War Room

by Michael Holley

  It would remain a mystery until the afternoon of September 9, the Patriots’ first game of the regular season, against Mangini’s Jets. That game in New Jersey would be full of events that would lead to broken records and broken relationships; it would spark yearlong debates about integrity, excess, and authenticity from all directions—Internet posters, current and former NFL players and coaches, TV talking heads, and even a persistent U.S. senator; it would become sporting America’s most passionate numbers game, with forty-four states on the offensive, six New England states playing defense, and fifty-three players believing, correctly, that 90 percent of the country was rooting for them to fail.

  But before the NFL’s reality TV show began in Jersey, the Patriots and their fans were dealt a humiliating sucker punch on the last day of August. One of their leaders, safety Rodney Harrison, admitted that he had purchased human growth hormone online. He got the NFL-banned drug by using an illegal prescription from a doctor he’d never met. He had been caught because the district attorney’s office in Albany, New York, had been orchestrating a sting operation, trying to nab manufacturers and suppliers of illegal drugs. Harrison had given his real name and home address to a wellness center from which he placed orders in Florida, and when a doctor from that center was caught in the web, so was the Patriots’ safety. Harrison met with commissioner Roger Goodell in New York and was suspended for the first four games of the season.

  The suspension was tough to comprehend in New England. While Harrison was routinely called one of the dirtiest players in the league, the Patriots and their fans often substituted “dirtiest” for “toughest.” Teammates raved about his overall leadership and the way he commandeered young defensive backs. More than that, he had been quietly generous in the community. When a Boston church needed a new floor for its gymnasium, Harrison paid for it and insisted to one of the ministers that he didn’t have to share the news with the media. And when that same minister told Harrison that he was thinking of going back to school for an additional degree, Harrison offered to pay his tuition. But the Samaritan work got lost in the smallest print when the suspension came down.

  The sentiment began in September and lasted through the fall and winter: The Patriots, once known as everyone’s cuddly underdogs, were now viewed as frothing pit bulls.

  On a couple of awkward occasions since leaving the Patriots for the Jets, Mangini had initiated telephone conversations with Belichick. Mangini lamented how sour the relationship had become and told his former boss, “It doesn’t have to be this way.” Belichick listened but remained skeptical, and the glowing United Nations photo op never happened. The two coaches were in a tough spot. It wasn’t just because of the Patriots’ staffers and players who flat-out told Belichick that Mangini was recruiting them to New York as they all prepared for a play-off game in Denver. Mangini dismissed the charge and pointed to the Patriots’ five turnovers as the reason for the team’s first postseason loss under Belichick. It wasn’t because of New England’s tampering charges against the Jets, either. The dilemma was that their families were close, even after the exit to New York. There were times when Mangini’s wife, Julie, hosted Belichick’s children at the Manginis’ home and had them in her private suite at Giants Stadium. When they were together, the families tried their best to separate AFC East blood sport from the real world. But there was no sidestepping reality: Mangini knew the Patriots, inside and out.

  In a sense, even if he hadn’t left on questionable terms, he had to be kept at a distance. He knew too much. He was a divisional competitor who knew how the Patriots schemed, how they scouted, how they thought. Belichick was the one who had given Mangini NFL life when he was in his early twenties. He brought him to the Jets from Baltimore and brought him to New England from the Jets. Four years earlier, they had argued in a coaches’ meeting until they were both red in the face, but that did nothing to stop Mangini’s advancement, and two years after the intense argument, naturally, Mangini became defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel’s replacement when Crennel left for Cleveland.

  Mangini was different from most, if not all, of the young people Belichick hired. Most of them were grateful for the opportunity and wouldn’t dream of crossing him, in any circumstance. Mangini was grateful, too, but he seemed to hold an “All is fair…” attitude when it came to debating Belichick in a meeting or competing against him on the field. There didn’t seem to be many boundaries or places he wouldn’t go in a competitive situation with Belichick. He may have been the only Belichick disciple who felt that way.

