Belichick

by Ian O'Connor

  Belichick had softened a tad with age, with assists from his extroverted love interest, Linda Holliday, and the former chaplain turned Patriots character coach, Jack Easterby. He could still be brutally robotic, or robotically brutal, in his pressers, unless the questions involved special teams minutiae or the history of the single wing. Belichick created this character, and every time he stepped to the podium, he was an actor stepping onstage in his costume. Belichick as Quasimodo, his hunchback cloaked by a hoodie. This is why people were sometimes surprised when they encountered Belichick off campus and found the normal, somewhat engaging human being his friends knew. It would’ve been like stumbling into Carroll O’Connor back in the day and being surprised he didn’t act like the bigoted Archie Bunker from one of Belichick’s favorite shows, All in the Family. Belichick would shed that costume and that character for a special occasion here and there. But on this particular Saturday, he let down his hair, his guard, his everything, with the Super Bowl still eight days away and most of America still believing that the Patriots were guilty of producing, directing, and starring in a newfangled sequel to Spygate. Word had gotten around to reporters that something newsworthy and interesting would be forthcoming, and that it would be a good idea to stick around the facility for a while. And Belichick delivered. He entered a packed interview room and adjusted both microphones at the podium downward. He was wearing a nautical-blue team jacket over a striped, collared shirt. He looked up and actually smiled, asked reporters how they were doing, and when a couple of them asked him the same question, he said, “Good. Good. Good.” This was going to be a hell of a good day for Bill Belichick.

  He said that he wanted to share some information, that he’d spent the week educating himself about air pressure in footballs. Though he loved books on military strategy, and though he’d hung a sign on his locker room wall quoting ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu’s Art of War—EVERY BATTLE IS WON BEFORE IT IS FOUGHT—Belichick wanted his audience to know that his team hadn’t tried to win any simulated battle through pregame deflation. “I feel like this is important,” Belichick said, “because there have been questions raised, and I believe now 100 percent that I have personally—and we as an organization—have absolutely followed every rule to the letter.” He was just getting started on a filibuster that would last 16 and a half minutes and turn out to be as memorable as the rambling wreck of a presser he conducted when he bolted the New York Jets.

  Belichick said the team had conducted its own tests, which found that the pregame rubbing of footballs (to break them in) had contributed to an artificially high PSI setting. That PSI number dropped when the balls reached their equilibrium and were exposed to the same cold weather conditions that decreased pressure in the tires of cars parked outside. In these tests, the coach said, his quarterbacks couldn’t identify footballs with a difference of 1 PSI, and even struggled to identify footballs with a difference of 2 PSI.

  In the end, Belichick said, New England’s success was the by-product of hard work and physical and mental fortitude. He said the Patriots were the best team in the AFC in the regular season and had proved their conference superiority again by winning two postseason games.

  “I’m embarrassed to talk about the amount of time that I put into this relative to the other important challenge in front of us,” Belichick said. “I’m not a scientist. I’m not an expert in footballs; I’m not an expert in football measurements. I’m just telling you what I know. I would not say that I’m Mona Lisa Vito of the football world, as she was in the car expertise area, all right?”

  The beat writers who already knew that Belichick loved watching Discovery Channel and the History Channel now knew he also loved Marisa Tomei’s character in My Cousin Vinny. This was Belichick unplugged, and he wasn’t finished.

  “At no time was there any intent whatsoever,” he continued, “to try to compromise the integrity of the game or to gain an advantage. Quite the opposite: We feel like we followed the rules of the game to the letter in our preparations, in our procedures, all right, and in the way that we handled every game that we competitively played in as it relates to this matter. We try to do everything right. We err on the side of caution. It’s been that way now for many years. Anything that’s close, we stay as far away from the line as we can.”

  These remarks didn’t seem aimed just at Roger Goodell and NFL investigators, but at everyone who had quietly taken a complaint about the Patriots' alleged covert tactics to reporters or the competition committee. Belichick said he welcomed the league to investigate further and pronounced himself eager to move on from the subject so he could prepare for the Super Bowl.

