Belichick and Brady

by Michael Holley

  “I’m going to beat out Bledsoe,” he said. “You watch.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  NO ONE SAW IT COMING

  In the spring of 2001, no one was taking Tom Brady seriously. As usual, he was the king of the shadows. He worked out, quietly and constantly, determined to improve his balance by strengthening spindly legs. He studied the playbook, its language and concepts, because at least he was equal with Drew Bledsoe when it came to offensive philosophy: He and Bledsoe had been with Charlie Weis, the offensive coordinator, the same amount of time. So the advantage would go to the quarterback who could best comprehend, retain, and coolly run the plays amid the motion and violence of the games. Nothing against Bledsoe, but Brady liked his chances.

  In every other category, viewed objectively, Brady’s quest appeared hopeless. After much media speculation about Bledsoe’s contract status with the Patriots, the deal was finalized the first week of March. The numbers said it all: ten years, $103 million. It was the biggest contract in league history. Bledsoe had just turned twenty-nine and was clearly entering the sweet spot of his athletic and business career. Bledsoe was a deal-maker now. He admitted as much during the celebratory press conference, when he mentioned that a couple of one-on-one conversations with owner Robert Kraft made it all come together.

  This was gentlemen’s agreement territory, with the principals making big deals in private, and then summoning the lawyers much later for the mundane dotting and crossing tasks. This was next level. Bledsoe wasn’t just the Patriots quarterback anymore. He was a junior partner in the firm.

  Kraft said that Bledsoe could be similar to New England icons Ted Williams, Bill Russell, and Larry Bird, all athletes who played for Boston teams their entire careers. “I remember feeling sad when Bobby Orr left,” Kraft said at the Bledsoe announcement. “I saw this as an opportunity to sign one of the great Patriots for the rest of his career.” Orr, the most dynamic performer in Boston Bruins history, ended his career in Chicago. Bledsoe was motivated to stay in one place. He said he signed his lengthy contract because he wanted to align his business and sentimental interests.

  “I’ve expressed over and over again my desire to play my entire career with the New England Patriots,” he said. “It looks like that is a very real possibility.”

  The month of March wasn’t being very kind to Brady. A couple of weeks after signing Bledsoe, the Patriots spent another $3 million on twenty-seven-year-old quarterback Damon Huard. And just for the purposes of psychologically piling on, the Denver Broncos signed Brian Griese, whom Brady backed up at Michigan, and gave him a $12.6 million signing bonus.

  Bill Belichick wasn’t going to suddenly overshare and explain why the Patriots invested the way they did, so it seemed fair to draw conclusions by following where the economist put his money. He loaded up at quarterback, which Brady found interesting, since he was the cheapest and, in his mind, best one. Belichick insisted that he believed in competition in its purest form, with draft status and reputation not factoring into the decision. If that were truly the case, Brady was excited about the chance to compete against the two older quarterbacks on the field.

  He was never going to be able to out-corporate Bledsoe. No way. Bledsoe could hold court with the owner any time he wanted. They’d talk football, current events, wives, kids. Bledsoe could wink at certain media members and they’d fight his causes for him on the air or in print, keeping him entirely clean. He was a wine expert, a business and family man, as influential and connected as any athlete in town. Fortunately for Brady, the Bledsoe signing was historic for a reason no one could immediately see. One day it would be viewed as the last contract of its kind with the Patriots, a massive deal that was a patchwork of paying for past performance, good public relations, and romanticism.

  In fact, there were several acquisitions that more accurately reflected who the Patriots were becoming, but those deals were in the shadows, right there with Brady. All of the signings were similar in that they were either for $477,000, which was the veterans’ minimum, or they were relatively cheap deals with modest signing bonuses. Over the course of the offseason, there was a steady beat of these signings, featuring names that led to shrugs and indifference. Mike Vrabel, Larry Izzo, Anthony Pleasant, David Patten, Mike Compton, Antowain Smith… They seemed to arrive daily. They were welcomed the way floorboards are to a house that lacks them; more necessary than exciting.

