There is usually a pencil tucked behind one of Bill Belichick’s ears, his constant reminder to be ready when an idea flutters and then suddenly drops. An insight about his franchise is always nearby. There is a coaching point for himself, an area of emphasis for an assistant, or an illustration for the players. The pencil is both symbolic and essential for what lies ahead in 2009. It’s time to restructure, rethink, and ultimately rewrite the franchise. Fortunately for him, he’s been a part of this process a couple of times already.
Nearly twenty years earlier, in Cleveland, he had insisted on vivid language throughout the organization. He was serious about it. Details mattered. Words mattered. He wanted everyone to be precise in their descriptions of who a player was and what he could do, so precise that you could practically feel, touch, and see that player coming to life off the page.
He and Mike Lombardi, his top personnel man at the time, had spent months on the writing of the new scouting manual. They were building something from scratch, so they were wise enough to be patient with the unknown. It was going to take a while to turn some core ideas into an articulated football world. They knew that intelligence, power, and versatility had to be part of their players’ profile, but that still wasn’t specific enough. By the time they started to figure it out, they got fired.
In 2000, in New England, Belichick’s writing partners were Scott Pioli, Ernie Adams, and Bucko Kilroy. They wrote with clarity and power, accurately describing some of their championship players before they were even in the building. They wrote of their ideal defensive lineman: “He must be able to play with fast, strong hands. Two-gapping is not a passive catch and read technique. It involves knocking the offensive line back and establishing a new line of scrimmage. If the defensive tackle gets doubled, he can’t get moved back. He must be able to hold his ground and work laterally. He must be able to disengage and make plays.”
One year later, they got that guy, Richard Seymour. He went beyond the description, actually. He was faster, stronger, bigger, and smarter than the prototype. He was far and away the number one player on their draft board, even though many fans had swooned instead for Michigan receiver David Terrell. But when Terrell’s career was ending four years later, Seymour was dominating through his third consecutive first team All-Pro season.
For the most important position in football, Belichick and his writing team coveted the same general concepts that other franchises did. Of course they wanted a quarterback who was a leader, good decision-maker, and accurate passer. But even those traits can be subjective to scouts who are trying to give the boss what he wants. So the specific instruction was that the quarterback must “throw accurate passes that can be caught by our team. Pretty spirals don’t count if they land out of bounds, or even worse, if the defense can put their hands on the ball. The word ‘accurate’ means that if the ball is supposed to be thrown to the receiver’s right number, that is where the ball gets thrown. It does not get thrown to his left number.” As for his style around the team, their quarterback-on-paper would be held to a higher standard than everyone else. He’d be smart, a natural leader and tone-setter, a man who couldn’t be outworked or outstudied by anyone.
That was their guy, too. Good fortune allowed them to be in position to select Tom Brady; their good writing allowed them to quickly appreciate what they had in him. He was a mold-breaker as well, showing an ability to ascend in his personal life—cover shoots, commercials, movie cameos—while maintaining genuine connections with his boys.
It was no wonder that going into the 2009 season, the Patriots’ decade had included six division titles, four conference championships, and the three Super Bowl wins. They’d had two foundational players emerge from the pages of a football manual and leap firmly into the starting lineup. They were the capstones of the offense and defense, so any conversation about changes with them was naturally a conversation about changes with everyone. Many of the organization’s parts were movable, but these two weren’t.
Some type of planning session needed to happen. Brady was coming off major knee surgery, and there had been delays in rehab due to a postsurgery infection. It was premature to think about his career being in jeopardy, and it also seemed unfair to expect him to be the same quarterback he was in 2007. He’d be in the same offense with a different coordinator in Bill O’Brien. As for Seymour, he was still playing at peak level. He was in the final year of his contract, and the team needed to pay him and defensive tackle Vince Wilfork.
There was a lot to think and write about.
