learning to be a starting quarterback,” Andruzzi recalled. “He held his press conferences in his locker, so we just hosed him down with silly string in front of all the reporters—anything to bust his chops. Our offensive line was a bunch of jokers back then, but we helped keep Brady grounded, keep things light in a new and tense situation.”
Bledsoe was cleared to play after a fifty-one-day recovery during week eleven of the 2001 season. The news came in a press conference with his doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“I’m itching to get back there,” Bledsoe told reporters. “I feel strong and I’ve been working out for the last couple of weeks and I feel great.”59
But to Bledsoe’s dismay, Belichick kept the franchise quarterback on the sidelines in favor of Brady. The replacement responded that week with a four-touchdown performance in a big win over the New Orleans Saints.
It was the beginning of a magical run.
Chapter Nine
It’s Good!
The Brady-led Patriots would win the rest of their remaining regular-season games in 2001 to finish first in the AFC East with an 11–5 record. The team was headed back to the playoffs behind its second-year head coach and second-year quarterback.
Despite the team’s late-season run, however, there was at least one Patriots player that didn’t believe Brady had what it took to lead the team into the postseason. Drew Bledsoe met privately with Coach Belichick near the end of the season and warned him that the team could not win with Brady, who was virtually a rookie quarterback. It was the franchise QB’s attempt to regain control of his team and his career. Belichick didn’t agree, but it would not be the last time that he would be confronted with the question.
The Patriots were scheduled to play host to the Oakland Raiders in their first playoff game, the last one played in that old tin can, Foxboro Stadium. Owner Robert Kraft planned to open a new state-of-the-art stadium the following year and the renewed fan frenzy surrounding the team could not have come at a better time.
The playoff showdown with the Raiders would later be known by two distinct nicknames, one for Patriots fans and one for all those others living outside New England. Locals nostalgically refer to it as “the Snow Bowl,” while members of Raider Nation bitterly call it “the Tuck Rule game.”
There was a real animosity between the two franchises that had been festering for decades. The teams first met in the divisional round of the AFC playoffs in 1976, when the Patriots fell victim to a hotly disputed roughing-the-passer call against defensive tackle Ray “Sugar Bear” Hamilton on Raider quarterback Ke
n Stabler that led to an Oakland win. Nearly a decade later, in January 1986, New England would exorcize those demons by defeating the Raiders in the playoffs 27–20. Patriots general manager Patrick Sullivan taunted Raiders defensive end Howie Long after the game and was punched in the head by Long’s teammate Matt Millen.
Those players and executives were all long gone, but the bad blood remained between the two teams. New Englanders were bracing for the first significant snowfall of the season as Patriots fans piled into their cars and headed to Foxboro to renew their tailgating rituals on Saturday, January 19, 2002. As the snow began to fall that day, traffic halted to a crawl along Route 1 in both directions leading to the stadium. Tom Brady, the young player with the hopes of the Patriots faithful on his shoulders, was one of those stuck in the game-day traffic tie-up. Two and a half hours before kickoff, Brady had to call the team’s head of security to coordinate a police escort to get him to the game. Meanwhile, a biting wind enveloped the stadium and the snow fell harder as the teams took to the field. Old man winter had arrived just in time to serve as the Patriots’ twelfth man, but the Raiders weren’t intimidated.
“They [Patriots] wished for snow, they wished for it to be cold,” shouted Raider linebacker Travian Smith during warm-ups. “But there’s one thing they didn’t wish for, they didn’t wish for the Raiders.”60
The prophecy proved true, at least in the first half. Brady and the offense were stuck and there was no police escort in sight. The Patriots entered the locker room at halftime down seven points, but the game did not appear competitive. The Raiders had dominated both sides of the ball on a sloppy, snow-covered field. This wasn’t the kind of effort that fans expected, and Brady and his teammates were roundly booed as they marched into the locker room. The natives might have been getting restless, but both the quarterback and Coach Belichick knew that it was no time to panic.
On a day of brutal weather, which made consistently completing downfield throws a mere fantasy, feeding a sure-handed tight end Jermaine Wiggins with shorter, sticks-moving completions was an absolute must for the Patriots to win. “I’ve always prided myself on being able to catch everything, on having really good hands. We ran a little tight-end screen against Oakland where I went in motion and I dropped the ball. I was on the sidelines really upset because it was such an easy catch—I just took my eyes off it trying to run. Tom comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, listen, don’t worry about that. We gonna keep feeding you.’ Here comes the quarterback giving me confidence to know he’s not going to give up on me, he still trusts me. Then he says ‘Just keep getting open’ and walks away. I ended up getting opportunities throughout the rest of the game to do my part to contribute.”
As the second half unfolded, Brady sent a jolt of electricity through the stadium as he scrambled through five inches of snow and found the end zone, where he spiked the ball and then himself as he toppled onto the powder. In a moment, the Patriots were back in it. The score was now 13–10 in favor of Oakland, but fans could feel the momentum shifting. New England had the ball with just a minute and fifty seconds left to play. Brady ran over to the sideline to consult with offensive coordinator Charlie Weis and told him that he wanted to throw a slant pass on the next play. Oakland cornerback Eric Allen overheard the exchange and reported it back to his teammates. The Raiders were ready.
