By now, everyone in New England had heard and practically memorized what Tom Brady said about Wes Welker. The quarterback had absolved the receiver for The Drop. He said Welker was a great person and teammate. He said he wanted to keep throwing footballs to him for as long as he could. He said he loved him. Gracious words all around, leaving no space for second-guessing or resentment.
But still. This was New England. The day after the Super Bowl, that play got hours and hours of nonstop, frothing analysis. The same thing happened the next day, and the day after that, too. Welker was from Oklahoma, but he had been in New England for five years. That was long enough to realize that there are errors in big games, and then there are errors in big games against teams from New York. Those are the worst of all. Even if New Englanders were wired to move on, which they weren’t, the New Yorkers would be there with smug reminders. Their jeering “eighteen and one” chant after the Super Bowl in the almost-perfect season was bad enough. Now there was this drop in their 21–17 Super Bowl win, which they used to prop up Eli Manning as a big-game quarterback and Tom Coughlin—He’s 2-0 against Belichick, you know—as a Hall of Fame coach.
It just so happened that Welker was the biggest practical joker on the Patriots. His drop, after a season in which he caught an incredible 122 passes, was the worst payback of all. It also coincided with negotiation time. His contract was up and, in March 2012, he was looking for an extension. Instead, the Patriots announced that they were placing their franchise tag on him. He suggested that he might not sign, nor show up for minicamp in June. He didn’t get his commitment. What he received, on national TV, was a lesson in Patriots economics from Willie McGinest.
McGinest was one of many ex-Patriots in the media. It was startling to hear their thoughtful and unfiltered opinions, after years of being intentionally bland and guarded as players. These days, they went on TV and radio and more than made up for lost time.
“During my tenure in New England, no matter how big you were or who you were, nobody said that they weren’t coming to a mandatory minicamp. If you know anything about New England, understand that you’re expendable. Unless you’re Bill Belichick or Tom Brady, you’re expendable.”
As strong as his words were, McGinest could have gone further. He could have mentioned that Welker was thirty-one, two years removed from a torn ACL, and on the same team as two tight ends, twenty-three and twenty-two years old, whom the Patriots wanted to sign to long contracts. As a player, McGinest didn’t get too many challenges after he had spoken, but as a media member, he received a pointed tweet from Welker: “why did u ever leave the Pats and play for the Browns?” McGinest, who collected $12 million from Cleveland during the last contract of his football career, replied, “My point exactly. We’re all expendable at Patriot Place.”
A few weeks later, there was another tweet from Welker: “I signed my tender today. I love the game and I love my teammates! Hopefully doing the right things gets the right results. #leapoffaith.”
There was a lot for Bill Belichick to think about, and Welker’s contract was one of those things, but it wasn’t the top item on his list. The Super Bowl loss had confirmed that the offense just wasn’t the same without Rob Gronkowski. In postgame interviews, Gronk had claimed to be completely healthy and said he felt no pain from his high ankle sprain. That was obviously not true and, a week after the game, he’d undergone surgery on an ankle that had multiple ligament tears. He was expected to be completely healed by training camp, which would allow Josh McDaniels plenty of time to reimagine the Gronk–Aaron Hernandez offense.
McGinest was right: Going from major player to replaced player was the inevitable progression, and it rarely happened on the player’s terms. One of those rare moments took place in May when left tackle Matt Light announced his retirement. It wasn’t an unexpected move, and it was part of the reason Belichick and top personnel man Nick Caserio decided to use last season’s first-round pick on left tackle Nate Solder. Light was going to be missed, not just for his ability to protect Brady’s blind side, but for his energy and wit.
When Brady was part of a GQ magazine photo spread that included, remarkably, a picture of him holding a goat, Light and other linemen made copies. They taped it to their backs and made sure that Brady had to look at that outrageous picture of himself for each snap of practice. Once, Light was even bold enough to sneak into Belichick’s office and replace his computer mouse with a gag one; each time it was touched, it provided an electric shock. Belichick recalled, at Light’s retirement tribute, how that little stunt went horribly wrong and erased some notes that the coach had written.
