Patriot Reign (17 page)
Authors: Michael Holley
The
Patriots are one of four teams with no affiliation to either National or
Blesto. Their scouts are supposed to have the football skills to recognize
talent and the journalistic skills to find untold stories. They are respectful
and relentless when they are on the nation’s campuses. They play
by a school’s rules, but they are resourceful enough to
find the answers they need.
“Let’s say you and I are scouting and
we’re at Virginia today,” says Licht, who was a trusted Patriots’ evaluator
until he left for Philadelphia after the 2003 draft. “You might be close
friends with the defensive backs coach. He’s going to tell you things that he’s
not going to tell me. So I’m going to try to dig to get that information. But
in the end I know he’s not telling me the whole …he’s not lying, but he’s not
telling me what I want to hear. He’s not addressing some of the concerns I
have. My job as a scout is to find it out. Whether that’s trying to take you
out for drinks, getting it out of you that way. Or giving you something so you
give me something back. Every scout has his own little way of doing it.”
Bobby Grier, who hired Licht in 1999, oversaw the Patriots’ scouting
system before Pioli did. Grier made nine first- and second-round draft picks
between 1997 and 1999. Just one of the nine picks, Kevin Faulk, is still with
the team. The Patriots began to rot in those years, from their talent to their
salary cap to their spirit. Grier and former head coach Pete Carroll—a pair who
did not vacation together on Nantucket as Pioli and Belichick do—took the brunt
of the blame and lost their jobs because of it. Their scouting philosophy was
different from this one.
“Your balls weren’t on the line if a guy
didn’t make it,” Licht says. “It was clear that the scouts were telling them
who the players were and they were going to make the decisions. Bill and Scott
make the decisions now. But your balls are on the line if you say a player
isn’t going to be a problem off the field. If he is, then it’s your fault.
You’re responsible for the players the Patriots draft.
You’re not responsible for how players turn out somewhere else.
“If I said a guy was a first-round pick, the Colts picked him, and if he
turned out to be a bust, they wouldn’t have looked down on me. They wouldn’t
have said I was a bad grader. Because that player in the
Patriots’
system might have been successful.”
Pioli reads all the things the scouts have written and listens to many of
the things they have to say. During a meeting he knows whom to push in front of
everyone and whom to pull to the side. It is a diverse group. Pioli has known
his director of college scouting, Tom Dimitroff, since Cleveland, when he
worked with Dimitroff’s father. In this environment of long days and fast food,
Dimitroff may be the only vegetarian in the league. Kyle O’Brien is the young
scout from Harvard. Hallum is an expert on southern sayings and offensive
linemen. Lionel Vital is the former NFL and Canadian Football League player who
sometimes acts out the words on his reports. When “L. V.” says a lineman has
strong hands, he clenches to illustrate. Larry Cook is the former driver’s ed
teacher with an instructor’s sense for something amiss. Cook was skeptical when
he watched former UCLA quarterback Cade McNown work out—and scrape to find
receivers to catch the ball for him. That was when he knew there must be a
story with McNown and his teammates. And there was a story. When the Bears
drafted McNown in the first round, there were some scouts who were uneasy with
the pick. The Bears would soon find out why: McNown developed a reputation as a
quarterback who was not tough enough or accountable enough to be a great
starter.
The Patriots scouts’ knowledge of the system, originally
created by men like Bucko Kilroy and the late Dick
Steinberg, is essential. Pioli and Ernie Adams wrote in new material and
tweaked some of the old information to make it precisely for Belichick’s
Patriots. You have to know the book and system terminology. Have to. You never
know, as Licht learned one Friday afternoon in October 2002, when a random quiz
is coming. He walked by Belichick’s office on his way to his own. The coach
asked if he could talk to him about “a few guys.” Fifty players later, Licht
was still answering Belichick’s questions.
“And then, while you’re
talking, he’s typing notes into his computer,” Licht says. “And he’ll say,
‘Yeah, yeah. I saw this guy versus Penn State. He’s just kind of flopping
around. I don’t think that’s our type of guy.’ ”
“Our kind of guy”
is someone who can be quantified. The Patriots’ grading system for players has
its own music and melody. It is the marriage of science and art, instinct and
intellect. There is a New England alphabet and New England numerology. Every
player who puts on a silver helmet is defined in these terms.
