12

by Casey Sherman

  “Aw, we have no fucking luck.” Robert Kraft sighed from the owner’s box.

  It was happening again, and this time, the quarterback who had just completed one of the greatest performances in Super Bowl history could only watch helplessly from the Patriots bench.

  “Man, the D’s gotta make a play,” Brady told Josh McDaniels.

  Malcolm Butler had given up the play to Kearse and nearly tore his chin strap off in frustration as he returned to the sideline. On the next play, Wilson fed workhorse Marshawn Lynch, who powered his way to the 1-yard line. Lynch, who had earned the nickname “Beastmode” for his tough, physical play, had run the ball successfully against the Patriots defense throughout the game.

  It was now second and goal, and Seattle sent a third receiver onto the field. The Patriots countered by sending the rookie Butler back into action. The Seahawks were going to throw. Butler recognized the call; it was the exact play he’d been burned on in practice earlier in the week. He had begged off the receiver and it had cost him. But practice is practice. Lessons learned there needed to be executed when it counted. There was no moment that counted more than right now. As Butler got into position, he saw Wilson’s eyes dart his way. He lined up four yards off the line, facing Seattle receiver Ricardo Lockette. The ball was snapped and Butler exploded, freed up by fellow defensive back Brandon Browner’s jamming of Jerome Kearse. Butler stepped in front of the throw and hauled it in for the game-saving interception.

  Tom Brady leaped to his feet screaming. He jumped in the air and spun around in disbelief before hugging his coordinator.

  “Oh my God. We did it, Josh. We did it!”

  Brady and the offense returned to the field to run out the final seconds of Super Bowl XLIX. Number 12 took the snap and then a knee. Victory was theirs.

  Once again the confetti at the Super Bowl rained red, white, and blue. Edelman hugged Brady and told him what nearly all football fans had finally come to recognize without dispute.

  “You’re the greatest quarterback in the world, man!”

  Brady was named Super Bowl MVP for the third time. The quarterback fought his way through a sea of players until he found Malcolm Butler, the game’s most unlikely hero.

  “Malcolm, are you kidding me?” Brady said joyously. “You’re unbelievable, man!”

  Number 12 was given a 2015 Chevy Colorado in conjunction with his Most Valuable Player Award. He gave the vehicle to number 21, Malcolm Butler.

  Brady then received a hug and kiss from wife Gisele, who had a complicated relationship with some Patriots fans who had blamed her for the team’s losses in their past two Super Bowl appearances. The so-called Gisele Curse had now been lifted. The animosity had always been unwarranted, as she had expressed nothing but support for her husband’s career. Bündchen posted a photo of her husband on Instagram that summed up her feelings in both English and her native Portuguese.

  We are so proud of you daddy!!!, she wrote. Congratulations!!!! Estamos muito orgulhosos de você papai! Parabéns!!!!

  Chapter Twelve

  Brady’s New Team

  New England Patriots fans were almost denied the chance to celebrate their world championship. Boston was in the midst of a record-breaking winter, and a total of nine feet of snow had fallen on the city by early February. There was simply no place to put it all as snowbanks towered on street corners and walking paths were treacherous and few. Robert Kraft strongly considered cancelling the event over safety concerns. He was also worried about the prospect of terrorism. Bostonians were still recovering physically and emotionally from the 2013 marathon bombings, and Kraft had consulted his own intelligence network about potential threats beforehand to ensure that his team and their fans would be safe. After also speaking with Boston mayor Marty Walsh and police commissioner William Evans, one of the heroes of the marathon bombings, Kraft decided to go ahead with the parade, which was pushed back a day to Wednesday, February 3, 2015.

  It was the team’s first championship parade since 2005, but the city itself had become accustomed to the spectacle. The Patriots had opened the floodgates after their surprise win in Super Bowl XXXVI. Since that time, New England sports fans had celebrated eight more world championships, three for the Patriots, three for the Red Sox, and one apiece for the Celtics and Bruins. Boston had gone from sports world laughingstock to Titletown, U.S.A., in less than a decade, and many fans credited Tom Brady and the Patriots for inspiring the turnaround in the region’s professional sports cultures.

  Wearing the same ski cap he had sported during the awkward Deflategate news conference two weeks before, Brady, now a four-time Super Bowl champion, stepped onto the duck boat with his five-year-old son, Benjamin, and wife, Gisele, for the ride down Boylston Street in the heart of Boston. Number 12 was given the honor of carrying the Lombardi Trophy and was met at each turn of the ninety-minute parade by cheering fans whose screams hit a decibel level not reached in Boston since the Beatles played the Suffolk Downs racetrack in 1966. Despite the frigid temperatures, little Benny Brady danced for the crowd, kissed the trophy, and then fell asleep on his dad’s shoulder as the line of duck boats arrived at city hall.