Light’s departure was significant for another reason: It meant that there was now one member of the team, Brady, with three Super Bowl rings. There were twenty-two of those three-ring guys, but they were scattered now. There was a better chance of seeing all those rings on TV than in Foxboro. McGinest could wear his on the NFL Network. Bruschi could wear his on ESPN. Troy Brown and Ty Law could display theirs locally since both were on Comcast SportsNet New England. Teammate Matt Chatham was across town with his at the New England Sports Network. The recruits who dreamed of playing in the Rose Bowl could see them on the fingers of Adrian Klemm, coaching at UCLA, and Mike Vrabel, coaching at Ohio State. Richard Seymour, the headliner of Light’s draft class, had his in Oakland. But not for long. He was planning to make the upcoming season his last one as well.
Brady’s former teammates understood that there were several keys to longevity, and the fact that he continued to possess them and profess his love for them was impressive. Ty Law said he knew it was time to leave when he started to get easily injured and the fun of football started to feel like a wearisome job. Rosevelt Colvin acknowledged that he was worn down near the end of his career as well, tired “of the games and, honestly, you get to the point where you tune Bill out. And I think he’s a great guy. But he rides everyone, whether it’s [running backs coach] Ivan Fears, Josh [McDaniels], Charlie Weis, me, Tom. Mentally, it’s a lot to be out there.”
Christian Fauria said it was Brady’s “work behind the curtain” that amazed him. The extra stretching. The disciplined sleep schedule, which usually had Brady in bed before nine p.m. The concentrated study on the upcoming opponent, players and coaches alike, then wiping the slate clean at the beginning of the next week and doing it again. The careful diet. The weight work.
“Really, I just got sick of it all,” Fauria says. “But Tom is amazing. He’s religious about his routine.”
For Seymour, it was a combination of several things, some of which Brady never had to be concerned about in New England.
“I was starting to get worn thin. I had a couple of different head coaches, and a new general manager. There are lots of small routines that you get into, and one coach would know how to take care of you and another one wouldn’t. My wife and kids got tired of the travel, and I didn’t want to be on anybody’s schedule anymore. I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to.
“I think I’m the exception to the rule. I left the game on my own terms. I don’t have regrets. Some guys have to keep playing and take deals that the teams say they have to take.”
Brady was thirty-five years old and not even considering joining the retirement community on TV or in the stands. Part of the job was not just an ability to do it, but an infinite desire to do it. He had that, with an abundance in reserve. He didn’t need to do anything that the Patriots demanded, and he was the only player Belichick ever had who could say that. He never had to worry about getting a contract, just crafting one. He felt great about his arm strength, his overall health, his diet, and the stewarding abilities of Belichick and his staff when it came to building the roster and coaching it. When he restructured his contract in the spring, creating more than $7 million of cap space, the corresponding move seemed to be obvious: Brady was making space so the team could sign his buddy Welker.
Right idea, wrong player. The new deal was going to Gronk and, like him, it made a statement. He was twenty-three, and his $55 million contract could keep him with the Patriots until age thirty-one. Brady often said that he wanted to keep playing football well into his forties, and if he was able to manage that, he’d still be throwing touchdown passes to Gronk.
At the rate Belichick was going, he would still be coaching both of them. He once said that he didn’t plan to be the next Marv Levy, who coached Buffalo until he was seventy-two. But Belichick, who turned sixty in April 2012, sounded and looked energetic on the job. Off it, with his girlfriend of five years, Linda Holliday, he always had a smile on his face. Holliday threw an elaborate, Moroccan-themed surprise party for him at a Boston hotel on his sixtieth birthday. It was game-planned thoughtfully; even the servers were banned from smartphones, so some of the celebrity guests, such as the Bon Jovis, didn’t have to worry about unauthorized pictures. Bill Belichick at work could be intense, but socially, he knew how to have fun.
Since Gronk was signed through 2019, the focus naturally shifted to his dynamic twin, Hernandez. In 2010, he had written his letter to the Patriots, essentially promising them that they wouldn’t find trouble with him. He challenged them to put language in his contract that would penalize him for failed drug tests, his way of telling them that they wouldn’t have to worry about the issues that scared off some teams in the draft process. Some of those issues were superficial, such as the tattoos that covered his arms. Some of them were more serious, such as the habitual marijuana use or his association with a few suspicious characters from his hometown. Those characters seemed to pop up in Gainesville a lot, and a couple of them appeared to be significantly older than a kid who arrived on campus at seventeen. They weren’t his relatives. Just older guys, ranging from their midtwenties to early thirties, who seemed to be hangers-on. At best, they were people who wanted to be around Hernandez when he made it big. At worst, well, they fulfilled the gangbanger stereotypes that many people didn’t want to verbalize, for fear of being labeled out of touch, bigoted, or racist.
