Belichick and Brady

by Michael Holley

  There was no question that there was a violation; the only question was what the NFL was going to do about it.

  Maybe it was the nature of the litigious season, but there was definitely a Gotcha spirit as the play-offs unfolded.

  When the Patriots and Ravens met in a divisional play-off game on January 10, 2015, it was almost guaranteed that something controversial was going to happen. The rivalry began with genuine mutual respect, but now it had devolved into one of those relationships in which both sides act like there’s respect, for political reasons. Belichick recommended Baltimore coach John Harbaugh for the job in 2008, and there were many Baltimore connections, football and otherwise, for the Maryland native. But this is a competitive league, and this was the fourth time in five years that one of these teams was going to be ending the other’s season.

  Twice in the game, it looked as if the Ravens would be that team. They leapt to a 14–0 lead, and when the Patriots tied the score, the Ravens added two more touchdowns to make it 28–14 five minutes into the third quarter. It was a typical New England winter day, twenty degrees with a nasty windchill, but the Patriots offense was not equipped, at least not on this day, for the ground game associated with cold-weather football. They were one dimensional, and Ravens defensive coordinator Dean Pees was too smart to be fooled in those situations. If the Patriots were going to pass on every second-half play, they would have to be creative in their play-calling.

  On their first touchdown drive of the third quarter, the Patriots confused the Ravens with their offensive formations. On one play, for example, running back Shane Vereen was lined up as a tackle. His number, 34, suggested that he was eligible to receive a pass, but on that particular play he wasn’t. A Raven still accounted for him as if he were, and it sent the Baltimore sideline into some disarray. Harbaugh even got a penalty for complaining about it to the officials.

  The Patriots were onto something. It didn’t take a lot of creativity to find Gronk, who always seemed to be open. His score, on a five-yard pass from Brady, made it 28–21 in the third quarter. The fun began two minutes later, when Brady lateraled to Julian Edelman, who’d been a college quarterback at Kent State. With the defense drawn to him, Edelman lofted a perfect pass down the left sideline for Danny Amendola, who caught it and ran to the end zone for a fifty-one-yard scoring play.

  Edelman may have had that pass, but Brady handled the rest of them. It was one of the best play-off games of his career, as he finished with 367 yards and three touchdowns. His final touchdown pass, to Brandon LaFell, was not only the game winner; it also moved him past Joe Montana for the top spot in career postseason touchdown passes.

  After the game, a 35–31 Patriots win, Harbaugh was angry. He said the Patriots’ clever declaration of eligible and ineligible receivers was “clearly deception” and said, “It’s not something that anybody’s ever done before. The league will look at that type of thing and I’m sure that they’ll make some adjustments and things like that.”

  He was right and wrong in the same sentence. The tactic had been used several times in 2014, in the pro and college seasons. Despite that, the league wasn’t always forward-thinking in these matters, so there was likely to be a change in the offseason.

  For now, the Patriots were going to their fourth consecutive conference title game. They would face the Indianapolis Colts, the best possible opponent.

  On the Saturday before the game, the Patriots were thinking of running on the Colts. The Colts were thinking of writing about the Patriots. Indianapolis equipment manager Sean Sullivan e-mailed Colts general manager Ryan Grigson, saying that he was concerned about the Patriots’ footballs. He said that Colts coach Chuck Pagano had received a call from the Ravens’ special-teams coordinator, and there had been some trouble with Baltimore’s ability to use footballs that they had treated; instead, they were forced to use the slick, out-of-the-box ones.

  “As far as the gameballs are concerned,” Sullivan wrote, “it is well known around the league that after the Patriots gameballs are checked by the officials and brought out for game usage the ballboys for the patriots will let out some air with a ball needle because their quarterback likes a smaller football so he can grip it better, it would be great if someone would be able to check the air in the game balls as the game goes on so that they don’t get an illegal advantage.”