  Number 12 had been right. His family was indeed honored with his victory. Brady had gone ten years between Super Bowl victories, the longest stretch of any quarterback in history. The fact that he was still playing at the highest level astounded both adoring fans and hard-bitten reporters alike. On the night of the Super Bowl, the team had hired country rocker Darius Rucker to entertain the crowd at the postgame victory party. He played one of his most popular songs, “Time,” from his days with Hootie & the Blowfish, which included the lyric Time, why you punish me? Time, time, you ain’t no friend of mine. At thirty-seven, Brady had not just defeated the Seahawks, he’d also beaten time. Joe Montana was in the last year of his playing career at the same age, but Brady had proven that he was still at the top of his game with no end in sight. All was right in the world again for Patriots fans. The team was primed for more championships, and Deflategate looked as if it would end not with a bang but with a whimper.

  While Brady, his teammates, and their fans basked in the glow of their championship season, DeMaurice Smith sat in the fifth floor conference room at NFLPA headquarters on 20th Street in Washington, D.C., with two of his toughest attorneys, forty-five-year-old Heather McPhee and general counsel Tom Depaso, a fifty-nine-year-old former Penn State linebacker who had served on the union’s legal team for over three decades. They were trying to predict the league’s endgame for number 12. Heather McPhee had been Smith’s professional right hand for more than a dozen years; the pair had represented mega-corporations and executives together, first at renowned international law firm Latham & Watkins and then at the most powerful lobbying law firm in the United States, Patton Boggs. Since moving to the NFLPA, Smith and McPhee had successfully battled Roger Goodell and the NFL billionaire owners in several high-profile cases, including most recently the suspension of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, who was caught on videotape punching his then fiancée unconscious in a hotel elevator.

  Defending a domestic abuser like Rice was difficult for McPhee, who was forced to put her moral judgment aside to do her job. Ray Rice had been urged by Ravens team president Dick Cass to soften his language when describing the incident.

  “It would be truthful to say that you laid your hands on her,” Cass told him.

  McPhee, like Cass, was a Princeton graduate and sophisticated lawyer who understood the “word management” that Cass was suggesting. But she knew this wasn’t the time to deploy semantics. She smiled at Cass, whom she knew, respected, and liked, tossed her wild blond hair and smiled. “Come on, Dick, that phrasing evokes visions of televangelists on late-night cable TV,” she said. Despite the nerves and intensity in the room, Rice slightly smiled at the remark. And soon thereafter, when asked by Goodell what happened in the elevator, Rice looked the commissioner in the eye and said, simply, “And then I hit her.” He had wis
ely followed McPhee’s advice.

  The disgraced player told the commissioner that he hit his girlfriend.

  Goodell handed down a mere two-game suspension for Ray Rice and hoped the incident would quickly go away.

  Three months later, the case returned like a clap of thunder after TMZ published a security video showing Rice punching his fiancée. The video immediately went viral, and critics and reporters voiced their outrage at the running back, the Baltimore Ravens, and Roger Goodell for his decision to suspend the player for only two games. The NFL league offices went into spin control, with Goodell stating publicly that he was appalled by the video and that he had increased the punishment from a pair of games to an indefinite suspension. The commissioner also claimed that Rice had not been honest with him during their disciplinary meeting.

  Heather McPhee knew this was a lie, and the intense, detail-oriented lawyer had the proof. During that meeting, as she always did, McPhee had taken copious notes, including a record of Rice’s simple, raw words, “And then I hit her.” She underlined the words on the legal pad; Rice had followed her guidance. When Goodell tried to justify the new punishment of Rice, McPhee and the NFLPA resoundingly won the case on appeal. For her, it was not a victory for Ray Rice but a victory for the truth.

  The saga was a near fatal blow for Roger Goodell. His handling of the affair was roundly criticized, and many were now calling for his job. The once mighty commissioner was wounded, vulnerable, and under threat of losing what he craved most—total power.

  Now, two months later, McPhee stared across a conference table at her boss, DeMaurice Smith, as they attempted to determine the motive behind Goodell’s new investigation against Tom Brady—the proverbial face of the NFL.

  Smith was a high-powered white-collar lawyer with the experience and instincts that came from his background as a criminal prosecutor. He and his team had quickly gathered information that triggered more questions than answers. They had learned that the Baltimore Ravens had tipped off the Colts to allegations that the Patriots mishandled game balls during their win over the Ravens in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs. Colts general manager Ryan Grigson had brought the matter to the attention of league officials.

  Normally, the league would notify a team that was accused of a rules violation, especially if the infraction was minor. The proper inflation of a football had never been an issue in the long history of the NFL, as teams and quarterbacks often deflated or overinflated balls for personal preference. This custom was almost universally viewed as having no effect on a player’s performance or the outcome of a game.

  “The league should have simply called the Patriots and put them on notice, but instead they stayed quiet,” Smith observed out loud. “Why?”

  “Maybe they wanted to catch them in the act,” replied McPhee. “Like a sting operation.”

  “Sting operations don’t happen in the spur of the moment,” Smith added. “This one took careful planning.”

  The NFLPA attorneys continued to pore over their notes. Smith and McPhee noticed that Goodell had sent his director of football operations, Mike Kensil, to the Patriots–Colts game to keep a close eye on New England’s equipment guys. At halftime, he had approached equipment manager Dave Schoenfeld, who supervised both John Jastremski and Jim McNally.

