Two days before his team’s biggest game of the season, Bill Belichick had an idea that he was excited to share with his defensive players. He wanted to add a wrinkle for the Philadelphia Eagles to consider, a wrinkle that they wouldn’t have seen anywhere in the New England film because it wasn’t there. The Patriots hadn’t run the scheme, called Dolphin, all year.
The players were so used to seeing this experimental side of Belichick that none of them paused to raise points and ask questions. Such as a glaring one: Why now? The team had dominated its competition in the postseason, including its silencing of the Colts. The defense had been elite for two years now, finishing first in the league in 2003 and second in 2004. Why mess with a good thing? Why overthink it?
For Belichick, questions like those are signs of fear and mediocrity. His players understood that he was constantly searching for the perfect matchup. They trusted that he had put the film work in to justify whatever unconventional concept he offered them. They had seen him in action with the clicker in his hand, analyzing the film, and they knew they were watching the best in the industry. Bar none.
Many of them had come to New England feeling good about their ability to detect tendencies on film, but he was much more detailed and analytical than all of them. He’d let the film run for a second or two, reverse it, and then go forward again to the first couple of seconds. They all thought they were seeing what he did, but they weren’t. They’d be looking at the point of attack, and he’d go somewhere else, to an infinitesimal place that he believed was the glue of the entire play. He was amazing that way. And he approached new plays reasonably: If there’s any delay in “getting it” in practice, it won’t be a part of the game.
Dolphin certainly was going to make it into the core of the Super Bowl game plan. It called for Tedy Bruschi and Mike Vrabel to fill the “A” gaps, the areas between the center and the guards, while Roman Phifer took advantage of a favorable matchup he had against tight end L. J. Smith, who wasn’t a strong blocker. The linebackers picked up the defense quickly, and it was as if this twist had been a part of their repertoire the entire year.
“We prided ourselves on being intellectuals and students of the game,” Phifer says. “And obviously that’s a reflection of Bill.”
Each of the linebackers knew the defensive signals, even if Bruschi was the official signal-caller. They lined up according to Bruschi’s instructions for the sake of order, but they already knew what to do. Bruschi was similar to the leader in a familiar call-and-response exercise; everyone knew his lines as well as their own, yet they respected the tradition of having a song leader. Sometimes defensive lineman Richard Seymour would tell the linebackers that he was going to tweak his stunt, and the ’backers would in turn adjust the call based on Seymour’s freestyle. It was advanced communication, and they had refined it through years of practice competitions, pop quizzes, and play-off wins against record-setting players and teams and, sometimes, in record-setting conditions.
This was a close group, a brotherhood, and they all knew enough to anticipate playing in the Super Bowl and to dread the ending of the game, too. They always expected to win these games, and who could blame them? Twenty-two of them were playing in their third Super Bowl in the last four years, and they had an eight-game postseason winning streak. That wasn’t normal. The last team to do that was Vince Lombardi’s Packers of the 1960s, an era when there was no salary cap or unrestricted free agency. Those elements were the lifeblood of the modern game, and that’s what made each of these championship runs so emotional. It’s not like the group was going to return as a whole next year.
The coordinators, Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel, were definitely leaving. Joe Andruzzi, whom Tom Brady once teased as a “little, fat guard,” was a free agent and in line for a fat contract, probably on the open market. David Patten’s contract was expiring, and some team out there was likely to look past “fiscal responsibility” and all the other things the Patriots said, and pay for Patten’s speed and championship profile. Ty Law wasn’t going to have to ask for his release this time; the Patriots were almost guaranteed to move on from the cornerback and his $12.5 million cap number. Seymour had completed his second consecutive season as a first-team All-Pro and wasn’t going anywhere. But a protracted vacation wasn’t out of the question. He was twenty-five and had far outperformed his contract. He was one of the few Patriots who had the leverage and temperament to hold out for a better deal.
