Belichick and Brady

by Michael Holley

  “It made me think, ‘He’s real,’” Fauria says. “He felt it was important for him to show her the respect and attention she deserved. He wasn’t weirded out; he saw the situation as natural. It wasn’t the typical reaction of a twenty-five-year-old man. I know it sounds strange, but that’s actually the moment when I realized how special he is.”

  Three years later, it was Brady’s thoughtful letters and texts to teammate Tedy Bruschi that made the linebacker wonder aloud in amazement, “Who is this guy? Is he real?” Brady was checking in on and encouraging him after Bruschi’s stroke. He and his sisters brought him food. He went to church with him. He even helped his wife, Heidi, plan a surprise party for Bruschi’s thirty-second birthday.

  Two weeks after the stunning loss to the Giants, a loss that had a team wondering how it could improve on an 18-1 season, Brady was at it again. This time he was doing a favor for a friend in Suffolk County Superior Court. He was testifying in Charlie Weis’s medical malpractice trial in downtown Boston. Patriots fans wanted what was best for their former offensive coordinator, but they weren’t focused on anyone except for the tall man who climbed out of a black Volvo wearing a pin-striped suit, a crisp white shirt, and a neatly folded white pocket square.

  Court officers attempted to maintain order, all the while trying to get a glimpse of Brady themselves. In anticipation of his appearance, the courtroom was packed tighter than Gillette Stadium. Some people even tried to go with stadium rules and create standing-room-only positions. They were told to leave; many of them didn’t listen. A sixty-one-year-old woman named Gail Whittier, who ran the courtroom coffee shop, got to chat with the quarterback and get his autograph. Whittier, who is legally blind, told the Boston Herald that Brady had a firm handshake (“He was no wimp”) and that he smelled the way everyone thought he looked (“Nice and clean”).

  Vrabel was right. The Patriot Way did not apply to Brady. He was unlike any athlete in Boston history. Many of the greats had aspects of what he had, but not in totality like Brady. Ted Williams had been a war hero, an expert fisherman, and genuine hitting scientist. But Ted never won a championship and often found himself fighting with the media. Larry Bird was a three-time champion and three-time MVP, but he wasn’t nearly the heartthrob that Brady was. Bill Russell won eleven titles and five MVPs; Bobby Orr was the greatest defenseman who ever lived; David Ortiz slugged away at the curse and helped the Red Sox win two World Series in four years after winning none in eighty-six. But no one combined style, substance, local and national pop-culture appeal, and public relations like Brady.

  “Tom is a special dude,” Ty Law says. “It’s a little bit different for him now because he’s such a celebrity. Such an icon. Such a, you know, living legend. It’s hard to go out and move about and do things like a normal person. But he has such a sense of normalcy when you’re with him. And long before all this stuff, it’s what made us like Tom so much. With Tom, we were all there and it was just like being with one of the guys.

  “It’s hard to do, but he did well with it. He can’t be like the rest of us. He can’t do the same things that the rest of us do. He ain’t gonna be able to enjoy himself. I’ve always said in life, ‘F the fame, give me the fortune.’ I don’t need the fame. Anytime you have to rent out the whole movie theater just to take your family to the movies, something is wrong. I mean, that’s not living. To be that famous where I can’t have an intimate moment with my wife or girlfriend or kids, that’s not cool to me. Tom lives in that world.”

  He had started 127 consecutive games and his career record was 100-27, a winning percentage of .790. All the winning had given him tremendous clout, with the public and in the locker room, although he wasn’t wired the way some thought he would be. Or, more accurate, who they would be if they had his power and influence. He was sensitive to the locker room messages he could potentially send by politicking management. On one hand, it would ensure that things got done. On the other, he’s not really one of the guys, is he, if he’s orchestrating deals in a way that no one else can? It was better for him and the team to be a strong player, a quarterback, a captain, and leave the coaching and front-office decisions to those who are paid to do those jobs.

  With that said, he was ecstatic at the beginning of March when there was no drama with Randy Moss. The record-setting receiver had redefined the concept of a make-good contract in 2007. The team had taken a chance on him, he had in turn taken a chance on himself by reducing his deal to one year, and both parties were rewarded with twenty-three touchdown receptions. That led to a new, three-year $27 million contract.

