by Ian O'Connor
Belichick didn’t overdo it with the sales pitch. While Bengals coaches were repeatedly calling Thornton to persuade him to sign, Belichick simply told him, “We want you. Come start for us at left end. We’re going to win a Super Bowl, and you’ll be part of it.”
Cincinnati offered a lot more money than New England did, and that made the decision easy. Before Thornton left Foxborough, Belichick told him that if he didn’t sign with the Patriots, they would draft a defensive lineman and win the Super Bowl with that player instead. And with the 13th overall pick in April, Belichick selected 6´5˝, 300-pound Ty Warren of Texas A&M.
One major free agent Belichick did land was Rosevelt Colvin, who’d had 21 sacks in his previous two seasons in Chicago. Colvin had grown tired of Windy City weather and wanted to go play in a market with a warm climate or a domed stadium. Foxborough offered neither, so when Colvin’s agent called with news of Belichick’s interest, his client said thanks, but no thanks. He also didn’t want to be coached by a branch of the Bill Parcells tree.
“I don’t want to be yelled at every single day,” Colvin told his agent, Kennard McGuire, who persuaded his client to make the trip anyway.
Arguably the league’s most coveted free agent, Colvin recalled a Patriots staffer picking him up at the airport in a white Ford Taurus. “It’s overcast,” he said, “trash everywhere on the highway . . . No limo, not like a Lincoln Town Car, but a car they probably use to shuttle guys on the practice squad back and forth to the airport.”
When they arrived at the Patriots’ facility, Colvin said, there was no welcoming committee at the door. “Nobody was there other than Berj Najarian,” he said. “All the lights are off. There’s nothing going on at the facility at all. Berj asked me if I needed anything to drink. ‘Are you sure? Water? Let me take you on a tour.’ Berj took me to the locker room. It was dark; he didn’t turn anything on. I went to talk to Belichick for an hour. We sat down and talked and then I said, ‘I appreciate you bringing me in.’”
Colvin then folded himself inside the same white Ford Taurus for the ride back to the airport to take the next flight out of town. He told his agent, “I’ll pass.” Belichick and his personnel chief, Scott Pioli, were growing a bit tired of the narrative that they’d made only bargain-basement buys in free agency during their time in Foxborough, so they responded with the best offer Colvin received: $30 million for seven years. The linebacker quickly forgot all about his desire to play in a tropical climate. The Patriots also signed cornerback Tyrone Poole, for $8 million over four years, and Harrison, a two-time Pro Bowler, for $14.5 million over six years, after taking him to the local Ground Round.
“Yeah, they really wined and dined me,” Harrison joked.
Pioli thought that if the coach wanted serious-minded grinders in New England, he should treat them that way from the start. Though the players accepted and even embraced Belichick’s approach, they still couldn’t accept the Milloy firing, and proved it in Buffalo. In this second game of 2003, a road game against the Eagles, either they could rally around the coach who had just enraged them or they could make a very wise man out of Tom Jackson. The Patriots didn’t have to forgive and forget; they only had to prove that they remained willing to play hard for Belichick.
And they did that in a 31–10 victory that saw Brady throw two touchdown passes to Fauria and one to Deion Branch. The Patriots forced six turnovers and sacked Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb seven times. Bruschi, who had been openly critical of the Milloy move, returned an interception for a touchdown. Were these the actions of a team that truly hated its coach?
Larry Izzo, New England’s best special teams player, profanely dismissed Jackson’s claim before adding, “I don’t know another coach in the league who has the support of his players more than Bill, and we went out and showed that today.”
The Patriots lost Colvin for the year to a shattered hip, which could’ve been a devastating, season-defining development for many teams. New England won six of its next seven games anyway, suffering another big injury (Ted Washington broke his leg against the Jets) before hosting another 7-2 team in a nationally televised night game that was billed not as a battle of contenders but as a battle of Bills.
Parcells vs. Belichick. Big Bill vs. Little Bill. The two men were barely on speaking terms, and that was OK. Their teams were prepared to do the talking for them.