Phifer, now thirty-six, wanted to return but knew it wasn’t going to be in New England. He had been pulled aside by linebackers’ coach Dean Pees after the fifth game of the season. He was told that Belichick didn’t like what he was seeing on film, and that if his play didn’t pick up he’d be cut during the season. Phifer knew what Belichick was seeing. The linebacker looked at himself in those film sessions, and he saw a player who was stiff and a step slow. He was supposed to be a guy who could stop the run and cover, but there was a play in that fifth game, a win over the Seahawks, that had bothered him and Belichick. Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck had faked a toss to running back Shaun Alexander, and the back had almost lounged there as if he were out of the play. Then he suddenly ran full speed up the sideline, where Hasselbeck hit him for a big gain of twenty-four yards. Phifer was supposed to be on Alexander. He wasn’t close.
After the warning from Pees, Phifer’s play picked up markedly. In the play-off win over the Colts, he got a big hit on Edgerrin James and immediately felt something pop in his right shoulder. Torn labrum. He didn’t play much in the conference championship game in Pittsburgh. But with a chance to start in the Super Bowl, to be a contributor to this team that could be remembered as a dynasty, there’s no way he was going to miss the opportunity. He was a right-handed player who couldn’t lift his right arm, but he still had full range of motion with his left. He’d get the job done that way. Not many people in the game as long as he’d been in, fourteen seasons, gave much thought to the condition of their postcareer bodies. If you thought about that too much, you’d never make it to year fourteen, or even half that long. But there was no question the game wore you down, at times in life-threatening ways, and players were starting to think of that more than ever.
Everyone, regardless of their age, knew that the NFL’s year to year was akin to real life’s generation to generation. Time moved at warp speed here, with no space for gradual and thoughtful change. It had been only a year ago, minutes after the Super Bowl win over the Panthers, when Belichick had asked Phifer, “So are you gonna keep playing? Or are you gonna call it a career?” The coach had asked in a hopeful way, as he appreciated the skill and professionalism of the linebacker. Phifer had replied, “I’m in.” Just one year later, he knew there wouldn’t be any polite asking. He was at the point in his career when a private meeting with the boss wasn’t likely to produce good news.
On the day of the game, with Dolphin fully committed to muscle memory, Bruschi roamed the Alltel Stadium field in Jacksonville and began to look into the stands. He saw his wife, Heidi, there along with two of his three sons. It was hours before the game and they were already in place. He knew the kids would be restless, so he ran over to them with a plan in mind. He took a boy in each arm and they all made their way to the field. Then he slowly backpedaled as they chased after him, and he went down in a heap as he let them playfully pile on and tackle him. He and Phifer had talked about becoming a dynasty and now here they were, on February 6, a couple of hours away from making it happen. They couldn’t possibly know all the reasons why this would be their last game playing together, but they had a feeling that this was it.
Brady was excited for the game to begin, and his reasons were different from those of his teammates in their thirties. He had talked about winning a third title at the previous year’s parade, and he hadn’t been pandering. He always believed that he should win, and he had a case with the best offense of his career. He had a particularly strong relationship with Deion Branch, the receiver who shared a mastery of the offense with him. Branch was finishing his third season in the offense, and he had gained his quarterback’s total trust by knowing his assignments on his first day as a pro.
Branch was always in tune with Brady, so when the quarterback would begin to scan the defense and eventually identify the player who is the “Mike,” primarily the linebacker who keys the defense, Branch would know what to do. “All of your sight adjustments are based on that call,” Branch says now. “If you miss that call, you’re going to miss the whole play. Tom is expecting you to make the adjustment off of what he’s just identified. You have to see it the way that he does. It can be very complex.”
It was simple for Brady and Branch. They almost always saw the defense the same way. In the win over the Panthers, Brady was the MVP and Branch was his leading receiver, securing ten catches for 143 yards. They expected tight coverage from the Eagles, who had given up exactly the same point total as the Patriots during the regular season. Their defense was coordinated by one of Belichick’s friends, Jim Johnson, with the two men often chatting during the season to compare notes about opponents. Brady and Branch weren’t surprised when they often faced what they called a Cover 2, Man Under defense. The Eagles had their safeties protecting everything over the top, with linebackers and corners underneath taking away the passing game. “One of the toughest defenses to throw against,” Branch says.
It didn’t matter. Brady was determined to get his receiver the ball. They had only one miscommunication the entire game, on a third-and-nine. Branch was certain, based on his read, that Brady was going elsewhere. He got the message when Brady clarified on the sideline. “Hey, I’m just trying to get you the ball.”
