Belichick and Brady

by Michael Holley

  “The only thing I know is ever since that happened and it got exposed, what we have is 0-2 in Super Bowls. That’s all. I’m not saying they have anything to do with each other; I’m just telling you what the facts are.”

  Faulk was reminded that the Patriots had won the most games in football since Spygate, duplicating the success they had before the stick-to-their-ribs scandal.

  “It’s successful,” he replied. “But we’re talking about championships. There’s a lot of teams that win a lot of games.”

  Belichick often told his players to ignore the noise. He had it written on the walls in football operations, clear enough and large enough for all players to see. But telling them to ignore the noise was akin to telling them to ignore the atmosphere. The sun. Day and night. The noise was everywhere, in and out of New England. There was that noise about their misfortune in championship games since Spygate. Noise about the system of Belichick, and how maybe he needed to load up the way former Patriots coach Pete Carroll had. His Seahawks had dominated the Broncos in the Super Bowl, winning 43–8. The Patriots couldn’t touch Manning; the Seahawks couldn’t keep their hands off him or his receivers.

  Ignore the noise about the quarterback, too? There were always people talking about the lack of playmakers around him. Kenbrell Thompkins? Aaron Dobson? Even a magnificent talent like Gronk was no guarantee to be there at the beginning of the 2014 season. How do you ignore that? And although Brady didn’t fear or hear the clock that reverberates in most aging athletes, he’d be thirty-seven in August. More than one person could hear that clock, and maybe even one of them was Belichick.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “WE ARE THE PATRIOTS. EVERYTHING IS A BIG DEAL”

  Tom Brady has expressed the sentiment many times: There is nothing the Patriots can do to surprise him anymore. Nothing. He is the most grown of the grown men in the locker room these days, five months away from his thirty-seventh birthday. By March 2014, there isn’t much he hasn’t seen from the Patriots or even from the league itself.

  He understands the nature of the game, from its brutality on the field to its corporate warriors in New York, always prepared for legal combat in the name of defending the shield. He’s won more often than any player in football, and that isn’t just about appearing in five Super Bowls and eight conference title games. At the genesis of winning is an understanding of how things and people work, and that is one of his overlooked skills.

  He’s learned a lot over the years. He, Matt Light, and Patrick Pass used to be the youngest of the twenty-two Patriots who were three-time champions. Now all but two, Brady and forty-one-year-old Adam Vinatieri in Indianapolis, are retired. If Brady is to win another Super Bowl, he’ll do it with a bunch of players who will find it hilarious that there was no such thing as an iPhone or iPad the last time he palmed the Lombardi Trophy in February 2005. This game cycles through players and trends quickly. You’ve got to have two things ready at all times: an impromptu good-bye or a packed bag.

  For Brady, it’s always been the good-byes. He forced Drew Bledsoe’s in 2002, was hurt by the abruptness of Lawyer Milloy’s in 2003, and was angered over the negotiating that led to Deion Branch’s in 2006. There is a story for all of them. Ty Law, fellow Wolverine, is the one who sold him the condo way back in the Cherrywood Lane days. Willie McGinest displayed unique leadership and introduced him to trusted friend and business partner Alex Guerrero. Mike Vrabel, chess player/coach on the field and comic in the meeting room, was the reminder that hard work could and should be fun. Randy Moss showed him how high the offense could go, specifically how far the quarterback could go, with a prodigy-in-residence. Light, who played with Crohn’s disease and never made it public, was the consistent and loyal protector.

  After listening to and watching Bill Belichick for fourteen seasons, Brady has heard the themes repeat. Be prepared. Ignore the noise. Do your job. Even for those like Brady, veterans knowledgeable in the departures and arrivals orchestrated by Belichick, the spring of 2014 still is full of twists.

  The most shocking move was actually put in motion a year earlier. Darrelle Revis, the most talented player ever drafted by the New York Jets, tore his ACL in the third game of the 2012 season. The Jets’ world changed in his absence: The general manager who drafted him, Mike Tannenbaum, was fired after the season. The new guy hired in 2013, John Idzik, traded him to Tampa for first- and fourth-round picks. Once there, Revis signed a $96 million contract with no guarantees and then Tampa got a new general manager, former Patriots scouting director Jason Licht. He had a vision for a young team, one that didn’t include the high-salaried cornerback.