As Tom took the direct snap, he dropped back, looking for an open receiver running the slant pattern, but an opposing linebacker had closed that window. He pumped the ball and was suddenly struck by a small missile, former Michigan teammate Charles Woodson, blitzing from Brady’s right. Woodson swatted Brady’s right arm during the hit and the ball came loose. Another Oakland player pounced on it and the play was immediately ruled a fumble. With the Raiders now in possession of the football with less than two minutes left, they could run out the clock and begin making arrangements for the AFC championship game. Oakland’s players started celebrating on the sideline while Brady and the Patriots were now faced with the realization that their season was coming to an end.
At that moment, the replay buzzer held by Walt Coleman, the game’s head referee, went off. He had issued the ruling on the field although he hadn’t seen for himself what had happened to the ball or when it came out of Brady’s hand. Coleman ran over to the replay screen, where he reviewed video taken from the front of the play. This angle clearly showed that Brady’s throwing arm was coming forward at the exact moment of the Woodson hit before the ball fell out of his hand. Coleman recognized immediately that the play was not a fumble but an incomplete forward pass under NFL Rule 3, Section 22, Article 2, Note 2.
The play was overturned to the relief of Brady and the Patriots and to the dismay, if not outright anger, of the Raiders. Brady knew that he’d been given a fortunate call from the NFL gods, as the play sure felt like a fumble to him. He wouldn’t be branded the goat after all. But he wouldn’t be the game’s hero either. That distinction would be saved for the team’s kicker, Adam Vinatieri, who belted an impossible forty-five-yard field goal through a wall of wind and snow to tie the game and send it into overtime, where he gave a repeat performance, this kick from twenty-three yards out to seal the win.
The AFC championship game was held the following week in Pittsburgh, where the Steelers were heavy favorites. Some players wearing the black and gold thought very little of the Patriots and believed that a trip to the Super Bowl was a foregone conclusion, so they confidently began making travel plans for their families. This line of thinking could not be found anywhere in Foxborough, as Belichick routinely drilled into his players the mantra of “one game at a time.” Dick Rehbein’s wife and two daughters were named the Patriots’ honorary captains for the game.
Under a sea of waving “terrible towels,” the Patriots drew an early lead in the game, thanks to elusive receiver Troy Brown, the team’s MVP of the season, who fielded a punt and scampered fifty-five yards for a touchdown. Late in the second quarter, Brady looked to add to that score by completing a critical third-down pass to Brown, who ran for a large gain. But it would be the last play of the game for number 12. As he released the throw, Brady was hit low and his body twisted like a pretzel. The second-year quarterback limped off the field with an ankle injury and was replaced by the man he’d replaced. Was Brady’s improbable season coming full circle? Drew Bledsoe entered the game and, despite some early boneheaded plays, led the Patriots the rest of the way to a 24–17 victory. Later, Belichick admitted that Brady could have gone back in the game but that the team was better off with Bledsoe. Now the quarterback controversy that the coach had worked so hard to contain was filling up the phone lines across Boston sports radio programs leading up to the final game of the season—Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans against the high-flying St. Louis Rams, the “Greatest Show on Turf.”
Tom Brady had taken over the leadership of the team and had proved his worth. A twist of fate gave him the opportunity and he made the best of it, but now it seemed another twist of fate could take it all away. Reporters peppered Belichick with questions about which player would be starting, and the coach promised that he’d have an answer by midweek. Bledsoe fans hung on to the hope that the nightmare season for their favorite quarterback would culminate in a major plot twist that would bring number 11 back where he belonged in time for the biggest game of the year. But the Patriots coach didn’t believe in fairy tales. Belichick still felt that, if healthy, Brady gave his team the best chance to win.
He met with both players and told them that Brady would play in the Super Bowl, but only if he was physically able to practice with the team. Bledsoe was outraged, which was a natural response from such a tough competitor. Still, he remained relatively quiet for the good of the team. Brady was happy to see that the coach believed in him. It was a different feeling than he had experienced in college, and the support given to him added confidence leading up to the biggest game of his young life.
During practice that week, offensive coordinator Charlie Weis stress
ed one thing above all else from his quarterback—Take care of the ball. No turnovers. Brady wasn’t called upon to engage in a shooting match with Rams quarterback Kurt Warner, the league’s MVP. Instead, he had to play within himself and within the game. Coach Belichick and defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel had devised a plan to release the dogs of war on Warner and the Rams offense, showing them a level of physical play they hadn’t seen all season.
Brady felt calm as he entered the Superdome on Super Bowl Sunday. In fact, he took his shoulder pads off before the game, laid them down, and fell asleep for about thirty minutes as the pregame pageantry continued on the field. He’d played in big moments before, surely nothing this big, but that’s why the Patriots had drafted him. He was ready to show owner Robert Kraft why he was the best decision the franchise had ever made. When Brady woke up, he changed his shirt, put his shoulder pads on, and waited just twelve minutes for the team to take the field.
Instead of getting introduced individually, the Patriots rumbled out of the tunnel as one. The act crystallized the yearlong message that no player was above the team. The spirit carried into the game as the players carried one another. The St. Louis offense had scored five hundred points that season and entered the game as fourteen-point favorites. Most sports reporters figured the Rams receivers would race up and down the field as if at a track meet. But the offense led by Kurt Warner and Marshall Falk only managed to score three measly points in the first quarter. Not stopping there, the Patriots defense would put New England on the scoreboard in the second quarter, thanks to a Ty Law interception return for a touchdown. It was obvious. The Patriots weren’t intimidated. In fact, they were in charge. Brady then doubled the score with an eight-yard touchdown pass to David Patten.
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