Over and over, that’s exactly what happened. Brady would see the creases in the Eagles defense and Branch would run to them. He’d snag the ball out of the air, run as much as he could, and then smartly go to the turf just before an Eagle had a clean shot at him. Branch tied a Super Bowl record with eleven receptions for 133 yards. This time, he got the game’s MVP trophy and Brady got to deliver on the promise that he had made to all of New England a year earlier.
The communication between Brady and Branch was flawless, but the same could be said of many relationships on the team. It had been like that in the Super Bowl and during the entire season. They knew they were no longer being judged by division titles or appearances in the play-offs. They were chasing the ghosts of the game now. A lot of the communication was unspoken during the season, like when players would look at Rodney Harrison in practice and see the intensity and speed he brought to it. Not wanting to be shown up, they did the same thing. Or maybe it was not wanting to be the first one to leave the facility. Or to not be the first one to miss an answer on one of Belichick’s tests.
Not much had to be said after the game, when there was a three-man huddle with Belichick, Crennel, and Weis. This wasn’t even year-to-year transformation; it was moment-to-moment. They had gone into the game as one staff and, as soon as it was over, they were in that huddle as head coaches of the Patriots, Browns, and University of Notre Dame. They weren’t a trio at that moment, and they were unlikely to be that again.
There were other sweet, unspoken moments at the end of the 24–21 win. Bruschi, naturally, was drawn to a beautiful father-son snapshot. His time had come before the game, a thirty-one-year-old father and his preschool-aged sons. Now he noticed Belichick on the sideline, with his arm draped around his eighty-six-year-old father, Steve. It couldn’t have been more perfect than this for Belichick, winning the Super Bowl next to the man who taught him the game. He could remember being eight years old and hearing Steve’s typewriter as he composed his scouting book, Football Scouting Methods. It was his mother who edited the book; Bill was the one who wanted to be a part of the life that the book described. This was a family affair, and Bruschi punctuated it with a celebratory douse of father and son. The Belichicks loved it.
After the game, Bruschi could be seen on the field smiling and holding up three fingers. Dynasty. Just as he and Phifer and many others had imagined. The night would be full of music, laughter, dancing, and wine. They would savor it as long as they could, and then prepare for the departures. The veterans thought they had steeled themselves for this, so there was nothing in football that could sneak up on them. But that was football, not civilian life.
Nine days after the Super Bowl, Bruschi was back at home and he still couldn’t get enough of the season. Heidi and the boys were asleep and he was awake in the master bedroom, watching football. He had come across the NFL Network, and a replay of the conference championship game in Pittsburgh was on. He had played in the game, replayed it in his mind several times, and now he wanted to watch it again. He looked at it for a while and then he began to doze. He was in a deep football dream, or so he thought, trying to wrap up Jerome Bettis in a tackle. He was acting out his dream, though, and when he awoke at four a.m., his arms were in the air.
Several hours later, he and Heidi realized that he’d had a stroke. It was tough to settle the contrasts. In the Super Bowl, just a week and a half earlier, his boys had run after him on the field. Now, in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, he could hear their tiny footsteps behind him as they were curious about the flashing lights of the ambulance that he was being carried into. He heard them behind him only because he couldn’t see them; there was darkness in his left eye.
It seemed that his career was over.
As Bruschi underwent surgery and rehab, the Patriots went about their expected football business. Bill Andruzzi called in to a local sports radio station, angry that his brother couldn’t generate interest from the Patriots and had reluctantly signed with Cleveland instead. “If the Pats had offered him anything decent, he would have stayed,” his brother told the station.
Patten indeed got triple the money that the Patriots were offering, and happily took a $3.5 million bonus from Washington. Law was released. Seymour decided to hold out. Troy Brown, who had been a receiver, punt returner, and defensive back for the team, didn’t have his option picked up and was encouraged to test the market. Belichick’s first Patriots draft pick, Adrian Klemm, signed with the Packers. And Phifer had that private conversation with Belichick, the one where Belichick said there were no hard feelings and Phifer said he wasn’t ready to say good-bye to football yet. So the Patriots released him.