Belichick’s insistence on writing what he wanted to see shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone. He and his father had combined their collection of football literature and put it on display at the Naval Academy. You spend that much time collecting and reading books, and a love for language and ideas is inevitable. In fact, Belichick’s habit of writing things down longhand and then later putting the information into a Word document was the same approach David Halberstam used throughout his career. The author conducted interviews with pen/pencil and paper and then made the transfer to the computer. It was as if it wasn’t real until it was first on a page.
After Halberstam died in a car accident in the spring of 2007, several of his friends shared remembrances. Paul Simon said he didn’t have a “Ted Williams song” for Red Sox fan Halberstam, so he dedicated a tender version of “Mrs. Robinson.” John Lewis, the Georgia congressman and civil rights leader, talked about Halberstam’s compassion. Anna Quindlen marveled at his fearlessness and journalistic vision. In Boston, Belichick went on WEEI radio and spoke of him reverentially. He rattled off the names of a half-dozen Halberstam books and, in some cases, offered plot summaries.
“He was a very vibrant man; a brilliant guy,” Belichick told the radio audience. “He had a great background in just about every area. It wasn’t just sports. It was politics. Religion. World affairs. People. You name it. He was a very interesting man who pulled a lot of different people together. He could carry on a conversation with pretty much anybody.”
Only on the surface was it ironic that Belichick, usually a man of few public words, would find the appropriate ones in that situation. Pulling a lot of different people together and finding common strands was the essence of coaching; investigation, discovery, and problem-solving were staples of writing. Belichick literally was the writing coach as he set things in order for the upcoming season.
He had to formalize his good-byes to Pioli and Josh McDaniels. Pioli had been at his right hand for nine years. He’d been next to him on the duck boats in downtown Boston, in the draft room when Seymour and Brady were selected, even on Nantucket in the summer.
McDaniels, for eight years, had been the student who had accepted the professor’s critical red pens and cross-outs. He’d come a long way from the coaching assistant who was instructed to write out the play, of course, so he’d know the game better. His submitted work to Belichick used to be returned with dozens of sticky notes, pointing out misidentifications and other errors. Labels. Details. Specifics. He’d driven the importance of those to McDaniels, and the sticky notes became fewer and fewer. The young assistant not only learned to label better; he became a better thinker.
Now they were off to Kansas City and Denver, and it wasn’t real until it was on paper.
“To sum up in words everything Scott Pioli has meant to this organization and to me personally would be difficult, if not impossible,” Belichick wrote in a statement. “From the day I met him, he has demonstrated a passion for football and respect for the game that is second to none. It has been extremely gratifying for me to follow Scott’s career ascension from the bottom of the totem pole in Cleveland to his place as a pillar of championship teams in New England. Now, with the opportunity to steer his own ship and a vision of building a winner, there is no more capable, hardworking, loyal, team-oriented person than Scott Pioli.”
For McDaniels, Belichick had authored a booklet of things to expect as a head coach. No first-time head coach, no matter his age, could grasp the breadth and scrutiny of the job. McDaniels, thirty-two, was no different. The book was private; the statement was for all to see and hear.
“Josh McDaniels is one of the finest people and brightest, most talented coaches I have ever worked with. Since joining us eight years ago, Josh performed a variety of roles and excelled in every one of them. Between his work on defense, in scouting, player evaluation and coordinating the offense, Josh is a very well-rounded coach whose outstanding body of work speaks for itself.”
It was now Bill O’Brien’s turn to shape the offense that McDaniels had inherited from Charlie Weis. He had refined and updated it so it reflected the evolution of Brady and the league. O’Brien’s mission was to keep adjusting the offense while finding out who the postinjury Brady was. It was Nick Caserio’s turn to help Belichick find the next seventh-round gem like Matt Cassel. Caserio would be the one supervising the search for the next free agent, like Mike Vrabel. The linebacker had fit so perfectly that it was hard to believe that he’d begun his career outside of New England.