At a glance, Hernandez appeared to be doing everything he said he would. His signing bonus with the Patriots was $200,000, nearly $300,000 less than the player who was drafted in his slot the year before. The Patriots structured his contract so he would have to earn his money in workout and roster bonuses. Not a problem. He was there all the time, and he knew exactly where he was supposed to be on the field.
Even some of the real issues that other scouts mentioned, what they perceived as Hernandez’s low self-esteem, moodiness, and sullenness, were being dealt with. After his rookie year, Hernandez spoke openly and passionately about the need for mental health professionals in Latino communities. Hernandez, whose late father, Dennis, was Puerto Rican, teamed up with the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology to raise awareness and funds for mental health in underserved communities. He unashamedly talked about his reliance on therapy as a teenager after his father’s death.
The contrast was astonishing. In April 2010, his character was being questioned and there were stories about his drug use. In April 2011, he was the celebrity being lauded for helping out in the community. On a Friday afternoon, he spoke with 120 kids and their parents at the predominantly Latino Gardner Pilot Academy in the Allston section of Boston. That night, along with the mayor of Boston and three state senators and representatives, he attended a fund-raiser in Newton, Massachusetts, for mental health services.
“There are a lot of young kids that don’t have that guardian or role model to talk to or that person that they can go to and just lay everything out,” he told the Boston Globe’s Greg Bedard. “Sometimes the psychologist, when you have no one around you, can be there for you and be that person you let your feelings out to, the person that you can talk to and can give you guidance in making the right decisions when you really don’t have the right people there to help you with those big decisions in life.”
He was still making trips back to Connecticut, but that could be easily explained. His older brother, DJ, was the head football coach at a high school near their hometown. As for some of the shady characters who would travel from Bristol to Gainesville, the Patriots didn’t see much of them, although they were around.
As the Patriots were just over a week away from training camp in mid-July 2012, New Englanders began to get excited about the team’s chances for the season.
There was a lot to look forward to and a few new names to learn. For that reason and others, many Globe readers probably glanced over a story on July 18. It was exactly the kind of article some sports fans skipped because they were using sports to escape the depressing tales of city life. It was sad, though: Two young men, twenty-nine and twenty-eight, from Boston’s strong and proud Cape Verdean community, had been killed in a drive-by shooting on Shawmut Avenue, near downtown. The initial speculation was that it was a gang-related shooting.
But the young men, Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu, had no gang ties and no criminal records. They were friends who worked together at a cleaning company in Dorchester. They had left a club around two a.m., got into a car with three other friends—de Abreu was driving and Furtado was in the front passenger seat—and began making their way home. They were waiting to turn left onto Herald Street when a silver Toyota 4Runner with Rhode Island plates pulled up beside their black BMW. The driver of the 4Runner was angry and yelled, “Yo, what’s up now?” He then fired six gunshots into the car and sped off. The three friends in the backseat survived; Furtado and de Abreu were dead when police arrived at 2:32 a.m.
“They were my employees, but they were also very good friends of mine, like brothers,” said their boss, Jose Centeio. “This is a mystery, why anyone would want to kill two people who never bothered anyone. They had no issues with anyone, and I’m sure of that, because I spent a lot of time with them.”
No one in New England would have presumed that a player at Gillette Stadium might have known exactly what happened that night on Shawmut Avenue. Reporters wanted to talk about Gronk and his celebrity offseason. He and Matt Light had angered some fans by dancing, happy and shirtless, after the Super Bowl loss to the Giants. Next, Gronk was in a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial; hung out at the ESPYs; had a nude photo shoot with ESPN magazine; and met with the Kardashians about the possibility of a Gronk family reality show.
Hernandez was asked about his summer, compared to Gronk’s.
“I just chill,” he answered. “I don’t pay attention to all that stuff, but I’m sure he was having fun. I definitely get laughs when people tell me about some stuff, but I’m more laid back, chilled and relaxing.”
