by Ian O'Connor
Belichick did what he could to soften the blow. He spoke of how Bledsoe was a consummate professional, of how the 29-year-old quarterback did more for the New England Patriots franchise than anyone before him. The coach later conceded that after Bledsoe suffered his injury, he might’ve erred in how he painted the future to him. Belichick said there might’ve been “a little gap in the understanding of what an opportunity would be.” He also acknowledged, “Maybe I shouldn’t have made the commitment to Drew.”
The Belichick-Bledsoe relationship was fractured for good. Not that the coach ever had a firm appreciation for a quarterback who didn’t make decisions quickly enough for his liking. During one film session, Belichick grew tired of the image of Bledsoe patting the ball in the pocket before finally delivering it. “Drew,” the coach said, “stop jacking the ball off and throw it.”
Belichick said Brady would remain the first-stringer even though the quarterback’s game had recently shown some cracks. “He’s done a reasonably good job,” Belichick said. The endorsement was lukewarm at best, when measured against his assessment of Brady following the San Diego game. But Belichick knew he wasn’t giving the ball to Todd Philcox this time. After the death of Dick Rehbein, Belichick took control of his regular quarterback meetings, and his permanent appointment of Brady made those meetings awkward. Bledsoe and the coach barely spoke to each other.
Belichick could live with the tension in the meeting room. He knew in his heart he’d made the right call. He’d always been struck by Brady’s retention of minute playbook details, by his recognition of defensive schemes on film, and by his ability to slow down the game and see the entire field in real time.
“From day one,” Belichick said, “you asked what happened after a play and he’d tell you eight things that happened. You go back and watch the film, and there are the eight things that he said happened, and that’s what happened on the play. You can see every one of them.”
In the end, Belichick was betting his career aspirations on this beautiful football mind. Tom Brady would not let him down.
The season was over with 1:43 left in the divisional playoff game, played in a nighttime snowstorm at Foxboro Stadium, the final contest ever staged in the charmless place. The Oakland Raiders had a 13–10 lead and possession of the ball after Charles Woodson separated it from his former Michigan teammate Tom Brady and Oakland linebacker Greg Biekert recovered the fumble. Belichick was heading into the off-season with a strong belief that he had finally found his long-term quarterback and that he had established a program built to last.
The Patriots had won their last six regular-season games to claim the AFC East title, beating two of their head coach’s former employers—the Jets and the Browns—in the process. Belichick was so happy to finally beat the Jets, he all but acted like a Times Square tourist on New Year’s Eve. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen him hug anyone,” said linebacker Roman Phifer.
Belichick was struck by how hard his players had competed all year. “We didn’t really think of ourselves as anything special,” he said. Neither did the league: The NFL had originally scheduled the Patriots for a bye week after their 16th and final game, which their coach took as a sign of disrespect. Belichick thought the schedule makers were telling his players, You guys will be out of it, so you can go ahead and start your vacation early. Go ahead on home.
New England had effectively clinched a playoff berth with its 20–13 victory over Miami in the last regular-season game played in Foxboro Stadium, highlighted by a 23-yard pass from running back Kevin Faulk to Brady, of all people, and punctuated by the sight of Belichick and his players doing a victory lap around the field and high-fiving their fans in a show of appreciation. “I’m a real veteran of closing down these stadiums,” Belichick said in a cute reference to the near-apocalyptic endgame at Municipal, in Cleveland.
“What a coaching job Bill has done,” said Phifer. “You appreciate it from the outside, but in here it’s amazing to watch week after week.”
An 11-year NFL veteran and another former Jet, Phifer embodied the hodgepodge nature of a defense that included an undersize college defensive end (Tedy Bruschi) at inside linebacker, a Steelers castoff (Vrabel) on the outside, and a pass-rushing defensive end (Seymour) who was an unpopular first-round pick with a fan base pleading for offensive help. “We’re not the Steel Curtain or the ’85 Bears or anything like that,” Vrabel said. The Patriots were opportunistic defenders who could switch from a 4-3 set to a 3-4 and back to a 4-3 again on consecutive possessions. Crennel, the defensive coordinator, believed his unit found strength in its flexibility and versatility and actually performed better when challenged to adjust from one scheme to the next. As for the divide Pepper Johnson believed existed between the ex-Jets and others in the locker room, Bryan Cox, the former Jet whose loyalties were questioned after the Bledsoe injury, helped to bridge the gap the following week with a big hit on Colts receiver Jerome Pathon that announced the arrival of a new day in Foxborough.
