Patriot Reign (19 page)

Context
because Belichick had made bold and controversial decisions before, without
being wrong. He chose Vinny Testaverde over Bernie Kosar in Cleveland, a move
that one of his friends equated to “beheading the Browns’ mascot.” He chose the
Patriots over the Jets, escaped the shadow of Parcells, and
became known as a great coach away from “home.” He chose Brady over Bledsoe and
watched Brady become a Super Bowl MVP.

Irony again because he was
in Philadelphia—that irony will become clear later—and one of his former
players was on national television, saying that his current players hated
him.

The Patriots played the Eagles in a 4:15 game at Lincoln
Financial Field. That meant they were able to leave their hotel rooms later
than usual. They were able to watch the various pregame shows on television,
including ESPN’s
NFL Sunday Countdown
. At the time the show
included Chris Berman and Rush Limbaugh and former pros Michael Irvin, Steve
Young, and Tom Jackson. In 1978 Belichick was an assistant in Denver when
Jackson was a Pro Bowl linebacker there. Belichick didn’t have any memorable
exchanges with Jackson then, but—more irony— Jackson and Parcells are
friends.

After ESPN aired its story about the Milloy release,
including clips from former and current Patriots, Jackson eventually looked in
the camera and delivered a line for which Belichick would never forgive
him:

“Let me be very clear about this. They hate their
coach.”

Several Patriots players and staff members saw it,
reporters covering the team saw it, and Belichick heard about it. He was
furious. It wasn’t just that he found Jackson’s words irresponsible—Jackson
admitted that he hadn’t interviewed anyone for his analysis—but he also found
fault with the story itself. Eventually he would take his displeasure out on
almost everyone at the network.
Almost
everyone because
Berman, a longtime friend, was the host of the show.

And this is where the irony of Philadelphia and the
Eagles comes in. Limbaugh was still two weeks away from resigning over comments
he would make about Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb. He was two weeks away
from suggesting that McNabb was overrated because the largely white media
wanted to see a black quarterback do well. Limbaugh’s mere appearance on the
show was enough to draw criticism. But on September 14, before the Patriots
beat the Eagles 31–10, Limbaugh was the only panelist who supported what
Belichick had done. That day the political commentator had been controversial
for a different kind of “minority” opinion. His view was that Belichick was
not going to make a decision based on sentiment, especially if that sentiment
was outweighed by other factors—finances included—that could hurt the balance
of the team.

It was common sense for Belichick. He applied this
sense so often, with such success, that it was often misunderstood for genius.
Belichick’s “genius”—a term he does not like applied to himself—is no more than
an ability to easily sift through distractions and nonsense and identify the
central point. He can even do all of that and come to the conclusion that a
central point does not exist. He takes large things and makes them small, which
is a strength. Sometimes he believes that large issues, called crises on most
teams, can be or should be broken down in the same way with no fallout. That
logic could have gotten him into trouble if he had had another kind of team in
2003. He didn’t. He had the team with the hidden characteristic, which was
simply “professionalism.” Supreme professionalism actually.

“As
much as some of Belichick’s ways can get under your skin,
you’ve got to give it to him as a coach,” Woody says. “We knew that nobody had
coaches that were as good as ours. You’re talking about a guy who would come
into the meetings every week and tell us the three or four things we needed to
do to win. ‘If you do this, this, and this, you’re going to win.’ And that’s
how it would happen.”

The meeting in Foxboro following the release
of Milloy had been about one thing: professionalism. As a group, the Patriots
were not whiners. Belichick was not going to lose the team because they were
the team and they were not going to allow themselves to be lost. They wanted to
win just as much as he did, and after the first wave of commentaries passed,
they knew that the coach and his staff were going to give them a chance every
week. They didn’t have to love him; they just had to respect that.

Anthony Pleasant had learned about professionalism a decade before when
he played for Belichick in Cleveland. Pleasant jumped offside one game, and
Belichick took him out and cursed him. The Browns came back to win, and
Belichick tried to shake Pleasant’s hand afterward. “Man, I ain’t shaking your
hand,” he told the coach. “I’m tired of you messing with me.” He went to
Belichick’s office the next day and apologized. He had been wrong. They shook
hands. “It’s the way I’ve handled business with him since then. I go talk to
him when I have a problem. At least he will listen. You know, some cats won’t
even listen.”