  Moss caught the Patriots’ final touchdown in the Super Bowl, a catch that was oh-so-close to being the game winner. The game was going to nag the consciences of each player leading up to the start of the season and likely beyond. One of those players, cornerback Asante Samuel, would be doing his postgame analysis in another city. He signed a $57 million contract with the Eagles, so he could think about “his” plays in Philadelphia. After a loss like that, every player had plays that he considered his own. For Samuel, who had great hands for a corner, it was an Eli Manning pass that sailed high and just off the defender’s fingertips. They would have won with that interception. There was also the miracle catch of the game, the one where David Tyree slapped the ball to his helmet and fell to the ground without allowing the ball to touch the turf. Rodney Harrison had been there, wrestling and pulling, but Tyree held on. It was a huge play in the game, a thirty-two-yarder over the middle, and it gave the Giants the life that they needed. The problem was that it really wasn’t Harrison’s assignment. It was Samuel’s. But the Patriots freestyled on defense at times, and it had helped more than it had hurt over the years. This one stung.

  The loss was hard enough, but no one could move on from it or the season because both were stuck in a Spygate holding pattern. There was that Herald report that the Patriots had taped the Rams’ walk-through, and now there was a former New England employee, Matt Walsh, who was hinting that he had information that might put the Patriots on trial again for the videotaping scandal. Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter wasn’t letting go, either. He was convinced that Roger Goodell was lording over a cover-up, and he was determined to get to the root of it.

  It was funny. Specter believed that the commissioner was helping the Patriots, and the Patriots believed that the commissioner was trying to demolish what they had built. April was not only Bill Belichick’s birthday; it was when he was the NFL’s version of homecoming king during the draft. He would trade only with two divisional opponents, the Bills and Dolphins, and he had cleaned them both out when they’d bartered with him. The Bills were on their fourth quarterback and third head coach since Belichick made the Drew Bledsoe trade with them six years ago. The Dolphins, who had gone 1-15 in 2007, had given the Patriots a second-rounder that became Corey Dillon, and sent them star receiver Wes Welker for draft picks that the Patriots didn’t want.

  The Patriots had been well positioned with two first-round picks in the 2008 draft. But part of Goodell’s Spygate punishment was to snatch the Patriots’ first, which was number thirty-one overall. That was the bad news. Fortunately the trade with the 49ers had worked out better than anyone expected. The traded twenty-eighth pick in 2007 had turned into the seventh overall pick in 2008. It was a rare chance for a team this good to select an impact player, and the Patriots knew exactly who they wanted. He was a heady linebacker from Tennessee named Jerod Mayo, and the scouts and defensive coaches loved to gather and watch his film. He played with the energy of someone who knew exactly where he was going, and when he met a ballcarrier, the player either stopped in his tracks or fell backward.

  Mayo would be the bridge between Bruschi and the next generation of Patriots because the inevitable was beginning to happen. Bruschi knew he wasn’t as fast as he used to be, and his bosses could see the same thing. It was a similar story for several popular players, Harrison, Vrabel, and Troy Brown among them.

  Two and a half w
eeks after the draft, in mid-May, Brady did an interview on WEEI radio in Boston. The interview coincided with a Goodell press conference in which the commissioner announced, finally, that he’d heard everything he needed to from Matt Walsh. The dismissed employee did not have an explosive tape or any other information that would lead the Patriots to further punishment. Most important, there was no pre–Super Bowl taping of the Rams’ walk-through. The press conference was carried live in Boston and nationally on ESPN. Afterward, ESPN commentator Mark Schlereth was among many who were unconvinced that the tapes were innocuous. This was going to be the immeasurable penalty for Spygate: constant doubt. Brady was asked about the nonstop videotape chatter.

  “I think it’s just kind of the environment right now,” he told the radio station. “I think that’s the way guys make it. They say the craziest things. That’s what ESPN has become. ESPN, to me, is like MTV without the videos. They just have highlights, instead.”