  On March 12, 2014, the Bucs made it official. The best cornerback in the NFL was available for anyone to sign, although everyone could plainly see that one team made more sense than any other in the league.

  The Patriots.

  Sure.

  Revis, twenty-eight years old and in his prime, in a Patriots uniform? The same player who seemed to enjoy every second of being on the New York side of the Jets-Patriots rivalry. The player who was angry because he said Brady prodded their sideline. He’s the player who went on TV, twice, to deliver one-word putdowns of the Patriots. He called Randy Moss a “slouch” in 2010. Two years later, sitting next to Gronk in an ESPN studio, he was asked to share the first thing that came to mind about Belichick. “Jerk,” he replied. The host was stunned, so Revis repeated it, clearer and louder.

  Slights aside, Revis was a money player. He shut down top competition, and he expected to be paid well for it. Belichick and the Patriots hadn’t been aggressive in free agency, at least not Revis-level aggressive, in seven years. The Jets, meanwhile, had history with him. And they needed him. But the Patriots knew someone who had a deeper history with Revis. That history went beyond Revis’s draft day with the Jets in 2007, his national signing day with the University of Pittsburgh in 2004, and even his first day of high school in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, in 2000.

  “The house that I grew up in was the house that Darrelle’s grandma [Aileen Gilbert] lived in,” Ty Law says now. “I’ve known him since he was five or six years old. Let me tell you, he stood out even when he was a little kid. And that’s saying something when you’re from Aliquippa.”

  The small western Pennsylvania town, about twenty miles from Pittsburgh, is known for producing NFL talent. Law, eleven years older than Revis, grew up there watching Revis’s uncle, Sean Gilbert, star for the Quips in high school basketball and football. Gilbert was a colossus, six feet five inches and three-hundred-plus pounds as a defensive tackle. He had his number, 71, retired in high school, alongside Mike Ditka’s 80. He went to Pitt and was drafted third overall by the Rams in 1992. Law’s cousin, Hall of Fame running back Tony Dorsett, also took the familiar Aliquippa-Pitt-NFL path. As had Ditka, a Hall of Fame tight end. When Revis became a free agent, many people knew how to contact him, but few knew exactly what to say. Law did.

  He knew how every great athlete from Aliquippa was expected to be tougher and more competitive than most. They competed hard at everything, not just football. Law laughs as he remembers playing a game in which kids would get a twig, put it in a stream, and see whose twig was fastest, end to end. Anything and everything is turned into a competition when you’re a Quip. Years ago, after Gilbert had been traded from St. Louis to Washington, the team made him its franchise player and offered a salary of $2.5 million. He told them in February of that year, 1997, that he’d never sign a deal that undervalued him like that. He said he was taking his family back to Aliquippa and that he’d sit out the season if he had to. That’s exactly what he did, his firm stance closely observed by his sister’s twelve-year-old son, Darrelle. The next year, he was traded to the Panthers and signed a then-record contract for a defensive lineman: a $10 million bonus and $45 million overall. It was about fairness, respect, and never, ever backing down.

  Aliquippa no longer makes steel, and its unemployment and crime rates are high. But everyone in town follow
s the athletes who make it out, and they keep score.

  Law made five Pro Bowls and was part of three Super Bowl champions. Like Gilbert, he wasn’t afraid to talk about money and say how much of it he deserved. Like Revis, he’d let his emotions run high before and resorted to name-calling with Bill Belichick. He knew what it was like to have Belichick on your side in big games, and he’d experienced negotiating against him trying to get a big payday. He explained to Revis that Belichick isn’t just the wooden guy from interviews and the sideline. The coach appreciates greatness, and he’d be willing to move Revis all over the field, allowing him to be as free and creative as he needed to be.