What Belichick liked about players on his team, he
couldn’t respect about Jackson. Many of them could admit mistakes, face to
face. Jackson never did. He would extend his hand to Belichick on a bizarre
February night in Houston. Belichick offered a few words, but not his
hand.

A
fter all the talk about Jackson
in Philadelphia, the biggest story to come out of the city was an injury to
free agent linebacker Rosevelt Colvin. He limped off the field in the second
quarter against the Eagles and didn’t return. It was obvious that he was hurt,
but no one knew it was as bad as a fractured hip. Placed on injured reserve,
Colvin was knocked out for the season.

Belichick had
spent so much time talking about increasing team speed and acquiring team
speed. When the Patriots finally got it in the form of Colvin, they lost it
after two games. It was late September, and Colvin and guard Mike Compton were
already out for the season. Nose tackle Washington had a broken leg, linebacker
Ted Johnson had a broken foot, linebacker Mike Vrabel had a broken arm,
cornerback Ty Law had a sprained ankle, and receiver David Patten had a knee
injury that would eventually end his season too. Brady had an elbow so sore and
swollen that it looked as if he’d had a softball implanted.

No one
in Foxboro talked about sympathy or pity because they all knew what the coach
knew. They were good and they had depth. “If you look at some of the people we
have on our inactive list, they’re pretty good players,” Belichick said one
day outside of the Gillette Stadium cafeteria. He’d stop in there, but he never
seemed to be picking up a complete meal. “I’m not saying they’re great. But if
you look at the inactive list for some teams, you wouldn’t even want to put
those guys in a game. Our team isn’t like that.”

His team was smartly built, with one eye on the cap and the other on the
field. He was good at figuring out how much better one player was than another
and seeing if the price matched the production. Jonathan Kraft, the team’s vice
chairman, is amazed by his ability to do that.

“Let’s say he has a
player who has a 100 rating, with really no upside above that. He’s a solid
100, he’ll be there a few years, he’s making $4 million. Bill can see another
player who is a 75, making $500,000, and has upside. He knows he can put that
kid in a system where the deficiencies between 75 and 100 can also be
protected.

“He’s never going to get into salary-cap hell chasing
that elusive last guy or believing that one person makes your team. He is
completely focused on team.”

It took a while for his team to catch
on locally, though. When they beat the Titans on October 5, it was the same day
the Red Sox were trying to tie their best-of-five series with the Oakland A’s
at two games apiece. And when the Patriots went to Miami and won in
overtime—their record was 5–2—everyone in New England was still talking about a
silver-haired manager named Grady who refused to take the ball out of his
starting pitcher’s hand. The region was wounded when the Red Sox lost to the
Yankees in the seventh game of the American League Championship Series. In this
case, Jackson’s words would have been accurate. New England really did hate
this
coach. The Sox led the game in the eighth inning, 5–2,
and manager Grady Little famously turned his back to the bullpen and left a
scuffling Pedro Martinez on the mound to scuffle some more.

Belichick was a Red Sox fan as well, and he frequently asked for updates
on what they were doing. He asked because he liked baseball, but he also liked
the challenge of looking at things from all angles to see
what he would do. Most of the time he’d take the side of the manager. He loved
it in 2001 when Jimy Williams, fired by the Sox, was the first manager hired in
the off-season. That was one of the coach’s favorite stories. He didn’t offer
many opinions on Little. He was more interested in seeing if a quick
decision—accelerated by public opinion—would be made. A decision came on
October 27. Little was out.

Meanwhile, Belichick had a team that
was turning him into a mellow coach. These Patriots were much more coachable
than his team from ’02. They listened. They were resourceful. They didn’t make
excuses. They had gone to Denver and won, sparked by an intentional safety.
That wasn’t even the best part of the game. On the winning touchdown, Brady to
David Givens, the receiver ran the wrong route. He was supposed to be running a
slant and took off on a back-shoulder fade instead. Brady noticed the error
immediately and adjusted by throwing for the fade instead of the slant. The
players seemed to have a wit and awareness that the coach loved.

This team played each week as if it had something to prove, and Belichick
liked that. He respected this team. Whenever someone asked him about the team,
he would reply with a rare answer, a “media-ready” answer that actually
represented his true feelings. He would tell people that the thing he liked
about the Patriots was that they always tried to do what was asked of them.
They were students who stayed late after class, determined to figure out some
theorem. It sounded kind of plain, but the coach liked their effort.