The math was adding up quickly. More than one-third of the Patriots with three rings were now either leaving or in limbo. There was a pattern starting to emerge, and most people on the team either didn’t see it or didn’t want to say it aloud: These Patriots, under Belichick, were capable of breaking up with just about anybody, with the exception of one player. Brady.
If the Patriots were known for their study habits, then they knew the reason Brady was one of the guys yet not like them at all. For example, his agents were never heard from on contract issues, and he and the team agreed to deals long before the media started countdown clocks on his expiring contracts. In the spring of 2005, Brady’s contract was extended six years for $60 million. He got a $14.5 million signing bonus. He further endeared himself to New England because he made it clear that he wasn’t interested in every available dollar. Locally, he got a halo from fans for not demanding as much as Peyton Manning ($34.5 million signing bonus in 2004) and Michael Vick ($37.5 million).
Good quarterbacks were hard to find. Great quarterbacks were untouchable. Quarterbacks who understood the cap game and how to motivate their teammates were perhaps one of a kind.
“There’s just so much to consider at that position,” Louis Riddick, currently an ESPN analyst, says now. “It starts with decision-making and accuracy. But it’s more than the physical aspect of it. Can he make decisions under pressure? On third down? How about if his left tackle gets knocked out of the game; can he still be consistent? I’ve been on the headsets and heard coaches change the play call because they didn’t think the quarterback could bounce back from a negative play. The position is about physical ability, communication, and leadership.”
Brady was a quarterback; he’d allow Belichick, Scott Pioli, and Kraft to stock the team. For all that Belichick didn’t give to the media in press conferences, he certainly made up for it in daring personnel moves.
Previously, Belichick’s media management, or even his media awareness, had been viewed as a weakness. He now understood that he could use the media to his benefit by knowing what they were saying about him, other teams, and his own players. The latter point interested him most of all: another way of knowing just how on-message players were could be gleaned by seeing, hearing, and reading what they had to say to the public.
Reporters would have been surprised to know how much time he spent doing elements of their jobs. That is, he spent a significant amount of phone time, talking with various football sources, trying to get information. He did more questioning and listening than talking, which was the opposite of his one-dimensional profile in the media. Part of his homework was taking notes from other coaches in town, such as Doc Rivers with the Celtics and Jerry York, Boston College’s championship hockey coach.
He had a few issues to manage just after free agency and before the draft. The departures of Weis and Crennel meant that he’d have to replace two significant staff positions in the same offseason. Eric Mangini, a Wesleyan graduate like Belichick, would take over the defense. Although Belichick didn’t give Josh McDaniels the official offensive coordinator’s title, the job belonged to him. He was confident that both men, studious and bright, had the intellect to be successful on the job. The only thing lacking was their experience.
Belichick also offered advice to Bruschi, who had already walked into his office and tearfully retired. The linebacker had intentionally gone to the locker room first, put all of his locker belongings in a huge trash bag, and placed them near an exit before going in to talk with Belichick. He’d asked Heidi and his sons to wait in the car, and as soon as the meeting was over, he grabbed the belongings and left the building for what he believed to be his last time as a player.
Bruschi didn’t have all the information on stroke recovery, and Belichick had even less information than Bruschi did. But Belichick’s tendency to impartially ask questions was a strength in this case. He continued to tell Bruschi to be patient and see how he felt in several weeks before he made any hasty decisions.
In the meantime, there was a draft to get ready for and, per usual, Belichick was trying to catch up as quickly as possible.
Many were surprised and confused when the Patriots drafted a cowboy from Fresno State. His name was Logan Mankins, and he grew up on a cattle farm. He was big and strong and wanted to be a professional roper. He was good at football, so he played at Fresno, playing both tackle and guard. He was the definition of a Patriot with his low-maintenance lifestyle, on-field toughness, and suspicion of the spotlight. In a comical and organic exchange, the Patriots had asked Mankins to wear his “Sunday best” to his first press conference. He was prepared to go with a cowboy hat, dress shirt, jeans, and his doing-business boots. Learning that, the team directed him to a Men’s Wearhouse so he could purchase his first suit.
Since none of the draft experts had Mankins going to the Patriots, and very few of them had him being drafted in the first round at all, the pick was not initially well received.