  Grigson received the e-mail and either forwarded it or referenced it in his own e-mail to the NFL: “Just another FYI below. Again, all the Indianapolis Colts want is a completely level playing field. Thank you for being vigilant stewards of that not only for us but for the shield and overall integrity of our game.”

  The league’s senior vice president of game operations, David Gardi, replied that he would look into it and make the officials aware of the issue. At this rate, it seemed that the football was getting more attention than the actual football game. Which is exactly how it played out on Sunday evening.

  Despite being warned about concerns over the footballs, referee Walt Anderson lost sight of the balls twenty-five minutes before the start of the game. He said it was the first time in nineteen years of officiating that something like that had happened to him. He lost the balls because a member of game operations, Jim McNally, had taken the balls to the field. But on his way there, he stopped in the bathroom and took the footballs in there with him.

  All of these actions would be dissected and analyzed for the rest of the year, to a much greater degree than anyone realized on January 18. Was it a sting operation from the NFL? Did the Patriots tamper with the footballs? Did on-site league officials knowingly allow certain improprieties to happen, if indeed they did happen, just to prove a point?

  Those questions and many more like them provided the only tension of the night. The game was similar to the first three Patriots-Colts matchups with Pagano as the head coach. It was a blowout, and it got there fast. The final was 45–7, and it led to a late-night party on the field at Gillette. Gronk danced, and so did Darrelle Revis’s mom, Diana. Then there was a dance-off between Gronk and Diana. The fans stayed as late as they could, despite the cold and rain, because they wanted to enjoy the party as well. Bill Belichick looked at Jim Nantz and said, “We’re on to Seattle…” That drew a stadium full of cheers because everyone got the reference, how “We’re on to Cincinnati…” had turned around their season. The Patriots were returning to the Super Bowl for the sixth time under Belichick and Brady and, finally, this was an opportunity to shut everyone up about Spygate. If they could win this next game, against the Seahawks, it would force everyone to talk about football, and not scandal.

  The problem was that in the eyes of the NFL, the football was the scandal.

  As the on-field party was ending, a league investigation had already begun. In fact, the Patriots’ twelve footballs had been measured at halftime and eleven of them were found to be below 12.5 PSI. Early on, at least, the league seemed unaware that all footballs, no matter what their inflation level, would lose air pressure in the cool January condition. The second half had been played with alternate, properly inflated footballs. Jim McNally had already been questioned for thirty minutes by NFL security at the stadium.

  Now the chain had begun, in the middle of the night, and when it reached the Patriots and their fans, it was going to make them sick. McNally, just before midnight, spoke with equipment manager Dave Schoenfeld and told him that he’d been interviewed. With all the buzz on Twitter, Berj Najarian, one of Belichick’s closest advisers, texted Schoenfeld at 1:45 a.m. The chain was rattling now, moving quickly. Najarian and Schoenfeld met in Najarian’s office just before two a.m. Twenty minutes later, Pro Football Talk had a story about ball deflation. Newsday had a story at four a.m. The chain reached Brady and thousands of Patriots fans when three WEEI radio hosts, John Dennis, Gerry Callahan, and Kirk Minihane, interviewed him on air and asked what he knew about the story.

  “I think I’ve heard it all at this point,” he said with a laugh.

  Minihane
asked him directly if the Patriots deflated balls, and he said no.

  The atmosphere was thick now, and no amount of mind-over-matter exercises would allow anyone, even Belichick, to ignore the noise. The noise was the norm. People wanted someone to blame. Same old Patriots, cheating again. That was the national refrain. Initially, the fingers pointed toward Belichick. But when he said, on January 22, that he had no idea about ball preparation and that Brady would know more, there was anticipation that Brady did it.

  On the afternoon of the twenty-second, Brady stood before a press gathering that was clearly expecting some type of confession. That much was clear with their questions, their rising incredulity, and, at times, barely camouflaged anger when they weren’t getting what they expected. Brady stood before them in a gray sweatshirt with a white T-shirt underneath it. He had on a Patriots winter hat with the team’s original logo, the hiking minuteman, Pat Patriot, on the front. He was casual. The crowd was frenzied.