Late in the 2008 season, he had shared his disbelief of the owners’ claims that the collective bargaining agreement wasn’t a good deal for them. He specifically mentioned Robert Kraft and his outdoor mall, Patriot Place. He didn’t think it would have been possible without the performance of the players. Could Kraft have disagreed with Vrabel and still kept him on the team? Sure. But that was just a theory, because in March, Vrabel and Cassel were traded to Pioli’s Chiefs. Belichick gave the move the writing treatment that it deserved.
“When Mike arrived in 2001, we knew we were adding a solid outside linebacker. But where Mike took it from there exceeded our highest hopes. Mike Vrabel epitomizes everything a coach could seek in a professional football player: toughness, intelligence, playmaking, leadership, versatility, and consistency at the highest level. Behind the scenes, Mike’s wit and personality is one of the things we have all enjoyed about coming to work every day. The toughest aspect of my job is the day I stop coaching people like Mike, who did everything in his power to contribute to team success.
“Of all the players I have coached in my career, there is nobody I enjoyed working with more than Mike. In the same way people recognize guys like Troy Brown, we appreciate and thank Mike Vrabel. He is one of the very special Patriots champions.”
It wasn’t a rebuild, not with Seymour and Brady still on the roster, but why did it feel that way? Why did it feel different? The Patriots had dealt with this drain before, several times. It was the parade after the parade, the exodus of various personnel off to see if they could make it away from home.
The Patriots received a second-round pick, number thirty-four overall, in the Cassel-Vrabel trade. The selection was a reminder that although the Patriots were in transition, they weren’t too far away from their draft roots. As they had done several times in the past nine years, they took an asset and maximized it far beyond its original value. In a sense, they were draft flippers. Cassel had been the 230th overall pick in 2005. By 2009, the Patriots had moved pick 230 for pick 34, and it was all based on the 2008 performance of the twenty-seven-year-old quarterback. It was a great financial move for him as well because he had entered 2008 making $520,000. As soon as he got to Kansas City, he signed a $63 million contract with $28 million guaranteed.
At fifty-seven years old, Belichick was as energized and focused on the job as he had ever been. He wasn’t thinking of retirement, although the league was starting to look like the head table of a Belichick reunion dinner. His lieutenants were stationed all over the country. Thomas Dimitroff was the general manager in Atlanta. Pioli and McDaniels represented Kansas City and Denver. Mangini had replaced Crennel in Cleveland. Jason Licht had left for Philadelphia and Arizona, but was now back in New England. And there were a handful of college coaches he leaned on for insight on players and collegiate trends: Chip Kelly and Pat Hill on the West Coast, Kirk Ferentz in the Midwest, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer in the Southeast, and Greg Schiano in the Northeast.
During the April draft, some clues about the 2009 season began to reveal themselves. The 2007 and 2008 drafts had been headlined by a safety and a linebacker. In 2009, Belichick traded out of the first round in exchange for extra picks now and next year. He wound up with four second-rounders: Oregon safety Patrick Chung, Boston College defensive tackle Ron Brace, Connecticut cornerback Darius Butler, and Houston offensive lineman Sebastian Vollmer. It was obvious that something was stirring on defense, and what it was became tangible in the summer.
Before that, though, there was good news. Brady was back. He wore a huge, black brace on his left leg, and there were times when he seemed a step off during the early days of team activities. He had a rebuilt body and workout routine, courtesy of a trainer named Alex Guerrero. The two of them reworked Brady’s throwing program as well as his diet. Brady returned to the office, so to speak, and it was similar to when he left. Randy Moss and Wes Welker remained the primary receivers, and the Patriots had signed a potential third option in thirty-seven-year-old veteran Joey Galloway. He looked lost most of the time in the scheme, and it even seemed that a rookie seventh-rounder, Julian Edelman, was getting it quicker than he was.
Edelman was one of those players, like Vrabel and Troy Brown, that Belichick dreamed up during his free-verse writing sessions. They were players that had primary positions, but they could theoretically be plugged in anywhere. He was a prospect worth watching.
Yet it seemed for every player who arose like Edelman, there was another valued one saying good-bye. In June, there was the expected announcement from Rodney Harrison. He was retiring. He had missed time with significant injuries in three of the previous four years, and he was now better at describing his time away than fighting to get back. He admitted to losing his all-consuming hunger to play football, and he had already been hired to bring his verbal punch and candor to NBC’s football studio show.
