Belichick and Brady

by Michael Holley

  But as much fun as it was for Belichick to make deals, the joy came from seeing those players and coaching them. Technically, the league’s entire draft pool was pending. No one could do a thing until the lockout was settled.

  In June, there was something familiar for New Englanders to celebrate. It was another championship, the seventh in ten years for a Boston sports team. The Bruins, who hadn’t won a Stanley Cup since 1972, finally captured one. This time the rolling rally was in the summer, and fans were encouraged to take public transportation to avoid the hassle of closed streets. It sounded reasonable enough, but local officials weren’t prepared for the number of people willing to take their advice: A crowd of 1.2 million, twice as much as the normal commute, filled inbound train stations to Boston. It was too many people and not enough trains, so many of the fans were stranded and missed the parade. Scathing blogs and letters to the editor followed, understandably so. But it was fascinating to compare the source of local anger in 2000 (no parades to plan) to the source of it in 2011 (no ride to the parade).

  The celebration was in contrast to what Robert Kraft was experiencing in his professional and personal life. If he could have, he would have accepted every professional setback possible if it meant receiving a miracle at home. The business stuff, the lockout, was predictable enough. It had reached the one-hundred-day mark, and the public was far angrier than those T riders without a train to catch. Pro football was their favorite sport, and they didn’t have the temperament nor the resources to understand the impasse. Why couldn’t smart people figure out a way to divide over $9 billion? Even if they were smart and greedy, they still should have been able to solve that one.

  What wasn’t so easy was real, authentic life. Myra Kraft was in a fight for hers. By day, her husband would make phone calls and try to figure out a way to save the game. By night, he would rub his wife’s feet and try to give her comfort against the ravages of cancer.

  She was a brilliant woman, perhaps the smartest Kraft, and that was saying something with all the accomplishments and credentials in the family. It was her intellect that allowed her to make smart decisions as she either chaired or sat on several boards. Their range told part of the story of her personality: Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston, American Repertory Theater, Facing History and Ourselves. Another part of the story was her conscience, her demands for herself and those around her. This was her core, and since the Patriots were part of the family business, she pushed to make it a part of their core, too.

  She got resistance on that sometimes, but she kept pushing. She had reservations about being involved in the NFL at all in 1994, and not because she thought it was bad business. She just wanted to be assured that the family’s mission—calling, really—to be charitable wouldn’t slow down. It didn’t. Two years later, she called out Bill Parcells, on the record, when he thought he was being funny by calling a slow-recovering receiver “she” in 1996. “Disgraceful,” Myra said, when describing the slight. “I hope he’s chastised for that. It was the wrong thing for anyone to say.”

  A sense of social justice had been ingrained, as far back as kindergarten. Her father had escaped the Holocaust in the 1930s, but his parents and siblings had died in concentration camps. She was not one to stand by and wait for change. Jonathan Kraft recalled a time in apartheid South Africa where she saw black men being arrested by police. She asked the police what they had done wrong and was told that they didn’t have the proper documents to be in the city at that hour. She told them that she didn’t, either. “So arrest me, too!” Jonathan had to pick her up and carry her away from the scene.

  She learned to love football, thanks to her husband and four sons. She loved the cerebral aspects of the game, so she not only watched it; she read about it as well. Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side became one of her favorite books. Maybe it just wasn’t possible to bring the world of pro football closer to some of the many philanthropic causes that she supported, but she was going to try. It probably never crossed her mind, nor those of the football operations staff, but she read people so well in interview situations that she probably could have picked up things about players, nonfootball things of course, that they couldn’t.

  A lot of people didn’t know that she was as sick as she was in the summer of 2011. She still cooked, still checked in on her eight grandchildren, and still told Robert to go off and end that lockout. She was among the first to know when the lockout was ending, in the third week of July. That was also the time she died. She was sixty-eight.