“The Pats’ decision to take offensive lineman Logan Mankins and pass on much higher-rated players like safety Brodney Pool and linebacker Barrett Ruud seemed even ‘woise’ a day later,” wrote Kevin Mannix in the Herald. He used the analogy of boxer Jake LaMotta being bloodied even worse than he imagined. “Nobody was expecting the Pats to walk away with ‘Best in Show’ hardware. Not many Super Bowl champs get that honor. Picking at the end of each round and without the benefit of multiple picks in the early rounds pretty much eliminates that chance. But even when you factor in the position of the picks, the Patriots came away looking barely average because they blew the chance to get a playmaker with that first pick.”
No one seemed to consider the timing of the poor review. While Belichick was being ripped for supposedly making a bad draft pick, he was being forced to problem-solve the situation with Seymour, another onetime “bad pick” who was now holding out because he was one of the best defensive linemen in football. Seymour was in the fourth year of a contract that had since become illegal. The deal was for six years, and the Players Association had argued, successfully, that such long contracts had allowed teams to take advantage of players who had outperformed those deals. Seymour was a perfect example and he knew it.
“I wanted the business side to be taken care of,” he says. “For a team to just rip up a contract was seen as business. But if a player asked for that, he was being selfish. I looked at it as business from my perspective, and it was one of my proudest moments. I never compromised who I was as a man to fit in.”
At the beginning of the 2005 season, perhaps as an indication of what was to come, Belichick seemed to trade one set of problems for others. He had resolved the contract dispute with Seymour by giving him a $1.5 million salary bump, and Bruschi had enthusiastically come to him saying that his career wasn’t over after all. But now there were impending contractual issues with Branch, McGinest, David Givens, and Adam Vinatieri. It was going to be difficult to keep all of those players at the numbers they were requesting.
Even if they could, was it practical? He truly wanted to sign Branch, who was young, productive, and shared a football brain with Brady. But the sides couldn’t seem to agree on the receiver’s value, and they were at a stalemate halfway through the season. Bruschi had returned, miraculously, from a stroke—the first NFL player who had ever done that. Wasn’t that an indication that it might be time for a real youth movement on defense, if not the entire team? Harrison was out for the season, having torn three ligaments in his knee. On offense, tight end Christian Fauria had been told, in a candid conversation with tight ends coach Jeff Davidson, that this was likely his last year in Foxboro. The young tight ends, Daniel Graham and Ben Watson, needed more time to play. Fauria sulked when he heard the news and then, he says, “I told myself, ‘You’re such a baby.’ I was pissed at myself for acting that way. In that instant, I decided to change my attitude.”
Belichick was so engrossed with team-building, so prepared with any football situation about which he was asked, sometimes it was easy to forget how he got that way. He was doing what he did only because of his mother and father. He studied and taught football, he researched and collected dozens of football books, only because of what they valued. His father was to college scouting what Belichick was to pro coaching. He covered every situation so no player on his team could possibly complain that he didn’t see something coming.
The senior Belichick had a way of being funny, too, even during tense times. In 1962, with the United States and the Soviet Union in the thick of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Steve Belichick noticed that his Midshipmen football players were overwhelmed. Earlier in the week, they had heard President Kennedy’s warning that the Soviets had put themselves in position for “nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.” They were stunned and a little scared, and Steve Belichick knew it as he scanned the players’ faces before a team meeting. He talked about these important world leaders, President Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, and joked, “I don’t think those guys realize that we are playing Pittsburgh this weekend.”
The team laughed and relaxed. And they also beat Pitt, 32–9.
Bill Belichick wasn’t as loquacious as his father, at least not publicly, but he was an observer of people and moods. He knew when a team was too tight or too casual, and a lot of that insight came from his father. Steve Belichick had been on the sideline for all three Super Bowl victories, including the most recent one over the Eagles. His mind was still computer-quick, and there genuinely wasn’t anything in the game that he hadn’t seen before. But he loved the modern game, especially college football. He watched college football every Saturday, in the same house where he and his wife had raised their only child.
On Saturday night, November 19, Steve Belichick was watching college football when his heart stopped. Bill Belichick heard the crushing news and didn’t share it with many people. The Patriots were playing the Saints the next day, and Belichick planned to coach the team. All of the players didn’t know the details until after the Patriots had defeated the Saints, 24–17.
