by Ian O'Connor
That October, two days before a game against Buffalo, Belichick left his team to attend the funeral of Giants owner Wellington Mara, a gesture that left a lasting impression on Mara’s son John. When Belichick signed Junior Seau in 2006, he made a mark on the star he’d just released, Willie McGinest, by calling him and asking if it would be OK for Seau to wear his number, 55. (McGinest gave his permission—he’d initially worn that number at USC because it was Seau’s.) At an August 2008 preseason game with the Giants, just months after that team handed him his most devastating defeat as a head coach, Belichick approached Giants offensive lineman Chris Snee, tapped him on his shoulder pads, and told him he’d played a hell of a game in Super Bowl XLII. “Those words stayed with me,” Snee said. That same year, a theater executive named Josiah Spaulding Jr. was attending a function for the Marquis Jet company at the Four Seasons in Boston when a man approached and told him that the guest speaker, Bill Belichick, would like him to sit at his table.
Spaulding was a member of a prominent Boston family, but he was flabbergasted that the legendary coach of his favorite team wanted to be seated with him. As he approached Belichick, the coach rose from his seat and said, “Joe, it is so great to see you again.” Spaulding was a bit starstruck and completely confused. “Have we met before?” he asked.
“Yeah, you punched me and knocked me down and scored the winning goal against us,” Belichick responded. Suddenly, 34 years later, the memory hit Spaulding between the eyes. Wesleyan. The defender who had cheap-shotted him with his stick, an unprovoked whack across his left leg, before the hulking and bearded Bowdoin star decked him and then scored. Spaulding never knew the defender’s name. “You were that asshole?” Spaulding asked Belichick. “Because I still cannot feel anything on the left side of my leg from my knee to my ankle.” They laughed a lot that night and exchanged cell numbers, remaining in touch afterward.
In 2009, Frank Edgerly, a first-year Patriots scout whose previous job was as head coach at New Jersey’s Red Bank Catholic High School, found himself dealing with a profound family crisis: His 45-year-old sister, Debbie, had been diagnosed with breast cancer four years earlier, and she was fighting for her life in a hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. Even though Belichick never made him feel like a high school coach who needed to stay in his lane, Edgerly was only months into the job and was still, in his words, “walking on eggshells” around the facility while learning the NFL trade. He didn’t tell his superiors about his sister’s crisis, not in the middle of the season. But word got to Belichick anyway and, through Nick Caserio, the Patriots arranged for plane tickets, a hotel, and a rental car for Edgerly and his wife to spend time with Debbie. It was the last time the scout saw his sister alive. “It makes you wonder sometimes if Bill really wants to be the villain,” Edgerly said.
Belichick called his former fullback Heath Evans to offer comforting words after he blew out his knee while playing for New Orleans in 2009, a call that meant everything to Evans and his family. Around the same time, Belichick was campaigning for the Wesleyan teammate who beat him out as the starting center, Bob Heller, to get inducted into the school’s hall of fame. A Seattle attorney who was a two-time All-American, Heller said Belichick had been a consistent and supportive presence from afar as he endured treatments for multiple myeloma. Heller was inducted into the Wesleyan Hall of Fame in 2010. “Bill is loyal to a fault,” Heller said. “If you’re his friend, he’s got your back.”
Doc Rivers became a friend of Belichick’s when he was coaching the Celtics, and the Patriots’ coach agreed to address his team during a playoff series. (Belichick kept it short and bittersweet after one victory, telling the Celtics to kick ass in every upcoming game and drawing a rousing locker room response.) Rivers also asked Belichick to take part in a video to inspire his team as it started one postseason run. “It was a cool video about toughness and being a warrior, and this guy was reading it with a hood on,” Rivers said. “The players couldn’t see who it was, and at the very end the hood was taken off and it was Bill, and the guys went nuts. That was a big ask for him to do that, and he did it. That was the coolest thing he ever did for us.” Belichick commiserated with Rivers over big losses, he skated with Bruins coach Claude Julien in advance of the NHL Winter Classic at Gillette Stadium, and, though Valentine’s stay at Fenway Park was turbulent and brief, he remained forever willing to contribute Patriots items to fundraisers for Sacred Heart University (where Valentine became athletic director) and to host friends of Valentine’s and the school’s at games.