  So it wasn’t a surprise when the men found themselves at an impasse during one of their last clipped conversations. Each of their organizations thought that the other had been guilty of stationing a cameraman in a forbidden area of their stadium, with the purpose of videotaping coaches’ signals. The Jets believed it happened to them in September 2006; the Patriots felt it happened to them during a play-off game between the teams in January 2007. With the constant back-and-forth and mistrust, it didn’t seem that the relationship between Mangini and Belichick could get any worse. But it did.

  In the Northeast, one of the best things about the start of the NFL season is that you can simultaneously experience summer and fall. All the sports schedules say that fall is just a few weeks away, with the arrival of play-off baseball and NHL and NBA training camps, yet the weather is still made for T-shirts, flip-flops, and the beach. It was a thought that everyone in the New York metropolitan area could relate to on September 9.

  A crowd of nearly eighty thousand filed into Giants Stadium on a day that you wished you could order on demand: plentiful sun, 80 degrees, and just enough wind to keep anyone from complaining that it was too hot. The Patriots and Jets were minutes away from kicking off their season and continuing a rivalry that was rare for pro sports; while some rivalries are made-for-TV only, this one was just as nasty, if not nastier, when no one was looking. As usual, Mangini and Belichick strolled the sidelines without glancing at each other, while their families laughed and talked together in a suite high above the field. The stadium had a familiar first-game hum, a combination of excitement and the nerves of not knowing what to expect. Fans had it, and so did Josh McDaniels.

  “I didn’t know if I felt great. I didn’t know if I was scared to death; I wasn’t quite sure,” he says. “I just thought, ‘We’ve got a chance to do some good things. I’m just not sure how this is all going to unfold.’ With Randy missing the entire preseason, we still hadn’t played together.”

  It was Patriots-Jets, so most eyes in the stadium were fixed on the field in the first quarter. Tom Brady had already connected with one of his new receivers, Wes Welker, for an eleven-yard scoring play and a quick 7–0 lead. There was no need for anyone to be looking at the sideline, unless it was someone on the lookout for a camera. Early in the game, Jets security had noticed a Patriots videographer, Matt Estrella, on the New England sideline. He was focusing on the New York defensive coaches and their hand signals. Within seconds, Estrella was escorted off the field, his camera was confiscated, and he was held in one of the stadium’s private rooms.

  Suddenly there were two events happening at the stadium that would have the nation talking for the rest of the year. The one that could be seen by both live and national audiences was impressive. The Patriots’ Ellis Hobbs returned the third-quarter kickoff an NFL-record 108 yards for a touchdown and a 21–7 lead. Later in the third, Moss ran toward rookie cornerback Darrelle Revis as if he wanted to go down the right sideline. But he noticed the way he was being covered so he made an abrupt left turn; ran across the entire field while being hopelessly pursued by a linebacker, cornerback, and safety; and looked in the sky to find a heave from Brady descending into his arms. The only thing that kept it from being the typical, improvised backyard touchdown play was that most backyards don’t stretch fifty-one yards. It was a dazzling play from a pitch-and-catch standpoint, but more telling was the amount of time Brady had to throw the football. He and the Patriots we
re almost impossible to beat if there was that much time for decision-making.

  “You know what that day was? To me, that day changed football,” McDaniels says. “That changed the way I perceived what we could do offensively in the NFL. I had never been a part of a game that things like that happened, and you’re going, ‘Man, we called a simple play and all of a sudden we scored a touchdown or we gained forty yards.’ It didn’t happen the previous year. We worked harder because we didn’t have those kind of explosive players. And it opened up a whole new world for me.”

