Patriot Reign (18 page)

Kraft was in the room,
paging through some of the information in the massive scouting books. Jonathan
Kraft was there too, glancing at the television and reading the business section of the
New York Times
.
Belichick was at the center of the room, and Pioli was next to him. Berj
Najarian sat several feet away from them. Jason Licht was nearby, prepared to
answer any questions about players or draft trends.

As the first
round began, there were two mild surprises. The Saints moved up to number 6 to
take Johnathan Sullivan, a defensive tackle the Patriots liked. Then, at number
7, the Vikings didn’t submit their card before the clock, so Jacksonville and
Carolina went ahead of them. When the Vikings did pick, at number 9, they took
Kevin Williams, another defensive tackle. Three spots later, St. Louis took
defensive tackle Jimmy Kennedy.

The Patriots were two picks away
and one defensive tackle they wanted, Ty Warren, was there. They couldn’t wait.
Some team might be calling the Bears, at number 13, trying to get a defensive
tackle as well. Belichick called Angelo. “Hey,” he said. “How about a
sixth?”

They could talk like minimalists and understand each
other. They had known each other since the 1980s, when they were both with the
Giants. Angelo agreed, so the teams switched places, with the sixth-round pick
as the sweetener. Warren was the choice.

Since the Patriots had
another first-rounder, number 19, the phones hadn’t stopped ringing. And they
had options. Miami was calling again. This time the Dolphins wanted to get into
the first round, and they were willing to relinquish next year’s first for the
right to do it.

“They’re clearly going for it all this year,”
Belichick said to Pioli.

There was a call from Ozzie Newsome in
Baltimore. The Ravens wanted number 19—the Patriots guessed they were
looking for a quarterback—and apparently weren’t willing to
pay the necessary price.

“Come on, Ozzie,” Belichick said. “Give
me a fucking break. Next year’s number 1 has to be a part of the deal, minimum.
We’ve already got some action on this pick.”

He hung up.

They did have action, but did they really want to make another deal with
the Dolphins? They had just taken the Dolphins’ 2004 second-round pick, and now
Miami was offering its first. A deal with Baltimore would be better by any
chart—value or common sense. Newsome called back. If their guy, Kyle Boller,
were still there at 19, they’d trade with the Patriots. Arizona had
back-to-back picks before them, so the Patriots were tense when the Cardinals
were on the clock. They took Bryant Johnson and Calvin Pace. “Thank God for the
Cardinals,” Adams said. “When you need them to fuck it up, they fuck it
up.”

It was a deal.

The Patriots dropped twenty-two
slots to number 41 and picked up a first for 2004.

Belichick had
met with former Dallas coach Jimmy Johnson in the spring, and Jimmy had said a
few things that impressed him. Jimmy told him to write down the players he
wanted on his team—“Be realistic,” Jimmy had warned—and then put together a
draft plan from that list. Wasn’t the idea to get as many desirable players as
possible?

That’s what the Patriots were thinking when they moved
down. They already had Warren. They could drop down, save money, and pick up
two other players on their top-20 list: Eugene Wilson, an Illinois cornerback,
and Bethel Johnson, a Texas A&M receiver.

But a run on corners at the end of the first round made them nervous.
Pioli started making some calls. First it was the Bengals. “Are you looking to
move with this pick?” They weren’t. Then it was the Lions. No thanks, again.
They finally got a deal with the Texans, one spot behind Angelo and the Bears
again. They moved up five spots by packaging their second-rounder with a third
they had acquired from Washington. Belichick knew his buddy Angelo needed help
at corner. And the Bears did play in Champaign in 2002. He hoped Angelo
wouldn’t take the local kid, Wilson, at number 35.

“Charles
Tillman, cornerback, Louisiana–Lafayette,” Dee said from New York. The Bears
took him, so now the Patriots could have Wilson.

It was another
close one. They made one more deal to secure Johnson—they traded a
fourth-rounder to Carolina for the right to move up five spots—and the first
day of the draft was done. It was a faultless start, although it wasn’t seen
that way locally. Fans had wanted to see the Patriots, not the Jets, move up
for Kentucky defensive tackle De- wayne Robertson. New England never considered
it. They liked what they got on day one. The only day two problem—and a brief
problem at that—was an argument between Pioli and Belichick.