One month later, with camp over and great anticipation for the season, the Patriots had an announcement: Hernandez had agreed to a new contract. It was for seven years and $41.1 million. He was assured of at least $16 million in guarantees and he received a $12.5 million signing bonus. In a single offseason, the Patriots had ensured that the Gronk-Hernandez combination would be together until at least 2018. One of the first things Hernandez did with his money was donate $50,000 to the Myra H. Kraft Giving Back Fund.
“Now, I’m able to basically have a good chance to be set for life and have a good life and I have a daughter on the way, and I have a family that I love,” Hernandez said. He was emotional as he talked about the Patriot Way and how Robert Kraft had changed his life. He said he was moved by the contract because it was Kraft’s way of saying that he trusted Hernandez’s character and decision-making skills. He seemed amazed by the opportunities that the contract afforded him and his family.
“It’s just knowing that they’re going to be okay, because I was happy playing for $250,000, $400,000. But knowing that my kids and my family will be able to have a good life, go to college, it’s just an honor that he did that for me. He gave me this opportunity. So the $50,000 to help his foundation, obviously it’s basically saying thank you.”
It didn’t take long for Gronk and Hernandez to make the Patriots look wise for their investment. In the first game of the season, at Tennessee, both tight ends caught six balls and both had touchdowns. There had been chatter about Welker’s role being reduced, and the Titans game seemed to suggest it was more than a rumor. Welker had just fourteen receiving yards in the game, on three receptions. Other than that, as well as a bloody nose from Brady and some questionable calls by the replacement officials (the regulars were being locked out), there wasn’t a lot of negative news to report.
In less than a year, Wes Welker had watched the Patriots sign linebacker Jerod Mayo, Gronk, and Hernandez to significant contract extensions. As they were being extended, he was being reduced, on and off the field. Welker indicated that the team had initially made him a two-year offer worth $16 million and then changed it. Later, he backtracked from the story, but something wasn’t adding up. He wasn’t the biggest contract priority, and he was on his way to being a secondary on-field priority before an injury changed things.
Early in game two, an uncommon home loss to the Cardinals, receiver Julian Edelman caught a short pass from Brady, with Hernandez blocking to Edelman’s left. When Edelman was tackled, his momentum carried him toward Hernandez’s right ankle, and the receiver landed hard on it. Hernandez immediately grabbed the ankle as he rolled on the ground. This didn’t look good. He was going to be out for a while. With Hernandez injured, Welker’s importance increased again. He was able to accomplish a milestone, too, in the game. He caught five balls, which gave him 562 catches as a Patriot, the most in franchise history.
Three games later, with Hernandez still missing with the severe ankle sprain, the Patriots hosted the Broncos at Gillette. Denver’s new quarterback was Peyton Manning, who had been cut by the Colts following his spinal fusion surgery and season away from football. Indianapolis was now led by rookie Andrew Luck, while the Broncos expected Manning’s record-setting right arm to get them to the Super Bowl. Although the game was hyped as the thirteenth Brady-Manning matchup, the star of the afternoon was Welker.
He looked like the same Wes, grabbing thirteen balls for 104 yards and a touchdown in a 31–21 win. He stayed on the field after the game to do a “talkback” interview on Comcast SportsNet with host Michael Felger and a familiar analyst duo, Troy Brown and Ty Law. Asked about his big game, in light of his diminished role at the beginning of the season, Welker said it was enjoyable. “It’s definitely nice to stick it in Bill’s face once in a while, so this is a good one.” All four of them laughed, and all four of them realized just how true the statement was. A couple of days later, predictably, Welker said, “I don’t know what else to say about it; it was a joke. But Bill and I, whether y’all believe it or not, have a good relationship. It was a joke, and I’ll make sure to keep that in-house going forward.”
The lack of a contract, the reduced offer, and then the reduced role had led to the “joke,” so it had history and heat attached to it. And Belichick didn’t think it was funny. The next week, in Seattle, it was Brady’s turn to be the object of someone’s humor. Hernandez returned, for the first time in a month, and had a touchdown. But the Patriots couldn’t hold a 13-point fourth quarter lead and wasted a 395-yard passing day from Brady. They lost 24–23. A second-year cornerback, Richard Sherman, intercepted Brady and then badgered the dejected quarterback as he walked off the field at the end of the game. Later, he posted the picture on Twitter with the caption “U Mad Bro!”