  Unfortunately for the Patriots, the day wasn’t solely about their 38–14 win and their exciting offensive aesthetics. By the time most Patriots went to work on Monday morning, a new term was pushing its way into pop culture. People were calling it “Spygate.” The news of what happened in the first quarter was initially reported by a Jets website. According to the report, the camera and its contents were turned over to the NFL and the league was investigating the matter. It didn’t take long for the mainstream media to pick up the torch, and what a torch it was. The story went viral at warp speed, and soon it was the hottest topic in America.

  The hours between Monday afternoon, when most football fans had heard about the story, and Thursday night, when the commissioner announced his ruling, could best be described as a verbal takedown of everything the Patriots had accomplished. They were officially accused of taping an opponent’s defensive signals, but the Patriots were put on trial for dozens of other claims and slights. The composite national view was, “If they would videotape coaches’ signals, what wouldn’t they do to win? I’ll believe almost anything.”

  Breaking news was mixed in with anecdotes and speculation, and it created a torrent of acid rain for the Patriots. There was a report that they had rigged the headsets and phones in their stadium so other teams couldn’t communicate. There were reports that they taped mikes to their defensive players’ jerseys so they could record the quarterback’s verbiage and cadences. There was a story from Pittsburgh receiver Hines Ward, a member of two teams that lost conference championships to the Patriots, who focused on how suspicious it was that New England defenders were able to call out some of their plays. LaDainian Tomlinson, whose San Diego team was scheduled to play the Patriots in week two, said, “I think the Patriots actually live by the saying, ‘If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.’ They live off that statement. Nothing surprises me, really. You keep hearing the different stories about the stuff that they do.”

  And that was just the buildup to the ruling. The commissioner didn’t give credence to any of the wild reports; his focus was the tapes and what to do about them. The bad news for the Patriots came on Thursday night when Goodell announced that he was fining Belichick the maximum allowed, $500,000, as well as fining the organization $250,000, taking away a 2008 first-round pick—or a second and a third in the unlikely event that they didn’t make the play-offs—and seizing all signal-related tapes and notes in the Patriots’ possession. It was an unprecedented punishment. Belichick said in a statement that his misinterpretation of a league bylaw on cameras was a mistake. He was referring to a phrase that stated it was illegal to use electronic equipment “that might aid the team during the playing of a game.” In the statement, Belichick said, “We have never used sideline video to obtain a competitive advantage while a game was in progress.” The assumption, then, was that the Patriots were using the tapes for what former offensive coordinator Charlie Weis would call “research and development.” But Belichick never specified in the statement why the team was taping, and he wouldn’t comment on the matter for the rest of the season.

  Seemingly a few seconds after Goodell’s ruling, the talking heads were out with more criticism.

  Don Shula, the NFL’s all-time leader in coaching wins, said there should be an asterisk next to Belichick’s record. Fox analyst and four-time Super Bowl champion Terry Bradshaw, in an open letter on TV, told Belichick, “You are now known as a cheater,” and added that he hurt the team and the New England fans “all because of [his] arrogance.” On NBC, former player Cris Collinsworth said the penalty handed down by Goodell wasn’t enough. He said he wanted to see Belichick suspended for the next meeting with the Jets as well as a play-off game.

  Belichick was aware of all that was being said, and he had a thought: “We’ve got to be ready to play on Sunday.” He knew he could spend every minute of his time at the office talking about staying focused, but those players were going to be confronted with Spygate, everywhere, as soon as they left the building. On the afternoon of September 15, the day before the Patriots’ second game of the season, Belichick had an idea.

  A few years earlier, he had been on a cross-country flight to Los Angeles and was seated next to a man wearing a Patriots golf shirt. “Are you the new coach?” Belichick joked, and the man, a comedian named Lenny Clarke, replied, “Yes, I am.” Clarke had been born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and once worked as a janitor in Cambridge’s city hall. He and some colleagues went out to a bar one night and saw a few comedians, and one of Clarke’s janitor friends said, “You’re funnier than he is. You should be up there.” Thus, a comedy and film career was born. As he sat next to Clarke on the flight, Belichick worked on studying draft prospects and Clarke worked on a movie script. When they landed, they exchanged numbers and promised to stay in touch.