Belichick was presented with a game ball after the win, and a line of Patriots offered hugs and kind words. The team was 6–4. But for the first time in Belichick’s head coaching career, preparing for the next game was not the most important thing to do. As the team devised a plan for Kansas City, Belichick was on his way to Annapolis to eulogize his hero.
On November 23, usually the first day of game-plan installation in Foxboro, the head coach of the Patriots was in the Naval Academy Chapel. He had been there many times, and he had been married there nearly thirty years earlier. Now he and hundreds of others from the college and pro football world were here to memorialize a man who devoted his life to his country, his family, and football. Patriots owner Robert Kraft was in attendance, along with Charlie Weis and Ernie Accorsi, who had worked with Bill Belichick in Cleveland and was now the general manager of the Giants.
Everyone in attendance could feel and see the impact that Steve Belichick had on those he met. He was able to balance a love for rigor and discipline with an earnest love for the uniqueness of people. He liked to joke that in the house intelligence rankings, he was a distant third behind his wife and son. But on the day he said good-bye to his father, Bill Belichick also honored his mother, saying, “You were the real strength behind two coaches in this family, and I love you.” He may have cried during this time, but the public didn’t see it. What Bill Belichick wanted the world to know, and remember, was that Steve Belichick represented all that was good about fatherhood, coaching, and football.
When Belichick got back to New England, he was in business mode again. He talked about the challenges of playing the Chiefs and the difficulty of dealing with the raucous atmosphere at Arrowhead Stadium. Those difficulties could be easily seen a couple of days later when Brady had one of the worst days of his career. He threw four interceptions in a 10-point loss.
Typical of their season, the Patriots followed the loss to Kansas City with a win. The rhythm of the season had been erratic, and it wasn’t clear what the identity of the 2005 Patriots was. The same could not be said of their opponent after Kansas City, the Jets. They had a new, playmaking cornerback, Ty Law, who had signed with them to reestablish his market value after teams had concerns about his injured foot. His individual season had been great, with five interceptions through twelve games. His team had been miserable; the Jets were 2-10 after a 16–3 loss to the Patriots. The two teams played again, the day after Christmas, and the Patriots walked away with a 10-point victory. One of the few highlights in the game for the Jets was Law picking off Brady and running seventy-four yards for a touchdown. It was his seventh interception in what would eventually become a ten-interception season. New York would soon be looking for a new coach. But that was next year.
A couple of days after the game, Law got a phone call. He recognized the number, the voice, and the question.
“Hey Ty,” Brady said. “What did you see on that interception? What did I give away?”
Three titles and two MVPs later, he was still searching the way he had when he was trying to take the job from Bledsoe.
“Tom, I played with you longer than anybody over there, right?” Law explained. “It’s obvious what you do: You do this exaggerated throwing motion and I knew you were coming back the other way. I played with you long enough to know that. As soon as I saw that motion, it’s not a real throwing motion, I just stopped. You threw it right there.”
The flaw would be corrected for the play-offs, where the Patriots were headed. Law was going to be looking for a new team and, truly, there were no hard feelings for New England. He wanted to return to Foxboro.
Since the Patriots were in season, and had cobbled together a wobbly 10-6 division winner, they didn’t have time to reflect the way Phifer did. Since being released by the Patriots in March, he had searched for a job until finding one, briefly, with the Giants. But something wasn’t right. He’d taken a hit in practice, nothing out of the ordinary, and twisted his knee. He’d had it drained a couple of times, yet it wasn’t responding to treatment. He was living in a Jersey hotel at the time, and one day he lay there on his bed and looked at the ceiling. He was away from his family, and he was down about that. He was forever aware of that problematic knee, and he knew what his body was telling him. This was it. It was over. He called his wife and cried.
“It felt like a breakup after a long relationship,” Phifer says. “The game has done so much for me and my family. It’s the only thing that I really loved. It gave me passion. It’s something that I was blessed to do since I was eight years old. It’s something that I shared with my father. And you know, there’s nothing like that locker room. The relationships. Going to work on a winning streak with guys you care about and admire. It’s hard when that’s taken away from you.”
That was Phifer’s story for the end of his career. But there was a larger truth to his words about the end, and several Patriots were going to have similar feelings after a tough night in Denver.