As Belichick prepared to write again, the endeavor seemed tenuous. There was a lot of institutional knowledge and instincts leaving; what was actually coming? Was the established culture that secure where it could remain stable despite the changes?
“In the biggest games, in any situation and on a weekly basis, his production was phenomenal,” Belichick wrote. “Rodney embodies all the attributes coaches seek and appreciate: toughness, competitiveness, leadership, selflessness, hard work, intensity, professionalism—and coming from Rodney, they are contagious.”
After all, there were many “normal” things in the locker room that weren’t necessarily normal in other places. Harrison was among those who were there for the installation of things that were now taken for granted. The players, for example, were coachable, maybe because some of their toughest coaches were their peers. All of their competitions were based around improving team performance.
They gave out that mental error belt to prevent mistakes in the game. They challenged one another to get to work early and interrogated players who tried to leave early. They took the punitive nature of being late for meetings away from the coaches and handled it themselves; if you were the last one sitting down, no matter what time it was, you were late. In fact, Harrison learned that lesson when he first arrived from San Diego. He and others became enforcers of that rule and many more. They checked one another’s plates for fatty foods.
Fried chicken again today, huh? No wonder you’re making so many mistakes in the game.
They joked. They easily crossed racial lines while socializing. They crossed spiritual lines in the cafeteria; there were times when Heath Evans, a Christian, would have debates with Robert Kraft, who is Jewish, about the Old and New Testaments. That was the culture and it had led to the creation of the atmosphere, yet it wasn’t consciously created. It came to be spontaneously, and now many of its custodians and caretakers were moving out.
The changes weren’t glaring at the beginning of training camp. Some of the scenes there appeared to be normal. Belichick’s friend, musician Jon Bon Jovi, was asking about the new coach of the Jets, Rex Ryan. He was the Jets’ fourth head coach since Belichick arrived in New England. In June, Ryan had targeted Belichick and said he hadn’t taken the job to “kiss his rings.” Belichick had certainly heard his share of hyperbole over the years, so he barely reacted when he answered Bon Jovi, “I think they’ll play hard for him.”
Kraft, meanwhile, approached his friend Seymour. He asked the giant standing next to him, “Is this the best group of players on paper?” Seymour hesitated. He respected the owner and had taken one of the most significant trips of his life with him. He and his wife, Tanya, had gone to Israel with Kraft and his wife, Myra. The Seymours had been baptized in the Jordan River, an incredible experience for both of them. He knew he could have given Kraft a better answer than his “It’s up there…” But there was so much uncertainty. His contract situation was unclear. Some of his teammates, who were under contract, were unproven. It was hard to tell how, or if, this team would come together.
Once again, goodness, it was coming apart. It felt like corporate America with its sweeping buyouts of senior employees. Seymour was a key part of the franchise’s stonework, but there was chipping and shifting in the mortar. And dramatic breakaways. Maybe some careful observers could see it coming, with the way they watched Tedy Bruschi limp around the field. He’d had surgery on a knee in 2008, and when you’re thirty-six years old, an injury from 2008 still throbs and pokes and taunts in 2009.
Bruschi knew he wasn’t the same player. He and Roman Phifer had a lot in common, including their love for watching film. They’d sit in the meeting rooms and pick up tells and insights that other players didn’t always see. Bruschi was such a student that he would instruct his linebacker coaches to double-check what they were teaching him. “Is this what was covered in the meeting?” he’d say as they wrote on the board. He wanted to be sure he was practicing the proper technique because “I know what happens around here when you get it wrong.”
But there were other problems in August 2009. He didn’t like the way he looked on film. He thought he was slow and stiff. Phifer had said the same thing about himself four years earlier when he decided it was time to stop playing. Phifer was with McDaniels as a member of the Broncos coaching staff, watching films and making them as well. A couple of years into retirement, he had attended a meeting of retired players and was startled at the debilitating issues they’d had as a result of playing in the league. Hip and knee replacements. Depression. Dementia. He was determined to do something and raise awareness. He helped produce a documentary called Blood Equity.
