by Ian O'Connor
Sometimes these news clippings inspired a humorous anecdote or a rebuke at some poor Patriot’s expense. One day during the 2007 preseason, Belichick jumped all over cornerback Brandon Meriweather, his No. 1 draft pick, for committing the first-degree felony of praising Wes Welker in print. Belichick started reading the quote from a printout before looking up at Meriweather and saying, “What the fuck do you know? You’re a fucking rookie. Have you ever gone against Wes Welker? What do you know about Wes Welker?” The entire room erupted in laughter.
One player said that the coach warned the team to stay clear of the “trifecta.” The player quoted Belichick as saying, “Drugs, pussy, and alcohol. Don’t get caught up in the trifecta.” One morning, Belichick opened a meeting with a little story about potential, and how it related to his stacked 2007 team, that one player paraphrased this way: “There’s a dad speaking to his son, and he says, ‘Hey, son, I want you to go in the other room and ask your mother if she would have sex with anyone in the world for a million bucks.’ The kid says, ‘Dad, are you sure?’ And the father says, ‘Yeah, go ask her.’ So the kid goes in and says, ‘Hey, Mom, Dad wants to know if you’d have sex with anyone in the world for a million bucks.’ And she says, ‘Hell, yeah, I would.’ The son runs back and the father says, ‘Go in the other room and ask your sister the same question.’ So he goes in and asks his sister, and she says, ‘Heck, yeah.’ The kid goes back to his father and says, ‘Dad, she said yes, too.’ And the father says, ‘Well, son, here’s the difference between potential and reality. Potentially, we’re sitting on two million bucks. But the reality is we’re living with two whores.” The room fell apart again.
The Patriots came to understand that Belichick’s favorite three words were “What the fuck?” Those three words were often heard during the showing of lowlights on Monday mornings, when the coach trained his red laser on the filmed images of players who screwed up this or that. One such lowlight featured fullbacks Heath Evans and Kyle Eckel, who had blown blocking assignments on a punt and nearly allowed the kick to be blocked. Belichick stopped the film, put the red laser on Evans and Eckel, and summoned the name of his fellow Andover football nerd, Ernie Adams. “Here’s Heath and Eckel,” Belichick said. “Put me and Ernie in here for Heath and Eckel. Let me tell you right now: It might not be any better, but it couldn’t be any fucking worse.”
The players loved these biting reviews, at least when they were aimed at Patriots other than themselves. During one full-contact scrimmage, Gemara Williams ran back a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown. When the Patriots watched the return in a pitch-dark film room, Moss made everyone crack up by shouting, “That motherfucker is fast.” But Belichick wasn’t laughing over the next scene—that of an exhausted Williams catching the next kickoff in the end zone and taking a knee.
“Belichick stops the tape,” Williams recalled, “and he goes, ‘What the fuck? If a guy wants to find a way to go home, this is how you do it.’ He cut into me for a good five minutes straight. He was ripping me, but he was being funny, and everybody was laughing. Afterward some coaches told me, ‘Hey, don’t take it hard. It’s just Bill being Bill.’ I’ll always remember that moment.”
Belichick wasn’t an unforgiving overlord looking for reasons to terminate people. One day during the regular season, Eckel, an undrafted free agent, woke up to a Boston Globe article that detailed allegations of alcohol-fueled misconduct at his alma mater, the Naval Academy, where Belichick had grown up. Eckel showed up to work that day certain he was going to be fired. He wanted to keep a low profile and to avoid his coach as much as possible, but sure enough, he ran into Belichick in a hallway. “He pulled me over and says, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve had much worse written about me,’” Eckel said. “He cracked a small smile. It felt like a thousand pounds were lifted off my shoulders . . . I was a special teams guy who came in at the end of games when we were up 40 so nobody else had to get hit. I can’t imagine what those interactions with Coach Belichick do for guys who play every down and make big plays in big games.”
The player-coach relationship in New England was as healthy as any in the sport. Belichick felt that one of his primary jobs was to protect his players from external forces, from distractions that could undermine the mission statement. One sign on the top of a team facility door read WHEN YOU LEAVE HERE, then listed four instructions next to small Patriot logos: DON’T BELIEVE OR FUEL THE HYPE . . . MANAGE EXPECTATIONS . . . IGNORE THE NOISE . . . SPEAK FOR YOURSELF.
