by Ian O'Connor
Barry Chin / the Boston Globe via Getty Images
“So it sure has been a pleasure,” Peyton Manning told Belichick after their last competitive rodeo.
Doug Pensinger / Getty Images
Those in the know thought Linda Holliday lightened up her longtime boyfriend . . . as much as one could.
Ethan Miller / Getty Images
Belichick and Brady. The greatest of the great.
Christian Petersen / Getty Images
In triumphant and turbulent times, Belichick and Kraft had to defend their long friendship with President Trump.
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
No coach had ever won five Super Bowls, and yet Belichick burned for No. 6.
Wendy Maeda / the Boston Globe via Getty Images
Belichick wearing his father’s fedora. A cold arrival in Minnesota for Super Bowl LII, and a chilly off-season to come.
Elsa / Getty Images
14
Spygate
In January 2007, a year after he suffered his first postseason loss as Patriots coach—to Denver—following 10 straight victories, Belichick lost the AFC Championship Game to the rival Indianapolis Colts, who had finally beaten New England in their previous two regular-season matchups. The Patriots held a 21–3 second-quarter lead inside the RCA Dome and appeared ready to harden the Colts’ standing as big-game busts before Indianapolis staged an improbable comeback.
“We’ve got them right where we want them,” Colts coach Dungy told his bewildered players at halftime. Right where we want them? “What the fuck is he talking about?” said one of those players, Dan Klecko. “We’re down 21–6 to Tom Brady. That’s not where I want to be.”
Dungy had no choice but to play mind games with a locker room full of men who had no experience beating the Patriots when it mattered most. “You have to play them and not their mystique,” Dungy said, “but that’s hard to do, because all you hear about is their mystique and see their rings and know how good they are.” Two Colts who would help Dungy send the Patriots home at last were players Belichick had sent on their way: Klecko and Adam Vinatieri.
Klecko never wanted to leave Foxborough, but his bosses thought he didn’t quite fit. Belichick and Scott Pioli had so much respect for his work ethic and his father’s New York Jets legacy that they sat with him for 45 minutes that September 2006 day he was cut to reminisce about their championship runs. Dungy and Colts GM Bill Polian picked up Klecko and turned some of Belichick’s own coaching against him by using the 5´11˝, 275-pound lineman’s versatility at a most opportune time. With Indianapolis on the New England one-yard line late in the third quarter, Klecko was stationed at fullback when Peyton Manning backed away from center and shouted “Apple, apple” at the line of scrimmage, signaling a play the Colts had put in that morning, a play that sent Klecko into the right flat as a receiver.
“I’m thinking, Oh, shit, there’s no way he’s throwing to me,” the lineman said. Sure enough, Manning threw it to him, and Klecko caught it and celebrated his touchdown with a hard spike. His love for the Patriots had been temporarily replaced by hate. “Fuck it, you guys,” Klecko thought to himself in that moment. “I still wanted to be there, but this is what you get.” In his gray hoodie with the sleeves hacked off below his elbows—a concession to his short arms, he said—Belichick paced the sideline with his hands on his hips before Manning completed a two-point conversion pass to tie the game.
Vinatieri was even more emotional than Klecko. He’d won two Super Bowls with field goals in the final seconds and he’d scored the winning fourth-quarter points in New England’s third Super Bowl victory in four years, in the process becoming the NFL’s Mariano Rivera—the best closer in the game. And yet, after the 2005 season, Belichick wouldn’t give him the contract he thought he’d earned. “I felt like You’ve rented me enough,” said Vinatieri, who had shared an agent with Belichick, Neil Cornrich, before hiring a new representative and closing out the five-year, $12 million deal to sign with Indy.
Down 15 points at halftime of the AFC Championship Game matchup with his former team, Vinatieri did something he almost never did: He started shouting angrily in the locker room. He wanted this one badly. He wanted to beat Belichick to a fourth title, and he ended up 3 for 3 in field goal attempts, including a 36-yarder with 5:31 to play to make it a 31–31 game. “I think everybody in this town needed it for their own reasons,” Vinatieri would say of the victory. “My reasons may be different than their reasons, but we all had to beat New England.”