Brady was mad, and it had nothing to do with Sherman. The Patriots were 3-3 and inconsistent. They were able to slip by the Jets the next week in overtime. The Gronk-Hernandez offense was back again, with the tight ends combining for eleven catches, 132 yards, and two touchdowns. It was back, and then it was gone. Hernandez played those two games against the Seahawks and Jets, but his ankle wasn’t responding the way it should have. He was going to miss the next few games and, if all went well, he’d be back in a month.
The Patriots didn’t need Hernandez on November 18 against their old rival, the Colts, and their new quarterback, Luck. A strong passer and runner, Luck was able to do some breathtaking things on the field. But he was mistake prone, throwing three interceptions in this game, and the Patriots took advantage. It seemed that they could score whenever they needed to, but they stopped just short of 60 in a huge 59–24 win. Although Gronk had one of those Gronk games, eleven catches and two touchdowns, that wasn’t what drew postgame interest.
Late in the game, on the Patriots’ final extra point, Gronk went to block his man, former teammate Sergio Brown. His left forearm seemed to collapse on the spot. Fluke injury. His arm was limp, and he went to talk with Dr. Thomas Gill, a man whose name was going to be in the news a lot in the next several weeks. The forearm was broken. The biggest question of all was for Belichick, who had a starter on special teams. The head coach always did that, and it wasn’t often that it warranted attention. But Gronk had been hurt on a meaningless play in a meaningless point in a blowout. People wanted to know, why was he even there? On his weekly Boston radio segment on WEEI, Belichick tried to answer.
“You only have so many players. You only dress so many players. Somebody’s got to play. I think you’ve got to be careful when you’re trying to run a team, to go up to one guy and say, ‘Michael, we’re going to leave you in the game because we care about you, but Glenn, we’re going to take you out because you’re really important. You other guys go in there because if something happens to you, we don’t really care’… I think football players play football. I don’t know how… you tell me which guy is going to get hurt and I’ll get him out of there. I don’t know how you do that.”
Fortunately for the Patriots, they had a few things in their favor. It was November, which still left time for Gronk to return, at least for the play-offs. They were losing Gronk, yes, but Hernandez was returning. Ten games into the season, the two tight ends had played together for just three full games. Most important, there was a clear path to a home play-off game, if not a first-round bye, because the division was more mediocre than usual. The Jets were without Darrelle Revis, who was out for the season with a torn ACL. After two seasons when it seemed that Rex Ryan and the Jets would be a difficult matchup for the Patriots, the Jets were average in 2011 and even worse in 2012.
The Patriots got a big win over the Jets in the first post-Gronk game, 49–19, and the American sports fan got a win, too. One of the silliest plays in football history occurred in the first quarter, with the Jets already trailing 14–0. Quarterback Mark Sanchez went to run on a busted play, and as he carried the ball, it popped free after hitting the backside of his own guard, Brandon Moore. In soccer, it would have been an own goal. In football, this was being called the butt fumble.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life!” Cris Collinsworth exclaimed on NBC.
The fumble was scooped by Patriots safety Steve Gregory and returned for a touchdown. The Patriots were 8-3 after the win and the Jets were 4-7. The next week, in Miami, New England won the division, the tenth division title for Belichick and Brady.
There was a win at home the next week, against Houston, and Hernandez looked like the player he had been last season. He caught eight passes and scored twice in an easy 42–14 win over the Texans. Other than his ankle issues, he didn’t indicate that anything was bothering him. He had mentioned in the summer that he was expecting a daughter, and she had arrived in style one month earlier, on November 6, her father’s twenty-third birthday. Hernandez and his fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins, named the child Avielle. When his teammates heard the news, they overwhelmed him with hugs, smiles, and slaps on the back. Brady talked about Hernandez during his press conference and said he thought the tight end would be a “great dad.”
It was interesting that Hernandez always seemed to be on the verge of saying something else when he talked about the humbling moments in his life. Without prompting, he frequently talked about “bad decisions” and “having someone to talk to” and “doing the right thing.” On first listen, they were just clichés. But he wasn’t reciting them like many athletes do when they want to get out of an interview as quickly as possible. He was speaking from a deep place, yet with a filter. The word that stood out, distinctly, when he talked about his life now was “reckless.”