  By September 2007, they had talked and been to dinner many times. So Clarke wasn’t surprised on the fifteenth when he was sitting in the owners’ box at Fenway Park and a call came in from Belichick. Clarke was enjoying himself, not just because it was a Red Sox—Yankees game, but because he was hanging out with another comedian, Steve Martin.

  “Lenny, I need a favor,” Belichick said.

  “You name it, Bill. Whatever you need.”

  “Lenny, I need you to come speak to the team tonight. It’s been a rough week. Just come in and tell some jokes. You can rip me, whatever you need to do.”

  “But I’m at Fenway right now,” Clarke said, realizing that the Patriots were meeting at least a half hour away in suburban Norwood.

  “I know,” Belichick said. “There’s a car waiting for you behind home plate.”

  Clarke left the park, went over some ideas as he was driven to the hotel where the Patriots were meeting, and eventually walked into a room full of players and coaches. He delivered twenty-five minutes of risqué material. He got ahold of a minirecorder and made fun of Belichick. He made fun of players who even thought of being listed on the injury report. “This poor bastard has a hole in his heart and comes back from a stroke,” he said, pointing to Tedy Bruschi, “and some of you still haven’t recovered from sprained ankles.” He went down the line: Belichick, Bruschi, Brady, Moss. No one was safe. The players were in tears from laughing, and dozens of them came up to him afterward to tell him how great he had been.

  The message was clear. There was no need to tiptoe around what happened and have an internal pall over it. It was still football. That was their internal philosophy; they were far less carefree when challenged and questioned by fans, former and current players and coaches, and the media.

  In New York, Mangini told his close friends that he never wanted Spygate to go as far as it did. He said he thought the matter could be worked out between the Patriots and Jets, and if it were up to him, he wouldn’t have advised Jets security and upper management to be so aggressive in their handling of the situation. His feeling was that as he was coaching, his own organization was taking things further than he would have been willing to go; for example, he never wanted the league involved. His front office did, though. It was Patriots-Jets. It was always bitter, and the feeling was that the Patriots would have done the same thing if they had caught the Jets red-handed. That was an organizational view, but because of Mangini’s history with Belichick, this became his story and his dime-dropping. By the time he walked off the field on September 9, wearing his charcoal Jets shirt, he really was the villain in black as far as
the Patriots were concerned.

  It no longer mattered to them how Mangini felt. They didn’t care that he actually saw things the way they did and that he believed the taping in no way undermined what they had accomplished as champions. They didn’t care that it bothered Mangini to see their dynasty, his dynasty, too, questioned and mocked. It didn’t matter. Some Patriots coaches with whom he had remained close stopped taking his calls. Others, for obvious political reasons, were sure to keep him at a public distance. Some players in New England would soon refer to him as Fredo, the resentful Corleone who betrayed his brother Michael in The Godfather. Unlike Mario Puzo’s characters, there was no acting involved between the coaches. The relationship was over.

  The Harrison suspension, the Spygate penalties, the wild rumors of what they’d done, and the critics all simplified things for the team. They could have been stars of a new documentary, America Hates the Patriots, and as a result they became protective of their championships and defensive when anyone questioned their achievements. They had to send a message, and winning games wasn’t going to be enough. They played with an attitude and a sneer, and if they didn’t roll teams, especially those who had publicly doubted them, they were disappointed.

  “Yeah, man. I was angry as hell,” Bruschi says. “It was a lot of things. First, it had become open season, kind of an onslaught, on Bill Belichick. Then I felt anger that the media or our fans would think that any type of videotaping we did would help us win a football game … sometimes from film work, I’d recognize all the plays before they happened. I’d know formations, techniques, where the ball’s going. But the other team would still get the first down, because their players are good, too. Or I’d get blocked. That’s football.