Belichick
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Even without the first-round draft pick they forfeited in Deflategate, the Patriots were whole again. Brady was back. Dante Scarnecchia, their invaluable offensive line coach, was back from a brief retirement. Their defense would lead the league in points allowed (250) for the first time since 2003, and the 39-year-old quarterback would throw 28 touchdown passes against two interceptions while winning 11 of 12 starts. Garoppolo threw only four passes in those 12 games, but he’d already served notice that a confrontation with Brady was coming, and sooner rather than later.
Belichick didn’t have to worry about that for now. He didn’t have to worry about much over the course of a 14-2 regular season other than trading another talented defender, Jamie Collins, whose expiring contract and reported desire to be paid like an All-Pro were shipped to Cleveland for a draft pick. In fact, Belichick’s biggest concern in 2016 had nothing to do with football and everything to do with a political football.
Donald Trump had scored a much bigger upset than the Patriots did in Super Bowl XXXVI, and by beating Hillary Clinton and winning the presidency, he’d put his longtime friends and the holy trinity of pro football’s most impressive dynasty—Belichick, Brady, and Kraft—in a most uncomfortable position. Trump was only the most polarizing and divisive force in the modern history of American politics. He had led the birtherism movement in a failed attempt to prove that the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, was not born in the United States. He had called for a ban on Muslim immigration and had made a series of offensive comments about African Americans and Mexicans.
Belichick, Brady, and Kraft found out it was much easier being Donald Trump’s friend when he was building skyscrapers, running beauty pageants, and hosting The Celebrity Apprentice. Brady had judged the Miss USA pageant for Trump in 2002, played many rounds of golf with him over the years, and, in September 2015, had effectively endorsed him by keeping a red MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN cap in his locker. Kraft had long spoken of how kind Trump was to him in the wake of his wife’s death, in 2011, constantly checking on the Patriots’ owner, and though he’d been a lifelong Democrat, he would donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration celebration.
But the president-elect turned a hotter spotlight on Belichick than anyone else in Foxborough. He was the leader of the best team in a sport that’s roughly 70 percent black, and there he was in Instagram photos posted by his girlfriend, Linda Holliday, posing with her and Trump after a March dinner at Trump’s Palm Beach resort, Mar-a-Lago, where the coach was reportedly a member. Within days of the photos’ appearance, the Globe published two letters from outraged readers, under the headlines “How Can Owner, Coach and Star Pose with Him?” and “Happily Aligning with Hate.” One published letter, from a Tessa Yesselman of Cambridge, criticized the coach for his association with Trump. “Belichick has made millions of dollars largely off the labor of black athletes on the Patriots,” it read. “Public figures are entitled to their opinions and private lives, but when you stand happily next to a man who makes weak and insincere denouncements of the Ku Klux Klan, and consent to pictures with that man on social media, you align yourself with the vitriol and hate he embodies.”
Yesselman, who worked for a New York agency that investigated police misconduct, was a passionate Patriots fan who had admired what she called the “grumpy genius” of the team’s head coach. “But after the election letter,” Yesselman said, “I was done with him.”
The election letter. At a New Hampshire rally the night before the voters went to the polls, Trump said he had been handed a letter from Belichick a couple of hours earlier on his plane. The Republican candidate had someone call the coach for permission to read the letter at the rally, and Belichick asked if he could send a revised version for that purpose. Trump told his supporters that he assumed the coach would tone down his praise in the second letter, “like most gutless people do. Gutless. But he’s the opposite. He’s a champ. So he sent me the new letter, and it was much better. It was stronger.”
Trump shared Belichick’s second version with the crowd:
Congratulations on a tremendous campaign, he read. You have dealt with an unbelievable slanted and negative media and have come out beautifully, beautifully. You’ve proved to be the ultimate competitor and fighter. Your leadership is amazing. I have always had tremendous respect for you, but the toughness and perseverance you have displayed over the past year is remarkable. Hopefully tomorrow’s election results will give [you] the opportunity to make America great again. Best wishes for great results tomorrow, Bill Belichick.