Belichick does have a heart; he just prefers to keep that fact classified. In May 2011, he signed autographs and visited kids at the Franciscan Children’s Hospital, in Brighton, but declined to discuss his appearance with reporters. That same year, after cutting tight end Garrett Mills—a 2006 fourth-round pick who never played in a regular-season game for the Patriots—Belichick wrote letters of recommendation for him for the graduate programs at Northwestern and Stanford; Mills earned his M.B.A. at Northwestern. In 2013, Belichick started a foundation that focused on football and lacrosse programs and provided coaching, mentorship, and, according to its website, more than half a million dollars to organizations in need. A foundation grant made possible the building of Bill Belichick Field and the creation of a lacrosse program for children in Uganda.
Contrary to popular perception, many Patriots players and coaches had a certain fondness for Belichick that transcended his unmatched ability to put them in position to succeed on the field. Before New England’s Super Bowl victory over Atlanta, an ESPN.com reporter approached numerous Patriots assistants and asked them this question: “What is the nicest thing Bill Belichick has ever done for you?” Running backs coach Ivan Fears, who had worked under Belichick for his entire term, said there was a Media Bill and a Genuine Bill. “The guy you guys are seeing isn’t Bill,” he told the reporter. “That’s the guy up there to do the press conferences. No, you’ve got to know Bill. No, no, no, you’ve got to know Bill. If you know Bill, you understand why the players love him and you understand why we love working for him. Bill is a hell of a dude, I’m telling you . . . Get away from the media thing and know Bill.”
Patriots assistants often measure every syllable when talking about Belichick, knowing that he has little use for the humanizing process. Brian Flores, linebackers coach, did say Belichick told him at halftime of a hotly contested divisional playoff game against Houston that he could leave the building after his pregnant wife’s water broke while she sat in the stands. (Jennifer Flores called from the ambulance to say that she wasn’t having contractions and that Brian could stay for the second half.) Brendan Daly, defensive line coach, said that Belichick had arranged for a car to race him to the airport after a game in Denver so he could meet his wife and kids for his father-in-law’s funeral services the next day, and that the coach told him to take as much time as he needed away from the team. Brian Daboll, tight ends coach, recalled the time Belichick lent him a car for his first six months on the job, in 2000. Chad O’Shea, receivers coach, said his head coach showed genuine concern for his assistants’ families. “I think he’s outstanding that way,” O’Shea said, “and it’s far from probably what people think of him. He’s very good with our children. He’s very generous on holidays in terms of gifts. It’s not uncommon for him to get football cards for the coaches who have sons. There’s not a day I go in there that I don’t genuinely enjoy and want to work for Bill Belichick. I feel strongly about that, because he cares about you both as a coach and as a person.”
In May 2017, Belichick attended services for Kathy Berman, wife of his friend Chris Berman, of ESPN, after she died in a two-car accident in Woodbury, Connecticut. A few months earlier, after his historic comeback at the Falcons’ expense, Belichick made his way to ESPN’s on-field set, put on a headset, and gave long, insightful answers to questions from Berman, Randy Moss, and Steve Young. As the interview wrapped up, Berman said, “Listen, just another night at the office, right, Bill?
” Belichick laughed. “It was an amazing night, Chris, unforgettable night,” he responded as he gave him a hearty handshake and explained how winning a title with his sons Stephen (safeties coach) and Brian (scouting assistant) on staff made it more special.
Then Belichick wrapped his left arm around Berman’s shoulders, stepped into him, and said, “And this is, you know, on your farewell tour. I’m glad I can make a stop on that, too.” Berman had accepted a reduced role at ESPN after 38 years of building the company into a global juggernaut, and Belichick figured he wasn’t terribly thrilled about it. “And you gave me overtime,” the broadcaster said. “You didn’t want to let me go.” The winning coach laughed again. That Belichick, in his most glorious moment, took the time to acknowledge a likely wounded industry giant with millions watching was a pretty damn nice thing to do.