  Excitement for New England fans would have to come in the draft, where the Patriots held the sixth overall selection. Belichick had already made enough dollar-store purchases to last a lifetime of springs. Now it was time for a wide receiver for Bledsoe to throw to or an elite offensive lineman who could protect him.

  Typical frustration could be felt in a Boston Herald article headlined PATS’ PLAN FULL OF HOLES. “So, other than showing fiscal restraint, what’s the plan?” football columnist Kevin Mannix mocked. “Don’t ask. The only answer involves the meaningless words of ‘improving the team every way we can.’ That’s not a plan, that’s a platitude. A plan involves doing what San Diego and both Super Bowl teams did. Get impact players… The Patriots? They’ve signed Larry Izzo and Mike Vrabel and re-signed Matt Stevens. So far, their chances of turning a 5-11 team into a winner don’t look too promising.”

  The reality was that fans and media weren’t the only ones skeptical of what the Patriots were doing. Roman Phifer, a linebacker who had played for Belichick with the Jets, was released by New York in late February. His agent let him know that three teams, Oakland, San Francisco, and New England, had the most serious and consistent inquiries about him. Phifer told his agent to explore Oakland and San Francisco, but he didn’t want to go to New England. He had many personal and professional reasons for feeling that way. He was going through a divorce, and he wanted to remain close to his three-year-old son, who was living in Los Angeles. New England didn’t work, geographically or competitively. And the latter was really starting to affect Phifer.

  He was thirty-three and had never won anything of significance. Ever. There were no state championships in high school. At UCLA, where he went to college, his teams never appeared in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day. In the pros, in his first eight seasons with the Rams, his teams never had a winning season. And then, as soon as he left for the Jets, his new team was rocked by injuries and his old team won the Super Bowl. He was tired of it. He wanted to win something, and the 2001 Patriots weren’t going to give him the opportunity. He told his agent he’d likely sit out a season before signing with them. He was still watching and waiting in April, when it was time for the Patriots to make their draft selections.

  There were no surprises in the top five, with a quarterback, Michael Vick, taken first by the Falcons. When it was the Patriots’ turn, they had a menu of electric options before them: All of the top receivers were available, in addition to a left tackle projected to go in the top ten. It was fitting, though, that Belichick had his eye on the son of a mason. Richard Seymour was twenty-one, six feet six inches tall, and the namesake of a man who paid his bills by laying bricks. The younger Seymour, a University of Georgia defensive lineman, was exactly the cornerstone Belichick envisioned for his defense. Phifer understood what the presence of Seymour meant for Belichick and for himself. Guys that big who actually played to their size could protect linebackers in Belichick’s defensive system. They drew two and sometimes three players to them, allowing linebackers like Phifer to run freely and make unimpeded tackles.

  Seymour, who grew up in South Carolina, had hoped to be drafted by a warm-weather team. His family was delighted that a young man who was lightly recruited in high school was even in position to be drafted. Many of them were Raiders fans, and they knew Seymour wasn’t going to fall all the way to twenty-eight, where Oakland was picking. But being in the same league that many of them had watched from afar was exciting enough. An elaborate country feast was planned. There were hogs and chickens roasted, cakes and pies baked. The guest list included aunts and
uncles, cousins, neighborhood friends, and even Mark Sanford, South Carolina’s governor at the time. It was a joyful moment for father and son, who were best friends. Even though the elder Seymour separated from his son’s mother when the boy was six, the family bond was strong. As a teenager, Seymour worked in his father’s construction business. When Seymour went off to school at Georgia, nearly three hours away from home, father and son continued to spend time together. They would sit in the dorms and watch film of the Bulldogs’ games. This day, this opportunity, was validation of all the lessons, football and otherwise, that the elder Richard Seymour had given to the younger one.