They had split four games when Little Bill was in Cleveland and Big Bill in New England, though Belichick won their only postseason meeting. They didn’t know it at the time, but this Cowboys–Patriots clash would be the last time Belichick and Parcells would stand across from each other on NFL sidelines. Predictably enough, the buildup to this heavyweight fight focused on their nasty divorce in New York.
“I have no hard feelings about anything,” Parcells maintained before his fifth and final showdown with Belichick.
Parcells later wrote in his book that he had called Belichick after his Super Bowl victory over the Rams and the call lasted less than a minute. Maybe Belichick was better at holding a grudge, or maybe he was worse. Either way, Belichick wasn’t quite as effusive in his praise of his former boss as he was before they met in that playoff game on New Year’s Day 1995, when Little Bill said that Big Bill “did a tremendous amount for me.”
Privately, according to author Michael Holley, Belichick told his players before the 2003 Patriots–Cowboys game, “Don’t get distracted by irrelevant aspects of this game. Belichick versus Parcells? We’re both assholes. We started coaching together when some of you were in diapers . . . Don’t get into Belichick versus Parcells. If you want the easy way out, tell them that I won’t let you comment.”
Publicly, Belichick told reporters, “We worked together for a long time and we shared a mutual respect. Not all decisions are easy, but as coaches, we often have to make difficult decisions. There was a lot that went into it, and given all the circumstances, I felt I made the right decision. We have a professional relationship and we had some success together. Bill always gave me the latitude to run the defense within certain general parameters, but we’ve all moved on with our careers.”
Belichick and Parcells never really had more than a professional relationship, which was permanently damaged by the Jets mess. On a cold night in Foxborough, the deep pregame freeze between head coaches was evident for all to see.
“It was almost comical,” wrote Dan Shaughnessy in the Globe. “While the teams went through their extensive warm ups, Belichick and Parcells paced, hands in pockets, pretending not to notice one another. There were times they were within five yards of each other, but there was no handshake, no greeting. Together for so many years with the Giants, Patriots, and Jets, Belichick and Parcells are foxhole buddies no more and the good people at ESPN relayed the big chill to its national audience.”
The game unfolded as expected, with two great defensive coaches lording over the two defenses that would finish the season 1-2 in points allowed. The Patriots scored the only touchdown in a 12–0 victory, though it really wasn’t a fair fight. Belichick had Tom Brady and Parcells had Quincy Carter, who threw three interceptions—three more than Brady did. Little Bill was also playing with the core of his 2001 title team. Big Bill? He was rebuilding a Cowboys team that had gone 5-11 three straight seasons under Dave Campo.
The final score was a mere sidebar to the postgame handshake—assuming there would be a handshake. Cameramen closed in on Belichick and Parcells as they came together on the field, and Big Bill surprised some witnesses by wrapping Little Bill in a hug. Parcells congratulated his former assistant on the victory. “I told him I thought he had a good football team,” Belichick said, “and I wished him well. And I do.”
When questioned about the hug, an irritated Parcells said, “People in the media can try to drive a stake between us, but that’s not going to happen. He did a helluva job for me.” Parcells added that he thought the Patriots had “a good shot” to win it all a second time.
Belichick
didn’t know it that night, but after he left Gillette Stadium, his 3-2 record against Parcells would remain in place for eternity. Parcells still held a 2–1 lead on the big-picture scoreboard, the one that really mattered: Super Bowl titles won as a head coach.
Little Bill still had time to do something about that.
On his way to another AFC Championship Game, Belichick had humbled the Buffalo Bills of Lawyer Milloy and Drew Bledsoe, beating them by the same 31–0 margin that had favored Buffalo in its season-opening rout of New England. Belichick had also shredded Tom Jackson’s they-hate-their-coach claim by winning 13 consecutive games, including a tight playoff victory over the Tennessee Titans—settled by another Adam Vinatieri game winner—played in brutal Foxborough conditions.