  He took 18 questions. The one that inspired the most meaningful response involved his statement that his organization always erred on the side of caution. A reporter wanted to know how that claim jibed with Spygate.

  “I mean, look, that’s a whole other discussion,” Belichick said. “The guy’s giving signals out in front of 80,000 people, OK? So we filmed him taking signals out in front of 80,000 people, like there were a lot of other teams doing at that time, too. OK? But forget about that. If we were wrong then, we’ve been disciplined for that.”

  Though the reporter didn’t specifically challenge Belichick’s assertion that there were “a lot of other teams” illegally videotaping in 2007, he did attempt to follow up by pointing out that Spygate had proved he was willing to cross the line. Belichick cut him short.

  “The guy’s in front of 80,000 people,” he said. “Eighty thousand people saw it. Everybody saw it. Everybody sees our guy in front of 80,000 people. I mean, there he is. So, it was wrong, we were disciplined for it. That’s it; we never did it again. We’re never going to do it again, and anything else that’s close, we’re not going to do, either.”

  The reporter asked if this approach represented a shift in philosophy, a commitment to staying on the right side of the line. “We always do. We always have,” Belichick said. “I mean, anything that’s even remotely close, we’re on the side of caution.”

  Belichick was asked if he’d consulted with any science experts in conducting his tests and arriving at his conclusions, and he said only that New England “talked to a lot of people.” He took another handful of questions, then headed off to prepare for the Seahawks. The Patriots had quickly surrendered on Spygate, and Belichick had just served notice that his program would do no such thing on Deflategate. As for his serious reservations about Brady’s denial, Belichick could set those aside. They had just become irrelevant. He could wrap his arms around science and hold on for dear life. He could get Brady ready for that angry Seattle defense and let the league try to make its case on its own.

  Belichick couldn’t waste any more time. He hadn’t won the big one in ten years, and he was about to engage in a standoff with the man he’d replaced in Foxborough, Pete Carroll, that no witness would ever forget.

  Belichick, call a fucking timeout!

  Rick Young, a 46-year-old Patriots superfan from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, was among the many New Englanders screaming obscenities at their head coach from the University of Phoenix Stadium stands as precious time bled off the Super Bowl XLIX clock. Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch had just powered the ball down to the Patriots’ one-yard line and was poised to give his team the lead on the next play. All Seattle coach Pete Carroll had to do was give him the ball. And all Belichick had to do was call one of his two remaining timeouts, to give Tom Brady a fighting chance to drive for a field goal that would send the game into overtime.

  But instead of taking that timeout with a minute left, Belichick just stood and stared across the field at Carroll, who was chomping away at his gum with his typical type A gusto and waiting for his opponent to stop the clock. Belichick sensed a little confusion on the Seattle sideline and didn’t want to bail out the indecisive Carroll. So he let the clock run down to 50 seconds, 45, 40, 35, 30, while the fans cursed him and wondered if he’d lost his mind.

  Young was sit
ting in the building’s third level, around the 25-yard line on the Patriots’ side of the field. “Everybody was going crazy on Belichick,” Young said. “We were all screaming, ‘We’ve got Brady. Just call a timeout and give us a chance. What the fuck is he doing?’”

  In shotgun formation, the Seahawks snapped the ball with 26 seconds to play. The Super Bowl was about to deliver a bizarre ending to what had been a bizarre week.

  It had started with Robert Kraft’s bold and unannounced trip to the microphone after the Patriots had arrived in the desert the previous Monday, when he professed his belief that his coach and quarterback had done no wrong and that the outside investigator hired by the NFL to separate fact from fiction, Ted Wells, was destined to come up empty. Kraft said that if no wrongdoing was found, he would “expect and hope that the league would apologize to our entire team, and in particular Coach Belichick and Tom Brady for what they’ve had to endure this past week.”