The Patriots closed out the regular season with a 38–6 rout of the Panthers, made possible by the pick-sixes contributed by Ty Law and Otis Smith, both of whom also had pick-sixes in the September blowout of Peyton Manning’s Colts. Smith and Lawyer Milloy poured a bucketful of ice water on Belichick, who had won a division title for the first time, and the delirious players put on their AFC EAST CHAMPIONS caps and T-shirts. “Now the season starts again,” Belichick said of the playoffs. And that new season, Dan Shaughnessy wrote in the Globe, was destined to be a prosperous one. He opened his column this way: “Might as well face it: The Patriots are going to the Super Bowl.”
It seemed that prediction was about to die a painful death in the heavy snow a couple of weeks later, when Oakland’s Woodson raced in untouched from the left side of the defense, blasted Brady, and knocked the ball from his hand. Replays clearly showed New England’s quarterback attempting to tuck the ball into his body—not attempting to pass it—when he lost control. The Raiders started celebrating as a furious Brady was pulled up from the frozen field by his teammates, his jersey all askew.
Referee Walt Coleman was getting prepared for Oakland to run out the clock when his replay buzzer went off; the play was subject to review. Buried deep inside a blue hooded jacket, Belichick betrayed no hint of the stunning reversal to come. Coleman made his way to a sideline camera, slapped on a headset, and reviewed the video evidence, which confirmed that Rule 3, Section 22, Article 2, Note 2 applied to the Brady hit. The rule stated that “any intentional forward movement of his arm starts a forward pass, even if the player loses possession of the ball as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body.” The purpose of the rule was to make life easier for game officials by not making them determine a quarterback’s intent when his arm is moving forward. Coleman returned to the field, faced the Oakland sideline and a crowd that had already surrendered, and made the ruling public.
A stone-faced Belichick, snow resting on the top of his hood, listened with his mouth agape as Coleman told his captive audience that the called fumble had been changed to an incomplete pass, and then lifted his right hand and snapped it downward. Raiders coach Jon Gruden, snow resting on his visor, started running and screaming over the absurdity of it all.
The Raiders were as angry as they were stunned. “Ball came out—game over,” Woodson said. “It kind of took the air out of a lot of guys.” The crowd was suddenly alive with possibility even before Brady completed a 13-yard pass to Patten to the Oakland 29. The Patriots gained but one yard on the next three plays before sending out Vinatieri to attempt a desperation 45-yarder. “You can’t get any tougher than that kick,” Belichick said, “in four inches of snow.”
Chilled breath billowed from the players’ helmets and the coaches’ headsets. This surreal snow-globe scene reminded weathered New Englanders of a 1982 game against Miami played in virtual whiteout conditions. The Patriots won that game, 3–0, after their coach, Ron Meyer, sent out a snowplow manned by an i
nmate named Mark Henderson—on work release for the day—to clear a spot for kicker John Smith to make the deciding field goal. Two decades later, there would be no furloughed inmate available to help Adam Vinatieri. He was an undrafted kicker out of South Dakota State who had played overseas with the Amsterdam Admirals before Bill Parcells gave him a shot in New England, where Vinatieri declared himself a special player the day he ran down Herschel Walker on a kick return.
As he lined up the attempt, Vinatieri decided to take small steps on his approach to the ball to avoid slipping and falling. He had beaten Buffalo the year before in overtime on a brutal wintry day, but that kick into the elements was a 24-yarder. This attempt was an entirely different proposition. Vinatieri knew he couldn’t deliver a high and majestic kick in the driving storm, so he told himself to just make sure he lifted the ball above the hands of the defenders. Vinatieri was thinking he needed to hit a 3-iron instead of a 9-iron, and on contact he wasn’t sure if he’d hit the ball hard enough. “But when the officials stepped forward and raised their hands,” Vinatieri recalled, “I said, ‘Oh, my God, I made that kick.’” Twenty-seven seconds remained on the clock. Under the circumstances, it might’ve been the most improbable kick in NFL history.