On Spygate, Belichick needed the Patriots to ignore the noise like never before. He told his players that the case had nothing to do with them and that they should focus on their jobs and let him deal with it. “We come in after destroying the Jets,” said Evans, “and Bill’s like ‘Hey, guys, this was my doing. You guys knew nothing about it. I take full responsibility for it, and we’re moving on. I’m sorry for my part in this.’ And then, boom, it was never mentioned again.”
Donté Stallworth, another talented receiver brought in with Moss and Welker, heard it this way from Belichick: “He pretty much told us . . . that we didn’t break any rules, that everything that happened was legal but it’s under question from the league’s point of view. From a legality standpoint, I think he wanted us to know that everything that happened up to that point was not illegal; it was more frowned upon . . . The way I understood it, there were no broken rules; maybe bent rules. He told us, ‘Listen, this is what happened and I’m taking responsibility for it. This is all on me.’”
The Patriots went on their own revenge tour anyway. Chad Brown lived near Bruschi, and the two would carpool together and talk about the damage done to New England’s reputation. Bruschi had come back from a stroke and surgery to repair a hole in his heart, and now he had to listen to people challenge the legitimacy of a program that he embodied. “It wasn’t just Bill Belichick being slammed,” Brown said. “Everything those guys had worked for and built up was being questioned.”
The Patriots answered the doubts on the scoreboard. They put up 38 points for a third consecutive week, shredding Buffalo in the process. They were 5-0 before they scored 48 against Dallas, and then 49 against Miami, and then 52 against Washington in a ruthless 45-point victory that left some critics assailing Belichick for running up the score on his old NFC East rival Joe Gibbs. While holding a 38–0 lead and still instructing Brady to throw in the fourth quarter, Belichick went for it on fourth-and-one at the Redskins’ seven. “What did you want us to do?” he asked. “Kick a field goal?”
Gibbs didn’t complain about the margin of victory; the Redskins did say their headsets malfunctioned inside Gillette Stadium, the apparent home office for malfunctioning headsets. The Patriots didn’t lose any sleep over it. They were 8-0 and averaging more than 40 points a game. They had outscored their opponents by 204 points, and Brady had thrown 30 touchdown passes (he’d never thrown more than 28 in a season) against two interceptions. These were no longer your big brother’s Patriots, the franchise that won with great team defense, a great kicking game, and a clutch quarterback who elevated workmanlike receivers. Suddenly New England was a fast-breaking NBA team with scoring options all over the floor. The Patriots were the Golden State Warriors a decade before their time, and Brady was the kind of stat machine Peyton Manning had always been.
One New England newcomer, Kyle Brady, was in awe of what he was watching. The tight end had played 13 years with the Jets and Jacksonville and was ready to retire his beaten-down body before Belichick persuaded him to take one last shot at winning a ring. Before the 1995 draft, Brady had run through some agility and catching drills for a Cleveland contingent that included Belichick and Ozzie Newsome, and he called it the most thorough and vigorous workout he’d ever endured. Belichick would deny a report that he threw a phone against a wall in disgust after the Jets took Brady with the ninth pick, one spot ahead of the Browns.
Either way, coach and tight end had worked together with the Jets and now were working together again with the Patriots, who had l
oaded up for another strong Super Bowl run. This was exactly what Kyle Brady was looking for to close out his career. “It was certainly the most unique year of NFL football that I experienced,” he said. “It was such an amazing team, such a dynamic offense. You almost felt like you were in college again, and at times we felt we were playing teams that couldn’t even offer us a challenge, especially in the first half. Every college team plays the first few games against Division I teams that don’t have the same level of talent or depth, and it’s usually a runaway and you’ve got backups in by the second or third quarter and you’re drinking Gatorade on the bench, having a good time. That’s how it felt [in New England]. It was as if we were at a completely different level than other professional teams.”
Of course, it all started with the other Brady. The quarterback had never played with anyone whose skills approximated those of Randy Moss. One of Moss’s first moves as a Patriot was to ask for the locker right next to the quarterback. “I wanted to know when he’s studying, what he’s studying, what he’s thinking,” Moss said, “so on Sunday we kind of made it look easier. So during the week, we would come in 5:30, 5:45 in the morning, get our workouts in, and then I might have a few questions about the game plan. Or I might have a few questions about practice the day before. And it was just more of We do not want to let one another down. And he’s had his accomplishments, his notoriety . . . and I had mine. So I didn’t want to let him down, knowing he’s Tom Brady.”