  First question: “When and how did you supposedly alter the balls?”

  The tone was set with that one, and it never ventured far from that register: Brady was expected to confess. The majority of these people believed that he did it. The majority of Americans, too. This session alone, with its fifty questions about air pressure and texture and grip, was going to more than make up for the first fourteen seasons of his career, when criticism was at a minimum.

  “I didn’t alter the ball in any way” was how Brady’s response to the first question began.

  Maybe Brady knew then that people didn’t believe him. Or maybe it was that second question: “This has raised a lot of uncomfortable conversations for people around this country who view you as their idol. The question they’re asking themselves is, ‘What’s up with our hero?’ Can you answer right now, is Tom Brady a cheater?”

  These were real journalists. But it was as if they were actors spoofing journalists. It was wild. It was still early in the process, so all the terms weren’t known yet. Some of the questioners talked about actual pounds of air instead of air pressure. No one mentioned the ideal gas law—a scientific law not on the legal books. There weren’t questions about the Colts’ footballs or the process the officials went through to get those balls on the field.

  This was all on Brady now.

  “I feel like I’ve always played within the rules. I would never do anything to break the rules. I believe in fair play and I respect the league and everything they’re doing to try to create a very competitive playing field for all the NFL teams. It’s a very competitive league. Every team is trying to do the best they can to win every week. I believe in fair play and I’ll always believe in that for as long as I’m playing.”

  The questions kept coming, some fair and most not, some neutral and most with a presumption of guilt. If they listened, Brady was telling them about the way he looked at the world, football and otherwise, but it was too much of a circus to consider the thoughtfulness that he’d put into moments like this. “I think part of being in this position and putting yourself under a spotlight like this and being open for criticism, I think that’s very much a part of being a professional athlete,” he said at one point. “We can only express to you what our side is and how we approach it. Then everyone is going to make their own conclusion.”

  He answered many questions that way, and he had no idea how long it would last. Just past the quarter pole was the sixteenth question: “How does it make you feel that they’re calling your team cheaters?”

  Answer: “I think a big part of playing here is trying to ignore the outside forces and influences and people that are maybe fans of our team or not fans of your team; or fans of yourself or not fans of yourself. Like I said, everybody is entitled to an opinion. Those opinions rest with those people. I think you can just go out and try to be the best you can be, deal with people with respect, with honesty, with integrity, have a high moral standard. I’ve always really tried to exemplify that as an athlete. I’ll continue to try to do that.”

  Question twenty-seven: “Is this a moment to just say ‘I’m sorry’ to the fans?”

  Question twenty-eight: “For the fans that are watching and looking into that camera, what do you say?”

  Answer: “I’m not sure. What would you like me to say? I’m not quite sure.”

  No one in the NFL did press conferences like this, starting from the top. Roger Goodell had been the commissioner for nearly a decade, and he’d never stood like this and addressed a free-form session from journalists demanding answers about a scandal. Belichick certainly wasn’t going to field fifty questions like this and answer them all patiently and expansively. Then again, perhaps the Belichick method was justified, because for all of Brady’s direct eye contact and elaboration on answers, the room didn’t believe him. He knew it. His friends knew it, too.

  His business manager, former Patriots employee Will McDonough, received an e-mail from Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Christofferson following the press conference: “The sanctimonious finger wagging over deflation might be the most absurd thing I have seen the media do, which is saying something. Some of the questions TB was asked today were more obnoxious than a congressional inquiry. Sucks that he had to go through that in the absence of any actual facts. In my business, those kind of questions get you sanctioned by a judge. He was amazingly calm. I’m sure he’s relying on friends like you to keep him sane.”