“Best birthday gift you could have, having a daughter on your birthday and especially Daddy’s little girl,” he said a couple of days after Avielle’s birth. “It’s an honor, and I couldn’t ask for my life to be better at this point. My life is pretty good, and thank God for that, and it’s a blessing; I still feel blessed daily. It definitely changed my life and I’m going to look at things differently. I’m engaged now, I have a baby, and it’s just going to make me think of life a lot differently and doing things the right way. I can’t just be ‘young and reckless Aaron’ no more.”
Before the Patriots’ next game, December 16 against the 49ers, there was a moment of silence on the field. Many people watching the game on television missed a large part of it due to coverage of President Obama speaking at a memorial service in Newtown, Connecticut. There had been a mass shooting there two days earlier, and the nation was still trying to comprehend how and why it happened. “No single law, no set of laws, can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society,” the president said. “But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this.”
In addition to the moment of silence, the Patriots wore a decal on the back of their silver helmets. The Associated Press carried a powerful photograph of the Newtown logo on the back of Hernandez’s helmet. To the left of the blue “81” was a black ribbon with “Newtown” written above it. The site of the tragedy was thirty miles from Hernandez’s hometown. It was hard to think about football, and the 34–31 loss to the 49ers didn’t elicit much criticism from anyone.
Heading into the new year, after a 12-4 close to the regular season, there was optimism with the Patriots. Gronk had played briefly in the regular-season finale to test his arm. A plate had been inserted, and he felt fine. He’d have two weeks to rest it before the first play-off game at home, against the Texans. Finally, there would be a chance for the young tight ends to play together, healthy, for the first time since September. As for Welker, for all the conversation about his evolving role, it settled into the same as it always was. He may have said he was joking about sticking it in Belichick’s face, but he was going to have a chance to do that in free agency. He followed his 122-catch 2011 season with 118 catches in 2012. Someone was going to be willing to pay for that kind of production.
There wasn’t a lot to worry about pregame with the Texans. The Patriots had handled them in December, without Gronk, and they were likely to crush them this time with him. Eight plays into the game, though, there was a problem. A season-ending and season-changing problem. Brady went deep for Gronk down the right sideline, and in the tight end’s effort to catch the ball, he landed on his left arm. He had been positioned in such a way that when he fell, the point of impact was at the top of the surgically inserted plate. The arm was broken, again, in a different place.
The win over the Texans was secure, and the Patriots were headed to the conference championship game for the second year in a row. It was a great accomplishment, but everyone had seen enough of the Gronk-Hernandez program to understand how good things could be when those two were together, and how problematic the Patriots offense could be without them.
Belichick was asked about Gronk, the tight end’s health, and the decision-making of the team’s medical staff after the game. He wasn’t in the mood for any of the questions.
Was Gronk 100 percent when he went out there or was there a chance he wasn’t completely healed?
“I covered that yesterday,” he replied. “He was cleared medically. I don’t have anything to add to it.”
He was asked if putting Gronk out there was riskier, given the presence of the plate.
“I have nothing to add to it,” he said.
He knew he was being pushed for more, and the questioners knew it, too. He knew it was game-changing, and so did the reporters, but he wasn’t going to give them what they were looking for. They would have continued to ask if he had wanted to play the game, but he reached the point where he didn’t want to dance any longer. He became annoyed when a reporter tried to use the side door with the questioning, asking about the evaluation process, in general, when trying to discern if an injured player is ready. The head coach spoke slowly and condescendingly this time.
“I [pause] have [pause] nothing [pause] to [pause] add [pause] to [pause] it.”
The conversation was finished, but the topic wasn’t. The Ravens were coming back to town, but this time they believed they were on a mission. Ray Lewis, their Hall of Fame linebacker, had announced before the play-offs that this would be his final season.
After a competitive first half, which ended with the Patriots leading 13–7, the game fell apart on New England. It was still just 14–13 at the end of the third quarter. But one play into the fourth, Anquan Boldin caught a three-yard touchdown pass and yelled loud enough for the entire stadium to hear him. This was personal for Baltimore. It wasn’t just because they wanted to win for Ray. They thought they had been the better team last season when the Patriots beat them by a field goal.
Following the Boldin score, the Patriots’ villain, Bernard Pollard, struck again. The safety was flat-out bad luck for anyone in a Patriots jersey. When he was nearby, the doctors had to be on alert. Running back Stevan Ridley tried to make a move in the open field and lowered his helmet to take on Pollard. The safety lowered his helmet, too, and it resulted in a nasty collision and a Ridley fumble. It didn’t take long for quarterback Joe Flacco to find Boldin, again, and it suddenly wasn’t much of a game. The Ravens won 28–13. They were going to the Super Bowl in New Orleans. And if that wasn’t obvious enough, they did their own broadcast after the game.