  According to the immediate draft reviews, Seymour had something in common with New Englanders; many of them wished he had landed elsewhere, too.

  The Boston Globe’s Ron Borges, a longtime football writer and Hall of Fame voter, immediately panned the selection:

  “Seymour has been compared most often to Packers defensive lineman Vonnie Holliday, whom the Patriots should have drafted two years ago; if they had, they wouldn’t have had to waste their first-rounder yesterday on a tweener like Seymour, who at 6’6½” and 298 pounds is too long in the leg to play inside in the NFL in the opinion of some league scouts and lacks the quickness to play as a pass-rushing end despite what you’ll hear over the next few days.

  “However, Seymour’s odd build for the position he plays is not the real problem with his selection. The real problem is that Bill Belichick passed on greatness for need, a decision that has blown up in the face of more coaches than anyone can imagine.”

  Across town, the Herald was even more succinct and caustic. Playing off the name of Kenyatta Walker, the talented left tackle passed over by the Patriots, a headline in the tabloid declared, BLEDSOE MAY END UP NEEDING A WALKER.

  There was no praise, locally or nationally, for the maneuverings of Belichick. He had been on the job for fifteen months and had cleared a significant amount of refuse in the organization. In theory, it was akin to the approach he had taken with the Browns, but this time he was having more luck and more roster flexibility due to unrestricted free agency, which wasn’t available to him his first fifteen months in Cleveland. He and Brady were essentially doing the same thing: making huge strides, backstage.

  Belichick was ecstatic with the sudden growth of the Patriots. He had been able to hire Romeo Crennel, a defensive coach he’d known for twenty years, away from the Browns. His first coaching assistant, Brian Daboll, had been a success, so now it was time to promote him and bring in two more low-level employees in their midtwenties, Josh McDaniels and Nick Caserio. Belichick and his top personnel man, Scott Pioli, had been able to rewrite the scouting manual, and they’d had a full year to train the scouts in their football hieroglyphics. The free agency haul, with lots of good players for a reasonable price, had been remarkable. And now the draft had yielded what Belichick believed to be a dominant defensive tackle in Seymour and, through a flurry of trades, a left tackle in Matt Light who could protect the quarterback for the next decade.

  The quarterback. Well, if there was something negative to say about the changes in the franchise as spring turned to summer, it started with what was a trace of uncertainty at the position. It was a peculiar space, tucked between pleasant surprise and buyer’s remorse. Bledsoe was healthy, strong, and overwhelmingly professional. His name still meant something in the league, as most teams continued to rate him as a top-tier passer. That wasn’t the issue. What Belichick talked with his coaches about, in amazement, involved the kid, Brady.

  His offseason had been phenomenal. His strength was up and his body fat was down. He challenged himself in the weight room with squats and leg lifts, knowing that his best throws began from the bottom up, with proper footwork and balance, and then on to arm position and follow-through. He was fluent in the offense. And if he had any bitterness about the generous paydays that had happened for other quarterbacks in Foxboro and around the league, he didn’t show it. He had natural leadership qualities, and he was rapidly developing a game that was in sync with his intangibles.

  Brady was one year ahead of where the Patriots had projected him to be. That much was clear, as was the fact that Dick Rehbein hadn’t recommended an ordinary backup. If the push continued at this pace, Brady would move from third quarterback to second by September. Eventually, the progress of Brady would become one of the big stories of training camp. Another summer story had already been established in the spring: More low-priced veterans were on the way.

  One of them was the unfiltered Bryan Cox, who had acquired the affectionate nickname “Loud and Wrong” due to his animated, split-second opinions. He signed at the beginning of August and immediately brought familiarity from all angles. He knew the defense intimately, and he often talked about it and other things like an R-rated uncle. Another linebacker, much more reserved than Cox, arrived at the beginning of August as well. His opportunities in the Bay Area had disappeared, and his best chance to play was in New England. So Phifer, who once hosted Willie McGinest on a recruiting trip to UCLA (McGinest went to rival USC instead), was finally teammates with his buddy in New England.