The crowd cheered. Trump barely lost New Hampshire, but he shocked the world by winning the election. The following day, Belichick stepped to his news conference podium in a striped, collared shirt with the top two buttons left unfastened. He opened by talking about how much respect he had for that week’s opponent, Seattle, and after two minutes on the Seahawks he pivoted on his own to Trump. Belichick said that the president-elect had been a friend for many years, but that he himself was not a political person who makes politically motivated comments.
“I have a friendship and loyalty to Donald,” Belichick said. “A couple of weeks ago, we had Secretary of State [John] Kerry in our locker room. He’s another friend of mine. I can’t imagine two people with more different political views than those two, but to me friendship and loyalty is just about that. It’s not about political or religious views. I write hundreds of letters and notes every month. It doesn’t mean I agree with every single thing that every person thinks about politics, religion, or other subjects. But I have multiple friendships that are important to me and that’s what that was about.”
With that, Belichick said he wanted to focus on New England’s big game with Seattle. Asked immediately if he felt happy or annoyed that Trump had read the letter at the rally, Belichick responded, “Seattle.” As another reporter tried to ask if he’d talked to his players about Trump and if he was concerned about “locker room rancor” resulting from his stated support, Belichick said the word “Seattle” four times before requesting the next question.
As it turned out, Belichick didn’t vote for Trump or Clinton or anyone else. Brady refused to say whether he had voted for Trump; he said only that his supermodel wife had ordered him to stop talking about politics. (Gisele did post a flat “NO!” in response to an Instagram question about whether the couple had supported Trump.) One of New England’s two African American captains, Devin McCourty, didn’t say anything in his Wednesday media availability that suggested Belichick would have trouble reconciling his loyalty to Trump with his responsibility to inspire the black players on his team.
“I think the one thing that’s certain is everybody has their own opinions in our locker room,” McCourty said, “but politics aren’t going to divide our locker room. We’re here to do a job, but I think everyone is entitled to their own opinion and who you support.”
Martellus Bennett, the tight end acquired in an off-season trade with Chicago, wrote an emotional Instagram letter to his young daughter that he opened with these words: “Daddy how will this effect [sic] my future? Jett, I’m not totally sure my love.” Back in September, on opening night in Arizona, Bennett and McCourty had raised their fists high during the playing of the national anthem, in support of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who since the preseason had been taking a stand by taking a seat, and then a knee, during the anthem to protest police brutality, the deaths of unarmed African Americans at the hands of cops, and systemic oppression of people of color. These were two New England Patriots—two of Bill Belichick’s players—who were joining a growing protest on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and it was a powerful visual.
It caused no apparent discord inside the Patriots’ facility. Despite his friendship with Trump, Belichick seemed well equipped to relate to the experience and burdens of the African American athlete. He was the son of the only white man on Okinawa during World War II who initially accepted and befriended Samuel E. B
arnes, one of the first black officers in the U.S. Navy and a hero who called Steve Belichick “one of the most unprejudiced persons I’d ever met.” Bill Belichick had also lived through the turbulent desegregation of Annapolis high schools, and he reveled in the fact that his unified football team—under an inclusive coach, Al Laramore—had represented the best of what black and white could accomplish when working together.
Race was never an issue with the head coach of the New England Patriots. Players, agents, and sportswriters did sometimes talk about the makeup of Belichick rosters and how he seemed to have more white players at the offensive skill positions long dominated by black athletes—particularly wide receiver—than any coach in the NFL. But that truth was likely the result of Belichick exploiting yet another market inefficiency, and a culture of coaching, from the youth leagues through the pros, that had undervalued good white athletes at positions they were no longer supposed to be qualified to play. (Just as vile racial stereotypes once compelled ignorant coaches to steer black athletes away from the quarterback position.) If fellow AFC East teams didn’t know what they had in Wes Welker (Miami) and Chris Hogan (Miami and Buffalo), and if other franchises couldn’t see that the small and undrafted Danny Amendola and the small seventh-round quarterback, Julian Edelman, could be dynamic postseason receivers, Belichick would be more than happy to educate them.