  ESPN and other outlets carried the press conference live. When it was over, the ESPN crew of host Trey Wingo and analysts Mark Brunell, Jerome Bettis, and Brian Dawkins gave their opinions on what they had seen. None of them believed Brady. Brunell, a former quarterback, appeared to be emotional and on the verge of tears. “I just didn’t believe what Tom Brady had to say,” he said. Bettis said Brady missed an opportunity to take responsibility and admit a simple mistake. After a brief lecture he concluded, “I’m disappointed in you, Tom Brady.” Dawkins lamented that this was a small deal that became a big one because “we have somebody who won’t own up.” Wingo made a reference to Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal—the daddy of all “gates.”

  Everyone on the set fell into a pattern that was becoming common in the first week of the scandal. They often mixed commentary about the condition of the football with the air pressure in the football. Brady never said he wasn’t aware of the footballs’ condition, because he was in control of that. The final say on air pressure was at the discretion of the officials. The footballs that Brady approved had nothing to do with air pressure; he approved them based on how they felt. Ideally, he wanted them inflated to the lowest level permitted by the league, which was 12.5 PSI. It was up to the officials to do the inflating. Sometimes they got it right; sometimes they pumped it to the sixteen of the Jets game; sometimes they weren’t exactly sure what they did because they couldn’t remember which gauges they used and they didn’t record relevant data.

  The day before, with the conversation about footballs and air pressure reaching NPR, CNN, and all the morning news shows, in addition to the usual sports channels and sites, other Brady friends e-mailed. One, J. J. Dudum, was exasperated by the accusations, writing, “Will you tell these idiots to shut the ‘F’ up about these deflated balls!!! Give me a break!!! Maybe if it was close let’s chat about it but 45–7 you kicked their Ass!! Don’t they have something better to talk about?????”

  Brady’s reply was simple, yet it summarized the moment as well as New England football since 2007.

  “We are the Patriots,” he wrote. “Everything is a big deal.”

  They were going to Arizona to play in the Super Bowl, the ultimate goal for every team in the league. They would meet the Seahawks, the defending champion blessed with the number one defense in the league. It was going to be their toughest game of the season. And as difficult as the game was going to be for the Patriots, it felt like it wasn’t even close to the toughest thing ahead of them.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DO YOUR JOB

  It has been
eight years since the New England Patriots first learned about branding. The powerful kind, the type that defies all reassurances and historical truths. Eight years ago, they were caught doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in sports history, and they were forever typecast as cheaters in all but six states.

  They’ve found time does not heal all wounds. America is not always forgiving to those who admit mistakes. And while slates can be wiped clean, this is the Internet era; for better or worse, some people and some things are destined for permanence.

  There is no question that Bill Belichick understands this as he stands before a surprised media crowd on January 24. Spygate has made the Patriots suspects for life. It’s the reason Bob Kravitz, the Indianapolis columnist who broke the air-pressure story, wrote that Robert Kraft, “if he has an ounce of integrity,” should fire Belichick. It’s the reason influential TV host Michael Wilbon said the Patriots should lose their spot in the Super Bowl. Why else would former player Jerome Bettis, an analyst for ESPN, go on TV and call the Patriots “known felons”? Would the NFL leak to the media that it was “disappointed, angry and distraught” about the Patriots had it not been for 2007 and Spygate?

  Two days earlier, Tom Brady stood at Gillette and told a boisterous crowd of reporters that he had no idea why the footballs were underinflated for the conference championship game. Based on the tone of their questions and the questioners’ subsequent reports, most of them didn’t take Brady at his word. It was a new experience for him, essentially being called a liar to his face, and it stung. Now Belichick was determined to share the information he’d learned after several days of performing science projects. He wasn’t scheduled to meet with the media but alerted them at the last minute that he wanted to talk. He had simulated the treatment the Patriots give their footballs during the week. He simulated the whole process, as the team normally would, to figure out what happened. The Patriots beat the Colts on January 18, and nearly a week later the head coach is breaking many of the rules that he’d long established. He’s looking back instead of forward to the Super Bowl. He’s listening to and taking on the noise. He’s doing someone else’s job.