  Fox Sports had just reported that the league had a low-level Patriots staffer on video carrying AFC Championship Game footballs from the officials’ locker room into a Gillette Stadium bathroom, and GQ had just published a piece about the cozy relationship between Commissioner Roger Goodell and Kraft, whom one NFL executive called “the assistant commissioner.” Kraft had been Goodell’s most loyal advocate, helping him earn tens of millions in yearly wages and escorting him through the public relations disaster that was the initial two-game suspension of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, who had knocked out his future wife with a punch to the face in an Atlantic City elevator; Rice was later cut by Baltimore and suspended indefinitely by the league when TMZ aired a video showing that punch.

  Seattle’s star cornerback Richard Sherman had assailed Kraft’s relationship with Goodell, and the cornerback and the owner exchanged verbal jabs at Tuesday’s annual Super Bowl Media Day. Kraft also took the opportunity to announce that his players thought Deflategate was “a bunch of hogwash,” a position that put Kraft at odds with his buddy Goodell. If nothing else, Kraft succeeded in making enough noise himself to take the pressure off his quarterback and his coach.

  Yet on Super Bowl Sunday, his approach looked like it would be a losing one when Seattle carried a 24–14 lead into the fourth quarter. The Seahawks had seized control of the game when Chris Matthews, an undrafted 6´5˝ receiver who had no NFL receptions to his name, suddenly started making like Randy Moss. Matthews had spent time in the Arena Football League and the Canadian Football League and had worked as a security guard (before applying for a job at Foot Locker) when Seattle called, put him on the practice squad, and eventually made him a special teamer who recovered an onside kick in a stirring NFC Championship Game comeback victory over Green Bay.

  Matthews had earned his team’s trust, and Russell Wilson decided to throw him the ball in the last, and biggest, game of the year. Matthews’s first NFL catch was an athletic, twisting 44-yarder over Kyle Arrington down the right sideline that led to a Lynch touchdown. On Seattle’s next possession, Wilson found Matthews for an 11-yard score over Logan Ryan with two seconds left in the half. Matthews had two more catches in the third quarter, including a 45-yarder, leaving him with 109 yards before the 6´4˝ Brandon Browner, New England’s tallest defensive back, finally shut him down. Belichick had benched the struggling Arrington in favor of his own answer to Chris Matthews, Malcolm Butler, the undrafted rookie from Division II West Alabama and a fifth corner who had made all of one start and who nonetheless made a significant difference in coverage.

  Belichick’s adjustments slowed Seattle’s offense, allowing New England an opportunity for an even more improbable comeback than it had staged against Baltimore in the divisional round. Brady found Danny Amendola for a four-yard touchdown, and after a Seattle three-and-out, the quarterback drove the Patriots down the field one more time, completing eight consecutive passes to put the ball on the Seahawks’ five-yard line. After a short carry by LeGarrette Blount, Brady faced a second-and-goal with a little more than two minutes to go and Seattle up 24–21.

  The quarterback was finally in his element after the toughest two weeks of his career. He’d conducted an interview with NBC’s Bob Costas that was no more convincing about his role or non-role in Deflategate than his presser in Foxborough had been, prompting Costas’s colleague Cris Collinsworth to ask Brady to look him in the eye and tell him he’d never said something to a staffer about bleeding air out of a game ball. (Brady issued a firm denial, the announcer said.) The national debate over Deflategate had no place on the Super Bowl field. That was Brady’s sanctuary, his office, his forum to do what made him rich and famous in the first place.

  Edelman split out wide to the left. He’d absorbed a vicious head shot from Seattle’s Kam Chancellor on a huge third-and-14, 21-yard gain on the previous scoring drive, and the Associated Press would report that the receiver was tested for a concussion and cleared to play on. The Seahawks had lost defensive end Cliff Avril to a concussion in the third quarter and had lost cornerback Jeremy Lane to a gruesome arm injury after he intercepted Brady at the goal line in the first quarter. The fact that Edelman remained in the game was a critical development in New England’s favor. He was about to remind everyone that Belichick, the most brilliant of defensive minds, had used the slot position to showcase his ever-expanding creativity on offense; Welker to Edelman to Amendola (with Troy Brown as a founding father) had become his own Tinker to Evers to Chance.

