by Ian O'Connor
Their partnership was without peer in the NFL, and Brady’s durability had allowed it to flourish for as long as it had. Tommy might’ve nudged his preferred targets—Rob Gronkowski, Julian Edelman, Danny Amendola—Guerrero’s way (or else). Tommy might’ve gone corporate, as some coaches had complained, and he might’ve worn people out with his pliability-over-density lectures and his increasing interest in growing his personal brand in the United States, China, Japan—everywhere. Tommy might’ve become the NFL’s answer to Tom Cruise and entered the jumping-into-Scientology-and-onto-Oprah’s-couch phase of his career with his devotion to Guerrero and the doctrine of TB12.
But Brady was still the chief reason why Belichick and Kraft were the best at what they did. As long as Brady was upright and productive, it would’ve been crazy to let Jimmy G. or Alex G. break up the band. The Chicago Bulls of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Phil Jackson broke up prematurely after winning their sixth NBA title, in 1998, when they all had more basketball to play and coach, and that is a regret they will carry to their graves. Belichick, Brady, and Kraft needed to reboot and realize how remarkable it was that they had gone 17 years before they got a little sick and tired of one another and had a season that amounted to a slow week for George Steinbrenner’s Yankees in the middle of their last dynasty.
The Patriots had run out of external opponents to conquer, so, out of boredom, they took the fight within. Brady beat Belichick, or the Belichick machine, and maybe the coach evened the score by marginalizing Brady’s go-to guy. Either way, the Patriots said they stood united in the face of these public disclosures. And yet their unity could manifest itself only in the one mandate that truly mattered in New England: winning the whole thing.
On another AFC Championship Game Sunday in Foxborough, as Patriots fans walked by a few hours before kickoff, a man with a thick Boston accent hawked clothing products outside the nearby TB12 Sports Therapy Center, wedged between a Pure Barre workout studio and a Green Tangerine Spa & Salon at Patriot Place. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and the temperature was a surprisingly comfortable 48 degrees. The man stood near an oversize picture of a screaming Tom Brady, below the words WELCOME TO TB12. WE GOT THIS. He sounded like a beer vendor at Fenway Park when he barked, “Get your TB12 gear heeee-ah. Hats, Shirts, Scaaaaahves.”
The stadium experience had come a long way since the early stages of Robert Kraft’s ownership, though the drive in on Route 1—home to small industrial shops and motor inns—was still as gray and grim as ever. The owner’s company, the Kraft Group, opened Patriot Place in 2007, and Bass Pro Shops, Five Guys, Bar Louie, and a Showcase Cinema de Lux were among the establishments competing for consumers’ disposable income. But the most reliable product on the grounds was Patriots football. And the lead spokesman for that brand, doubling as the face of TB12, was about to play the Jacksonville Jaguars, after suffering a bloody injury to his throwing hand only four days earlier.
Brady had attempted a handoff to Rex Burkhead in practice, and somehow came away from the exchange screaming as he surveyed a money hand that looked like a zombie’s half-eaten lunch. For a while the franchise player wasn’t sure he’d be there for the franchise on Sunday. The gash near his right thumb required a dozen stitches and compelled Brady to wear red gloves to his Friday press conference to prevent photographers from getting a shot of the cut.
“I’m not talking about it,” the quarterback said when asked about his hand. He would do his talking on the field against a Jacksonville team coached by Doug Marrone and managed by Tom Coughlin, the head of football operations who had denied Brady and Belichick two additional rings as coach of the Giants. Though a three-touchdown blowout of the Tennessee Titans in the divisional round had quieted talk of the dynasty’s impending doom, the Patriots couldn’t get to kickoff against the Jaguars without a reminder of the tension within. Kraft did a pregame interview with the NFL Network, and he was asked by Willie McGinest, the first Patriot to seek treatment from a young Alex Guerrero years earlier, how important it was to keep Belichick and Brady together for another three, four, or five years.