“Have fun at the Pro Bowl!” shouted linebacker Terrell Suggs. “These are the most arrogant pricks in the world, starting with Belichick on down. Tell them to have fun at the Pro Bowl. Arrogant pricks. That’s funny. Ever since Spygate, they can’t seem to get it done. I don’t know what it is.”
It got even more inflamed when Welker’s wife, Anna Burns, posted to Facebook after the game, “Proud of my husband and the Pats. By the way, if anyone is bored, please go to Ray Lewis’ Wikipedia page. 6 kids 4 wives. Acquitted for murder. Paid a family off. Yay. What a hall of fame player! A true role model!”
Once the damage-control specialists and public-relations spin doctors were finished and the Facebook post had been deleted, the tone all around was respectful. But it was totally fraudulent, nothing close to the way it really was. The same was true of a few other things connected to the Patriots.
Fans in New England were worried about a tight end, but they were concerned with the wrong one. A video of Gronk had surfaced in Baton Rouge during Super Bowl week. He was again shirtless, dancing freely even as a black cast restricted his left forearm. There was yet another video in Vegas, another shirtless occasion, and this time there were wrestling moves along with the dancing. A few weeks after the Ravens beat the 49ers in the Super Bowl, Gronk had his third forearm surgery in three months. This was to clean up an infection that was caught early, and it wasn’t expected to extend his recovery time. Gronk had accumulated thirty-nine touchdowns in thirty-eight regular-season games, but his prosperous social life always made news. He was frequently thought of and portrayed as a partying frat boy with no boundaries.
“His arm is OK. His behavior is not. Gronkowski didn’t break any laws or any bones in Vegas. But his bare-chested shenanigans are growing old, even if he’s not,” Christopher Gasper wrote in the Globe. “He has a responsibility to the Patriots, to his teammates, and most importantly to himself to make sure he doesn’t do anything that could hinder or jeopardize what looks to be a Hall of Fame career.”
If people only knew.
Gronk was fine. It was the other tight end, Hernandez, who was unraveling. And it wasn’t new; it just hadn’t been revealed to the public yet. He’d likely been holding on to a heartbreaking secret for nearly eight months, and although it would remain hidden a few months longer, it would soon be exposed. He’d been socializing with several friends with criminal records and one of them, Alexander Bradley, had accused him of shooting him in the face after they argued in a car heading north of Miami. That was in February, when the cameras were on Gronk and his dancing. Gronk dancing topless was ice cream and cookies compared to this. Bradley lost his right eye, allegedly from the shooting, and filed a civil complaint specifying his multiple facial surgeries and current disabilities, due to the actions of Hernandez.
In the past few months, Hernandez had also been spending time with the boyfriend of his fiancée’s sister. The man’s name was Odin Lloyd, and he was a semiprofessional football player for the Boston Bandits. He lived on a tough street, Fayston, in a tough Dorchester neighborhood. Lloyd didn’t have his own car, but he would sometimes drive ones either owned or rented by Hernandez. They’d hang out in Boston clubs and drive back to Hernandez’s safe house, in Franklin, Massachusetts. Or they’d hang out in Hernandez’s mansion, in the finished basement, where a long pool table with a Patriots logo on it sat. The reminder of his employer didn’t stop Hernandez from smoking marijuana a few feet from that table. He was still doing that, and doing it daily. He knew how to smoke and not get caught by NFL testing. Anyone who really knew him understood that the “failed a single drug test” story he tried to sell the public was high fiction. He was doing what he had to do to keep his real life from his Patriots life, and it was still working in March 2013. It wouldn’t be for long, though.
In March, Wes Welker found that the market for his services wasn’t as strong as he expected it to be. The Patriots had once offered him $8 million per season, but he wasn’t drawing that type of interest in free agency. His market had changed, and the Patriots had changed course. They signed Danny Amendola of the Rams to replace Welker. That left Welker in one place, Denver, for two years and $6 million per season. He’d be one of the few receivers who could say he caught a bunch of passes from Tom Brady one season and Peyton Manning the next.