In case they came down with a bout of arrogance, he was always around to
remind them of what they couldn’t do. He was good at
reminding them to fear the trappings of football success. He could always find
a potential distraction and hold it up as yet another Patriots opponent. When
it was time to do that in early November, the distraction was close to him. The
Patriots were scheduled to play the Cowboys and Bill Parcells on a Sunday
night. The players were going to be asked about it. Belichick was going to be
asked about it. It was going to be explored from angles obvious and obscure.
People were intrigued by Bill versus Bill because the sideline shots were all
they got from the story. Everything else was imagined because neither man would
get into the specifics of how he was feeling. This was going to be a hard week
for Belichick, but it wouldn’t be emotional. It would be hard because the
actual team was difficult enough to game-plan. Now he would need an effective
game plan for comments about Parcells too.

I
t was one o’clock on a Monday
afternoon— November 10, 2003—when Belichick welcomed his team back to Foxboro
after an in-season vacation. The Patriots, winners of five consecutive games,
had just finished their bye week. On the previous Monday, in Denver, the nation
had watched them outwork and outsmart the Broncos on
Monday Night
Football
.

The Patriots had trailed by a
point, 24–23, with just under three minutes remaining. They were at their own
1-yard line, a few ticks and a few inches away from a loss. After three Tom
Brady passes fell incomplete—including one Daniel Graham drop that proved to be
helpful—the team was in an obvious fourth-and-10 punting situation. That’s when
the best special-teams coaches of today and yesterday, Brad
Seely and Belichick, decided to give up points to gain an advantage. Long
snapper Lonie Paxton hiked the ball and placed it exactly where he wanted it:
into the goal posts. New England would hand over the 2 points on the
intentional safety, but it would pick up field position on the subsequent free
kick and have a chance to retrieve the ball before the two-minute
warning.

Special teams, field position, and situational football
are all Belichick staples. They were all squeezed into those final three
minutes in Denver. So after sitting hopelessly at their 1 with 2:51 remaining,
the Patriots were actually able to smile thirty-six seconds later. They
suddenly had the ball at their own 42, they had Tom Brady leading them, and
they still had time to compose themselves. Predictably, Brady directed a
six-play drive that ended with an 18-yard touchdown pass to receiver David
Givens. The Patriots won, 30–26. The comeback and the safety left an impression
in Denver. “That’s a smart play,” Broncos defensive end Trevor Pryce told the
Gazette
of Colorado Springs. “I’ve never seen that done
before. That dude [Belichick] thinks.”

A few days later Belichick
left his Gillette Stadium office for two hours so he could go to Brookline and
watch one of his son Brian’s football games at Dexter. As he stood on the
sideline, waiting for the boys without jersey numbers and face masks to play
the game in its most wholesome form, he was noticed by a few parents. They were
respectful, understanding that he was there in his role as “Dad” and not
“Coach.” But that safety was irresistible. “Great job in Denver, Coach,” one of
the parents said. “What a great finish.” Belichick thanked him, talked with
Debby, and shouted out, “Nice tackle, Brian,” when his son—skinny legs poking
out from loose-fitting pants—displayed flawless technique
on a takedown.

Belichick had spent his bye week checking in on
Brian, Stephen, and Amanda. He had done some self-scouting and game-planning as
well. As he stood in front of his players in the Gillette Stadium auditorium on
the 10th, the first thing he told them was that he hoped they also had been
able to relax. He made that statement shortly after one o’clock. And soon after
that, the game resumed. It didn’t matter that it was Monday afternoon and the
Patriots were scheduled to play the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night, the 16th.
The only people who believe that the games begin on Sunday are the people who
watch the games to be entertained. In Foxboro it was time for the business and
drama of playing the Cowboys.

It would be the first time Belichick
faced Parcells since the longtime colleagues split in January 2000. Both men
were storing a lot of emotions, emotions that they were too wise to reveal to
the media. They had first worked together in 1981, and that working
relationship lasted uninterrupted for a decade. They took a five-year break
when Belichick went to Cleveland, but they remained friendly. They picked up
again in 1996, and that’s when the first signs of wear started to show, just
below the shiny surface. Even before football in New York and New England
became a Parcells-Belichick docudrama, Belichick had thought of leading a team
again—with no link to Parcells.