Belichick had even weathered another controversial move he made that had a negative impact on a popular player. Richard Seymour, team captain and Belichick favorite, had missed two December practices to attend his grandfather’s funeral in South Carolina. His coach seemed to believe that Seymour missed one practice too many. On his return, the right defensive end was told that the starter at his position in the 3-4 that Sunday, against Jacksonville, would be Jarvis Green. Seymour sat the first quarter, came on like a man possessed in the second quarter, and contributed seven tackles, a sack, and a forced fumbled to New England’s tenth consecutive victory.
Seymour was angry and hurt. “Very disappointing,” he called the demotion. Larry Izzo had twice missed two consecutive practices after his father’s death, and yet he wasn’t docked any playing time. “It was a coach’s decision,” Belichick said of the Seymour benching. “Sorry to hear everybody can’t understand that, but I do what I think is best for the team. That’s all.” Belichick reiterated the following day that he had the “utmost respect for Richard Seymour,” one of his very best players, and all wounded parties agreed to move on to the postseason push.
On his way to an AFC Championship Game matchup with Tony Dungy and Peyton Manning, Belichick saw nothing but green grass in front of him. Parcells and the Cowboys had been eliminated from the playoffs, and the Milloy-Bledsoe Bills hadn’t even qualified for the field. Belichick was running low on scores to settle before he received a request for a one-on-one interview—through Berj Najarian—from Mark Cannizzaro, of the New York Post, who told Najarian he wanted to talk to Belichick about a critical column he was writing on former Jets president Steve Gutman. The same Steve Gutman who’d watched Belichick’s bizarre resignation presser and effectively said the coach had lost his mind.
The Jets still hadn’t appeared in a Super Bowl since the 1968 season, and Gutman—widely regarded as an overmatched accountant with no discernible football expertise—was an inviting target if Belichick wanted to take a shot at him. As it turned out, he did. Belichick apparently spent the night marinating over what he wanted to say, then had Najarian invite Cannizzaro into a side room the following day after his usual briefing with the news media. The writer asked the coach what he thought of Gutman’s characterization of him upon his exit.
“I’m going to make one comment and we can close the book on it,” Belichick said. “I can’t think of anybody in professional sports—and certainly in my 30 years of professional football—who has said more and won less than Steve Gutman.”
Belichick had rarely taken his eye off the ball like this, never mind in the middle of a playoff week. He’d been waiting years for his opening on Gutman, and he seized it. Belichick also said that he knew he was making the right decision when he left the Jets for New England, and that his fears about the uncertain future of the organization all came to fruition.
His payback complete, Belichick turned his attention to a worthy adversary, Manning, the son of former New Orleans Saints quarterback Archie Manning. The Patriots had beaten the Colts, 38–34, in a wild game at the RCA Dome in November that was decided by a goal-line stand in the final seconds. The Colts had established a long history of failure in the presence of the Patriots; they’d lost 11 of the past 13 meetings, dating back to their pre-Peyton days.
Only this was a different Indy team showing up at Gillette Stadium to play for the right to go to the Super Bowl. The Colts had scored a combined 79 points in their playoff victories over Denver and Kansas City, and Manning, who had been 0-3 in the postseason before 2003, had completed 44 of 56 passes for 681 yards, eight touchdowns, and no interceptions in those games. The Colts had been so explosive on offense, they didn’t punt the ball once against the Broncos or the Chiefs.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team run through the playoffs like they have,” Belichick said. The same man who had schemed the high-flying 1990 Bills and 2001 Rams back to earth had a plan, and a defense, that could neutralize a dome team that preferred a fast track. In their previous seven home games, the Patriots had shut out three opponents and given up a total of 36 points.
This game was a clash of opposites. Manning was All-Everything at Tennessee, and the first pick in his draft. Brady wasn’t even his own coach’s preferred choice to start at Michigan as an upperclassman. On the coaching front, Belichick was the disagreeable grinder who never met an 18-hour workday he couldn’t turn into a 20-hour workday. Colts coach Tony Dungy was the neighborly voice of reason who brought a sunshiny dose of humanity to the workplace. “You know me,” Dungy said. “I’m not one of those guys who sleeps in the office. I’m not one of those guys who feels you have to do that to get the job done.”
