War Room

by Michael Holley

  “I think all of us in football, in general, are a bit myopic. I know when I was just getting started in the NFL, there was an element of rigidity in how you should dress, shave, wear your hair, speak, and behave politically. I always wanted to create a culture where everyone is passionate and intensely involved in their work, but there’s also enough levity to make the journey enjoyable.

  “We’re all driven, focused, serious, tough-ass football people. All of us in this business are that way. But I think we all crave something outside of that realm, too. We all need relief. I remember back in the day, some coaches would be aghast that you’d take ninety minutes out of the day to have a workout and have lunch. I mean, it’s something I don’t even have to address: There’s a time to work and there’s a time to pull back. Everyone in the building is very aware of that.”

  During that first interview, Dimitroff and Smith had talked about building a culture in football that was vibrant, authentic, and honest. They both hated the thought, for example, of leaving the job of releasing a player to someone else. They agreed that when it was time to release someone, the best way to do it was for them to be in the room together and be honest about the decision to move on. It was the best way to treat people.

  It’s one thing to have a theoretical philosophy and something different to have to put your thoughts into practice. Within a couple weeks on the job, Dimitroff made two moves that earned him instant respect among the scouts and let them know what kind of leader, and man, he was.

  The first move proved that he was practical and adaptable. The scouts had spent the fall preparing for the draft, using the language of their own scouting system. Dimitroff was planning to overhaul the system and install the one used by the Patriots, which was difficult to learn quickly. Since Dimitroff had been the college director in New England, he was confident that he knew the draft, even if he knew it in terminology that his new staff didn’t understand. So he agreed that any kind of system change should wait until after the draft, and in the meantime he would begin to communicate in the language that they had been using.

  “But I wanted to make it clear that a change was coming,” he says. “I wanted them to start thinking in the new Falcon vernacular.”

  It’s a good thing he didn’t make them start thinking about it immediately, because it was going to take a Dimitroff scouting seminar, and most likely a full year, for everyone to be fluent in it. It was a revolutionary grading scale that was based on the value of a specific position. It forced a scout to go deeper, eliminate gray areas, and say exactly what they projected a player would be in the NFL. The idea was for the grade, with 1 being the lowest, 9 being the highest, and 6 representing a starter, to reflect the value to the team. For example, based on today’s NFL, it made sense that a number two running back would have a 5.9 grade, which the scale says is a backup, and for a third receiver or third corner to have a 6.3, which the scale considers a starter. The grade factors in a passing-heavy league, where third corners and receivers are heavily valued.

  The scale was also one of comparatives. The idea was to know the Falcons’ roster, one to fifty-three, and be able to provide a snapshot for who a prospect is compared to his Falcon counterpart. It wasn’t good enough to say that a player was a “first-round pick” (you’d be thrown out of the room for that) or someone who could start “by his second year in the league.” The system was created and tweaked to make it leaner and more specific. What was the player’s value to the Falcons? And ultimately, who on our roster is this kid from Texas or Alabama or USC going to replace?

  It was a system full of numbers, colors, and upper- and lowercase letters that the scouts would have to learn, too. It had numerous columns for athletic ability, positional strength, and change of direction. It also had grades for character, which took on greater importance given where the franchise had just been.

  The new Falcon vernacular wasn’t just the grading scale that they were about to learn. It was an emphasis on consistency, transparency, and loyalty. What annoyed the new GM more than anything was waffling, especially from leadership that was supposed to be setting a tone. As liberal as he was in many aspects of his life, he couldn’t compromise when it came to inconsistency. He’d call people out on it. He’d call himself out on it. He wanted anyone working for him to know what he was thinking, whether they liked to hear it or not; that’s why he felt compelled to have a conversation with a man he respected, college scouting director Phil Emery.

  Emery had been intrigued by the scouting process since his sophomore year at Wayne State University in Michigan, his home state. He was a member of the football team then, and he remembered seeing a scout, sixteen-millimeter projector in tow, on his way to the football office. He thought it probably was one of the best jobs in the country, being able to travel, meet new people, and see some of the top athletes in America. He had overseen the previous three drafts in Atlanta as director, drafts that had produced players such as Roddy White, Jonathan Babineaux, Stephen Nicholas, and Justin Blalock. The Michael Vick situation had brought ridicule to the entire organization, but there were many smart football men like Emery who wanted to prove that there was actual talent beneath the rubble.

