12

by Casey Sherman

  “It’s what you dream about as a kid, to have the ball in your hands to win a championship,” White said. “I just wanted to find a way in there. It’s just an unreal feeling.”

  Chaos erupted on the field as a blizzard of red, white, and blue confetti rained down on the players.

  Tom Brady took a knee in a moment of silent contemplation. The 199th pick–turned GOAT–turned suspended NFL icon let his actions speak for himself, and those actions spoke volumes for the man’s career and his character.

  The confetti storm continued as the media rushed the field, but the referees still needed to review the play. They were checking to make sure White had scored and that his knee didn’t hit the turf first.

  “They gotta review it,” Edelman said as he hugged his quarterback, looking up at the wide screen.

  “Is he in?” Edelman asked as reporters swarmed around him.

  “Get out of the way. Get off the field!” Edelman yelled. “Is he in?”

  The receiver was still ready to play. He wouldn’t celebrate until he found his coach.

  “Is it over? Are they going to review it?” he asked Belichick in a panic.

  “Yes. They reviewed it,” the coach confirmed, smiling. They hugged.

  Belichick then found White, the game’s unlikely hero.

  “Oh man, that’s some football,” the coach said, hugging his running back.

  “Yes it was, Coach,” White replied with joy.

  “Way to go, buddy. I’m so proud of you.”

  Edelman and the coach embraced again.

  “It’s going to be one hell of a story,” Edelman said.

  “They counted us out twenty times,” Belichick pointed out.

  “You gotta believe, Coach.”

  “Hell yeah,” Belichick said.

  Julian’s focus turned to his quarterback and what he’d endured to get to this moment.

  “He had such a tough year, and it just shows you the kind of guy he is to be able to compartmentalize so many things, and when you see one of your leaders do that, it’s a contagious kind of thing, and I was just extremely happy that my buddy played with the cards we was dealt and played them well.”

  The entire Patriots team had played its cards well to complete this historic comeback.

  “Look what we just did,” McCourty said, embracing Josh McDaniels and LeGarrette Blount.

  Belichick and Brady spotted each other. The two men were the architects of the Patriots dynasty. Both were now unequivocally considered the best of all time.

  Coach and quarterback wrapped their arms around each other for their fifth time as world champions.

  “I love you!” Brady said into his coach’s ear. “We did it!”

  Blount, standing nearby, shouted to Tom: “You’re the greatest, bro! The greatest!”

  It was jubilation. This team—a collection of afterthoughts, players who were undrafted or cast away by other teams and now given an opportunity to believe in themselves and one another—followed behind their aging underdog quarterback, who seemed to be gaining strength and regaining his youth on every play as the Falcons defenders grew tired and ultimately helpless.

  “I knew we still had a chance to come back and find a way back in the game. We have a great group of leaders, a great team,” White said. “There was no pouting or anything. Guys were actually kind of fired up to get back out there. Duron Harmon was saying, ‘This is going to be the greatest comeback. We’re going to tell everyone about it.’ Guys were just excited to get back out there and just have that one more half to make things right.”

  White got some comeuppance on his winning score as well. Back in the first half, when Tom threw the crushing pick-six interception, White was walking back to the sideline when a Falcon turned to him and screamed in his face.

  “I was just like, ‘You better be careful,’” the running back said.

  That player was Ricardo Allen, the very player that White ran over as he scored the winning touchdown.

  “He was actually the person I ran through to get in the end zone, so that was kind of fitting,” White said.

  Robert and Jonathan Kraft hugged, cheered, and high-fived. They walked out of the owner’s box flanked by security and headed down toward the field. They passed DeMaurice Smith on their way down, and he stopped to congratulate them on the victory.

  Smith and Heather McPhee were Brady’s other teammates. Smith had watched history unfold in Houston while McPhee viewed the game at home. As player representatives, it was their job to be impartial when it came to rooting for one team over another. But this was different. The lawyers had gone to war with Brady. They saw the fire that burned inside him up close. Now that fire was blazing once more, lighting up the entire sports world. Smith and McPhee felt a sweet satisfaction in the game’s outcome.