  On July 22, one of the hottest days in the history of Newton, Massachusetts, the NFL came to Temple Emanuel to honor and celebrate the life of Myra Kraft. Roger Goodell sat close to DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the Players Association. Tom Brady and Drew Bledsoe shared a hug. Richard Seymour returned to the area for the first time since being traded, and sat near Belichick, the man who traded him. Conservatives such as Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh were there, along with many liberal Massachusetts politicians such as Senator John Kerry and Governor Deval Patrick.

  “Who else but Myra could bring such an eclectic bunch together?” Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz said. “Only one person on the planet. Only Myra could.”

  Elton John’s version of Henry Mancini’s “Moon River,” the Krafts’ favorite song, played softly in the temple. Three of Kraft’s sons gave eulogies, but he did not speak. There would be football this year, and it was going to be incongruous to look above the field, in the owners’ seats, and see Jonathan on Kraft’s right but no Myra on his left.

  Three days after the funeral service, Kraft and his sons were sitting shiva at the family estate. The prayers were over, and there were still visitors in the home. Robert asked his four sons and two of the visitors, Kerry and Patrick, if he should attend the press conference announcing the good football news. The vote was unanimous, 6–0, and that’s how an unforgettable image became possible: Kraft and Colts center Jeff Saturday sharing a hug. The lineman said he wanted to thank Kraft for helping to “save football.” The owners had preserved the power of the commissioner, given the players a less physically demanding workweek, but taken a bigger share of the revenue cut, 53 percent to 47 percent.

  It was one of the strongest national moments for Kraft, and it allowed the rest of the country to see what New Englanders had experienced for decades. Kraft was a relatable and clever deal-maker. His strength was going to the essence of what the issue was and then figuratively getting the lawyers away from it. That was his way of emphasizing that common ground could be reached as long as both sides could unemotionally focus on their similarities and minimize their differences. That’s how the NFL and Players Association closed a deal that would carry the sides until 2020.

  “You can’t solve a problem until you understand what the problem is,” Kraft told the Boston Globe. “There were some very difficult, complicated issues, but there was a give and take. I hope the same happens in Washington. The NFL is not Washington, but culturally it is very important that we bridge our differences.”

  As the league opened its doors for a late start to free agency and training camp, the question of conscience tugged for the Patriots. They signed plenty of solid individuals, such as Shaun Ellis, Andre Carter, and Nate Solder, their first-round pick. But in a stunner, the team traded a fifth-round pick for a player who seemed to be the antithesis of every written rule of their organizational manual. Football was not Albert Haynesworth’s top priority and everyone in the league knew it. He had the potential to be dominant, but he wasn’t often enough, and the worst of his inconsistency had a birth date. It was February 2009, when he signed a seven-year $100 million contract with Washington, including $41 million guaranteed.

  Worse than his being in it strictly for the money, though, were a myriad of character questions. He was arriving in New England with a misdemeanor sexual assault charge pending. A waitress at a Washington hotel said that she was fondled by the athlete as he paid th
e bill. While in camp with the Patriots, Haynesworth agreed to an exchange with prosecutors, who allowed him to enter a no-contest plea to one count of simple assault. Belichick and the Patriots often had foresight when they made a deal, but this was a bad fit.

  Proving to be ever unpredictable, Belichick also traded late-round picks for a wide receiver who was a buddy of his but didn’t seem to be his kind of player. Chad Ochocinco, who’d legally changed his name from Chad Johnson to match his uniform number—85—was brought in from Cincinnati. He had been a talented receiver, but his current skill seemed to be in self-promotion. He was a social media sensation, often regaling his millions of Twitter followers with homespun wisdom, humor, and his adventures with reality TV star Evelyn Lozada.