Nobody needed it more than the haunted Manning, who found himself on the wrong end of football’s burgeoning Russell-vs.-Chamberlain rivalry. Peyton had already produced seven seasons of passing for more than 4,000 yards, yet he was 5-6 in the postseason and 0-2 against Brady, who was 12-1 in the postseason. Manning’s father maintained that his son always felt he was competing against Belichick, not Brady, and Archie Manning knew how formidable the New England coach was as an opponent. In his first two years with the New Orleans Saints, in the early 1970s, Manning’s offensive coordinator was Ken Shipp, who would later teach a young Belichick plenty about the more aesthetically pleasing side of the ball when they were together in Detroit in 1976. As the Patriots were winning big in the early 2000s, Shipp often spoke with Archie about young Bill’s relentless quest for knowledge and about his extreme pride in Belichick’s accomplishments.
Only this time, Belichick didn’t come up with a defensive plan to stop Manning from throwing for 349 yards and driving the Colts 80 yards for the winning touchdown. Manning prayed on the sideline while the Patriots frantically tried to score in the final seconds, but this time it was Brady, for a change, who made the game-ending mistake on a pass intercepted by Marlin Jackson.
As it turned out, Belichick’s biggest mistake wasn’t letting go of the popular Vinatieri, whose departure was mourned by Patriots fans. It was trading holdout Deion Branch to Seattle for a first-round pick and leaving Brady with a first option like Reche Caldwell, whose drops against Indianapolis proved fatal. When this AFC title game was over and the Colts were on their way to a Super Bowl meeting with the Chicago Bears that they’d win, Belichick brushed past Manning in the postgame scrum, earning criticism from some media observers for showing a lack of sportsmanship. But Belichick did find Klecko and Vinatieri. “Go get a ring,” the coach told Klecko. “If it’s not us, I’m glad it’s you guys,” Belichick told Vinatieri. “Go win this thing.”
The Manning snub came one week after San Diego Chargers star LaDainian Tomlinson suggested that Belichick was to blame for New England’s postgame dancing at San Diego’s expense, which the league MVP said showed “absolutely no class,” and two weeks after Belichick shoved a photographer’s camera into the man’s face as the coach approached his former assistant, the New York Jets’ Eric Mangini, for a surprising postgame hug. Belichick had been furious at Mangini for taking the head coaching job with the Jets, a franchise he hated, and he’d turned this postgame encounter into a big news event by offering his former defensive coordinator an overwhelmingly limp and lifeless handshake after their regular-season meetings, and by refusing to even speak Mangini’s name before the Jets’ stunning victory at Gillette Stadium. The New England coach did have to work his way through a swarm of cameramen to get to Mangini after the playoff victory, and he did call Globe photographer Jim Davis afterward to apologize for his own version of a postseason push. But the scene did nothing to soften the edges of a public image formed in his daily press conferences, where Belichick was only slightly more accommodating and human than he had been in his darkest Cleveland days.
Belichick knew how to play the media game; he proved that as an assistant with the Giants and the Jets. As the Browns’ head coach, he chose not to play that game, or to not play it often enough. In Foxborough, the coach and his consigliere, Berj Najarian, would at times feed stories or confirmations of news items—not for attribution, of course—to writers they deemed fair or franchise-friendly. “The
misnomer with him is that he doesn’t care about the media or work the media. That’s blatantly false,” said one Patriots writer who got his share of stories from Belichick and Najarian. “He has his guys talk off the record . . . People say he doesn’t care what people say or write, but he does care what they say or write. Every morning, Berj would have a clip file, and on the treadmill Bill would read the newspapers. He keeps track, or Berj does, of what’s being written and said and who’s on whose side. I think there are times . . . before [Belichick] walks out to a press conference room and goes to the podium, he looks into the crowd and takes mental note of who’s there.”
Naturally, media members who were deemed enemies of the state weren’t afforded the same off-the-record courtesies or background help that went to the franchise friendlies. Belichick wasn’t unique in this context; just about every NFL head coach operated the same way.
