Belichick

by Ian O'Connor

  And yet only one NFL executive called Carr about Brady before the draft in the spring: Bobby Grier of the New England Patriots, who had worked with Carr at Eastern Michigan. “Bobby,” Carr told him, “there’s no doubt in my mind that Tom Brady will be a starting quarterback in the NFL.”

  Carr raved about his quarterback’s toughness. He recalled watching an overmatched Brady take hit after hit during his first scrimmage as a freshman—“He got the hell beat out of him,” said the Michigan coach—and pulling himself up and quickly rejoining the huddle time after time. Brady had overcome a lot in his five years in Ann Arbor, including Carr’s reluctance to give him the ball full-time, and the coach thought the weathered adversity would make his quarterback a better pro than his showing at the draft combine suggested.

  Carr figured the Patriots would be a good fit, too, because he thought highly of Belichick. As Michigan’s defensive coordinator in the late eighties, Carr spent a day watching film with Belichick in the Giants Stadium dungeon; he called it one of the best days of his coaching career. He was struck by Belichick’s versatility, his knowledge of every defensive and offensive position on the field, and his willingness to take follow-up questions over the phone. Carr said that Michigan made a number of changes to its defense based on Belichick’s recommendations, and that the Giants’ assistant helped his career.

  A dozen years later, Belichick liked Carr’s quarterback, and so did Scott Pioli. But nobody in the Patriots organization liked Tom Brady as much as Dick Rehbein did. Belichick had asked the assistant to take a look at two quarterbacks—Brady and Tim Rattay, at Louisiana Tech—for a possible selection later in the draft. Rehbein thought one was clearly better than the other. “Twenty years from now,” Rehbein told his wife, Pam, after returning from his scouting trip to Michigan, “people will know the name Tom Brady . . . Someday this is going to be a Joe Montana or Brett Favre.”

  Rehbein told his boss to find a round, any round, to draft the kid. Belichick was a bit concerned that Carr kept trying to find ways to replace Brady with Henson, and he already had a nine-figure player at quarterback in Bledsoe and two backups in Bishop and ten-year veteran John Friesz. Brady would be a nice piece to add to the roster, but in Belichick’s mind he was certainly not a must-have prospect.

  As the draft unfolded, after Pennington went to the Jets in the first round, Brady missed out on a couple of opportunities to go where he thought he belonged in the early to middle rounds. His hometown team, the 49ers, took Hofstra quarterback Giovanni Carmazzi with the 65th overall pick. Ten picks later, the Baltimore Ravens took Louisville’s Chris Redman, despite the fact that their offensive coordinator, former NFL quarterback Matt Cavanaugh, had lobbied hard for Brady. In the fifth and sixth rounds, three more quarterbacks came off the board: Tee Martin, Marc Bulger, and Spergon Wynn.

  A New York Giants scout named Whitey Walsh was another big fan of Brady’s, though he thought the quarterback “looked kind of emaciated, with no muscle definition.” Walsh was imploring Giants GM Ernie Accorsi to take the Michigan quarterback before it was too late. “He was very forceful,” Accorsi recalled, but nobody in the draft room was moved. Rehbein grew nervous as round after round passed without New England selecting his guy. Belichick took an offensive tackle (Hawaii’s Adrian Klemm), a running back (Arizona State’s J. R. Redmond), another offensive tackle (Michigan State’s Greg Randall), a tight end (Boise State’s Dave Stachelski), a guard (Missouri’s Jeff Marriott), and a strong safety (Virginia’s Antwan Harris) before he arrived at his seventh pick of the draft, No. 199 overall—one of four compensatory picks granted the Patriots after they lost four players in free agency. Six quarterbacks had been chosen by other teams over the first 198 selections, and none were named Tom Brady or Tim Rattay.

  On April 16, 2000, his 48th birthday, Belichick decided the former seventh-stringer in Ann Arbor should be his fourth-stringer in Foxborough. One of New England’s scouts, Jason Licht, was in the draft room when Belichick made the call. “When that pick came up, Bill was just ‘OK, it’s Brady.’ He doesn’t do cartwheels or get very excited, but I do remember on that Brady pick him being a little more intense.”