Moss regularly destroyed defensive secondaries with his size, speed, and athleticism. He ran effortlessly, his long strides eating up so much ground. His ability to track a ball and catch it at the highest possible point was unlike any other receiver’s on the planet. Watching him compete against smaller and less skilled corners, Kyle Brady said, “was literally like watching a dad playing against his sons.”
And yet Tom Brady wasn’t forcing it to his otherworldly receiver. In an earlier season, after watching the quarterback hit Deion Branch 50 times in 51 training-camp attempts against the New England defense, Belichick ordered him to avoid throwing the ball to Branch for the rest of the week and to start spreading it around to his other receivers. Brady had other talented options beyond Moss in Welker and Stallworth—especially Welker, all 5´9˝ and 190 pounds of him. Moss was going long and Welker was going short, running option routes and dusting the linebackers and nickel backs assigned to cover him.
The Patriots weren’t filming anyone from the sidelines, and every post-Spygate team on the schedule had to have changed its signals as a precaution anyway. And yet Belichick was embarrassing the league with what was effectively a college spread offense. He was putting Brady in the shotgun for about half of his snaps, more than any other quarterback in the league, and he was using one-back formations and turning the slot receiver position into a weapon that would change the way offense was played in pro football. With the help of Josh McDaniels, Belichick, a defensive coach, had actually developed into an offensive mastermind. He was using a no-huddle attack with at least three wideouts to stretch defenses and force favorable matchups that Brady could exploit.
Meanwhile, Eric Mangini’s Jets were a pathetic 1-7. Belichick was settling all old scores. Though the Patriots were slowed down by the defending champion Colts in Indianapolis, Brady threw two touchdown passes to overcome a ten-point fourth-quarter deficit and allow his coach to give Dungy, a Spygate critic, a drive-by handshake that made Belichick’s postgame meetings with Mangini look warm and cuddly by comparison. The Patriots reportedly complained that the Colts might’ve pumped artificial noise into the RCA Dome (no evidence was found to support this), and Belichick said the team’s coach-to-quarterback communication system didn’t work for much of the game—if only to show that when it came to suggestions of dirty tricks, two could play that game.
New England came back from its bye week to rout Buffalo, 56–10, in a Sunday night game to move to 10-0 and drive the conversation about a perfect season into high gear. Don Shula’s 1972 Miami Dolphins were the only undefeated Super Bowl winners, but NFL teams were playing 14-game regular seasons back then. New England had a shot to become the league’s first 16-0 regular-season team and its first 19-0 champ. That meant New England had a shot to become the greatest NFL team of all time.
Of course, Belichick would never let his team publicly talk about a game, possession, or snap that wasn’t right in front of it. But the Patriots were human. And human nature dictated that they were thinking about 16-0 and 19-0, especially if it came at the expense of a coach, Shula, who said their achievements were “tainted.” Belichick knew that. So when Pittsburgh safety Anthony Smith handed him a short-term distraction from the long-term goal, Belichick jumped on it. Smith channeled Joe Namath and guaranteed that the 9-3 Steelers would beat the 12-0 Patriots, and New England did a slow burn over that. Belichick read the safety’s words to his team, and the Patriots responded as the Patriots often did. “Well done is always better than well said—that’s been the motto of this team,” Brady said.
Enraged by Smith’s arrogance, Brady threw for 399 yards and four touchdowns, including two on deep balls over the top of the safety. During the game, the quarterback screamed profanities right into Smith’s face. Gillette Stadium fans responded to a shot of Smith on the video board with a chant of “Gua-ran-tee . . . Gua-ran-tee.” After the Patriots won, 34–13, Belichick said, “We’ve played against a lot better safeties than him, I’ll tell you that.” Smith had reawakened the tiring Patriots, who had played three consecutive night games and were starting to wobble under the weight of their pursuit.
New England had needed a late interception to barely beat Eagles backup quarterback A. J. Feeley, and then a streak-preserving mistake by Baltimore defensive coordinator Rex Ryan, who called a pre-snap timeout and negated a defensive stuff of Brady on a late fourth-and-one stop that would’ve secured the upset. Anthony Smith’s foolish guarantee helped carry New England deep into the season and into another triumph over the Jets, this one in the rain and snow and wind of Foxborough, where Belichick broke into a sideline smile before meeting with his excommunicated protégé. “Great game,” he told Mangini. “Awesome.” At 14-0, Belichick had bigger concerns than the 3-11 Jets. His team would beat Miami the following Sunday to set Belichick up for the ultimate regular-season game against the ultimate team in the ultimate building.