Belichick was human after all, not a joyless automaton. But as he pursued a sixth ring as head coach of the Patriots in 2017, his job became more joyless than it had been in a long, long time. He had a problem, a big one, and it was being caused by the two most unlikely opponents he’d ever faced.
Tom Brady and Robert Kraft.
At 3:03 a.m. on April 19, 2017, five days after he was acquitted of murdering Cape Verdean immigrants Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu, Aaron Hernandez was found naked and hanging by a bedsheet tied to his cell window inside the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center’s general housing unit, in Shirley, Massachusetts. Serving a life sentence for the shooting death of Odin Lloyd, Hernandez, 27, had used cardboard to jam the tracks of his cell door to prevent guards from thwarting his suicide attempt.
The onetime Patriots star was found with a fresh cut on his right middle finger and with blood on adjacent fingers and in large circular marks on his feet. He had JOHN 3:16 written in ink on his forehead and in blood on the wall. (The Bible verse reads: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”) Hernandez had also made drawings on the wall in blood and had placed under them a Bible opened to John 3, with the 16th verse marked in blood. Three handwritten notes were found next to the Bible, and their messages were redacted from the police report on the inmate’s death. Hernandez had placed a large amount of shampoo on the floor to ensure that the area beneath his dangling feet inside cell No. 57 was as slippery as possible.
Hours later, the New England Patriots visited the White House and presented President Trump with a No. 45 jersey and, eventually, a commemorative championship ring. Neither Trump nor his favorite football team said a word about the Good Friday death of Aaron Hernandez, whose attorney, Jose Baez, had spoken hopefully about getting the Lloyd conviction overturned on appeal. Hernandez’s brain would later be studied by researchers at Boston University, and it presented the most severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy ever found in a person his age. It was yet another alarming headline for the NFL, already weighed down by the CTE and concussion crisis and the fear that the football-caused brain damage cited in the premature deaths and suicides of some prominent players would encourage more and more parents to steer their young sons toward safer sports.
For the Patriots, Hernandez was a haunting thought they tried to delete from memory. Bill Belichick was asked about Hernandez during a CNBC interview conducted before the player’s gruesome death. When the interviewer, Suzy Welch, mentioned Hernandez as part of a word-association game, Belichick said, “Tragedy.” When Welch responded by saying, “Heartbreaking,” Belichick countered with “Yes, that would be another word.”
Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, of the Bristol County House of Correction, where Hernandez was jailed after his 2013 arrest, said that the former tight end was “a master manipulator, probably the best I’ve ever seen.” Hodgson said he told Robert Kraft that the owner shouldn’t blame himself for believing in Hernandez and giving him a big contract, that Hernandez had a diabolical gift for deceiving people. “When you talk to him, you think everything is coming from the heart,” Hodgson said. “Sociopathic people can do that and do it very well.”
Even if the sheriff’s words offered the owner a small measure of reassurance, Kraft wasn’t the one who had brought Hernandez into the organization. That was Belichick. He decided Hernandez and his behavior issues were worth the fourth-round gamble in 2010, and it turned out to be the worst personnel decision of his life.
The Hernandez disaster did not temper Kraft’s faith in Belichick as an evaluator, however. In fact, ever since he allowed his coach to start Tom Brady over his $100 million favorite, Drew Bledsoe, in 2001, Kraft had never regretted giving Belichick full personnel control. He had stripped away some of Bill Parcells’s authority before Parcells’s stormy departure, but he would never do the same to Belichick. Kraft had imposed his will on his coach only once since New England starting winning championships, and the player involved was Troy Brown.
Once an eighth-round pick in the 1993 draft, Brown was a lifer Patriot, admired and respected by all. But with the receiver turning 36 before the start of the 2007 season, Belichick wanted to cut him loose. Kraft insisted that Brown be made an exception to the coach’s practice of getting rid of players too early rather than too late, and Belichick relented. But just because he agreed to keep Brown a Patriot didn’t mean he agreed to play him. New England had just acquired receivers Randy Moss, Wes Welker, and Donté Stallworth. Of the 19 regular-season and postseason games the Patriots played that season, Brown failed to see action in 18 of them.