  ESPN and every other media outlet in the country, and world, had a statement from the Patriots and an apology from the Herald. Reporter John Tomase, who wrote the errant story about the Rams walk-through, apologized in print and on television. Yet Spygate, not even a year old, was embedded in the culture. There was no delineation between what the Patriots actually did, what they were accused of doing, and what analysts and writers imagined that they could be doing.

  It led to the Patriots becoming the most reviled franchise in the league. At least that’s why the out-of-towners said they didn’t like New England and “Belicheat.” New Englanders said it was the winning, from the Patriots and everyone else, and they had a case. In June, the Celtics completed a sixty-six-win regular season by beating their rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers, in the NBA Finals. Belichick and Brady had arrived in town when all the championship stories were viewed on dated posters; now they were told by posters on the Internet, kids in their teens and early twenties, who all had shining trophies as their avatars.

  The expectation, of course, was that the Patriots would be featured on the familiar parade route after the 2008 season.

  The first game of the year was against Kansas City, a team that had decided to rebuild and go young. It was going to be a big passing day for Brady. At least it seemed that way seven and a half minutes into the first quarter with a twenty-eight-yard Brady-to-Moss completion. Except no one was paying attention to the completion. It was the hit in the backfield that jarred everyone in Gillette Stadium. Safety Bernard Pollard ran around running back Sammy Morris and hit Brady low. The quarterback was in an odd position, following through on a throw and getting hit low. His upper body was going forward, his left leg going too far back. His anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments snapped. He screamed; the crowd groaned. The coaching box was silent and, if it was possible, this felt worse than the Super Bowl loss to the Giants. As bad as that was, you knew Brady would be back for whenever the next game was. That was not going to happen in 2008. His season was over.

  After raging about Pollard’s hit, and the absence of Kevin Faulk for blitz pickup rather than leaving the job to Morris, it was time to plan for the new New England Patriots. Their starting quarterback was now Matt Cassel, a man who hadn’t started a game since he was in high school, nine years earlier.

  “We had been playing the role of favorite for so long,” Tedy Bruschi says. “You hold yourself a certain way. It was consistent. It was a mentality. And then after that hit, a reset button was pushed. ‘Okay, we’re not that anymore. Let’s just see what we can do.’”

  They’d be able to beat teams like Kansas City, for sure, although the final was just 17–10. But how about other teams in the division? After five consecutive AFC East titles, all their divisional neighbors were on their level now. Would they be able to beat the Jets in week two? The Dolphins in week three?

  Brady’s injury made everyone feel older. It was the peek at the future that no one wanted to see. What if you have Belichick and no Brady? It might look and sound like this. Just one day after the injury, there, in Brady’s usual six thirty a.m. radio slot, was Cassel.

  “I’m not trying to be Tom Brady. I’m just trying to be Matt Cassel,” he assured the audience. “I don’t know where that’s going to take us.”

  No one knew, but there were some educated guesses. If the starting quarterback hadn’t started in college, hadn’t started in the pros, and looked uncomfortable when he started in preseason games, what did that suggest?

  The first real test was against Mangini and the Jets. That combination had given Brady trouble, so what could be expected from Cassel? Probably not the 19–10 win that pushed the Patriots to 2-0. Week three was strange. Brady was spotted with his year-old son, John, at a bookstore shortly before kickoff. He was probably seeking a self-help book about how to cope on NFL Sundays. He’d always been at the stadium. No one ever told you how to be injured, and he was a real rookie at it. When Deion Branch checked in on him from Seattle, he told his old receiver that he expected to be back to himself in four to five months. Branch told him to relax. No one, not even Tom Brady, was going to recover from ligament tears like his and be back in the NFL that quickly. The Dolphins, meanwhile, were happy not to face him and won big, 38–13.