The Patriots had little fear of Indy’s scoreboard-tilting speed, dazzling as it was to the rest of the league. Damien Woody, the valuable guard lost to a knee injury in the Tennessee victory, captured his team’s feelings about the Colts this way: “They put up all these flashy stats, but when someone punches them in the mouth, can they take a punch? We felt no, they couldn’t. So we punched them and they couldn’t counterpunch, and we felt we could beat them up.”
As contrasting styles often make for great rivalries, Patriots–Colts was starting to show real promise. This was their first playoff showdown, and Indianapolis tight end Marcus Pollard added to the intrigue when he declared that if the Colts kept playing like they had been, “they might as well just hand us the rings.” Belichick pounced on that line, just as he always pounced on far more benign observations made by upcoming opponents in an attempt to sharpen his team’s edge. “Nobody hands you a ring,” he reportedly told his players. “I don’t care how much money you have; you can’t fucking buy one. You have to play and you have to earn it.” Belichick was said to have pulled out his Super Bowl XXXVI ring and held it above his head for emphasis. As much as he micromanaged his own players’ public comments and reminded them that they gained nothing by flexing their muscles in the media, he loved it when bulletin-board material emerged from some other coach’s locker room.
“Not only don’t we say anything stupid; we don’t think anything stupid,” Brady said of Pollard’s remark. “We don’t need to go out there and talk. We let 13 games in a row say it for us.”
They did their talking with a 14th in a row, too, using the same tactics that Belichick’s bygone Giants had used in the Gulf War Super Bowl against Buffalo and that his Patriots had used in the indelible Super Bowl upset of St. Louis. New England manhandled Manning’s outstanding receivers, Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne, leaving people up and down the Colts’ organization apoplectic over the lack of penalties called, and put enough pressure on the quarterback to intercept him four times and sack him four times.
Down seven with less than two minutes to play, Manning threw a fourth-and-10 pass to Pollard, who was held by linebacker Roman Phifer. No penalty flag was thrown. When New England’s 24–14 victory was complete, Colts GM Bill Polian ran after the officials as they headed for the tunnel. A member of the competition committee, Polian said he would spend much of the next league meeting in the spring making sure officials started calling defensive holding “much closer to the way [the rules] are written.”
Vinatieri kicked five field goals, Antowain
Smith rushed for 100 yards, and Jarvis Green—who’d had 4.5 sacks in his first two regular seasons combined—delivered three of New England’s four sacks after Belichick correctly figured he’d make an impact against a Colts offensive line focused on more prominent pass rushers. Ty Law accounted for three of New England’s interceptions, and the safety Belichick had put in Milloy’s place, Rodney Harrison, gathered in the fourth and forced a fumble, further validating his coach’s decision to go with the slightly older and slower player.
As it was, Belichick was the Patriot most responsible for setting the early tone against Indy. On his first possession, facing a fourth-and-one from his own 44, Belichick decided to go for it. Brady walked up to the line with a handful of different play options to choose from, and he picked the right one: The quarterback gained two yards for the first down, and ultimately completed the 65-yard drive with a touchdown pass to David Givens.
The Patriots were heading back to the Super Bowl because they had defeated one league co-MVP, Tennessee’s Steve McNair, and then another, Manning, who fell to 2-8 in Foxborough and 0 for his last 4 against Brady and Belichick. Belichick’s plan against Peyton was simple: Make his defensive linemen active in his passing lanes and, if possible, make Manning throw on the move, as he wasn’t the same quarterback when his feet weren’t set. Oh, and don’t be fooled by the amount of shouting and mad gesturing Manning was doing at the line of scrimmage; he wasn’t audibling nearly as much as it seemed.
New England was near flawless in its execution. To a man, the Patriots said afterward that they were sick and tired of hearing about Manning and an offense that played faster than the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “Peyton this, Peyton that,” Harrison said. Manning had a quarterback rating of 156.9 in his previous two playoff games; he posted a 33.5 against New England.