As the Patriots prepared for a second straight off-season of deciphering why they hadn’t reached the Super Bowl, Belichick needed all of his media savvy to deal with a couple of potentially damaging stories. One involved his relationship with a former New York Giants receptionist, Sharon Shenocca, whose divorce case put Belichick in headlines that had nothing to do with his winning percentage. BILL STOLE MY WIFE, read the screaming front page of the Boston Herald in the summer of 2006, when news first broke that Shenocca’s husband had charged that she’d received “large sums of money and expensive gifts from Mr. Belichick, which she has used to purchase expensive clothing, pocketbooks, watches, a treadmill and maid service, most of which she initially hid from [her husband].”
Vincent Shenocca claimed that Belichick had limousines pick up his wife at her house and that he’d paid to send her to Houston for the Patriots’ Super Bowl XXXVIII victory over Carolina, and he was seeking custody of their two children; Sharon Shenocca was seeking the same. The story resurfaced in February 2007 under the New York Post headline “Sugar Daddy Belichick,” which cited court papers stating that the Patriots’ coach had purchased for Shenocca a secret $2.2 million Brooklyn townhouse, had paid for her rental at the Jersey Shore, and had been wiring her cash payments for the previous 18 months. Sharon Shenocca claimed that her friendship with Belichick was platonic, but Vincent Shenocca alleged that his wife and the coach had engaged in “an adulterous relationship.” His lawyer, Ed O’Donnell, planned to depose the coach as part of the custody fight.
The case was a great embarrassment to Belichick, who had separated from his wife, Debby, in 2005—“quietly and amicably,” wrote David Halberstam—though Vincent Shenocca said his wife, Sharon, had been in a relationship with the coach for years. Bill lived in Hingham, and Debby in Weston, and they divorced in 2006. Belichick was an intensely private man and a father of three who now had the most intimate details of his personal life splashed across the big-city tabloids. And at the office, his character was being assailed on an entirely different front. Ted Johnson, retired linebacker, had alleged in interviews with the Globe and the New York Times, published just before the Super Bowl, that Belichick had him engage in full-contact drills in practice in 2002—against the trainer’s advice—while still suffering from the effects of a concussion, which Johnson said resulted in another concussion.
This 2007 story was a nightmare for Belichick, who denied knowing that his linebacker wasn’t prepared to hit in the 2002 practice session. Johnson had avoided selection in the Houston Texans’ expansion draft but had to take a pay cut he didn’t want to take to ensure his place on New England’s roster. The contract turbulence set an uneasy training-camp tone between employer and employee even before Johnson suffered a concussion in a preseason collision with New York Giants running back Sean Bennett. “Bill’s the one who actually pulled me off,” the linebacker said, “when he saw me loopy.”
Four days later, when the Patriots were scheduled to practice in full pads, Johnson assumed he’d find a red jersey in his locker—players in blue jerseys were cleared for full contact, players in red jerseys were not. He was stunned when he saw a blue jersey, and he approached the new head trainer, Jim Whalen, who agreed that the linebacker should be wearing red. But during the practice, an assistant trainer suddenly walked up to Johnson and handed him a blue jersey. “And I said, ‘Who the fuck gave you that?’” Johnson recalled years later. “And he points three fields over, and there’s Jim talking to Belichick.” Fearing he might be cut if he didn’t agree to engage, Johnson put on the blue and jumped into a nine-on-seven drill that required him to take on a blocking back, and the two met helmet to helmet. “And it was a warm sensation,” Johnson said. “Everything slows down. Everybody’s moving slow, my vision is blurred, and I’m going, This is not good.”
Johnson avoided contact the rest of the practice, and afterward he confronted Whalen. “What the fuck are you doing, man?” he asked him. “I got concussed on the first play I was out there.” Johnson said he could see the blood drain from Whalen’s face before the trainer sent him to an independent neurologist at Massachusetts General, where he was diagnosed with a second concussion and told to stay clear of contact for two weeks. Upon his return, Johnson was rendered inactive for the season opener against Pittsburgh. He was so angry he cleaned out his locker, then walked past Eric Mangini, who asked, “What are you doing? Are you moving out?”