The next time, he thought, he
would do some things differently. He would want to work for an owner with whom
he could communicate, and not someone who was easily swayed by the outside
opinion of the day. He would want to have some influence
over personnel and have someone he trusted leading the personnel/scouting
department. He most certainly would hire someone who could help with media
relations, his biggest weakness. He just didn’t pay enough attention to what
was being said and written about him and his team. That was good at times
because it eliminated distractions, but it could also undermine what he was
trying to do because—whether he liked it or not—it was a part of coaching. And
in his first shot at being a head coach, he had left that part of the game
unattended. He knew he had the perfect candidate for a position that would
encompass several aspects of football operations. The Jets had a public
relations assistant named Berj Najarian. Najarian was in his late twenties,
grew up on Long Island—he attended Manhasset High, which produced Jim Brown—and
graduated from Boston University. Belichick quickly noticed three things about
Najarian: he was smart, he was even more organized than the coach (which was
hard to do), and he seemed to get along easily with everyone.

Belichick had ideas about a staff. He just needed an opportunity. He got
it in 2000, even after Parcells’s initial reaction to the Patriots’ request to
interview Belichick. The official fax from Foxboro to Hempstead, New York, was
sent on January 2, 2000, a couple of minutes after Pete Carroll coached New
England to a win over the Ravens. Carroll had asked owner Robert Kraft before
the game if it was his last day on the job. It was. So the fax was sent before
Carroll began his postgame remarks. When Parcells finally saw the transmission
from Massachusetts, he scanned it, crumpled it, and continued the conversation
he was having. He resigned as Jets head coach the next day, symbolically and
contractually handing the Jet keys to Belichick. They were keys that Belichick didn’t want because he knew Parcells would
always be nearby, jangling the master copies.

As Belichick stood
before his players in 2003, he told them that the past didn’t matter. He
reminded them that there would be a weigh-in the next day and that they were a
7–2 team that needed to be ready for the 7–2 Cowboys. He told them they should
know that the Cowboys were leading the league in defense and had 93 more
rushing attempts and five more minutes of possession time than their opponents.
Well into the meeting he talked about the subject that was going to be topical
all week.

Bill versus Bill.

“Don’t get distracted by
irrelevant aspects of this game,” he said. “Belichick versus Parcells? We’re
both assholes. We started coaching together when some of you were in diapers.
The last time we coached together was five years ago. Think about how much has
changed in the last five years. What were you doing five years ago and what
people were you doing it with? …A lot has changed. What happened five or
twenty-five years ago doesn’t really matter. Nothing could be less relevant to
this game or more detrimental to our preparation. Don’t get into Belichick
versus Parcells. If you want the easy way out, tell them that I won’t let you
comment.”

He made a short detour from that subject, because the
no-comment allusion reminded him of injuries. If Belichick is asked about his
players’ injuries, he tries to guard their confidentiality more than their
family doctors might. As much as he likes specificity and certainty in
football, he is just the opposite when talking about injuries. He will report
the problem area, but in the most general terms allowed. He asked his players
not to talk about the injuries to Ted Washington, Richard
Seymour, Ted Johnson, or anyone else. “And it goes without saying, we don’t
have anything to say—as in nothing—about the play-off race. Nobody knows better
than us how quickly things can turn around.”

Then he returned to
his course.

“If the media want to hype it, great. I’m taking
myself out of it. If they want to make this a soap opera, fine. But it will be
without me, RAC, Charlie, Pioli, and everybody else with connections—including
some of you. Let’s figure out what we’re going to do about Glover, Ellis,
Galloway, Adams, Roy Williams, and Coakley.”

He was right about
the cross-pollination. It was as if Parcells used to be governor of a giant
state that broke off into northern and southern sections. Romeo Crennel, or
RAC, had known Parcells since the 1970s, when they worked together at Texas
Tech. Charlie Weis had worked with Parcells as a Giant, Jet, and Patriot.
During the 1999 season Parcells had taken away Weis’s play-calling—he didn’t
think Weis used the running game enough. There was no shortage of history
between New England’s head coach, its coordinators, and Parcells. But no one on
the team could claim to have Scott Pioli’s complex association with
Parcells.