  Once the Krafts made their way down to the tunnel, they were surprisingly stopped by security and denied entry onto the field until stadium officials could clear them. It was an absurd moment but one Robert and Jonathan could only laugh about later.

  Gisele Bündchen, meanwhile, sent out a celebratory Instagram video of herself flailing her long brown hair and going wild with the confetti raining from the NRG stadium roof. Her excitement was infectious. She then dropped her phone in the chaos. Eventually she, too, headed down to the field to greet her husband.

  Later, she would recall that Falcons fans around her were “really intense” and telling her and other Patriots fans that the game was over and that her husband was all done. As the comeback developed, she called and texted her family. When she couldn’t calm herself down, she began meditating. Right there, surrounded by 70,807 screaming fans.

  “I started meditating ’cause it was the only thing that could calm me down.…It was very stressful,” she later revealed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

  She joked that she was partly responsible for the turning of the game’s momentum in her husband’s favor.

  “I channeled some great energy and, really, I feel a little responsible,” she said with a laugh. “I brought love and peace and clarity and calmness into the game. And it shifted after that.”

  Arriving at the staging on the field, Robert and Jonathan spotted Brady with his family by the stairs. At that moment, Tom’s mother approached her son with her delicate arms open and they embraced. She was fighting for her survival, and her strength had given him the will and determination to overcome the greatest challenges of his own life. He dedicated the Super Bowl win to her.

  While Brady hugged Galynn, his son Benjamin jumped up into Robert Kraft’s arms.

  “We were an extended family dealing with difficult family moments,” Kraft recalled. “We had the whole world against us. You have a finish like that. It’s almost anticlimactic. It’s so invigorating. You just stay in the moment and you don’t have to say anything. It’s just a look and an embrace.”

  Kraft’s hug of Brady’s son gave Tom a moment to turn to his wife for a soft kiss. Their daughter, Vivian, and Tom’s eldest son, Jack, held their hands.

  “We did it!” Brady shouted as he hugged and kissed Gisele.

  “It’s the best ever. It’s the best ever,” Tom Sr. told CBS Boston sports reporter Steve Burton on the field. “I’m speechless…it was so spectacular and so fun and so nerve-racking and so awesome.”

  “I think he did it for his mom. He did it for the Patriots. He did it for all of New England,” the elder Brady said.

  Galynn arrived on the field wearing a white and silver “Brady’s Ladies” jersey and a blue bandana on her head.

  “Oh my god. I’m overwhelmed,” she told Burton. “I was just praying. All I did was pray. The whole game. I’m so happy.”

  Tom Sr. later reflected on the emotional impact of the game and his son’s decision to dedicate the game to Galynn.

  “That one jerks the tear ducts big-time,” he told SI.com. “She lives and dies with every one of her children, whether it’s in a football game or anything else. And s
he was very thankful. Very thankful, yeah, just very thankful that this played out.

  “Winning five Super Bowls, and coming back from all the stuff that he was accused of, that was a very difficult thing for the whole family, to be impugned,” he continued. “It just meant a lot because anybody who’s watched him play football for 15 years, in cold weather, in heat, on the road or at home, knows what he’s been.

  “It just meant redemption, frankly. It meant redemption. It meant that all of these people that questioned his authenticity are non-entities from this point on.”152

  The twenty-two-inch, seven-pound sterling-silver Lombardi Trophy was brought down to the staging area, removed from its sheath, and handed to TV analyst Willie McGinest, a three-time champion with the Patriots. McGinest walked the NFL’s most treasured prize slowly through the crowd of Patriots as they took turns touching it and kissing it.

  “Kiss this motherfucking trophy,” McGinest told them with glee.

  Hightower, Long, Patricia. They all kissed the silver statue. McCourty kissed it, too. McGinest then handed it to NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan, a Houston native and daytime TV host. Trumpets played, the confetti continued to swirl.