Beyond the medical issues, walking away from football created another void. “We’ve been a part of a team all of our lives,” Phifer says. “If we don’t find another pack, we struggle. We’re like wolves. Football and everything it provides, it’s a tough act to follow. You can get bits and pieces of it in other places, but you can’t replicate it.”
Bruschi’s new pack was going to be on TV. After thirteen years as a football player, he was walking away. Only his teammates and coaches knew just what a creative and instinctive player he was. It didn’t translate to Pro Bowls. No, it was much more impressive than that. He created a playing style at middle linebacker that the coaches accepted but did not teach; he taught himself.
He once overheard a conversation that teammate Ted Johnson was having with their old defensive coordinator, Al Groh. Johnson was taller and heavier than Bruschi, and he had once hit a Dolphins guard with such ferocity that the player’s helmet split in two. He was a big, physical thumper. After one of those thumping games, Groh said to Johnson, “That’s the way we want it done.” Bruschi mentally shook his head. He couldn’t play that way. He was too small. He’d use athleticism and mind games instead. He’d take a lineman on early, but slip him later on in the game.
He was a poet with his teammates, putting his hand on their shoulder pads before games and looking into their eyes. “You good? Family is good? Bills are paid? All right, let’s play ball.” He negotiated his own contracts. He saw his parents file for bankruptcy when he was a kid, so he was preoccupied with buying a home and immediately paying it off, with no mortgage. Bill Parcells once told him after practice, “I’ve lost some players to drugs, but I’ve lost more to the IRS. I think you’re going to be in this game a long time; do you have an accountant?” Bruschi went back to his apartment that night and called a lawyer he knew in Arizona. “We need to get an accountant.”
An original, through and through. It’s why Belichick took his words about Bruschi to the cameras. Television stations in New England carried the announcement live, and everyone was stunned when Belichick became emotional as he honored the linebacker.
“If you ask me to sum up how I feel about Tedy Bruschi in five seconds,” the coach said, pausing and holding back tears, “he’s the perfect player.” He paused again, trying to pin the tears down. His voice shook. He repeated the compliment and more: “He’s the perfect player. He has helped create a tradition here that we’re all proud of. The torch has been passed, and we’ll try to carry it on.”
It was going to be hard to carry it on. By all measures, the team wasn’t as smart as it had been in previous years. It wasn’t as tough. It wasn’t as respectful. It wasn’t the Patriots.
The biggest blow of the season came one week before the games actually began. It was a Sunday morning, September 6, and Seymour was at home. He was away from his phone for a while, and when he finally got to it he saw that he had five missed calls and a text from Berj Najarian at the office. Belichick wanted to speak with him. He suspected nothing. What he heard on the phone was puzzling.
“Al Davis made a trade for you,” Belichick said. “And you’re now a member of the Oakland Raiders.”
“I was like, ‘Huh?’” Seymour says now. “I talked to my wife, my mom, my agent. And that was really it. There had been no speculation of that happening, no hint of it, so it felt really abrupt. The kids had just started school. We had a new house. We were entrenched in the community. Honestly, it took a minute to process it. I just couldn’t jump up and leave like that.
“For a couple of days, I didn’t talk to the Raiders or the Patriots. I saw a lot of wordplay about ‘whose property’ I was and who ‘owned my rights.’ I didn’t like the way it felt, and I didn’t like the way it sounded. From a personal standpoint there for a couple of days, I had to do what was best for my family.”
Seymour was a month away from his thirtieth birthday, and he was still recognized as a dominant player. The Patriots had acquired Oakland’s 2011 first-round pick for him. So in terms of locker-room accounting in 2009, the Patriots had traded away Seymour’s dominance and smarts and in turn received a promissory note for 2011. As brilliant as the Belichick-Brady tandem was, there was no way to overcome the losses of the Seymour trade immediately. The NFL didn’t work that way, not even for Belichick and Brady. Seymour was a rare talent, and everyone around the league knew it. The Patriots had good reasons for trading him when they did, planning, as always, for future cap flexibility. Yet they might have known, looking at their own internal writings, that they’d never again have a defensive lineman like him.