  Rehbein felt something more overpowering. “We got him, we got him,” he breathlessly told his wife over the phone. Nobody was quite sure what, exactly, the Patriots were getting. Except Rehbein. And Brady. His Michigan friend Jay Flannelly, who called him about an hour after he was drafted, remembered the quarterback sounding relieved, overjoyed, and confident that his time with the scout team would be short.

  “I’m going there to take Bledsoe’s job,” Brady told him.

  Upon first inspection in Foxborough, veteran Patriots weren’t sure what to make of the rookie quarterback. Willie McGinest, a defensive end and linebacker and a starter since 1994, said he thought Brady “needed to get his ass in the weight room and get in shape. We were all joking with him and messing with him about his combine tape.”

  Redmond, a third-round member of Brady’s draft class, said he remembered the quarterback “being about the worst athlete you could ever put in an NFL uniform.” Yet everyone raved about the quarterback’s relentless film study, his almost instant mastery of the playbook, and his commitment to working with scout-team receivers late at night. Rehbein couldn’t get over how quickly and thoroughly Brady could draw up a play and articulate its options in his first days and weeks as a pro. The quarterbacks coach was so fired up about the kid they’d just drafted that he’d tell his family about him over dinner. “My dad would talk about Tom Brady almost as if Tom was his own kid,” Betsy Rehbein recalled. “He would talk about Tom driving this yellow Jeep Wrangler, making fun of this little boy he was watching grow up.”

  Brady grew up faster than any talent evaluator could’ve expected. Brady and Bishop, the former Kansas State star, often hung out on the players’ nights off, and one night in 2000 they looked each other in the eye and made a pact between friends that went like this: If either one of us takes the starting job from Bledsoe, he has to promise to never give it back. Now in his second year, after adding about 25 badly needed pounds in the weight room, Brady had Bledsoe’s job by default. Belichick had spent more time with him in the weeks after the Rehbein tragedy, and his belief in Brady had grown by the classroom session. Out of a fear of another team poaching him off the practice squad, Belichick had kept Brady on his 53-man roster in 2000, at a time when nobody was compromising roster depth at another position for a fourth quarterback. Now his faith was beginning to pay off.

  To observers on both sides of the field, Brady looked pretty good in relief of Bledsoe in the loss to the Jets. But the mood among fatalistic New Englanders accustomed to bad fortune when it came to their football team, never mind their haunted baseball team, didn’t allow for any silver lining with this storm cloud. Once again, their Patriots had 5-11 written all over them.

  Tom Brady had just taken his team down the field on a dramatic 60-yard scoring drive—capped by his touchdown pass to Jermaine Wiggins—near the end of regulation to tie the San Diego Chargers, and the vast majority of the 60,292 fans in the house feared what might happen next. They expected Doug Flutie, former Boston College magic man, to take the ball in overtime and secure a victory at Foxboro Stadium for the 13th time in 14 tries as a collegian and pro.

  The locals had so much belief in Flutie, the Heisman Trophy winner from Natick, Massachusetts, who threw the most memorable pass in college football history, his Hail Mary to beat the Miami Hurricanes. So if Patriots fans were pessimistic about their team’s chances, it had everything to do with Flutie and little to do with lingering doubts about their own quarterback.

  In fact, Brady had managed to split his first two games in relief of Bledsoe. He beat Peyton Manning and the Colts in his first start by a 44–13 count, though he wasn’t asked to do much with the offense. He played interception-free football, while Manning, the No. 1 overall pick in 1998, was intercepted three times. (Two were returned for touchdowns.)

 
Brady didn’t look so prepared the following week, when he contributed to a 30–10 loss to Miami by taking four sacks and dropping a snap, which was kicked by a teammate and picked up by the Dolphins’ Jason Taylor, who carried the ball into the end zone. “So much for that quarterback controversy,” read the lead in a Herald column by George Kimball, who wondered if Huard should start against San Diego. Brady turned emotional in his postgame news conference when describing how much he hated to lose and how disappointed he was in the team’s effort that week in practice.