“Yeah, I am, actually,” Johnson responded. He walked out of camp for a few days, ignoring pleas from teammates to return to the facility, before he did return under the threat of a forfeited salary. Johnson said he told Belichick in a meeting, “I’m a team player. I’ve always been a team player. You can demote me, you can trade me, you can cut out my reps. But you can’t play God with my health like that, Bill. You crossed the line. And you really fucked up.”
According to Johnson, Belichick responded, “Well, I had to see if you could play.” The linebacker shot back, “See if I can play? I’ve been a seven-year starter . . . Just trade me. You don’t want me here. Just get rid of me.”
Johnson recalled that his head coach finally relented and said, “All right, you know what, Ted? I did fuck up. I apologize.” The linebacker likened Belichick’s admission to Jack Nicholson’s “You’re goddamn right I did” courtroom admission in A Few Good Men. Belichick told the Globe’s Jackie MacMullan in 2007, “It was a watershed meeting for us. We had a long conversation and we both tried to see the other’s position. I’m sure in part of that conversation I apologized for things I said or did, as he did for his actions and his emotions following his decision to leave the team. If I made a mistake or hurt Ted in any way, I don’t feel good about that. I felt as though we left that meeting saying, ‘We’ve both made mistakes. Let’s move forward and get on a higher level.’ And that’s what we did.”
That Belichick had put his veteran linebacker in harm’s way was surprising to those who had seen him dramatically improve his player relations skills from his Cleveland days, and to anyone who knew how one of his old Wesleyan coaches had done virtually the same thing to a young Belichick—subjecting him to a dangerous practice technique that left him with a serious leg injury and a sense of disillusionment with the sport. Johnson made uncharacteristic assignment mistakes in the coming games that he attributed to his head trauma, but he lived up to a promise he’d made Belichick, that he’d be a low-maintenance Patriot for the rest of his playing days. Johnson was named a captain in 2003 and regained his starting job in 2004, and though he suffered additional concussions in those two championship seasons, he was a significant contributor to both titles.
“So we went from I wanted out of there, I hated that man, I resented him, I was angry, hurt, disgusted, to being a captain the next year,” Johnson would say. “And honestly, we put it behind us.”
Before the start of the 2005 training camp, Johnson visited Robert Kraft at the owner’s house, and the two kicked their shoes off, put up their feet, and drank beers until midnight. The next morning, Johnson told Belichick he was retiring. The coach and the owner said kind things about Jo
hnson (Belichick called him a “class act”), and, in a statement posted on the team’s website, the linebacker referred to how the Kraft family had “believed in me from the beginning” and had “gone above and beyond in making me feel a part of their Patriots family.” Johnson said he was proud to be associated with the Kraft legacy. He made no mention of Belichick.
He did mention that he could “no longer ignore the severe short- and long-term complications of the concussive head injuries I have sustained over the years.” In additional remarks to reporters that day, Johnson said that he often couldn’t get his bearings to call a play, and that doctors had told him his memory loss and sleep difficulties were the result of head trauma. By the time Johnson detailed his living hell to the Globe’s MacMullan and the Times’s Alan Schwarz before the Colts–Bears Super Bowl, his neurologist was telling Schwarz that the retired 34-year-old Patriot was already exhibiting signs characteristic of early Alzheimer’s disease. Johnson was speaking publicly two and a half months after former Philadelphia Eagles safety Andre Waters had committed suicide. Waters was later found to have been suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), as a result, it was believed, of football-related concussions.
Johnson said that he suffered from depression and that he’d become addicted to Adderall after he started taking it in 2004 to improve his on-field focus. Johnson said his addiction was at least partly responsible for the demise of his marriage. He’d been arrested in July 2006 on domestic assault charges after the police responded to a dispute at his home; his wife, Jackie, recanted her claims before the two divorced.
Football had altered this 6´4˝, 253-pound man. Johnson had savored the NFL life in his early days playing for Bill Parcells, who would sometimes hitch a ride with his linebacker on the drive back to the facility from the old practice fields. They talked about life on those short drives, about the player’s father and family. Johnson loved being a Parcells guy, and though he was never a Belichick guy, he did come to appreciate the coach’s incredible talent for putting his team in a position to win.