  “I told him that it’s about leaving a legacy,” Law says. “He had all the numbers and awards over the years, but I told him that he doesn’t want to be Champ Bailey. Great player, don’t get me wrong, and I respect Champ. But he got all those Pro Bowls, and those are the only things hanging in the rafters. You want that championship banner.

  “Darrelle had a lot of offers. There were teams that had just as much money as the Patriots, if not more. But this was a chance to play with Tom Brady and get a ring. I’m not saying he made his decision because of me, but I’d like to think I had something to do with it.”

  Revis signed a two-year, $32 million contract with the Patriots, officially. But the second year was a complex team option, and if the Patriots exercised it they’d have a cap charge of $25 million in 2015. That wasn’t going to happen. So everyone understood up front exactly what this unusual Revis-Patriots union was. They’d likely be bound for just one year, and if everything worked out as planned, the marriage would dissolve yet all involved would leave with diamond rings.

  Belichick’s signing of Revis fooled some observers into thinking that the coach was changing the way he did business. The talent of Revis, along with the anticipation of watching him play, obscured the fact that this was the same Belichick making yet another sensible signing. Revis for a year was good value, and not only did his presence improve team depth; it gave the defense its own Brady figure, a transformative player who emboldened ordinary play designs. It also deprived and frankly embarrassed the Jets. It’s bad enough to have Revis return to the division, but even worse to see him with the Patriots. Missed opportunities like this would soon cost Idzik, the Jets general manager, his job.

  Believing that the Patriots were “loading up,” New England fans went into the second weekend of May, draft weekend, excited by the possibilities. The team’s first two selections were twenty-ninth and sixty-second overall. For teams that consistently draft well, that translates into two immediate starters. There was a restless and vocal segment of the fan base that wasn’t convinced that Belichick’s economics worked for a late-career Brady. They wanted every move to be made with the quarterback’s date of birth in mind.

  After drafting Dominique Easley, a defensive tackle from the University of Florida who had bad knees and a reputation for having a bad attitude, they surprised everyone with their second-round pick.

  When it was time to announce the sixty-second pick, former Patriot Willie McGinest took the Radio City Music Hall stage. He wore a red Patriots sweater under his tailored suit jacket, an outfit that led to resounding boos from the New Yorkers in the crowd. He teased the crowd, saying, “Your New England Patriots and my New England Patriots…” And then he gave the actual pick: Jimmy Garoppolo from Eastern Illinois. A quarterback.

  “Wowww,” said Rich Eisen, hosting the NFL Network’s draft coverage.

  It was an appropriate summary. With the first two choices, the Patriots nearly guaranteed that they wouldn’t get major contributions from their draft picks in 2014. Beyond that, the Garoppolo selection was significant. Belichick’s Patriots had never drafted a quarterback this high.

  When Belichick was asked to explain the pick on draft day, he managed to take a couple of shots at the Colts as he answered.

  “Organizationally, I don’t think we would put together a team the way Indianapolis did when they lost Manning, and they go 1-15 or whatever it was. I don’t think that’s really what we’re looking for. Unfortunately, we lost Tom in 2008 and we had a player who stepped in and won 11 games. We want to be competitive even if something happens to a player at any position. I think depth is always important. You never know when you’re going to need it. But I don’t think we would be happy going 1-15, if we had an injury at one position. But other people have different philosophies.”

  The 2014 draft was spread over three days, Thursday through Saturday, and the selection of Garoppolo on day two, May 9, wasn’t the only controversial event that day. Two Patriots employees, John Jastremski and Jim McNally, traded text messages that afternoon. There wasn’t anything unusual about that in itself. McNally, a game-day operations part-timer, and Jastremski, a full-time assistant equipment manager, texted constantly. Their tone ranged from ordinary to burlesque. Their language reflected the culture they were in: direct, blunt, sarcastic, profane. That was never a problem in Foxboro. The issue was that their texts, in time, would be shared with the rest of America.

  “You working,” McNally asked Jastremski, about two and a half hours before the draft resumed with round two.

  “Yup,” Jastremski replied thirty seconds later.

  “Nice dude… jimmy needs some kicks… lets make a deal… come on help the deflator.”