  Belichick held a little ceremony after that blowout loss that involved the burying of a football and the supposed dawning of a new day. “It may sound corny,” said Jerod Cherry, special teamer, “to have a bunch of grown men getting motivated with the symbolism of burying a football and kicking dirt over the first part of the season. But it worked. Bill showed transparency at that meeting by telling guys, ‘We’re all in this together . . . We’ve got to come together as one.’ And from that point on, we did just that.”

  Angered and embarrassed by the perception that he’d been exposed against Miami, Brady came out firing away against San Diego, completing 33 of 54 passes for 364 yards, 2 touchdowns, and no interceptions. (He hadn’t been picked off in 114 career attempts.) The way he responded late in regulation and again in overtime, after Flutie shockingly went three and out, left an indelible impression on Belichick. On first down from his own 23 in overtime, Brady detected a San Diego blitz that he’d studied with Weis in the lead-up to the game and called an audible. He took the snap and fired the ball down the right sideline for Patten before the Chargers’ rush could level him, drawing a pass interference call that awarded New England 37 yards and placed the ball on the San Diego 40. Brady completed a couple of short passes to give his kicker a better look, and Adam Vinatieri ended the game with a 44-yarder.

  Brady didn’t just win for the second time in three starts. This time he proved he could carry the team on a day when the running game was dreadful (29 yards on 24 carries) and the special teams were worse. “He put himself on the map,” said Huard. “I like his attitude,” said Terry Glenn, who had returned from his drug suspension to catch seven passes from Brady for 110 yards and a touchdown. “He has a really good, take-charge attitude, something you need at that position.”

  But it was Belichick who was most generous in his assessment of Brady’s performance. The head coach who had never believed in public displays of affection raved about his quarterback.

  “I can’t say enough about Brady,” Belichick gushed. “Tom had a great day throwing the ball, spreading it around, getting all the receivers involved. Tom has a game presence that’s good.”

  Belichick’s preseason feelings about the kid were being confirmed. For the first time as a head coach, he thought he might have someone with the makings of a special player at the most crucial position in all of American team sports. He’d have five more games with Brady, three of them victories, before confronting the most important decision of his career. The Bernie Kosar Decision, Part II.

  When the Patriots lost to the St. Louis Rams on the night of November 18, falling to 5-5 after consecutive victories over Atlanta and Buffalo, there was a significant difference in the play of the two quarterbacks. Kurt Warner, the grocery store clerk turned Super Bowl champ and two-time league MVP, passed for 401 yards and three touchdowns, while Tom Brady passed for 185 yards and one score. Drew Bledsoe, cleared by doctors to return, watched from the sideline in a blue windbreaker. The former No. 1 overall draft pick could’ve died after that hit by Mo Lewis, and the Patriots would’ve been foolish to accelerate his transition back into the lineup.

  But after the 24–17 loss to St. Louis, Bledsoe figured it was time for him to take his share of snaps with the first team offense in practice. Belichick had promised him he would get a fair crack at winning back his job from Brady, and during his rehab Bledsoe was consistent in saying he was confident he could do just that. And Brady’s performance had slipped of late, as if defensive coordinators were starting to adjust to him.

  Brady had beaten Peyton Manning a second time by throwing three touchdown passes and no interceptions, yet he was intercepted four times in a loss at Denver and was sacked seven times (while passing for only 107 yards on 27 attempts) in an ugly victory over Buffalo. The Patriots might’ve defeated 7-1 St. Louis, the league’s best and most explosive team, had Antowain Smith not fumbled at the Rams’ three-yard line late in the first half and denied his team a two-score lead. Brady did little to help their odds of pulling off the upset.