Of course, the Raiders stood no chance in overtime. The Patriots won the coin toss, and Brady, who had completed nine consecutive passes on the fourth-quarter scoring drive that cut Oakland’s lead to 13–10, immediately moved his team deep into Oakland territory by completing eight consecutive pass attempts (the first six to J. R. Redmond and Jermaine Wiggins) before Vinatieri was asked to close it out. The kicker and his holder, Ken Walter, starting using their feet to clear the spot of the attempted field goal.
“No snowplow in sight tonight,” the CBS play-by-play man, Greg Gumbel, said on the air. And when Vinatieri nailed the 23-yarder on the 15th play of the overtime drive, to send the Patriots to the AFC Championship Game, the hooded Belichick turned toward Brady, raised his arms high, and pulled him in for a hug as if to kiss him. Belichick hugged another player, and then joyously bounced onto the field, pumping his right fist toward the sky. Foxboro Stadium had been scheduled for demolition on December 23, the day after the final regular-season home game, against Miami, and here were the euphoric—if frostbitten—fans threatening to tear down the place on January 19.
“They just will not—will not—quit,” an emotional Belichick said of his players afterward. “These guys just keep fighting until their last breath.”
The whole night, start to finish, was a referendum on the winning coach. Belichick had built a team that held up under near-Arctic conditions. He had drafted Seymour, who penetrated the line and blew up Oakland’s third-and-one handoff that could’ve given the Raiders a first down and a chance to run out the clock. Belichick had studied tape of that 2000 game played in a Buffalo blizzard, a game that saw Wiggins manage back-to-back 17-yard catches on the winning drive in overtime, and decided to make the robust tight end a significant part of the game plan against Oakland. (Wiggins finished with 10 catches for 68 yards.) Belichick had honored his special teams roots by fielding a unit capable of pulling off one of the all-time special teams plays in Vinatieri’s 45-yarder.
Belichick had made the defining choice of the season when deciding that Brady should replace Bledsoe permanently, their salaries be damned. Brady completed 26 of 39 passes for 312 yards against Oakland and scored on a six-yard rushing touchdown in the middle of the fourth quarter. After his quarterback erased a ten-point deficit in the final eight minutes of regulation, masterfully running the no-huddle offense, Belichick had enough faith in him in overtime to call his number—and not Vinatieri’s—on a fourth-and-four from the Oakland 28. Brady delivered with a six-yard fastball to Patten, who made the catch from his knees.
The quarterback had already earned a Pro Bowl appearance in his first season as a starter, and now he stood one game away from the Super Bowl. Of his overturned fumble, soon to be known as the Tuck Rule Play, Brady said, with a Cheshire cat’s grin, “I was throwing the ball, definitely. And even if I wasn’t, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
Belichick’s story? The man who had turned a 5-11 record in 2000 and an 0-2 start in 2001 into a spot in the AFC Championship Game learned a couple of hours before kickoff that he had lost NFL Coach of the Year honors to the Chicago Bears’ Dick Jauron, who finished 13-3 before losing in the divisional round of the playoffs to Philadelphia.
And that was OK. Jauron could have his well-deserved honor—and his place in front of the TV watching the rest of the tournament. Belichick coveted only one trophy, and suddenly that one was almost close enough to touch.
11
Champion
Pittsburgh Steelers safety Lee Flowers plowed hard into the back of Tom Brady’s lower legs, and the New England Patriots’ quarterback buckled at the knees, twisted his body backwards, and collapsed in a heap. This was late in the first half of the AFC Championship Game, and Bill Belichick’s program was about to be put to the ultimate test.
The Patriots held a 7–3 lead when Brady completed his 28-yard pass to Troy Brown, his final throw of the day. On this sunny, unseasonably warm day in western Pennsylvania, with the home team cast as heavy favorites to win, Brady’s injured ankle forced Belichick to do something he never wanted to do: bet his Super Bowl hopes on Drew Bledsoe, who hadn’t seen action in 125 days.