Pioli and Belichick were friends when Pioli was in
college at Central Connecticut and Belichick was the defensive coordinator of
the Giants. Pioli worked for Belichick in Cleveland and spent one year in
Baltimore when the “Browns” moved there. With the Jets, Pioli and Belichick had
a different dynamic. They were great friends, with offices near each other’s,
working for the same supervisor. They knew each other’s families, worked out
together, and participated in office pools. Sometimes one would be
treated to an earful when the boss went off on the other.
Between Belichick and Parcells, Pioli plainly had more in common with
Belichick—until the day he saw a woman with blond hair walk into Parcells’s
office.

Pioli’s question to secretary Linda Leoni—“Who’s the
blonde?”—was still echoing when Parcells walked out of his office and asked if
Pioli had met his daughter, Dallas. He said he hadn’t, but he was very glad to
now. They talked a lot, found out they knew some of the same people, and had
similar interests. They dated. They waited for a while before she would tell
her dad and he would tell his boss that each was dating someone Parcells knew.
Dallas finally told him, while he was driving, and he reacted as if she had
said she was seeing a nice young man from down the street. It was clear that
they had his blessing.

The dating went well. It went so well that
Pioli decided that he was going to have to get on the boss’s calendar for a
serious discussion. He couldn’t have picked a more hectic day. Parcells was
busy, and he wasn’t in a very good mood. But Pioli was determined to talk to
him. “This had better be important,” Parcells said. Pioli was deeply in love
with Dallas and wanted to marry her. He told her father that in his office.
Parcells was quiet for just a moment, and then he reached out and shook the
hand of his future son-in-law.

Eventually that son-in-law would
travel to New England with Belichick. And eventually, in the middle of November
2003, there would be sixty minutes of gripping nonfiction. The Cowboys and
Patriots would play a physically violent game on the field while a lot of
unspoken hostilities played out on each sideline. All the elements were there:
love, bitterness, respect, regret. Belichick tried to push it all aside
on a November afternoon. Let the critics organize the
drama. There was a game to win. “Study up on the Cowboys,” he said at the end
of the Monday meeting. “I’ll have a few questions later.”

A
few
questions. Of course, they knew he was understating. On
Wednesday he had exactly thirty-two questions about the Cowboys. He randomly
went around the room, asking players things they should know about the players
they were facing. They did.

Rodney Harrison knew that the Cowboys
were more of a play-action than dropback team. The receiving foursome of
Givens, Troy Brown, Deion Branch, and Bethel Johnson knew the Cowboys’ four
main coverages: “Cover 1,” “Cover 2,” “Cover 4,” and blitz zone. When Antowain
Smith was asked, “Which linebacker plays to the 3 technique?” he knew the
correct answer was Dexter Coakley. Tedy Bruschi knew that on third-and-7-plus
the Cowboys went to max protection. And speaking of protections, Mike Vrabel
knew the Cowboys were unlikely to favor seven-man protections rather than
six.

This is the implicit agreement between the players and
coaches every week: we’re all going to know what we’re doing; we may lose some
games, but lack of preparation is an unacceptable reason to fail. That’s why
Brady sometimes calls Weis at home, asking about plays that could go in the
game plan or telling him that he’s uncomfortable with some that are in there.
It’s why Ernie Adams, whose office is a few steps down the hall from
Belichick’s, often takes a short walk for strategy meetings with the coach.
Adams’s recall is impressive. He references games from all decades and specific
plays from those games that might help the Patriots on Sunday. It’s why all the coaches truly become filmmakers as
they study the practice tape. They watch the simulated plays in practice and
then predict how the opposing team, based on its identified strengths and
weaknesses, will react to the plays. “Does he have it?” is a popular question
in the darkened room. That usually means a judgment call: there is some
skepticism as to whether a play will work or not. Sometimes “Does he have it?”
is a more definitive “He doesn’t have it.”

This prodding,
rewinding, planning, and practicing goes on for hours. It is aided by instinct,
research, and computerized trends on what exactly a team does in a given
situation. So, for example, Seymour knew what to expect from the Cowboys when
they were in the third-and-1 to third-and-6 range: play-action, bootleg, or
quarterback run. It was guesswork to some, but not to the coaches. When
Belichick, Crennel, and Al Groh all worked together under Parcells, they could
look at formations and shout out the correct plays before they happened. If
they missed on five calls in a season, they were angry.