  Brady took the podium with Robert and Jonathan Kraft and Coach Belichick.

  Roger Goodell was standing by.

  The team owners hugged their coach as the commissioner made his way over toward them. Brady stood on the podium and pumped his fist in the air, beaming with an ear-to-ear billion-dollar smile. He had tears in his eyes and was close to being overcome by the emotion of the moment as Strahan jogged up the stairs and handed the trophy to the commissioner.

  “That was awesome,” Roger Goodell said to Tom Brady, grabbing the quarterback’s right hand and shaking it for several seconds. “Congratulations. Great football game.” It was a brief and awkward concession speech.

  The commissioner was then handed the microphone.

  The moment Patriots fans had dreamed about was finally here.

  “What a wonderful football game tonight,” Goodell attempted to say.

  Patriots fans stood up at their seats in the stadium and formed a massive chorus.

  They booed the commissioner like few had been booed on live national television before.

  “That’s what NFL football is all about,” Goodell continued.

  Brady and Belichick stood behind the commissioner, watching the reaction and smiling. The Krafts stood to Goodell’s right, unable to hear him over the deafening boos.

  The commissioner looked at Robert Kraft and said, “Robert, you know how hard these are to get.…What an unbelievable achievement for your organization.”

  His voice was barely audible over the negative fan chorus.

  “Congratulations…we’re so proud of you…take this trophy home to New England,” he concluded and handed the trophy to Robert Kraft.

  The team owner, who had been targeted by Goodell and his Park Avenue operatives during Spygate and Deflategate, took the glistening hardware, shook the commissioner’s hand, and looked away. He hoisted the trophy high into the air and the crowd changed its tune from deafening boos to rapturous cheers.

  “Two years ago, we won our fourth Super Bowl down in Arizona,” Kraft began. “And I told our fans that was the sweetest one of all. But a lot has transpired during the last two years.”

  Again the crowd cheered wildly.

  “And I don’t think that needs any explanation. But I want to say to our fans, our brilliant coaching staff, our amazing players who are so spectacular, this is unequivocally the sweetest. And I’m proud to say, for the fifth time, that we are all Patriots. And tonight, for the fifth time, the Patriots are world champions.”

  Terry Bradshaw, the ceremony’s grand marshal, introduced Belichick and told him that he was the greatest coach ever, but the coach gave his players all the credit.

  “We got great players and they’re tough and they compete. We were down 28 to 3 and they never looked back,” the coach said.

  Bradshaw then turned to Brady and handed him the trophy.

  “I’ve got the greatest coach of all time, might as well have the greatest quarterback of all time, too,” Bradshaw said. It was high praise coming from the Steelers quarterbacking legend who had won four Super Bowls of his own.

  Tom took the trophy and hoisted it high in the air, pumping it.

  “Let’s go!” he shouted. “Let’s go!”

  His son Jack stood in front of him.

  Bradshaw asked what turned the game around.

  “There were a lot of plays that Coach talks about…you never know which play it’s going to be in the Super Bowl. There were about thirty of them tonight. If any of them turned out different, the game could have turned out different,” Brady said.

  Bradshaw asked about his family, and noted that he had dedicated the game to his ailing mother.

  “They’re all happy. It’s nice to have everyone here,” Tom said. “It’s going to be a great celebration tonight. Thank you to all our fans. Thank you to everyone back in Boston. You’ve been with us all year.”

  More cheers. Brady’s voice was building toward a crescendo.

  “We’re bringing this sucker home!” the legend declared in a thunderous climax.

  The tweets poured down like the confetti, hailing Tom as the GOAT—greatest of all time.

  Five-time NBA champion Kobe Bryant of the Lakers tweeted, Five rings can’t be deflated #Brady.

  At five minutes before midnight—less than a couple of hours after the world had Tom Brady dead and buried—Boston mayor Marty Walsh, a season-ticket holder and former union laborer from Dorchester, sent out a tweet announcing the victory parade that Tuesday.