When he finally reported to Oakland, he viewed things differently.
“It was a lot deeper than football,” he says. “I went to a team that personally needed me. There were a lot of young guys out there who had money, but no guidance. I was out there to lead men. I personally felt a lot of satisfaction. And as a defensive lineman, there’s no better place to be nasty and tough than the Raiders and Al Davis.”
Seymour was surprised when the eighty-year-old Davis approached him and started describing plays he’d watched the lineman make at the University of Georgia. “He was such a football guy,” Seymour says.
That simple phrase said it all because, back in New England, the Patriots didn’t have enough of them. Football guys. You knew them when you saw them, when you heard them, or in the case of Belichick, when you coached them.
Brady was the same as he had always been. He stayed in the pocket more, and that brace may have been the only thing he’d ever worn that didn’t look stylish on him. He still had the mind of an engineer, deconstructing how a defense functioned and then coming up with a plan of attack with Belichick and O’Brien. He was comfortable enough to go into Belichick’s office, notebook in hand, and share his observations from his film study once a week. These were one-on-one business meetings, with one careful observer, Brady, reporting what he saw to a man, Belichick, who is just as careful if not more so. There weren’t a lot of surprises revealed. In many cases, they were confirming what they already knew.
The trend for the Patriots was disturbing. They were a good team at home; they couldn’t close out games on the road. They lost their first matchup to Ryan’s Jets, with the new coach playing up the rivalry by leaving a voice mail for season ticket holders. The message: Be loud. The Patriots scored just 9 points in that game. In their first trip to Denver against McDaniels and the Broncos, they had a 10-point lead early and a 17–10 lead in the fourth quarter. A fumble, a missed field goal, and a taunting penalty later, they lost in overtime. They won big at home over the Titans, but Adalius Thomas was inactive for it. One of the team leaders, Thomas had missed practices in the previous week and Belichick wasn’t happy about it. He also wasn’t happy with the way Thomas was playing. He was making no impact plays, so he sat. Belichick and Thomas were headed for a confrontation.
Conflict was the New Patriot Way. Even Belichick didn’t seem like himself at times. In Indianapolis, the Patriots lost a game when they had a lead late and the head coach decided to go for it on fourth-and-two from the Patriots’ own twenty-eight. The theory was that he was trying to end the game so Peyton Manning wouldn’t have a chance to, but a couple of TV commentators suggested that it showed a lack of faith in the New England defense. Those commentators were named Rodney Harrison and Tedy Bruschi. He loved them, obviously, but when they were on TV he’d use what they said to inspire his current team.
“I’ve heard it said that I don’t have confidence in you, which is a bunch of bullshit,” he told the team the next day. “If you guys don’t think I have confidence in you, I don’t know what you’re doing every day… ignore the noise.”
When the Patriots played the Saints in November, New England was 7-3. New Orleans was 10-0. It wasn’t even close. The road-weary Patriots barely competed, which led to Belichick’s admission to Brady on the sideline, “I just can’t get this team to play the way it needs to.”
It was a bold confession from Belichick because his teams had routinely played well in December. But going into this December, the Patriots had won only a single road game in the United States. They got a win over Tampa, but that was in London. And they weren’t always great at home, which Thomas could attest to when he was nine minutes late for a team meeting and Belichick sent him home. The linebacker protested the move and Belichick shelved him for the rest of the season. Amazingly, he’d never play in the league again.
Belichick had come into the season believing that some adjustments were what the team needed. But it was a lot more problematic than that. Too many players were trying to win on their terms, which didn’t always include an attentiveness to winning football. The Patriots needed to get back to those players. Thomas and his supporters were going to be cut loose; Belichick was going back to his football roots.