  Dimitroff told Emery that he liked his work, but he was making Dave Caldwell the new college director. Caldwell had worked several years with the Colts, and when he and Dimitroff saw each other on the road, they talked football and had similar ideas. When Dimitroff was hired, there were two guys he knew he had to get: Caldwell and Lionel Vital, who had worked with two generations of Dimitroffs. Emery was offered a job as national scout, but there was no way around it: It was a demotion.

  He was crushed.

  “I felt a genuine loss and underwent somewhat of a personal grieving period that most likely anyone goes through when you lose your ‘spot’ in life,” Emery says. Dimitroff told him that news of the change was just between them, and he wanted Emery to keep his standing as college director through the upcoming draft. Emery appreciated how the difficult situation was handled, and Dimitroff made a note of how much class and professionalism Emery displayed the entire time.

  “I worked very hard at developing a positive relationship with Thomas and Dave,” Emery says. “I wanted everyone to feel comfortable around me after the transition so I could continue to contribute positively to the scouting process. I decided for that to happen I needed to be the most positive person in the building about the new direction we were taking through Thomas’s leadership.”

  No one would have guessed that Dimitroff and Emery had ever had an issue. As the Falcons got closer to the April draft, Emery was right there next to the GM as he tried to figure out which player would be taken with the third overall pick. Emery traveled with a group of executives and coaches to private workouts for Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco, Chad Henne, and Glenn Dorsey. Emery respected Dimitroff. And Dimitroff respected him so much that, when a better opportunity arose for Emery a year later, he was his top advocate.

  Office dynamics aside, there was plenty of work to do on the Falcons’ roster. Any GM, whether in the NFL or fantasy football, could see that the team’s top need was a quarterback. Vick had taken the franchise out at the knees, so even when he was finished serving his nearly two-year prison sentence he wasn’t going to return. But the Vick issue was complicated. He had been so charming, to ownership, his teammates, and his fans, that he’d actually had an impact on the Falcons even after he was gone.

  Five players, Roddy White, Joe Horn, Alge Crumpler, DeAngelo Hall, and Chris Houston, had all been fined by the NFL for on-field tributes to Vick in 2007. On the morning of December 10, Vick received his prison sentence. That night, the Falcons played a home game against New Orleans. White wore a black T-shirt with white lettering that read FREE MIKE VICK. The shirt was under his jersey, but it was revealed when Horn pulled up the jersey so the crowd and cameras could see it. Hall was on the field before the game with a Vick poster. The other players wore black eye strips with written tributes to Vi
ck.

  Dimitroff believed he could get a quarterback in the draft, but clearly replacing the quarterback wasn’t the only issue. Among other things, the Falcons needed to be psychologically free of Vick, too. They needed help everywhere. They didn’t have a reliable left tackle who could protect a quarterback; they were either too old at the position, with thirty-six-year-old Wayne Gandy, or too young and questionable, with twenty-three-year-old Quinn Ojinnaka. They had been ranked in the league’s bottom four on offense and defense. Their leading rusher, Warrick Dunn, rushed for just 720 yards and averaged just over 3 yards per carry.

  They also had a couple players who got the GM’s attention more for their attitude than their play. One of those players was Hall, a cornerback who had been a top-ten pick in 2004. His 2007 season had been filled with controversy. It started with a bizarre September episode in which he melted down on the field with interference and unsportsmanlike-conduct penalties, and then had to be restrained on the sideline after yelling at his coaches. It ended with the Vick tribute. He had been selected to the Pro Bowl the previous two seasons, and those selections fed an ego that was already outsized. He was exactly the kind of player who could undermine the good intentions of a new leadership team, so he quickly became part of Dimitroff’s history: He was the first player the new GM traded.