Armed
with picks, Belichick believed the Patriots could take some chances. Pioli
agreed, but not with the particular player Belichick had in mind. Pioli didn’t
want the player on the board. He thought his character problems were too severe
and that drafting him would send the wrong message to the players. Here they
had been, for three years, preaching that players conform to a professional
standard. How could they turn around and risk that message
for an unstable kid? Anyway, Pioli reminded him, think of Cleveland. A few bad
attitudes there were enough to sink a couple of teams.

Pioli had
convinced him. Instead of risks, they were solid for the rest of the day. They
got Klecko, Samuel, and Koppen, their players from the combine. They picked a
quarterback, Kliff Kingsbury, in the sixth round and a line- backer, Tully
Banta-Cain, in the seventh.

As the day ended Belichick and some of
the scouts sat in the draft room. There were no debates or arguments, for the
first time in months. It was mellow, with an undercurrent of satisfaction in
the room. It was Belichick, Pioli, and a few scouts, sitting around, having a
few beers, especially pleased about the state of the new defense. While to some
degree of confidence they could predict how the new additions would work out in
their organization, what they could not have predicted was the fallout of one
player whom many considered the heart of the very defense they’d wanted to
improve.

They got along the first time they met, early
in1996. The twenty-two-year-old kid with the unforgettable name—Lawyer—had
impressed Bill Belichick. They had sat down that day and begun watching
football films. Three or four hours later they were still
going.

Belichick knew then that he liked Lawyer
Milloy. It was the way Milloy never lost his focus when they were talking about
football. It was the sense that he could watch these films for an additional
three or four hours and still want to play afterward.

“I didn’t
think he had any weak points,” Belichick says. “He was one of the most
impressive guys I ever talked to. The guy hadn’t watched film since his last
college game back in November. And shit, he knew
everything. ‘Here’s what this call is, this is why I’m doing this. See that
formation? Here are the adjustments. Now he’s going in motion, we’re checking
this, I got him, he’s got him. …’ It was like he watched the
film yesterday.”

They put on another film, and it was more of the
same. Belichick was an assistant coach with the Patriots then. He knew Milloy,
a safety from the University of Washington, could help them. “After what I saw,
I thought,
This guy is smart. He’s not going to have a problem handling
anything.
And he liked football. He was into it. It wasn’t work for
him. Let’s face it: he does have a little bit of an attitude. But in the end
you can certainly work with the guy.”

The Patriots drafted him in
the second round that year. As his position coach, Belichick used to lobby Bill
Parcells to start him over Terry Ray. He was ready. They worked together for
just one season. After that, Belichick and Parcells were off to New York, and
Milloy was left standing in Foxboro, wondering what happened to the Patriots’
kingdom that was predicted to come. It didn’t. The team went from very good to
good, then from good to mediocre. It was bad enough to have a coaching vacancy
in 2000, a vacancy that Belichick filled. When the Patriots won Super Bowl
XXXVI, two people rushed to Belichick: his daughter, Amanda, and Milloy. “I
thought that was appropriate,” the coach says.

Even during the
good times—when the Patriots were champs—Belichick could always see Milloy’s
flaws, as a player and as a leader. He really was a leader. And he really
wasn’t. He brought some of his teammates together. He alienated them. He
brought them together again. You just had to understand him. He was full of
energy and emotion, a man who spoke it nearly as quickly as
he saw it. He wasn’t about internalizing his thoughts. He was a glance away
from going off, always ready to deliver a lick—verbal or physical.

“A negative leader sometimes” reads the Patriots’ 2001 team evaluation
report. This was
after
Milloy had helped the team win the
Super Bowl. There was also this: “Good production, durable, tough….
Over-aggressive, doesn’t wrap up, inconsistent leadership, selfish.”

There was enough for everyone, depending on your personality and what you
were willing to accept. If you didn’t mind someone playing his music at his
volume near your locker, you liked him. If you did, you had a problem. If you
didn’t mind a joke at your expense every now and then, you laughed with him. If
you couldn’t handle it, you shied away. If you were an employee who wished one
of the rank and file had the guts to take on management, you adored him. He
would say anything to anybody. If you were a designer of fashionable clothing
and wanted someone to look good in your clothes, you recruited him. His style
was balanced between classic and hip. He had a big heart and a great smile. He
was comfortable among the fans and clubs of Boston. He was handsome. A lot of
young women turned their heads his way and never turned away.