First, there is a twelve-letter lowercase alphabet. These are known as
“alerts.” A lower-case “a” does not stand for excellence; a player gets that if
there are concerns about his age, either too young or too old. A “c” is for a
character concern. An “x” is for an injury problem. A “t” is someone who will
make special-teams coach Brad Seely happy, while a “tt” is a special-teamer so
good—someone on the level of a Steve Tasker or a Bennie Thompson—that he can
make the roster for his teams ability alone. A report, for example, reading
“6.50ly” should be clear to everyone: that’s an overachiever who is a “Make
It+” player, which is a solid pro. He is a transfer student, which means the
scouts had better have the inside details of why he
transferred from his previous school. Putting a “y” on a player lets Pioli know
that there has been a transfer. The “l” alert is for someone who finished his
college career at a lower level of competition, either Division 1-AA, Division
2, or Division 3.
The scouts also use thirteen letters in the
upper-case alphabet, although you can double or triple the letters in some
cases to make your point. The top two letters—“A+” and “A”—mean what you would
expect them to mean. If Pioli and Belichick see those letters on a report, they
know they are looking at a player who will be wearing a yellow jacket and
giving a speech on the steps of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. A “Q” is a rare
player who happens to be height-deficient. “C” is for some circumstance—it
could be anything—that has restricted a very good player’s production. A “P” is
for players such as Adam Archuleta of the Rams and Mike Vrabel and Tedy Bruschi
of the Patriots. They are top projection players who are being counted on to
play a position in the pros that they didn’t in college. Bruschi was a
defensive lineman at Arizona who became a linebacker with the Patriots. Vrabel
was an All-Conference defensive end at Ohio State who became a linebacker,
first with the Steelers and then in New England.
“Just remember,”
Pioli said in an early draft meeting, “Bill can do things with ‘P’ types if
they’re good enough. We’ve got two starting linebackers that are projection
players.”
When the scouts are asked to put a player into a
specific box, they have eight groupings from which to choose:
- Starter: 9.00–9.99 A+, 8.00–8.99 A, and Q
(height-deficient) 8.00–8.99 - Circumstantial Starter—a first-year NFL starter whose production has been
restricted by some circumstance, which may include an NCAA rules problem,
problems with an agent, or a personal or family conflict: C7.00–7.99 - Make It +—a player who is not expected to start in his first
season but is expected to contribute in year one and eventually develop into a
starter:6.50–6.99 - Dirty Starter—could start, but
something about the player is restrictive (maybe not enough speed or athletic
ability); the manual says this could be the category for over- and
underachievers: 6.00–6.49 - Make It—a backup who won’t win
or lose a game for you: 5.50–5.99 - Free Agent—not
expected to make the team but could rise to the “Make It” level with time in
NFL Europe or on the practice squad: 5.00–5.49 - Pats
Reject—a reject by Patriot standards, but could land somewhere else in the
NFL:4.90–4.99 - Reject—doesn’t belong in the NFL:
1.00
Three dimensions of a player—major factors,
critical factors, and position skills—are graded on a scale from 1 to 9: 1,
according to the manual, is a “reject,” and 9 is that Hall of Famer.
Highlighted in red, atop the grading chart, is a reminder: “The key number is
6…. If a player is 6 in any factor or skill, we will be satisfied with his
performance of this skill or critical factor. He is not going to dominate.
However, this is a solid level of performance or competence. This is the type of grade that leads a player to the
‘Make It+’ level.”
Major factors are the same for all positions.
All players are judged in seven categories: personal/behavior, athletic
ability, strength and explosion, competitiveness, toughness, mental/learning,
and injury/durability. The categories in critical factors and position skills
are in flux, depending on the position.
During the amending and
rewriting of the book, the Patriots sketched a silhouette of a quarterback and
unknowingly came up with a Tom Brady portrait. “It fits him to a T,” Pioli
says. The book says several things about what a quarterback for the Patriots
must be, but four of them stand out:
- “Be the
mentally toughest and hardest-working player on the team.” - “Be able to take a big hit and then walk into the huddle and call
the next play.” - “Have his head screwed on straight
enough to handle the pressure and scrutiny to which all NFL QB’s are subjected.
(A Ryan Leaf fiasco can cripple a franchise for years.)” (“You couldn’t get
anyone to say anything nice about Ryan Leaf when he was leaving,” Pioli
elaborated one day in his office. “His teammates were happy to see him leave
Washington State. He was an asshole.”) - “If you want to
know who the good quarterbacks are, watch the passes they complete under a
heavy rush. Watch the first downs they get on third and long, passing into
heavy coverage. Listen to what their teammates have to say
about them.” (The previous quote is from an athlete whom Brady grew up
imitating and to whom he is often compared—Joe Montana.)