  When nearly ten minutes had passed without a reply from Jastremski, McNally sent a follow-up text: “Chill buddy im just fuckin with you… im not going to espn… yet.”

  That exchange, when eventually released to the public, would trigger debates and commentaries that would go far past the intensity of traditional rivalries played out on social media and talk radio. It would go past football and, really, all sports. It would go through owners’ suites and across the mahogany desks of America’s top lawyers. It would whistle through arbitration and district court. It would be the dividing line in a war that had text interpretation as one of its issues. No one was neutral on the texts, even though few were privy to the dozens of exchanges that happened before, exchanges that might have put the texts into context.

  What a 2014 season it was going to be. At the end of it, no fan would be able to honestly say that he or she saw it coming. It’s not every day that the league and one of the league’s most valuable commodities line up across from each other and attack, blood on the shield be damned.

  The beginning of the season, though, was conventional. The Seahawks were the favorites to defend their title, and the Broncos and Patriots were considered the best in the AFC. As usual, the expectation in New England was to get to the Super Bowl and win it.

  The Patriots appeared to be a long way from contending on September 7, the opener in Miami. Brady had to feel worse than anyone, physically and psychologically. He threw a lot, fifty-six times. He got hit a lot, sacked four times and pounded on a half-dozen occasions just after he released the ball. He was responsible for three turnovers, two fumbles and an interception. Sam Monson, a preseason Brady doubter from Pro Football Focus, was onto something. Brady looked bad; his offensive line looked worse. There was a story there, too. A few weeks earlier, Belichick traded the team’s nastiest and most experienced lineman, Logan Mankins, to Tampa for a backup tight end and a fourth-round pick. The deal was immediately panned, and there was nothing about this game that made it look smart. In addition to the battering of Brady, two rarities happened on the same day: The Patriots lost an opener and Darrelle Revis gave up a touchdown.

  The team didn’t look right, and that would have been the case even if they had pulled out a win against the Dolphins.

  There was no insight about who they were the next week, in Minnesota. The Vikings were missing their offense, which is what running back Adrian Peterson was for them. Peterson was deactivated forty-eight hours before the game following news that he was indicted for negligent and reckless injury to a child. That child was Peterson’s four-year-old son. The muscular running back, six foot two and 22
0 pounds, acknowledged that he struck his son repeatedly with a switch. He said it was the way he was raised growing up in Texas, and that this style of corporal punishment taught humility and manners.

  The Peterson news capped a disastrous week for the league. The football talk was sandwiched between discussion of severe parenting and domestic violence. A video had emerged of one player, Ray Rice, punching his fiancée in a casino elevator in Atlantic City. Another player, Greg Hardy, was convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend and communicating threats. Roger Goodell said that he hadn’t seen the elevator video when he suspended Rice for two games. Once TMZ got the footage and it went viral, the commissioner changed course and suspended Rice indefinitely. As for Hardy, who was convicted in July, Goodell never did suspend him. But with the attention on Rice, and now Peterson, Hardy was placed on the commissioner’s exempt list. It meant that Hardy would continue to get paid, but he wasn’t eligible to play in the games.

  Criticism of Goodell and throat-clearing from corporate sponsors was beginning to compete with the games, so New England’s 30–7 win over the Vikings didn’t make much of a ripple. Much more instructive was the guest segment on CBS This Morning, five days before the game. Robert Kraft was scheduled to talk about the weekly Thursday Night Football package on CBS. But as he had done many times in the past, barely two minutes into his appearance, he volunteered his endorsement of Goodell.

  “I know our commissioner has taken some heat,” he said as he lounged comfortably in his chair, making eye contact with all three hosts. There were dozens of critics who wondered why the NFL was so slow to react appropriately to domestic violence. As for the graphic Ray Rice video, well, it essentially matched what was in the police report and what Rice and his fiancée, Janay, told Goodell when they met with him in New York. Kraft continued, “He had no knowledge of this video. The way he’s handled this situation himself, coming out with the mea culpa in his statement ten days ago, and setting a very clear policy on how we conduct ourselves in the NFL, has been excellent. And anyone second-guessing that doesn’t know him.”