“Life is difficult,” the owner said, “especially if you’re doing things at a high level. Having continuity, keeping things going, you know, the fact that Tommy and Bill Belichick and my family have been together for 18 years . . . There’s a lot of strong-minded people, but when you have something good going, everyone’s got to get their egos checked in and try to hold it together.”
A friend of Belichick’s said the coach was unhappy with Kraft’s “egos” comment and felt it was directed at him. Belichick and his employer were going to meet in the off-season to hash out their issues. Meanwhile, this AFC Championship Game represented what appeared to be the final time Belichick’s staff would be together at Gillette Stadium. Josh McDaniels, offensive coordinator, was expected to take over the Colts, and Matt Patricia, defensive coordinator, was expected to take over the Lions. The last time Belichick had faced an exodus this significant, he beat the Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX and bade farewell to defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel (Cleveland Browns) and offensive coordinator Charlie Weis (Notre Dame) with an emotional group hug. At the time, Brady told a friend, “Bill does everything. He’s in control of everything. He runs everything. Don’t worry—as long as Bill’s here, we’re not going to miss a beat.”
Thirteen years later, Brady’s sentiment on that front wasn’t quite as strong. McDaniels had been a miserable failure as a too-young, too-soon head coach in Denver, where he alienated co-workers throughout the organization with immature and imperious behavior. Like Eric Mangini before him, he tried to act like Belichick without producing Belichick results. McDaniels got himself fired 12 games deep into his second season. On the rebound in Foxborough, he had reestablished the bond he had with Brady before leaving in 2009. They were some 16 months apart in age, and they spoke of their brotherly love before and after their sideline confrontation in Buffalo in December, when McDaniels rebuked Brady for throwing behind Brandin Cooks and the quarterback responded by profanely screaming at him. McDaniels understood what it meant to be a quarterback in a high-pressure environment; he’d played for his father, Thom, an Ohio coaching legend, at Canton McKinley. George Whitfield Jr., a quarterbacks coach who once played on the opposite side of the famous McKinley–Massillon rivalry, recalled McDaniels as a miniature version of Brady—resourceful, über-competitive, and in complete command of his system as he barked out orders and audibles at the line of scrimmage. Brady was going to miss him.
Patricia had been an aeronautical engineering student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he played on the offensive line, before picking coaching over a job working on nuclear submarines for Westinghouse. He was a grad assistant at Syracuse when Belichick interviewed him for a coaching assistant’s position with the Patriots. Belichick interrogated Patricia the way he’d interrogated Kirk Ferentz on technique and philosophy while coaching the Cleveland Browns—the way he’d interrogated scores of job candidates in between—and Patricia held his own. McDaniels and Brian Daboll were running point on the hire, and McDaniels asked George DeLeone, Syracuse’s associate head coach, for a recommendation DeLeone was happy to give.
Known for his thoroughness in vetting potential hires, Belichick apparently missed a serious incident that had unfolded during Patricia’s time as a student at RPI: He had been indicted by a Texas grand jury on a 1996 charge of aggravated sexual assault after a 21-year-old woman accused Patricia and his friend and teammate Greg Dietrich of forcing her to engage in sex while on spring break on South Padre Island, a story broken by the Detroit News years later. The charge was dismissed reportedly at the alleged victim’s request, and after the case came to light Patricia vehemently maintained his innocence. Belichick said the Patriots were never aware of the incident.
They recruited him in 2004 as if they had no concerns about his character. One friend of Patricia’s said that soon after the Syracuse assistant returned from the Belichick interview, th
e Patriots called him to offer the job, for a salary of $20,000. Patricia was thrilled, but he said he just needed to run the offer by his wife. “And they said, ‘Don’t bother—you don’t have the job anymore,’” Patricia’s friend recalled. “The fact that he had to talk to his wife, they took the job away. Matt called me and I said, ‘Don’t ever tell anyone that again. Take the job and then go talk to your wife.’”