  Phifer noticed an authenticity in the group. There was a collective love for football and one another. Phifer told Belichick about the situation with his son, and the coach gave him permission to commute weekly between Foxboro and Los Angeles, as long as he returned in time for practice on Wednesday. It was McGinest who became Phifer’s six-foot-five-inch tour guide, driving him around Providence and Boston so he could get a sense of the area. The two had kept in touch long after that recruiting trip in the early 1990s, and it was McGinest who gave him the final push and convinced him that the Patriots represented exactly what he had been searching for in football.

  “What really hit me, as soon as I got there, was the blessing that God had for me,” Phifer says. “I had resisted it for six months. I had focused on the cold, the crusty locker rooms, the old stadium. I’d convinced myself that it was going to be the same old story. But I love football, and that’s what was so obvious when I got there. Willie, Ty, Tedy, Lawyer, Drew. Those guys were so inviting, so humble. I knew it right then: ‘This is where I belong.’”

  There was genuine love on the team, and it seemed to go beyond football. It needed to, because the entire team would confront a wide range of issues that had nothing to do with blocking and tackling.

  First, in August, there was tragedy. Rehbein had been working out at a local gym, with the younger of his two daughters nearby, when he suddenly lost consciousness on a treadmill. He went to the floor but quickly recovered and was able to stand on his own. Thirteen years earlier he had been diagnosed with a diseased heart muscle, cardiomyopathy, and was taking medication. But his condition had never hindered him in his exercise and, in fact, he ran several times a week. He was alert and communicative when he walked to an ambulance, and he checked himself into Massachusetts General Hospital.

  That night, he talked with members of the coaching staff and told them that he would see them the next evening at a meeting. His family spent some time with him as well, and there was a sense that he was going to be just fine. He slept well that night and was given a stress test the next morning. After the test, his heart stopped. He was forty-five years old.

  Rehbein was survived by his wife, Pam, and daughters, Betsy and Sarabeth, sixteen and twelve years old, respectively.

  All of the Patriots and Giants, who happened to be in town for a joint practice, attended Rehbein’s memorial service. The coaches and especially the quarterbacks checked in on Pam and the girls. Someone came up with the idea that all player fines, which could total well over $100,000, would be put into a fund and given to the Rehbeins at the end of the season. And, without question, the team unanimously agreed that the 2001 season would be dedicated to Rehbein.

  At the beginning of September, five days before the season opener in Cincinnati, the shadows that Brady operated in began to wane. He had passed Huard, and now the only quar
terback separating him from his promise of the previous year, beating out Bledsoe, was Bledsoe. The phenom, Michael Bishop, was gone. John Friesz had been released. Huard had been leapt.

  Locally, there still wasn’t a complete grasping of who Brady was. It was like that in high school, at Michigan, and now. His ascent was franchise-altering, and the Franchise himself, Bledsoe, didn’t sense it.

  After all, Bledsoe had missed just six games in his first eight seasons. Bill Parcells was his first coach, and he once let Bledsoe play an entire season with a separated shoulder. When asked why, Parcells seemed insulted by the question and replied, “Players play on Sunday.”

  That seemed to stick with Bledsoe a few years later when, with his index finger on his throwing hand broken and swollen, he tried to keep playing. He just didn’t like coming out of games, and it had nothing to do with insecurity. He’d never had a backup as good as Brady, but he still thought his job would be there. Even with Brady in the same room, the kid already an equal in processing the game, Bledsoe was relaxed. He was confident in himself, his durability, and that contract. What were they going to do, have him hold the clipboard and be one of those visor-wearing backups? Not a chance. Brady, then, was a nice story, even with the backup’s prophetic words when he talked about rising to second on the depth chart:

  “At some point, they’re going to need all three of us, whether it be in practice or on the field. So I think that we’ve got a good quarterback position.”