  A couple years earlier, Dimitroff had been in Indianapolis at the Scouting Combine when he entered an elevator with a Hall of Famer. He immediately recognized Al Davis, the legendary owner of the Oakland Raiders. Dimitroff introduced himself: “Hello, Mr. Davis. I’m Thomas Dimitroff…” Davis smiled before the Patriots’ director of college scouting could continue. “Ah, Dimitroff,” Davis said. “I knew your father.” They had a brief and pleasant chat.

  In March 2008, after just two months on the job, Dimitroff talked with Davis about acquiring Hall. Throughout his career, Davis had been riveted by fast receivers and corners. He envisioned pairing Hall with the Raiders’ Nnamdi Asomugha, considered to be the best corner in the NFL. Dimitroff was looking for multiple draft picks so he could start to fill in some of the numerous holes on his roster. They agreed that the Raiders would send the Falcons a second-round pick in 2008 and a fifth-rounder in 2009. The Raiders would happily take Hall and sign him to a $70 million contract with $24 million in guarantees.

  “I’m just relieved, happy to be out of a bad situation in Atlanta, a situation that wasn’t the right fit for me,” Hall told his hometown paper, the Virginian-Pilot. “I’m happy to go to Oakland where I’m wanted, to team up with Nnamdi Asomugha and create a great secondary. I think you can argue me and Nnamdi will probably be the two best corners ever to team up, side by side… I’m a Pro Bowl player, he’s a Pro Bowl player. It’s just going to be great to have another guy alongside me that I feel confident can hold his own weight. I don’t have to worry about teams avoiding me, because they can’t avoid both of us.”

  For considerably less cash than the Raiders spent on Hall, the Falcons had made their mark in free agency three weeks earlier by signing the best available running back, Michael Turner. He had spent his entire career as a backup in San Diego, but Turner projected well as a starter. There was no question Turner’s 250-pound body could take the punishment of being an every-down back, so Dimitroff thought that offering him a contract with $15 million in guarantees was worth the risk.

  When it was time for Dimitroff to make his first draft pick for the Falcons, there wasn’t much uncertainty. A few nights before the draft he talked to Scott Pioli, whose Patriots were scheduled to pick seventh by virtue of their trade with the 49ers the year before. There didn’t have to be much secrecy with Pioli regarding the pick because there was zero chance the Patriots would be drafting Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan.

  “Are you sure about him, Thomas?” Pioli asked, knowing the gamble of taking a quarterback that high. A miss at that position in the top five was the quickest route to unemployment.

  “Definitely,” Dimitroff replied.

  He had seen all the throws on tape and in person. He had interviewed him. At times, he even allowed himself to think that Ryan had certain leadership qualities that reminded him of Tom Brady. There was no hesitation on draft day when it was time for the Falcons to pick. They took Ryan. As the draft got into the early teens, there was a furious run on tackles. Over a span of eight picks, five tackles were selected. The Falcons needed someone to protect Ryan, so they made a trade with Washington, using the second-rounder they got from Oakland to help them get back into the first round. They selected USC’s Sam Baker.

  They still had a second-rounder, even after the trade for Baker, and they used that one on Oklahoma middle linebacker Curtis Lofton, whom they expected to be an immediate starter.

  After the draft, it was time to spend more money. Ryan was signed to a six-year contract for $72 million. Dimitroff had been told by a former GM, Ernie Accorsi, to concentrate on one area of team-building at a time. Don’t try to fix everything all at once because it could become overwhelming. In fewer than six months on the job, Dimitroff had hired a new coach, installed a new grading system, signed the top free-agent running back on the market, traded a former top-ten pick, and made a strong financial commitment to a top-ten pick of his own.

  He believed that all of the additions would be good fits in Atlanta. These Falcons were long-term builders now.

  7

  New England Departure, Kansas City Arrival

  About thirty minutes before the first game of the 2008 regular season, Scott Pioli walked unnoticed toward the club level of Gillette Stadium. He was on his way to the coaches’ box, where he always sat in the front row and watched the games. It was amazing: He had been going through this routine for nearly a decade, having helped assemble four Super Bowl teams and three champions, yet he blended into a crowd of Patriots fans without so much as a “Hey, aren’t you…?”