The descriptions are perfect. What he doesn’t understand,
Brady teases, is that “they waited so long to take me. Come on. One hundred and
ninety-nine?”
The Patriots got lucky with Brady. He shouldn’t have
been available to them nearly two hundred picks into the draft. In one sense,
the Brady selection is a wonderful story. It allows football fans to forever
claim that championships can be won without a highly selected quarterback. But
then, the Brady story can also be perceived as an understated evaluation. If
the Patriots knew what he could be, they would have never taken Adrian Klemm
and J. R. Redmond before him. Going into the 2003 off-season, the Patriots
couldn’t have—as silly as it sounds—any Brady episodes. They would need to
recognize the most talented players early, and try to select them. But before
they could select them, they had to travel to Indianapolis. There, the entire
league would engage in the annual ritual that comes before selection. That
would be the scouting combine or, frankly, inspection.
THE MEAT MARKET
In the weeks before Indianapolis, Pioli,
Belichick, Larry Cook, and Jason Licht had begun to develop an occasional
routine. They would meet in the draft room, before the early draft meetings,
and shuffle some magnetic names on their tentative draft board. Although
Belichick’s displeasure with the defense was by now well known in the building,
he concentrated on all positions.
After they had
analyzed a player, they would line up the board. This was based on two things:
the prospect’s grade according to the team’s grading system, and the prospect’s
skills compared to people already on the team.
For example, the
Patriots had high grades for USC safety Troy Polamalu. They put one of their
positive alerts on him—“tt”—to indicate his exceptional
special-teams ability. It wasn’t enough to say, “Polamalu is good.” The more
precise question became, “Do you like Polamalu more than Lawyer Milloy? How
much better is he than Tebucky Jones?” And so on. The magnetic strip was then
placed on the board accordingly. If there was a lingering uncertainty about a
player, his name was tilted on the board, a reminder that there needed to be
more discussion or investigation.
The strip now told more of a
story: you knew where the player ranked among his college peers, and you could
see where he projected as a player with the Patriots.
It was
critical for Pioli and Belichick to have a sense of their preliminary board
before Indianapolis. Lots of things were certainly going to change between
February and April. But they still needed to have a plan for how they were
going to approach the NFL’s annual job fair. They were going to have a meeting
on February 17, the day before the combine, to talk about pro free agents. What
was the sense of going to Indianapolis and devoting an inordinate amount of
time to, say, linebackers when that would be a free agency priority? (Yet, they
had had a January 31 deadline for submitting a list of players they wanted to
interview at the National Invitational Camp, which is what the combine is
formally called. By the time the Patriots actually interviewed some of the
people on their list, their interest in those players had changed—for better or
worse.)
They had already identified the man they wanted most in
free agency. While fans and draftniks had them selecting everyone from Boss
Bailey to E. J. Henderson to Gerald Hayes, the Patriots knew the player they
needed was already in the league. It was Rosevelt Colvin of the Bears, a
twenty-five-year-old outside linebacker with pass rushing skills. Colvin was considered one of the top free agents
available. Belichick had an insider’s scouting report on him because one of his
best friends in the league, Jerry Angelo, was the Bears’ general
manager.
It wasn’t going to stop with Colvin. In the needs meeting
the day after the season, a “Star” defensive back—one who matched up in the
slot—was discussed. Belichick didn’t like what his team did on third down, and
he didn’t think Terrell Buckley was as physical as he needed to be to play
inside. So the Patriots were going into free agency and the draft looking for
two types of corners—insides and outs. They had two picks in the first
round—numbers 14 and 19—and they already knew they were likely to hold on to
the first one and draft a defensive tackle.
Maybe the plan was
loose, but they could travel to Indianapolis with it.
N
o other professional sport has
anything resembling the combine. It is a week of probing and testing, gawking
and prodding. The players are asked to strip to their shorts and told to look
straight ahead and then turn to the side as they are videotaped. They walk
around with assigned numbers and groups, which seem to be just as important as
first names. The interviews sometimes seem more like interrogations. The Crowne
Plaza at Union Station is the hotel transformed into a league
compound.
Teams can submit up to sixty players they’d
like to speak with, for fifteen minutes at a time, in their private rooms.