He would get that chance to educate them again in his 14th postseason appearance in New England. Belichick would need Hogan, Amendola, and Edelman to again crash through their projected NFL ceilings if he was going to do something on Super Bowl Sunday that no coach had ever done.
Julio Jones made the lunging, full-extension catch near the right sideline and somehow tapped down both feet as he fell out of bounds with 4:38 left in Super Bowl LI. Suddenly the Patriots were confronted with that familiar haunting feeling. David Tyree. Mario Manningham. Jermaine Kearse. Now it was Jones, the 6´4˝ receiver for the Atlanta Falcons who looks and plays like a superhero, making a you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me catch inside NRG Stadium, in Houston. Leading 28–20, ball at the New England 22, the Falcons were in easy field-goal range for Pro Bowl kicker Matt Bryant, who had made 37 of 40 attempts during the regular season and postseason and 31 of 32 from distances shorter than 50 yards. If Atlanta made it a two-score game on this series, the Patriots would almost certainly lose.
Jones was the most likely Falcon to make a decisive play against New England, and perhaps the most fitting Falcon, too. Before the 2011 draft, Atlanta general manager Thomas Dimitroff, the Patriots’ former director of college scouting, asked for Belichick’s opinion on whether he should trade up from No. 27 to No. 6 to take the Alabama star. Dimitroff was preparing to send Cleveland the 27th pick, his second- and fourth-rounders in the same draft, and his first- and fourth-rounders in 2012. Belichick told his former employee that he shouldn’t do it, that it was the kind of deal destined to stay with him forever. Dimitroff listened, then decided that he knew his organization better than Belichick or any outside voice did. He thought his franchise quarterback, Matt Ryan, needed an explosive and athletic target, and so Dimitroff did the deal.
Jones had made his GM look smart in ignoring Belichick’s advice; he’d accounted for 323 receptions, 4,873 yards, and 20 touchdowns over the past three regular seasons. And now he’d just made the biggest play of his career and was threatening to send the Patriots home to something other than a parade.
This was what Dimitroff had called his “dream game” ever since he arrived in Atlanta, in 2008: a chance to face Belichick in the Super Bowl. He was his own man, with his own personality as a snowboarder, mountain biker, and all-around fitness freak, but Dimitroff had mixed a little Foxborough into his own Deep South system. He had as his director of pro personnel Joel Collier, the son of Joe Collier, the former Denver defensive coordinator who taught Belichick everything he knew about the 3-4 defense. Belichick had hired Collier’s son as a Patriots secondary coach in 2005 and let him go after the 2007 season, much to the chagrin of Joel’s old man.
Dimitroff had also brought in, as an assistant to head coach Dan Quinn, Dante Scarnecchia’s son, Steve, who’d worked in New England’s video department in the early Spygate years. As a staffer for Josh McDaniels in Denver, amazingly enough, Steve had been caught illegally filming a San Francisco walk-through before a game in London. Dimitroff had decided to give him a last NFL chance.
He also decided to revive the career of Scott Pioli, who had been Belichick’s chief personnel man before he left to run the Kansas City Chiefs in 2009. Pioli was fired after four mostly stormy seasons, and a month after witnessing the suicide of linebacker Jovan Belcher, who had murdered his girlfriend before he arrived at the Chiefs’ facility, thanked Pioli for giving him a chance, and then shot himself in the head.
Dimitroff hired Pioli a year later, and together they built a program that was on the verge of beating their former boss for the heavyweight championship of their sport. All the Falcons had to do was run the ball three times, force the Patriots to exhaust their timeouts, and then kick the field goal to effectively end New England’s shot at completing the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history.