  For those who were trying to articulate what was different about the league in general and these Patriots in particular, Tedy Bruschi beat them to it. The Patriots began their season in Miami, where Tom Brady somehow looked better than he had in 2010. He was able to help four different receivers accumulate at least six catches and 85 yards: Wes Welker, Deion Branch, Aaron Hernandez, and Rob Gronkowski. Welker’s performance, eight catches for 160 yards and two touchdowns, topped them all. Brady finished with 517 yards and four touchdowns; Ochocinco caught one ball for 14 yards.

  The next day, Bruschi was a guest on a radio show in Boston. He was happily talking about football until a producer put a tweet from Ochocinco in front of him. “Just waking up after a late arrival, I’ve never seen a machine operate like that n person, to see video game numbers put up n person was WOW.” Maybe it was the fact that it was already past three o’clock in the afternoon and Ochocinco said he was just waking up. It could have been the awe, or just Twitter itself. Whatever the cause, Bruschi went on the air and told the receiver to snap out of it.

  “Stop tweeting and get in your playbook,” he said with passion. It was almost as if fans in drive time got to briefly feel what it was like for a wandering newcomer to be pulled back into shape by legendary Patriots like Bruschi, Rodney Harrison, and Willie McGinest. Bruschi’s media instincts were as impressive as his football ones, so he was onto something. Ochocinco came from a numbering system with the Bengals, which meant that he didn’t have to do any sight adjustments. He just ran a play. He wasn’t going to be able to do that with the Patriots, and it was going to be a season-long problem.

  But with so many of their former players in the media, the Patriots had to play the game: defend the current teammate and wave off the ex one, who can now be painted with a media brush. Tom Brady confidently did that when he commented on Bruschi’s criticism of Ochocinco.

  “I will say this about all those guys, whether it’s Tedy making a comment—and I love Tedy, he’s one of my great friends—and all those guys that have played for us, but honestly, none of those guys have any clue what they’re talking about. They’re outside of the locker room. They don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish. So, with all due respect to all of them and what they’ve accomplished… they don’t know.”

  It was a good sentiment, especially since the media couldn’t see practice. There, it was obvious just how lost Ochocinco was. He had played his entire career with the Bengals and it seemed that he couldn’t get that offense out of his system. Near the midway point of the season, with the Patriots 5-2, Ochocinco had nine catches. He hadn’t scored. But if he wanted to revisit that WOW tweet, he had good subjects with the second-year tight ends, Gronkowski and Hernandez. Individually, they were at Pro Bowl levels. As a duo, they were unstoppable. Through seven games, they had combined for a good tight end’s season: sixty-five catches, 793 yards, nine touchdowns.

  Going into the season’s eighth game, against the Giants, the scouting report on the Patriots was set. They were wonderful to watch on offense, but they gave up generous chunks of yardage defensively.

  No one imagined that this defensive bunch had the ability to come up with a goal-line stand to win a game, or to even carry the offense on a low-scoring day. For the Patriots to get where they wanted, the offense had to take them there.

  That was never more obvious than on November 6, Albert Haynesworth’s last game as a Patriot. It was bad enough that the Patriots had lost the game in the final minute, when they seemed to have it under control. Haynesworth made it tough for anyone to excuse the way he played against New York, especially in the third quarter. He was pushed aside by Giants guard David Diehl, and he made no effort to recover. It allowed Giants running back Brandon Jacobs to run ten yards into the end zone. Twenty-four minutes were left in the game at that point, and Haynesworth sat out all of them.

  On Monday, Belichick was asked about the benching of Haynesworth and he said the team was trying to utilize all of its defensive linemen. Not exactly. On Tuesday, Haynesworth was cut. With the release of Haynesworth, who finished his New England career with just three tackles, and the relative shelving of Ochocinco, the team seemed to be freer.

  It started with the thirty-four-year-old Brady. He’d had more to worry about than anyone during the lockout, with his face and his name attached to it. The dispute had lasted more than one-third of a calendar year, 138 days, so it wasn’t like he’d had much casual time to consider quarterbacking or vacations for that matter. Still, he was on pace to set a career high in passing yardage. He and offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien had a good relationship. They’d yell at each other, clear the air, and then proceed as if nothing had happened. They did that on national TV, during a game in Washington, and the exchange became a social media vine.