There is a horn for the start of the interviews, and a horn
signaling their end. The system was instituted because in the “free market”
teams would fight over players, arguing that they had gotten to the prospect
first. And silly games would be played, like a team sending attractive young
women to escort players to its headquarters.
That’s unnecessary in
the new system. All of the talking is scheduled. It is up to the coaches,
scouts, and general managers to draw out the information they most want to
hear.
“Everybody in the NFL is dealing with the same names,” says
Cook. “It’s like a lot of things. When you go to a bar at night, that girl
appeals to you. But that one over there, argh, she’s ugly. The next guy thinks
she’s pretty cute. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. We’re looking at the
same numbers, the same math, the same measurables. But we all have different
takes on what it means.”
As the Patriots welcomed players into
their Crowne Plaza suite, they were focusing mainly on character and
intelligence. They are good interviewers, mostly because they are prepared.
Sometimes they ask a player if there is anything in his background that they
should know about, even if they already know about it. Their repertoire of
interviewing techniques is diverse: good cop–bad cop, sympathetic listener,
wiseass. Pioli and Cook are almost always in the room. Coaches usually come in
when players at their positions are being interviewed. They rarely leave an
interview not knowing how they feel about a player.
When Illinois
receiver Brandon Lloyd came in, he was asked why he was choosing to do an
online “diary” of the combine. “David thought it would be a good idea,” he
said, speaking of his agent, David Dunn. They nodded. Fifteen minutes later Weis had a one-liner for the road: “Enjoy your
writings now, because when we draft you we’re going to tell you to shut the
fuck up.”
Boss Bailey, the linebacker from Georgia, impressed them
with his honest analysis of his game. The scouts had said a few weeks earlier
that Bailey missed too many tackles by overrunning plays. That was exactly what
he said about himself.
They were thoroughly entertained by
receiver LaTarence Dunbar of Texas Christian and defensive end Alonzo Jackson
of Florida State. Dunbar was confident and full of energy, excited to talk with
Seely about special teams. He mentioned his kickoff returns for touchdowns so
often that Seely said, “Now wait a second. Are these different touchdowns or
are you talking about the same ones?” Jackson walked around the room and shook
hands with everyone. When he saw Romeo Crennel, he said, “This is the man,
right here. The defensive coordinator, the man I need to see.”
Some players who came into the room were humble. Some, like Ohio State
safety Mike Doss and Notre Dame safety Gerome Sapp, knew where everyone was
supposed to be when Crennel quizzed them on defense. Some couldn’t articulate
their own assignments in their college schemes. Some, like Pittsburgh defensive
back Torrie Cox, acknowledged their mistakes and gained the respect of the
Patriots. Cox said he once got into a fight with former teammate Antonio
Bryant. The coaches paid attention then, because Bryant’s demeanor had turned
them off the year before. “So why’d you fight him?” Cox was asked. He replied,
“That mouth of his. Sometimes that mouth of his gets to be too much.” There was
laughter followed by, “Torrie, you just went up a notch in
our eyes.” Some players just lied about their skirmishes.
Across
the street from the hotel, players worked out at the RCA Dome. Belichick sat
high in the Dome seats watching the workouts, but he didn’t put a lot of stock
in what was happening on the field. A lot of other teams didn’t either. They
were more interested in the exhaustive medical testing. Anyway, workouts were
becoming so rare at certain positions—like running back—that Derek Watson of
South Carolina State got an ovation just for running the 40.
Belichick and Pioli spent some of their time catching up with friends
around the league. Pioli had breakfast with his father-in-law, Bill Parcells.
Belichick talked with Super Bowl–winning coach Jon Gruden of Tampa Bay. “I
wrote an article about you in the
New York Times
,” Belichick
said. “Did you see it?” Less than a month earlier, a Belichick column headlined
“O.K., Champ, Now Comes the Hard Part” appeared on the
Times
op-ed page. It was a thirty-seven- point essay on what to expect after winning
the Super Bowl. “I didn’t see it,” Gruden said. “I want to check that out,
man.” Chicago head coach Dick Jauron, who played for Belichick in Detroit,
stopped by. The three of them talked and laughed near the field entrance of the
Dome. They all have had to play versions of The Game with the media, so it was
strange to see them as their relaxed selves: wearing jeans and sweatshirts and
sneakers and enjoying a football atmosphere.