  St. Louis coach Mike Martz, offensive coordinator of the 1999 title team and the brains behind what was known as the Greatest Show on Turf, called New England a legitimate Super Bowl contender and the most physical opponent his Rams had faced all year. Maybe that’s why Belichick said he didn’t plan on making any changes in preparing for his next game, against New Orleans. Nobody would’ve been surprised had Belichick decided to go with Brady, who was 5-3 as the starter, against the Saints while monitoring Bledsoe’s work in practice and then making a call in two or three weeks.

  Only that’s not what he did. The next day, Belichick told his quarterbacks that he’d made his final decision on his first-string quarterback for the balance of the season, barring “something unforeseen.” At the time, he realized the magnitude of the stakes. “There was friction in the locker room,” said one New England starter, “and it was amplified times a thousand when Drew got healthy . . . You wouldn’t believe how much tension was in that locker room.” The majority of players, including many of the younger Patriots, favored sticking with Brady. Some of the old-guard Patriots wanted to turn back to Bledsoe.

  Though the decision to cut Kosar in 1993 had contributed to Belichick’s firing two years later, the coach figured he’d get a second chance in the league, and Kraft had given him that chance in Foxborough. Belichick wasn’t going to get a third shot at it. If he made the wrong choice on Brady/Bledsoe, it would cost him his career as a head coach.

  In his office, Belichick told the two quarterbacks that he was going with Brady for the final six games. A source close to Belichick said that before Bledsoe’s injury, the coach was preparing himself to take on the battle with Bledsoe and his chief benefactor, Kraft, to get Brady under center, and that there was no way he was turning back now. Belichick thought Brady was a quicker thinker on the fly, and more willing to take the safe play over an unnecessary gamble down the field. Bledsoe wasn’t accustomed to Belichick’s demand for accountability on every decision he made in a game, and it wore on him. Though Bledsoe had the stronger arm, Brady was buying the passing progression Weis was selling—first read, second read, throw the checkdown, over and over. Brady had also shown a greater commitment to working with teammates in the off-season; in fact, he’d never missed a workout.

  Bledsoe was livid when he heard the news. He thought his coach had lied to him. Belichick wasn’t worried about that as much as he was worried that the practice snaps Bledsoe had taken the previous week hurt Brady’s preparation against St. Louis, and that any future sharing could’ve hurt the team in the coming weeks.

  Bledsoe took his case to Kraft. Much as he loved his franchise player and wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having his $103 million investment on the bench less than one full year into a ten-year deal, Kraft was too smart to get in the middle of this one. If he had been perceived as a meddler in the Parcells days, those days were over. Kraft had hired Belichick to run football operations, and picking the starting quarterback was perhaps the most essential part of football operations.

  The following day, Bledsoe addressed the news media at his locker. Nobody wanted to see him go through this, not even Brady’s most ardent backers. Bledsoe was one of the good guys in the NFL. He’d always carried himself with dignity, even when some pockets of the fan base started to turn on him.

  Only on this day, before a hungry horde of reporters, Bledsoe would have the hardest time staying positive. He’d lost nearly
half his body’s blood after that Lewis hit, and then come all the way back, only to receive this permanent demotion. Asked if he was hurt or frustrated upon hearing Belichick’s decision, Bledsoe let out a half laugh and said, “Next question.” He had the same response when asked how he could compete with Brady without getting snaps. Bledsoe never acted like this with the news media, or with anyone else for that matter. His feelings of betrayal were getting the best of him. Asked if he was assured he’d have an opportunity to return from his injury to the starting lineup, he said, “That’s what I was told.”

  Bledsoe said he’d remain a team player and do everything he could to help Brady, whom he liked and respected. The two quarterbacks had golfed together and had spent plenty of time at Bledsoe’s house. Brady called his elder “one of the toughest guys I’ve ever been around” and “a great friend and mentor.” As competitive as the two quarterbacks were, they shared something of a big brother–little brother relationship.

  Only things were different now. “I look forward to the chance to compete for my job, and I’ll leave it at that,” Bledsoe said after Brady was named the starter. My job. Belichick had taken it away and handed it to a kid who was making a lousy $298,000.