DeLeone confirmed that friend’s account. “Yeah, that happened,” he said. “I called Josh back, or he called me . . . and the next thing I know, Matt comes in and he’s really nervous and says, ‘Coach, Coach, they took the job away. I thought I had a little time to make a decision.’ I told him, ‘Matt, no, that’s not the way it works. You don’t get on the phone with those freakin’ people unless you’ve already made your decision.’” DeLeone was among the Syracuse coaches and Patricia friends who called Foxborough to lobby for the reinstatement of the offer, and their efforts were successful.
Patricia moved from assistant offensive line coach to linebackers coach in 2006, following the preferred Belichick path of learning both sides of the ball, and after a couple of years calling the plays, he earned the official title of defensive coordinator in 2012. In his red jacket and red cap, he looked like a mall Santa on the sideline—only with a darker beard. Patricia had very little to work with in 2017, and his defense was an embarrassment over the first quarter of the season. It wasn’t rocket science, but it took a former rocket scientist to figure it out. Even though his unit suffered from the Chandler Jones–Jamie Collins talent drain and from Rob Ninkovich’s retirement and from Dont’a Hightower’s season-ending injury in October, Patricia pieced together a prototypical bend-but-don’t-break defense that finished 29th in yards allowed (5,856) but fifth in points allowed (296).
And now Belichick was about to lose his most valuable defensive asset. He did have good young coaches on staff, as always. Brian Flores, a linebackers coach and a product of the housing projects in Mike Tyson’s Brooklyn neighborhood, Brownsville, was widely respected as a developing leader, motivator, and tactician and appeared in line to assume Patricia’s defensive play-calling duties. On the offensive side, receivers coach Chad O’Shea and assistant quarterbacks coach Jerry Schuplinski, from the John Carroll pipeline, were the clubhouse leaders to take over McDaniels’s responsibilities. Belichick’s older son, Stephen, was drawing strong reviews from the safeties he coached and the colleagues he worked with, and his younger son, Brian, had just made the switch from scouting assistant to coaching assistant. Time would tell if they were destined to become head coaches like their father and their highly regarded sister, Amanda, who was running the women’s lacrosse program at Holy Cross, or if they would find their callings as vital career assistants, like their grandfather Steve.
Even if McDaniels and Patricia departed, Bill Belichick would have three of his most important aides in place, in Ernie Adams, Berj Najarian, and Nick Caserio, who does more coaching during practice and on game days than any director of player personnel in the sport. Adams and Najarian were still occupying their unique roles of football research director and director of football/head coach administration, and Najarian had enough clout with his boss to inspire Belichick to wear an Armenian flag pin on his lapel in a 2015 trip to the White House, where Najarian confronted President Obama on his failure to publicly call the Ottoman government’s mass murder of 1.5 million Armenians in the early 20th century what it was: a genocide.
Belichick would also keep on his staff Jack Easterby, a relentlessly upbeat chaplain hired in the wake of the Aaron Hernandez arrest who was still managing players’ emotions and personal issues as the league’s only character coach. Sean Harrington, a former Tufts University football player and computer whiz, would still be in place as the league’s only senior software engineer in personnel. Belichick had the NFL’s most eclectic and unique coaching and scouting staff, and assuming that Caserio didn’t follow McDaniels and Patricia out the door, it seemed strong enough to weather a transition year and keep the Patriots in contention in 2018.
One high-ranking NFL executive suggested that Mangini would be an ideal fit as a returning defensive coordinator, giving Flores more time to develop. That was a nonstarter for Belichick. Mangini was dead to him, and the former assistant’s public pleas for a repaired relationship only served to seal his fate. When Belichick’s friend Chip Kelly took over the 49ers in 2016, he inherited Mangini as defensive coordinator. Belichick pushed for Mike Vrabel to take Mangini’s job, and even after Vrabel chose to remain with Houston Texans coach Bill O’Brien, Kelly fired Mangini.
Belichick’s reach extended far beyond Foxborough. He had friends, protégés, grown-up staffers, executives, people who owed him favors all over the league. He became the most powerful coach in American sports by winning more than anyone else and by game-planning exclusively to his players’ strengths and coaching them to do things their pre-Patriots résumés suggested they weren’t capable of doing.