  He didn’t mind the anonymity, and on a few occasions he was teased about it mercilessly. Once, he had driven to work and parked his car in front of a stadium sign that read RESERVED FOR SCOTT PIOLI. He remained in the car to finish a cell phone conversation he was having and he was interrupted by a security guard’s hasty rap on the window.

  “Excuse me, sir. You’re going to have to move. This space is for Scott Pioli.”

  Pioli smiled.

  “I am Scott Pioli.”

  There was the time in New Orleans when he couldn’t get into the Patriots’ Super Bowl party because security didn’t recognize him. Another time, he and Dallas were at dinner outside of Boston with another couple, Berj and Regina Najarian. Berj, one of his closest friends, was Bill Belichick’s executive assistant. The couples had planned to go to a restaurant run by celebrity chef Ming Tsai, and when they arrived, the chef put on a show for them. He was thrilled to see Berj and asked several football questions, but he didn’t know much about the other guy.

  “What do you do for work?” the chef asked Pioli.

  “I work for the Patriots, too,” he replied.

  “Really? What do you do?”

  For the rest of that night, it was the punch line that the couples kept coming back to, over wine and laughter, putting the emphasis on different words to keep the joke going. “So, Scott, what do you do?” They messed with him for a while about that one. He could take it, and it was even funnier because everyone at the table knew just how thorough his work with the Patriots was. The NFL knew who Pioli was, too, and that’s why he had become known more for turning down job interviews than going on them. And those were just the teams that had followed procedure and asked the Patriots for permission to speak with him; a couple teams had gone the back-channel route, procedure be damned, and let Pioli know that his own universe could exist in their city, with total football control and all the money and perks he’d ever need. He always said no, easily, because money and power would never be the combination that would lure him away from New England.

  Maybe people didn’t know his face, but they knew his name an
d respected his brain. He was the man on the other side of the ampersand, Belichick & Pioli, whom everyone mentioned from the Combine until the day after the draft. It was the duo that helped turn the cliché about the draft, the inexact science of it all, into a myth. The Patriots had been extremely exact in round one with their picks, with most of them either known as among the best in the league at their positions or at least solid contributors to championship-level teams. The first-round aberration came with Laurence Maroney, and they could go back to their notes on him and study the intense internal disagreements that preceded the pick. Good drafts were a huge reason Pioli sat in that home coaches’ box and, from 2001 through 2007, watched his team win fifty-five of its sixty-six home games, a winning percentage of 83.

  Similar expectations were in place for the 2008 season. The Spygate heat from the previous September had cooled, and by the spring it had made its way to South Park, with Belichick’s “I misinterpreted the rules” being the fodder for an episode on the irreverent cartoon. Belichick and Patriots owner Robert Kraft had apologized for the incident again at the owners’ meetings, with Kraft’s contrition coming off so sincerely that he was given a standing ovation. In an extraordinary move, the Boston Herald ran apologies on its front and back pages for publishing a false story on the eve of the Super Bowl. It turned out the paper’s claim that the Patriots had taped a Saint Louis Rams walk-through before the Super Bowl couldn’t be supported, so the Herald ran large bold-type headlines that read SORRY, PATS and OUR MISTAKE. Even senator Arlen Specter, who had appointed himself as a watchdog of Spygate conspiracies, began to get distracted by other things and was on his way to making news for an abrupt switch to the Democratic Party.

  On the first Sunday in September 2008, the only sour sign from the past year actually hung in the north end zone of Gillette. It was a banner commemorating the “16–0 regular season.” The rest of the story, the postseason postscript, is what made the new addition so unsightly for most fans. As Pioli sat in the coaches’ box, with plenty of time before kickoff, he ignored the banner and instead looked to the field and the red uniforms of the opponent, the Kansas City Chiefs. When he saw the jagged white arrowhead with the red interlocking “KC” in the classic logo, he didn’t think of how young the Chiefs were and how the Patriots were heavy favorites in the opener. Every time he saw Kansas City, he thought of the connections, personal and visceral, he had made with the franchise.