It
gave him and his friend Ty Law immense pride that they weren’t sidelined with
“soft” injuries. They’d make fun of teammates who would be at practice riding
stationary bikes as the two of them put in the real work. Milloy didn’t miss
any games or many assignments.

He played baseball in high school
and college, and he had that quality that a lot of great pitchers have: even
when they don’t have their best stuff, they make you believe in what’s there. And that’s what feeds the greatness. Milloy was
like that. He made you believe. He was confident and energetic, waving his arms
to the crowd. He always had a little more energy than you did, even without his
stuff.

In 2002 he was without it.

He was twenty-nine,
he made the Pro Bowl—without playing like a Pro Bowler—and in the unfair world
of NFL economics he was essentially in his contract year with the Patriots. It
is an NFL truism known by all: you don’t want to have an average year when
you’re just south or north of thirty years old. Milloy had an average year. He
also happened to be playing for a coach whom he knew as well as the coach knew
him. He knew he and Belichick had a lot in common when it came to football, but
they couldn’t have been more opposite when it came to emotions. The coach
observed first and spoke later, if at all. He could go off just like Milloy,
but he could also be measured. He was always an economist.

As much
as Belichick liked Milloy personally—he was one of the people who sometimes
enjoyed the attitude—he didn’t like the way the numbers sat on the salary cap.
He wasn’t thrilled with the ’02 production either, but he could have accepted
it if it had been next to a cap number different than $4.5 million. Belichick
had thought about it the entire off-season. Once, during a draft meeting, scout
Tom Dimitroff made a comment about the big plays that he’d seen Milloy make in
’02. “I’d like you to come up with some examples,” the coach said. “I can’t
think of any.”

Belichick thought about it in March when the
Patriots signed former Chargers safety Rodney Harrison, and he continued to
think about it in April when safety Tebucky Jones was dealt to the Saints. He
wanted the team to negotiate with Milloy’s agent, Carl
Poston. If they could work out a deal that would give Milloy around $3 million
per season, that would be okay.

It was not going to be all right
with Milloy. It was a pay cut, and he wasn’t interested. On August 19, when the
Patriots traded a fourth-round pick to the Bears for nose tackle Ted
Washington, it was still an issue. There was almost no chance of the
disagreement ending well. New England was halfway through its preseason and
three days away from exhibition game number three. Most of Milloy’s teammates
knew about his contract struggles—he wasn’t known for his restraint. They all
figured that this season would be his last in New England. They were right: two
weeks later, on Tuesday, September 2, per his and his agent Poston’s request,
he was released. The Patriots had been preparing to do it if a deal couldn’t be
struck, so they weren’t blindsided. Still, now they’d have to explain the loss
to the team.

So there was Belichick on one of the most awkward
days of the year. He always told the team about roster updates in team
meetings. But this wasn’t going to be like the day in ’02 when he announced
that Dean Wells had retired, one day after signing. Lots of players didn’t even
know who Dean Wells was. This was Lawyer. This was their spokesman for
difficult things, the man who would say, “Why are we doing this bull- shit?”
when other players would think it.

Belichick arrived at the
meeting later than usual. He was uncomfortable. He got around to saying that
Milloy had been cut and that it was a tough decision. He mentioned that Milloy
had given a lot to the organization and that his physical and emotional
contributions had made the Lombardi Trophy on the second floor a reality. He
gave them the news of the day, waited a few beats, and then
started talking about the game they had to play.

The players were
stunned.

“Guys were outraged,” former Patriots guard Damien Woody
says. “The coaches knew it was a volatile situation. Our practices were always
loud, with the coaches saying a lot of things. But it wasn’t like that the week
Lawyer was released. It was quiet. It was that way for an entire week.”

What a lot of people would miss later in analyzing the release was that
for the players it wasn’t all about the departure of Milloy. It wasn’t about
any trite perception that they were somehow losing heart and soul. They had too
much breadth for one player to represent heart and soul. They’d get over the
loss. The thing that was so disturbing about the move was that it swung so
close to all of them: if Milloy could be cut, following the trade of Drew
Bledsoe the year before, who among them couldn’t be released?