Funny how things work out: Bledsoe had a premonition that he’d play in this AFC title game, and now that premonition had come to be. He hadn’t appeared in relief since his rookie year, 1993. He ran out to his old huddle and told his teammates, “Look who’s back!” His first pass was a bullet to David Patten, good for 15 yards. Bledsoe always had a hell of a right arm, much stronger than Brady’s. But on the second play, Bledsoe’s poor judgment reminded fans of how he’d lost his job in the first place. He broke the pocket and ran upright for the right sideline, where Pittsburgh’s Chad Scott blasted the lumbering quarterback just as the Jets’ Mo Lewis had in the second game of the year, sending him flying. Only this time Bledsoe popped up and cut an animated path back to the huddle.
The hit woke up Bledsoe, made him feel like a football player again, after four months off. He immediately found Patten for another ten yards and a first down at the Pittsburgh 11. On the next snap, with three receivers flooding the zone to the right, Bledsoe side-armed a pass into the deep corner, one of his favorite places to throw the ball. Sure enough, he found Patten for a touchdown, then turned to his bench and extended his arms in what-did-you-think-of-that form. The Steelers made it a game in the end, but they weren’t winning after a magical four-play sequence like that.
Bledsoe later wept as he took a knee to run out the clock on a 24–17 victory. His father, Mac, had surprised him by flying into town to watch a game his son wasn’t supposed to appear in, and when they made eye contact, Drew cried again. It had been an emotionally taxing season and day. Bledsoe had lost his quarterbacks coach, Rehbein, during camp, nearly lost his own life on the football field, and then lost the only job he ever wanted. On the afternoon Bledsoe would temporarily regain his job, the Patriots made honorary captains of Rehbein’s wife, Pam, and daughters, Betsy and Sarabeth, and no player was more touched by the gesture than the veteran quarterback, who had started establishing a scholarship fund for the Rehbein girls the morning after their father died.
Belichick, Kraft, and Charlie Weis, Rehbein’s close friend, had visited the family’s home in the immediate wake of Dick’s death. Pam Rehbein was moved when, after New England’s 38–17 victory over Indianapolis in October, Belichick credited her husband with the acquisitions of Brady and Patten, who had caught two touchdown passes against the Colts totaling 97 yards, thrown one for 60 yards, and rushed for a 29-yard score. “Dick loved working for Bill,” Pam Rehbein said. “There were no Mickey Mouse games with Bill. He knew what he wanted done and he let it be known. Dick absolutely loved that about Bill . . . Sometimes coaches will tell you one thing, it
doesn’t work out, and then it comes back to bite you. Dick said that never happened with Bill.”
In the final moments of an AFC Championship Game victory over Pittsburgh that his team dedicated to Rehbein’s memory, a beaming Belichick lifted his youngest child, Brian, into his arms. The coach then engaged in a group hug with his older son, Stephen, and his running back, J. R. Redmond. A year after the Patriots finished in last place in the AFC East and put their head coach in harm’s way, they were going to the Super Bowl.
On the Heinz Field podium, relieved that Pittsburgh’s Joey Porter had dropped what should’ve been a fourth-quarter interception and pick-six, Bledsoe held the conference trophy high and pumped it three times. As much as the moment belonged to him, it belonged to the man who had benched him, too.
Belichick’s baby, the special teams unit, made the difference by scoring two touchdowns in a one-touchdown game. Moments after CBS analyst and former Giants quarterback Phil Simms said on the air that the Patriots “think they have a decided advantage in special teams, especially with their punt return team,” Brown sliced down the heart of the field to score on a 55-yard return. In the third quarter, Brown scooped up a blocked field goal on the dead run at his own 40 and, just before he was brought down near midfield, lateraled it to Antwan Harris, who took it the rest of the way.
Brown was drafted by Bill Parcells in the eighth round of the 1993 draft, and had developed into the perfect Belichick player. He had started only seven games over seven seasons with Parcells and Pete Carroll; he’d started 28 games, caught 184 passes, and become a Pro Bowl player in two seasons with Belichick, who thought the quiet receiver was among the best lead-by-example players he’d been around. “Oh, man,” Belichick said, “that guy is some football player.” Only on Belichick’s Patriots could an AFC title game be saved by the 198th pick in a draft (Brown) after the 199th pick in a different draft (Brady) went down.