  It was the bye week and Brady was out temporarily. One of his former teammates, Troy Brown, decided to be out for good. He was thirty-seven and had been more of a spiritual than physical contributor to the 2007 team. His last game of consequence was the conference championship loss to the Colts. Now, in 2008, he didn’t have a job and he determined that he couldn’t play anymore. His retirement announcement was attended by Belichick, along with Brown’s young sons, Sir’mon, ten, and SaanJay, eight. Brown thanked Belichick for believing in him and allowing him to become a starting receiver in the league. He also said he was proud that he could wear the same jersey for fifteen years and, although he had a chance to go to the Jets with Mangini, he couldn’t imagine putting on green and white. There were questions from the media, but the best one came from Sir’mon, who cried throughout the press conference.

  “If you love this game so much, why are you retiring?”

  The room was quiet, and grown men and women clenched so they wouldn’t tear up. It was an emotional moment. Brown, who didn’t share much as a player during press conferences, showed that it was a new day as he stood there as a former Patriot, soon-to-be media member, and loving father.

  “I would love to keep playing, but there comes a time when the man upstairs, called God, you can’t outrun Him as much as you try to and want to. He just catches up to you and tells you that you’re thirty-seven years old. It’s a sad day for me, too. I saw you out there crying for me and I love you, and it’s going to be okay.”

  It was one of those days when the typical Patriots fan was right there with Sir’mon. It was a reminder of the great plays, yes, like Brown on the final drive of the Super Bowl against the Rams. Or the Super Bowl against the Panthers when he broke his nose, kept playing, and then showed up at the parade saying, “Bingo! We got Bingo! We win again, baby!” But this season, one month in, was about football mortality. No Brady and now no Brown. They were among the players who had poured the foundation of what the organization had become. It was strange to see the games go on without them.

  When the Patriots went to the West Coast in October to play the Chargers, Robert Kraft gave an update on Brady. He’d had surgery, was working hard, and, the owner added, “We hope to have him here for another ten years.” Who could even think that way after a year like this? Brady was going to play until he was forty-one?

  On cue, Harrison returned to San Diego, where he started his career. The next week, in a blowout win at home over the Broncos, he was carted off the field. Torn quadriceps. He shook hands and waved to the crowd as if he wouldn’t be waving again wearing a uniform. He was thirty-five. He’d had three major injuries in the last four seasons. If Brown was looking for a media partner, Harrison would be a good fit.

  After eight games, th
e Patriots were 5-3. They weren’t great, but they weren’t embarrassing, either. Which was also a good scouting report on Cassel. He could no longer be described as a high school quarterback. He belonged in the NFL.

  “Cassel was like everyone’s little brother that you’d give shit to every time you saw him,” Bruschi says. “He’d make you laugh. He’d be funny. He’d be self-deprecating. You could just mess with him. He was good friends with almost everybody. Were there points that he wasn’t playing well? Yeah, but our reminder was, ‘Who do you think it is?’ It’s not Tom. We had to have a different mentality. We didn’t panic.”

  Cassel didn’t panic, either, and he was playing well enough to get a starting job for someone in 2009. He had back-to-back games where he finished with four hundred or more passing yards. Josh McDaniels was at his creative best, deftly mixing a power running game with the passing abilities of Cassel. Most fans were similar to Bruschi: It’s Cassel at quarterback; let’s sit back and see where the ride goes. The present, actually, was much more pleasant than the future, for several reasons.

  The big signee at linebacker, Adalius Thomas, broke his arm and was out for the season. He had been good for the Patriots, not special. For all his versatility, it didn’t seem that he quite fit here. A man who did fit, in playing style and worldview, was Vrabel. His teammates loved his brain, which allowed him to spit out information as he made plays, like a pass-rushing Belichick. He was hilarious, too, and even Belichick tried to avoid eye contact with him when a serious point was being made because Vrabel had a way of turning anything into a comedy bit. A frequent target of his was Belichick, mostly for the coach’s professed love for the old Giants that he coached. Vrabel would imitate Belichick and have his teammates, and head coach, laughing as he exaggerated the résumés of the tough players that Belichick often praised. What Vrabel and the others didn’t realize was that one day Belichick would be talking about him and Willie McGinest, Tedy Bruschi, and Rodney Harrison in the same way that he flattered the Giants. No question, Vrabel was a three-time champion, with his initials in the foundation along with a handful of others.