  On second-and-goal, the Patriots decided to run a play they’d put in the night before in a hotel ballroom walk-through. Edelman would sell a slant hard, stop on a dime, and then turn back toward the pylon after putting the covering corner on roller skates. Brady had missed his receiver earlier on the same play, but both knew it was available to them when needed. Now it was needed. Edelman sized up Lane’s replacement, Tharold Simon, who had already surrendered a touchdown to Brandon LaFell. It was a mismatch, and as soon as Brady took the snap with 126 seconds to go, he exploited it. Edelman darted inside, used his left arm to push off on his plant and turn, and broke free for the easy three-yard score and his 26th reception in three postseason games.

  The Patriots had their chance to win it all for the first time in ten years, and to do it in the building where they’d suffered their most haunting defeat, the Super Bowl XLII loss to the Giants. Only the Seahawks were defending champs for a reason; they’d shredded Peyton Manning’s record-setting offense in Eli Manning’s stadium in New Jersey the previous February. With a 36-12 record in the regular season and a 6-1 record in the postseason, Wilson had firmly established himself as an elite quarterback. He did nothing to harm his reputation on the first play of Seattle’s final drive, when he hit Lynch for a 31-yard gain.

  Wilson threw deep on the next play for Jermaine Kearse, who was successfully defended by Butler, before an expiring play clock forced the quarterback to burn the first of his three timeouts with 1:50 to go. On third-and-10, after Wilson missed Matthews for a long touchdown (Browner knocked the pass away), the Seattle quarterback found Ricardo Lockette for 11 yards and a first down at New England’s 38. Wilson then hurried his teammates to the line, motioned to his receivers, and took the next snap with 74 seconds left. He quickly put the ball down the right sideline for Kearse, who went up with Butler at the New England 11.

  The tipped ball fell into the inside of Kearse’s left knee as he crashed to his back, then bounced from his knee toward his right hand. The receiver batted the ball as he tried to gain control of his body on the ground, then hit it again before grabbing it with both hands as he started to sit up. Patriots safety Duron Harmon hurdled Kearse as he was completing this amazing juggling act. Kearse, in disbelief himself, rose to his feet and turned toward the end zone before Butler pushed him out of bounds at the five-yard line.

  A national TV audience was waiting for NBC’s Al Michaels to deliver that signature line from the United States’ upset of the Soviet Union’s Big Red hockey machine at the 1980 Olympics: “Do you believe in mi
racles? Yes!” Instead Michaels described the play as a broken-up pass before saying, “And, is it, but somehow—what, did he wind up with the football?”

  He wound up with the football.

  Belichick had to check upstairs to confirm it was a catch. An ashen-faced Brady—his hair soaked with sweat, his eye black a bit smudged, his white jersey stained by grass—looked at the replay on the video board above and shook his head. The Patriots were all struck by the same ghastly thought: How could this be happening to us again?

  Up in the stands, superfan Rick Young and his fellow New Englanders buckled under this devastating moment. “We were all trying to recover from another Tyree catch,” he said. That would be David Tyree, the Giants receiver who had helped win Super Bowl XLII by pinning an Eli Manning heave against his helmet. “We were all thinking about the Manningham catch,” Young said. That would be Mario Manningham, the Giants receiver who’d helped win Super Bowl XLVI with an improbable sideline catch in front of Belichick.

  “All of those thoughts were in our head,” Young said. “Including Billy Buckner, Aaron Boone. It all came back. Here we go again. That’s all we were thinking.”

  The Patriots had won three Super Bowls and appeared in six since 2001, and the Red Sox had won three World Series titles since Boone hit his walk-off Game 7 homer for the Yankees in 2003, and yet fatalistic New Englanders were still confronting a legion of exorcised ghosts. This was their Kearse of the Bambino. Meanwhile, amid the chaos of the Kearse catch, another expiring play clock forced Seattle to take its second timeout with 66 seconds left. During the timeout, NBC aired a replay of the Tyree catch and showed Seahawks owner Paul Allen, seemingly ready to faint. “But they’re not in yet,” Collinsworth said on the air.