  Congratulations to the greatest team, the greatest coach and the greatest quarterback of all time for winning their fifth Super Bowl victory in Houston. The Patriots have made Boston and all of New England proud—fire up the duck boats!

  Brady and his teammates were presented with their championship rings during another glamorous event at Robert Kraft’s home in June 2017. The rings were encased in lockboxes, each with the same three-digit code: 8, 3 (as in 28–3, the score the Patriots had to fight back from), and 1 (the final ranking of the 2016 New England Patriots). The rings were also bedecked with 283 diamonds in a gesture that angered Falcons owner Arthur Blank. Robert Kraft also had another surprise. Number 12 would not be the only member of the Brady family to receive a Super Bowl ring. The team owner had an extra one made for Galynn Brady, who completed her cancer treatments two months after the Super Bowl and had served as the inspiration behind her son’s magical season.

  What really mattered was that, when the stakes were at their highest, Tom Brady had delivered again. In victory, there would be no more discussion about who the greatest quarterback in NFL history was. Number 12 had now separated himself by a quantum leap from his peers. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.” Ultimate triumph could not be attained without desperate struggle. In his painful saga of Deflategate and the bitter war against Roger Goodell and the NFL, Tom Brady had overcome one of the greatest personal challenges in sports history. While the commissioner had grown into a minor historical figure, it was Brady who was now the immortal, his image carved into the rock of the virtual Mount Rushmore of sports legends alongside fellow eternal athletes Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, and Muhammad Ali. But when asked by the authors of this book about his lasting memory of the greatest comeback in sports history, number 12 brought the conversation back to his teammates once again.

  “Mental toughness is a big thing in football and we found ways to be mentally tough in the biggest moments when a lot of people wouldn’t really survive under pressure,” Tom Brady said proudly. “All of our teammates, our entire team did, and that’s what really stands out.”

  Epilogue

  Not Done

  February 4, 2018

  Nearly one y
ear after Brady’s ultimate redemption, he had yet another opportunity to add to his legacy. Number 12 was now forty years old and he had just been named the 2017 NFL MVP, making him the oldest player to ever receive the honor. He was also about to step onto the field in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to become the oldest quarterback ever to play in a Super Bowl in a showdown against the Philadelphia Eagles led by backup quarterback Nick Foles.

  Fans and analysts alike had expected Brady and the Patriots to be here competing for their sixth Lombardi Trophy, but the road to Super Bowl LII was as difficult as the one the year before, and for different reasons. The team was not grappling with an external challenge like the one posed by Deflategate. Instead, the Patriots were threatened from disagreements and egotism involving the franchise’s three pillars of success. Brady, Belichick, and Kraft had built a near impenetrable fortress for eighteen years, but the foundation now showed signs of erosion. The public got its first glimpse of internal dysfunction at midseason when Belichick surprised everyone by trading backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo to the San Francisco 49ers for a second-round draft pick. Garoppolo had been groomed to eventually take over for Brady, but the trade (for a meager second-round pick) had taken this succession plan off the table. Some reporters speculated that Bill Belichick had been forced by Robert Kraft to make the trade in order to make up for the owner’s apparent abandonment of Brady during Deflategate and that the reason the coach did not insist on maximum value for Garoppolo was a petty attempt to stick it to the boss and the franchise.

  Questions about the team’s stability were amplified in December when it was reported that Brady’s business partner and personal trainer Alex Guerrero had his special privileges revoked and was no longer allowed access to the Patriots’ sideline or to travel with the team. This decision was made by Belichick, further rending the deteriorating relationship between the head coach and his star quarterback, and by extension the owner. An exclamation point was added in early January 2018 when ESPN reporter Seth Wickersham wrote that the relationship between Belichick and Brady and Kraft was broken beyond repair. The reporter portrayed Brady as angry and irritable in his dealings with members of the coaching staff, most notably offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who felt the quarterback’s wrath during a game against the Buffalo Bills when the coach pointed out to Brady that he had missed a wide-open receiver. “Fuck you!” Brady shouted back for the television cameras to see.