The Falcons had held a 28–3 lead late in the third quarter, showing why their offense had outscored Belichick’s by nearly 100 points during the season. Brady had helped Atlanta’s cause by throwing a ghastly pick-six before halftime to give the underdogs a 21–0 lead. His parents, Tom Sr. and Galynn, were in the stands watching, and it was Galynn’s first appearance of the year. She wore a bandanna around her head and a No. 12 shirt that read BRADY’S LADIES on the back, and she was praying like hell for her quarterback to turn it around. Galynn had been in a grueling fight with breast cancer, and before the game her only son told Robert Kraft, “Let’s win one for her.” As the game started to fall apart for Brady, Kraft thought of Galynn and wondered what must’ve been running through her Tommy’s mind.
But the Patriots never betray a sense of panic. When the Falcons took their 25-point lead, Belichick looked as if he were observing a disappointing performance in a non-contact training-camp drill. His even sideline temperament had always been among his more obvious strengths, and it helped keep his team calm and focused when confronting overwhelming odds. Brady, meanwhile, exhorted his teammates to play harder and tougher, to give more. Soon enough he was hitting Amendola for 17 yards on fourth-and-3, and then lumbering for a first down on third-and-8 before finding James White for New England’s first touchdown, nearly 43 minutes into the game.
Gostkowski missed the extra point but kicked a field goal with 9:44 left in the fourth, before the Patriots made the play that reminded the world why they’re the Patriots and everyone else is not. On third-and-1 in the middle of the fourth quarter, still holding a 16-point lead, Quinn and offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan elected to pass, despite the fact that their running backs would finish the game averaging 5.78 yards per carry. Linebacker Dont’a Hightower rushed in from the Falcons’ right, running back Devonta Freeman whiffed on the pickup, and Hightower pancaked Matt Ryan and sent the ball into the arms of New England tackle Alan Branch. Five plays later, Brady hit Amendola for a touchdown. White took a direct snap on the two-point-conversion attempt—he made a terrific catch above his right shoulder that would be overlooked amid the dizzying events to come—and carried the ball across the goal line to make it a one-possession game.
Atlanta appeared to rediscover its legs on its first snap when Ryan found Freeman for a 39-yard gain. The running 27-yard throw to Jones two plays later had the feel of a dagger, just as the Kearse catch had in the Super Bowl two years earlier. Only coaches often do the strangest things when standing across the field from Bill Belichick in a big game. With his fanatical devotion to minutiae, Belichick makes competing coaches work and think for 3,600 game-clock seconds. The Super Bowl is a draining experience to begin with, complete with an endless intermission to account for the megawatt halftime act (in this case Lady Gaga’s). Belichick’s ominous prese
nce in this setting can leave his counterparts feeling in the fourth quarter like suspects willing to say anything after a ten-hour interrogation.
Just as Pete Carroll had made the indefensible choice to throw the ball on second-and-goal from the 1, two plays after the Kearse catch—an offense that some team members never forgave him for—Quinn and Shanahan decided to throw two plays after the Jones catch. Of course Ryan was sacked by Trey Flowers for a loss of 12 yards, turning the potential clinching kick into a 53-yarder, and of course the Falcons were flagged for holding on the next pass (a nine-yarder to Mohamed Sanu to compensate for the previous mistake), to set up a third-and-33 and the eventual punt.
Brady had to start at his own 9 with 3:30 left, but every witness knew this drive would be exactly what it turned out to be—a monument to the Patriot Way and Belichick’s ability to identify talent that would work in his system better than it would anywhere else. Seven Patriots would touch the ball on this 10-play, 91-yard possession, and none was among the top 100 players taken in his draft class. Center David Andrews, Amendola, and Hogan had gone undrafted. Brady was famously picked 199th in 2000. Edelman, the Kent State quarterback, went 232nd in 2009. White was taken 130th out of Wisconsin in 2013. Malcolm Mitchell, part of the eventual yield of the Chandler Jones trade, went 112th out of Georgia in 2016.