All of them had an
idea of what players they liked. No one said anything about it. Or if they did,
it was a test to see the others’ reaction. Belichick did have a few light
moments with two members of the Oakland Raiders. He started to say hello to Al
Davis and kept walking, and Davis said, “Don’t even think
about walking by me. Come over here.” He and Raiders general manager Mike
Lombardi, Belichick’s former personnel director in Cleveland, talked about what
they would do to get New York Jets receiver Laveranues Coles on their team.
“I’d give up our second-rounder for him,” Belichick said. “Hey, I’d give up
one of our firsts,” Lombardi answered. (Washington, though, just gave up money
by signing Coles to a free agent contract.)
In between trips to
St. Elmo’s Steakhouse—where Belichick devoured the shrimp cocktail—the
Patriots were beginning to get a feel for the players they wanted in the draft.
None was a workout star.
They liked a center from Boston College,
Dan Koppen, who had short arms and whose forty times averaged out to5.26. They
needed help on the defensive line; that wasn’t news. But who would have guessed
that they were falling for the shortest lineman there? A kid from Temple named
Dan Klecko who wasn’t quite 5 feet
11
1
⁄
2
inches? “Best hands of
any lineman in the draft,” Licht said. They needed a new Star. They were eyeing
Asante Samuel, who was one of the lightest corners at 185 pounds. On his
strength reps, Samuel bench-pressed 225 pounds nine times, which tied for the
fewest reps in his group of defensive backs. Not good.
It wasn’t
always about numbers and stats. The Patriots said it and they lived it. It
wasn’t always about business either. They were starting to feel so good about
where they were headed that they found time to fight—playfully. It wasn’t that
they were excited over certain players. What was more important was that
Belichick and Pioli could finally go to work knowing what kind of players they
needed and wanted. On Saturday night in Indianapolis, light rain
had turned into a heavy rain and snow mixture. Perfect for
snowballs. So Pioli and area scout Matt Russell started pelting each other as
they ran down Washington Street. Two kids in winter, having fun in the
snow.
A
few of them had arrived early,
even though all they could do now was wait. There were no more grades, alerts,
and types for them to put on players. On this Saturday in April, the first day
of the draft, the Patriots’ scouts were as eager as the fans to see what
selections would be made.
It had already been a
productive off-season for the Patriots. A productive weekend could, remarkably,
have people talking about them as contenders again. Belichick and Pioli had
been so good six weeks earlier that they both got handshakes from the
boss.
“Nice job today, guys,” Robert Kraft had said one evening in
March as they all stood near the entrance of football operations. The owner
smiled. “Thanks a lot. After spending all this money, my wife can’t go shopping
now.” They smiled back. That day had been incredible. Colvin had been walking
around the building, a new Patriot. Cornerback Tyrone Poole would be coming
soon. And Rodney Harrison, released by San Diego, was going to join the
secondary. It was okay to mention defense to Belichick again. He was starting
to feel better. Colvin was going to make them younger, faster, and more
versatile on defense. Harrison would bring some toughness and talent to the
secondary. Poole could either start or help in the sub packages.
Now, on draft day, Belichick and Pioli had currency. They had picks. Lots of picks. They had traded Tebucky Jones
to New Orleans for three draft choices, a third and seventh this year and a
fourth in 2004. The night before the draft they took that third from the Saints
and made a swap with the Dolphins: the Patriots’ number three for the Dolphins’
number two in 2004. They were going into this day with thirteen picks, and the
point was not to use them all. Those picks were your passport, allowing you to
go wherever you wanted. You could stalk the board, going forward or in reverse,
getting who you wanted and where you wanted them.
The best thing
about all this flexibility and power was that Belichick and Pioli were content
to share it, not fight over it. They knew each other so well that they could
effectively communicate with expressions. Pioli knew the difference between
Belichick’s venting and the coach’s serious declarations that a player had to
go. There was one assistant coach—Eric Mangini—who could passionately argue
with Belichick and then laugh with him later. Pioli was the one other person in
football operations who could do the same thing.
It was time for
them to get their draft room ready. Their front and back boards—the back board
was for prospects who fell below the required 5.50 grade to be a “Make It”
player—were set. They had Jimmy Dee stationed in New York, prepared to read the
names of drafted players to them. The televisions were tuned to ESPN. The
telephones were working. Ernie Adams was at the front of the room, writing out
scenarios from the Patriots’ “value chart.”