  The wins and yards kept coming. They beat Washington on that screaming day, 34–27. That was their fifth consecutive win, a game in which Gronk had six catches for 160 yards and two touchdowns. The next week they were in Denver, and Hernandez got a chance to see his college quarterback. Tim Tebow had become one of the most popular players of the season because of his unusual quarterbacking. Brady had Hernandez on his team now, and it was his turn to dominate in a 41–23 win. He had nine catches, 129 yards, and a score.

  The regular season closed with wins over the Dolphins and Bills, good for a 13-3 record and the ninth division title in the past eleven years. In their season-ending eight-game winning streak, the Patriots averaged 36 points per game. Brady had indeed finished with the most passing yards of his career, 5,235. His leading receiver, technically, was Wes Welker. But Gronk and Hernandez had tilted the field in such a way that the Patriots always had an advantage when they sent their tight ends into a route. Gronk caught ninety balls and scored a record seventeen receiving touchdowns, and added another rushing. Hernandez had seventy-nine catches and seven scores. Just like Brady and Seymour had previously, Gronk and Hernandez far exceeded the best-case standard, physically, for their positions.

  As they entered the play-offs, even the potential disappointments worked out in the Patriots’ favor. O’Brien wanted to be a head coach, and that opportunity was realized one week before the divisional play-off game against the Broncos.

  Penn State had come off the worst year in its history with revelations about former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky and numerous allegations of sexual molestation of young boys. There was national outrage that officials at Penn State were aware of the accusations and didn’t do more to help with the prosecution of Sandusky. The school’s president resigned and legendary coach Joe Paterno was fired in November. On January 7, 2012, the school announced the hiring of O’Brien. He was going to stay with the Patriots until the postseason was over. Fortunately, he was going to have a postseason assistant to help him. Josh McDaniels, after being fired the previous year as head coach of the Broncos, had landed in St. Louis as offensive coordinator with the Rams. When their season ended with no play-offs, he was free to go anywhere he wanted. He went “home” to New England. Once O’Brien left, it was no secret that McDaniels would replace him.

  In the play-offs, against McDaniels’s old team, Patriots fans could see the effects of Hernandez’s versatility. McDaniels floated the idea of featuring him
as a runner and receiver, which is what he had always been. This would be like being back at Bristol Central High. He gained sixty-one yards on the ground, and another fifty-five in the air with a touchdown. The struggle to locate him further cleared the field for Gronk, who scored three times. It was on to the conference championship against the Ravens, the first team to win in the play-offs at Gillette.

  On the surface, it looked like a game that would be decided by a field goal, which it was. But that wasn’t the most significant development of the day. Nor was it receiver–kick returner Julian Edelman spending time at cornerback, getting two tackles and forcing a fumble; nor Brady, knee brace and all, diving above the pile on fourth-and-goal for the winning touchdown; nor, as dramatic as it was, a rookie free agent named Sterling Moore batting away a ball from Lee Evans that should have been the winning catch.

  The topic that kept the Super Bowl preparation party tempered was Gronk. He caught a pass late in the third quarter and the defender, Bernard Pollard, held on any way he could. He started to wrap up around Gronk’s waist, but that wasn’t working for the safety, four inches shorter than Gronk. He slid down to his left ankle and hung on there. When Gronk fell to the ground, his ankle buckled under the 225 pounds of Pollard. He limped off the field. He was seen after the game in a walking boot.

  Gronk was definitely going to play in the Super Bowl against, once again, the New York Giants. The only question was health and effectiveness. That was something they could worry about later. After a 23–20 win, Brady could look at the team’s lowest scoring total in two and a half months and say, happily, to CBS’s Jim Nantz: “Well, I sucked pretty bad today. But our defense saved us.”