Any type of criticism over Belichick’s personnel decisions came to a stop on Marathon Monday in Boston. The April day had begun normally, with the Red Sox game being played in the morning as the road race took over the city. But soon there were reports of a bombing on Boylston Street, the same street where championship teams had rolled through town in duck boats. There were three fatalities and hundreds of injuries.
When it became clear that the terrorists were from Cambridge, two young men who had been described by some as prototypical “normal neighbors,” there was shock. How could people just down the street lead such depraved double lives like that? It was the question of the year; blind trust was becoming increasingly problematic.
In May, incredibly, Gronk had his fifth surgery in fifteen months: four on his forearm and one on his ankle. He was scheduled for a sixth, in June, to repair a herniated disc. All of the procedures and rehab for them were going to lead to missed games at the start of the 2013 season. Yet with the definite absence of Welker and the possible absence of Gronk, Brady went on WEEI and tried to remain optimistic.
“He’s dealing with his situation,” he said of Gronk. “I want him out there helping the team win. He’s been battling through a long time. His mental toughness and excitement and what he brings to the team are really unmatched. When he’s healthy, I’ll be excited to have him out there. It will be nice to see what our offense can be like when Aaron is out there, and Rob’s out there, and all the other guys that have been injured are out there and can contribute fully to the team.”
Hernandez would never be out there again because the life he was accused of living, a secret one, finally enveloped his football career. Brady had asked his receivers to work out with him in California in April. Hernandez was there, but when he wasn’t catching passes, he was paying for guns. He went to a Bank of America in Hermosa Beach, California, and wired $15,000 to a man named Oscar Hernandez of Belle Glade, Florida. In turn, a few days later, the Florida man sent a rifle, a .22-caliber Jimenez pistol, and a Toyota Camry to Hernandez in Massachusetts. The car and guns would eventually become items of great interest for authorities who’d search Hernandez’s house.
Bill Belichick allowed the Patriots to leave minicamp one day early, on June 13, a Thursday morning. Hernandez spoke with reporters about being ready for training camp and helping the team. But other things were on his mind for his long weekend. The night before and even earlier that morning, he had been texting with Ernest Wallace, a friend from Bristol who had a long criminal record, including numerous drug violations. Wallace was sixteen years older than Hernandez, but it was Hernandez who was giving orders.
And give orders is exactly what he did after spending a Friday night and early Saturday morning with Odin Lloyd at a Theater District club called Rumor. On Sunday, Father’s Day, he urgently texted Wallace, who was in Connecticut. “Get ur ass up here.” Wallace, driving a Nissan Altima that was rented for him by Hernandez, arrived at Hernandez’s home a couple of hours later. He was joined by another friend from Bristol, Carlos Ortiz. Together they traveled to Dorchester to pick up Lloyd. He got in the Nissan after two a.m., and they headed back to North Attleboro.
After three a.m., the car turned into an industrial park, one mile from Hernandez’s home. Lloyd texted his sister, Olivia. “U saw who I was with. NFL… Just so U know.” Hernandez had allegedly been agitated. He said he was having a hard time trusting people. There was speculation that Lloyd had information about the secret on Shawmut Avenue. It was Hernandez who would eventually be accused of targeting those Cape Verdean immigrants after the night at the club. The reason? They had accidentally bumped into him, causing his drink to spill. He felt that they didn’t apologize, and perhaps they were trying to test him.
So it was Aaron Hernandez, star football player, who allegedly decided to leave the club, get in his Toyota 4Runner, and wait until two unsuspecting men got into their BMW. He saw them, ran a red light to catch up to them, and fired six shots. A week and a half later he went to training camp. A month after that he signed a new contract. And less than a year later, he was in an industrial park, one mile away from a $1.3 million mansion. One mile away from his fiancée and eight-month-old daughter, the family that was going to keep him from being “young and reckless Aaron.”
There were five shots, authorities believe, from a .45 Glock. Hernandez, Wallace, and Ortiz returned to the player’s house, and Hernandez’s elaborate video system even captured him on camera holding a gun that appeared to be a Glock. Lloyd’s body was found by a teenage jogger later that evening. When Lloyd’s pockets were searched, keys to a rental car were found. They were in Hernandez’s name.
It was over. When police knocked on his door late on June 17, he talked for a while and then said, “What’s with all the questions?” Unfortunately for him, they were just getting started.