He was going for 16-0 against the Giants in Giants Stadium. Belichick grew emotional every time he set foot in that place. He admitted that walking down the ramp and into the tunnel of this ballpark was a lot different “than it is for any other stadium in the league for me.” His heart wanted him to turn left, toward the home locker room, when he entered, though his brain forced him to turn right. As a Giants assistant, he’d weathered Bill Parcells, the players’ disrespect in the early years, and the disapproval of George Young, the general manager who never thought he’d become a successful head coach. And now Belichick had returned a three-time champ, with a chance to do something no NFL head coach had ever done.
He showed how much a perfect season meant to him by playing Brady, Moss, and his starters despite the fact that he’d long ago clinched the No. 1 seed and home-field advantage in the playoffs. The Patriots felt a bit liberated during the week to talk about 16-0, simply because the Giants represented their 16th opponent. They felt liberated to talk about Belichick’s body of work, too. Bruschi, a Patriot since 1996, called 2007 “probably the best year I have seen him have as a coach.” The linebacker reasoned that Belichick had more distractions to manage than ever before, “and with every distraction that he has had, he’s come through it stronger.”
For his trouble, Belichick had made the cover of Sports Illustrated for its Year in Sports holiday issue; the magazine’s creative design people put the coach—or the coach’s frowning face—in a Santa Claus costume over the headline “Perfect Season’s Greetings.” It wasn’t perfect yet. Belichick warned his players that the Giants would be as physical as any team they had faced
, and that proved true at the end of the game’s first possession, when 6´4˝, 256-pound running back Brandon Jacobs took a short pass from Eli Manning and ran over Bruschi on his way into the end zone. The 10-5 Giants had nothing of postseason consequence to play for, either—they’d already locked down the NFC’s fifth seed—and yet their coach, Tom Coughlin, a former colleague of Belichick’s on Bill Parcells’s staff, decided to play the banged-up Jacobs and the banged-up receiver Plaxico Burress, along with everyone else, in an attempt to derail New England’s historic bid.
It turned out to be a wild game before a charged Saturday night crowd and a TV audience treated to a three-way national simulcast. Beyond the team milestone, Brady needed two touchdown passes to break Peyton Manning’s record of 49 in a single season, and Moss needed two touchdown receptions to break Jerry Rice’s record of 22 in a single season—though Rice had set his mark in 12 games in a strike-shortened 1987. The Giants held a 28–16 lead in the third quarter before the Patriots took control.
Down five points early in the fourth, Brady threw up a second-down heave down the right sideline to a wide-open Moss, who had to come back to the ball before dropping it. On the next play, Brady threw up the same kind of heave down the same sideline to the same wide-open Moss, who caught the ball in stride for a 65-yard score that gave New England the lead for good. Brady had his record, Moss had his record, and, after adding another touchdown, the Patriots had set the record for points in a season, with 589, and for points differential: 315. Thirteen months after making an in-season change at Gillette Stadium from grass to a synthetic surface, and six years after upsetting the offensive juggernaut that was the St. Louis Rams, Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots had become the Greatest Show on Turf.
The Giants followed a late touchdown with an onside kick that was recovered by a fitting Patriot, Mike Vrabel. The perfect Belichick player had preserved the perfect Belichick season. Wearing his gray hoodie and a look of relief and contentment, Belichick hugged players and assistants as the clock bled to zero. Before the game, Peyton Manning had told his kid brother, Eli, that the Patriots were beatable, and Eli damn near beat them. John Madden was so moved by the effort that he left a voicemail for Coughlin the next morning telling him the decision to go all in was “one of the best things to happen in the NFL in the last ten years.” The Giants played the game angry, too, according to center Shaun O’Hara, who accused the Patriots’ trash-talking safety, Rodney Harrison, of “cheap-shotting everyone.” One thing O’Hara took from the game, he said, was the fact that “every single guy in our huddle couldn’t wait to play them again. Because we couldn’t wait to kick Rodney Harrison’s ass.”