  “We weighed the balls,” Kensil told him. “You are in big fucking trouble.”72

  Smith could hardly believe what he was reading. The league was aggressively crafting its own narrative that the Patriots were cheaters from the get-go.

  Roger Goodell had orchestrated an elaborate setup to expose a rule violation that few players, including Brady, knew even existed.

  The NFL had never tested footballs at halftime before.

  Once again, the NFLPA’s top lawyer asked himself the question—why?

  He called the meeting, grabbed his jacket, and took a walk around the block. Smith needed to think. He believed that he understood Goodell, his primary adversary, better than most, but still—this was bizarre. As Smith strolled down K Street, another narrative began to form in his mind. The other NFL owners had been breathing down the commissioner’s neck to punish the Patriots in some way to make up for his egregious behavior during the Spygate scandal in 2007. No one had forgiven Goodell for destroying the videotaped evidence to protect his mentor Robert Kraft. The commissioner needed to do something to protect his salary, an estimated $42 million per year, and to reassert himself and salvage the power that he had recently lost.

  “In order to regain control of the league, he must kill his father,” Smith surmised metaphorically. “He must tear down Robert Kraft.”

  The saga had a Shakespearean ring to it.

  But why go after somebody like Tom Brady, who has had an unblemished Hall of Fame career?

  Smith came back to the one word he often used when describing Goodell—power.

  If he can assert his power over Brady, the league’s number one attraction, he can make all other players bend to his will, Smith thought.

  For decades, Roger Goodell had quietly built a base of power through relationships with team owners, most importantly Patriots owner Robert Kraft. In Kraft, Goodell had not only found a professional mentor but a true father figure. The benevolent owner took Goodell under his wing and tutored him on the finer points of running a business as large and as powerful as the National Football League. Goodell proved to be an apt and loyal pupil. When his predecessor Paul Tagliabue announced his retirement in 2006, Goodell was just one of several candidates being discussed to replace him. Others considered for the job included Fidelity Investments honcho Robert Reynolds, Washington lawyer Gregg Levy, and Cleveland attorney Frederick Nance. Robert Kraft campaigned vigorously on Goodell’s behalf, and through a savvy combination of hand holding and arm twisting, convinced his fellow owners to appoint his young protégé as the new commissioner of the most lucrative and important professional sports league in America.

  The choice was made in a hotel in a Chicago suburb. The selection process was supposed to have been decided over three days by the league’s thirty-two owners, but on day two the choice was whittled down to two candidates, Goodell and Gregg Levy, the NFL’s chief outside counsel. The owners could have gone with another lawyer like the outgoing Tagliabue, but instead they chose Goodell, the company man who had overseen the league’s lucrative television contracts. The owners voted with their wallets. They chose Goodell on their fifth ballot. The vote was twenty-three to eight in his favor (with Oakland owner and league agitator Al Davis abstaining). Goodell had one more vote than the required two-thirds majority, and the owners made it unanimous. Robert Kraft got his man.

  But shortly after Goodell’s ascension, the corporate culture inside the NFL offices began to shift. The new commissioner took control of all disciplinary procedures across the league and was heaped with praise by national sports reporters for tightening the reins on players for their illegal actions off the field and their use of performance-enhancing drugs to give them a competitive edge on the field. It was a feeling of power that Goodell had never experienced before, and it began to manifest in peculiar ways.

  NFL staffers were told to avert their eyes when the commissioner strolled down the halls at the league offices. Lunchtime strategy sessions were transformed into royal courts where executives were not allowed to speak or reach for a slice of pizza until Goodell had done so first. The commissioner kept a mental list of his enemies and was morphing into a Nixonian type of leader—the kind of leader that his father Charles Goodell would have despised.

  Roger went after players and teams with a heavy hand. He was quick to punish teams with sanctions for salary-cap violations, and as league owners grumbled, Goodell could always count on the support of his friend and mentor Kraft. The two men had a personal relationship that went beyond the business they were in.

  But their close bond was put to the test in the fall of 2007 when the New England Patriots were accused of videotaping New York Jets defe
nsive coaches’ signals during a Patriots win in early September. The accusations ignited a firestorm across the sports world, and Goodell felt compelled to act. He took a coveted first-round draft pick away from the team and fined Patriots head coach Bill Belichick $500,000. The penalties were deemed stiff by some, but not the league owners who whispered among themselves that Robert Kraft’s team had been given a break, thanks to his cozy relationship with Goodell. After all, the case resulted in no suspension for Belichick or any member of his staff, and the Patriots went on to win all of their regular-season games before losing to the Giants in the Super Bowl. Goodell even took it upon himself to destroy the videotaped evidence and notes at the heart of the scandal now known as Spygate.

  “I think it was the right thing to do,” Goodell said at the time. “I have nothing to hide.”

  The NFL owners, however, believed that Goodell had betrayed their trust because of his loyalty for one man—his father figure Kraft. The Patriots owner later returned that loyalty in the Ray Rice case. He privately counseled the commissioner and publicly supported him by appearing on CBS This Morning, where he stressed that Goodell had no knowledge of the video and that anyone who second-guessed the commissioner did not know the type of man he was. Kraft also called his fellow owners, urging them to release statements of support for Goodell.73