Kraft suspected this might’ve been Belichick’s way of paying him back for interfering, but a source close to the coach contended that there was no payback involved, that Belichick watched a descending punt bounce off Brown’s facemask and decided his return man was washed up. The thing was, that punt didn’t bounce off Brown’s facemask until the 15th game of the season, a road victory over the Dolphins. The 15-year veteran also recovered from that embarrassment to return the next punt 28 yards; it was the last time he touched a football in an NFL game.
Kraft and Belichick had no meaningful personnel clashes after that one. The owner was heavily involved in Brady’s new four-year, $60 million contract completed in March 2016, and Kraft and the quarterback had developed a relationship that each described in father-son terms. Then again, Bledsoe was also close enough to Kraft to be called the owner’s fifth son. Belichick ran him off to Buffalo and then did the same to Lawyer Milloy, starting a pattern that extended all the way through Vince Wilfork in 2015 and Chandler Jones and Jamie Collins the following year. Belichick was either keeping or shipping out players with one thought in mind: what he thought was best for the New England Patriots. That included the quarterback position and a franchise player like none other, Brady.
For his part, Brady had long said he knew he could be traded just like his childhood idol, Joe Montana, had been dealt from San Francisco to Kansas City to clear the way for Steve Young. “Yeah, absolutely,” he said. “You can’t be around this long and not realize that the world will keep spinning and the sun will come up tomorrow without you . . . It could happen to anybody. You just have to show up for work, do the best you can do every day, and let your performance just speak for yourself.”
Brady’s family always believed that Belichick would trade Tommy in the twilight of his career, and that it was just a matter of where and when. In the winter of 2013, after Brady took a three-year, $27 million deal that was $30 million below market value, he was furious that his salary-cap discount didn’t compel Belichick to keep Welker from signing with Denver and teaming up with Peyton Manning, who had been cut by Indianapolis after undergoing a series of neck surgeries. Brady’s oldest sister, Nancy, told people then that her brother felt that “Belichick will definitely do to him someday what the Colts did to Peyton.”
Tom Brady Sr. had the same feeling. Asked if he thought his only son would have a happy ending in Foxborough, Tom Sr. said, “I don’t think so. I would hope he would have a happy ending, but very few peop
le really go out the way they want to go out. In Tommy’s particular case, I think he wants to play another four to five years. I think it’s up to Bill to determine whether Tommy is the horse he wants to bet on. Everybody seems to believe that 40 years old is a cliff that, once you reach it, you fall off it. I don’t think Bill’s ever had an athlete as dedicated to being a complete football player as he has had with Tommy, because of Tommy’s wholesale commitment, 365 days a year, to nutrition, to conditioning, to actively becoming a better performer. As such, I don’t think that they’re necessarily prepared for what Tommy is going to be capable of at age 43, 44, or 45.”
Or were they? On October 30, 2017, after off-season reports suggested that New England could land a first-round pick for Jimmy Garoppolo, if not two, Belichick shocked the football world by trading Brady’s backup to the 49ers for a second-rounder in the 2018 draft. A second-rounder for a quarterback projected to be a surefire star. Garoppolo was in the final season of his four-year deal, leaving the Patriots in a jam as they approached the trade deadline and as the backup approached his 26th birthday. Brady was set to make $14 million in 2018, with a salary-cap hit of $22 million. If the Patriots chose to use the franchise tag on Garoppolo, they would’ve been investing $45 million in the quarterback position for that one season, or ultimately trying to trade a high-priced Jimmy G. to teams that might leverage the Patriots’ desperation against them.
Belichick had hedged his bets when he didn’t deal Garoppolo before the draft, holding on to him in case Brady did show signs of decline after turning 40, on August 3. (Quarterbacks generally don’t respond well to their 40th birthdays—if they’re good enough to play that long—and Belichick wasn’t certain Brady’s superhuman devotion to fitness and healthy eating and sleep habits would make him an exception to the rule.) But at the time Belichick had to make his decision, Brady had a 6-2 record, the league lead in passing yardage, and 16 touchdown passes against two interceptions, as well as 51 touchdowns against seven interceptions over the 23 regular-season and postseason games he’d played since his suspension ended.