There was nothing novel about the thought, of course. Players often talk
about the business aspects of the league, but they
are
players. They are always taken aback by the shivers of corporate America,
shivers that people in other businesses receive from CEOs and COOs.
The
company is not doing what we expected, and we’re laying off three hundred
employees. Effective immediately.
Just like that.

It was
tough to be conscious of that coldness and play professional football. That’s
why every player says it’s a business without thinking about it, especially as
they give up their bodies while going across the middle. You can devote
yourself only to one or the other: pure businessmen will never go over the
middle, and pure players will never reduce things to business.

This was not over. They were hurting. They would get together and prove how tough and professional they were, even
if outsiders wouldn’t see the results until much later. After the release,
there was a defensive meeting—without Belichick present—and players and coaches
talked about their feelings.

A few of the veterans stood up and
said this was a good lesson for the rookies. Their message to the young players
was consistent: “Save your money and take care of yourselves. As you just saw,
this can be taken away very quickly.” When they were able to sort out the next
issue— and when they were able to expertly deconstruct it—they knew they could
still be champions.

They began by asking the most relevant
question of all: how could they dedicate themselves to an ethic of selflessness
and sacrifice when something like this had just happened? They were able to
answer that question to their own satisfaction before the meeting was over.
They were going to be selfless, not for any altruistic reason but for
football.

Selflessness, they concluded, was the most logical and
practical way to win games. In a sense, they were being
selfless
for
selfish
reasons, and eventually
that insight would make everyone happy.

That was a lot of
searching to overcome during an average game week, an extraordinary amount to
overcome when a player such as Milloy had been cut, and a nearly impossible
amount to overcome when your first game was against the player who had just
left.

The Patriots were traveling to Buffalo, where the Bills had
a new safety named Milloy. He didn’t have much time to practice—only a couple
of days—but he still started on Sunday. He was introduced last, wearing his
familiar number 36 jersey. He was back to being his
energetic self, and he was sparked by the Super Bowl expectations of fans in
western New York.

To those who didn’t know, it still appeared that
the Patriots were torn apart by the Milloy release. They weren’t. They were
hurt, though, and healing, and now they went straight from the recovery room to
violent contact. They didn’t have the focus they needed, all the way around,
and that sent a couple of false messages throughout the NFL: that the Patriots
were a troubled and divided team, and that Buffalo was the best team in the
division and on the verge of playing for a championship.

They both
looked their parts.

The Bills won decisively, 31–0. The screen
passes that had been part of the Patriots’ offensive package looked like
something out of the 1950s against new Buffalo linebacker Takeo Spikes. He was
too fast for the screens and too wise to them as well. Bledsoe had no problem
with the “Cover 5” defense that used to include Milloy at the back of it. Tom
Brady threw four interceptions. And the leading man, the star of the story, was
superb. He made more big plays in game one than he had all of the previous
season. He had five tackles, a sack, and an artfully defended pass that he was
able to tap to new teammate Nate Clements for an interception.

The
severity of the loss accelerated the recovery for the Patriots. There would be
a linebackers meeting where Larry Izzo stood up and shouted, “Let’s get our
shit together.” Tedy Bruschi, already a passionate player, would elevate his
leadership. Brady, Harrison, Troy Brown, Ted Washington… they all took over.
Not many people realized that Buffalo may have peaked that
day while New England, at least, achieved some clarity from the loss.

“I wouldn’t wish this situation that I went through on anybody that plays
any kind of sport ever in my life,” Milloy told reporters after the game.
“Because it was really messed up. But because of the Lord, because of the way
my mother raised me, and because of who I am as a person, as a man…I was able
to not only get through it, but I was able to conquer it. I came out on
top.”

A
s the Patriots headed into the
second week of the season, the reaction to Belichick’s decision fell into two
categories outside of the locker room. Essentially, there was either a lot of
irony or a lack of context.

Irony because the coach
was being criticized for his judgment in two areas where he had shown
expertise: the secondary and the salary cap. Irony because it was Belichick’s
work with the Patriots’ defensive backs in ’96 that made Robert and Jonathan
Kraft pay attention to him more. Well, that and his comprehension of the
collective bargaining agreement. He knew when to walk away from a player and
knew when to run, either for talent or cap reasons. “You need to understand
value in today’s NFL,” Robert Kraft says. “And he does.”