“They know he’s always telling the truth,” said Ivan Fears, the lifer assistant. “He’s not in there to blow smoke up their rear end. He tells it like it is. Most of the times he’s an asshole when he’s doing it, because he’s really frank. But it works.”
On a Sunday when Tom Brady played with black kinesiology tape wrapped around his right hand, when Rob Gronkowski was concussed in the first half by a fierce Jacksonville defense, it worked again for the Patriots. They were down ten points in the fourth quarter when Brady completed a third-and-18 pass to Danny Amendola for 21 yards, a play that altered the vibe of a game the Jaguars had physically controlled. Brady hit Amendola for a nine-yard touchdown four plays later, and after three punts—two from Jacksonville—Brady found Amendola again for a four-yard score; the receiver had played a brilliant all-around game. Up in the press box, sitting among many writers who had covered his epic victories over New England, Coughlin could only mutter to himself, complain like a fan, and forcefully write down notes about everything that was going wrong. With 55 seconds left in the first half and Jacksonville in possession of two timeouts and the ball at its own 25, Marrone had decided that his quarterback, Blake Bortles, should kneel out the clock and take a 14–10 lead into halftime. It was a dreadful mistake. No opponent can give away possessions against the Patriots in January, in their building. The Jaguars were playing not to lose long before they lost.
New England made the expected defensive stop in the end, Dion Lewis ran for the clinching first down, and then Belichick slid down his headset, clapped his hands enthusiastically, and pumped his right fist toward the sky while shouting, “Whooooo.” Belichick wrapped his arms around the departing Patricia, and the two awkwardly and passionately squeezed each other as if they weren’t ever letting go. The Patriots were going to have an opportunity to win three championships in four seasons, 13 years after they did it the first time around. On the field after surviving the Jaguars, Belichick and Brady shared a warm embrace that belied the stress in their relationship.
It was a fleeting moment. In his postgame press conference, when asked about Brady’s ability to perform despite the hand injury, Belichick said, “Tom did a great job, and he’s a tough guy. We all know that, all right? But we’re not talking about open-heart surgery here.”
Belichick had just sent his quarterback to their eighth Super Bowl together with a swift kick in the ass. Tom Brady, former seventh-stringer at Michigan, had grown accustomed to the feeling.
Bill Belichick stepped off the team plane in Minnesota wearing his father’s fedora. The last time Belichick had faced the Philadelphia Eagles in a Super Bowl was also the last time Steve Belichick attended the big game. Father and son were doused by Gatorade after that victory in Jacksonville, and then nine months later Steve was gone.
This game could have been billed as an overwhelming coaching mismatch, as Belichick was facing a second-year head coach in Doug Pederson, a former journeyman quarterback who, as offensive coordinator of the Chiefs, had directed their
baffling slow-down offense while trailing the Patriots by two scores in their divisional playoff game following the 2015 season.
Pederson had been a head coach for 34 games, or four fewer games than Belichick had coached in the postseason alone. Yet with his work in 2017, Pederson strongly suggested he’d be a worthy adversary. Somehow he had led the Eagles to their first Super Bowl appearance in 13 years despite losing to injury all-world quarterback Carson Wentz and a nine-time Pro Bowler at left tackle, Jason Peters, among other significant Eagles. Pederson had kept his team loose, aggressive, and confident enough to block out the critics expecting the top seed to be toppled on the NFC side of the draw. He also had quickly molded backup quarterback Nick Foles into a reasonable facsimile of Wentz; Foles shredded the Vikings for 352 yards and three touchdowns in the NFC Championship Game rout in Philly, preventing the visitors from becoming the first team to play a Super Bowl in their home building.
It appeared to be an intriguing matchup, and one that could produce the classic game the NFL sorely needed. The league had been under siege all year. African American players were protesting systemic injustices in society by kneeling or raising fists during the national anthem, and President Trump had tossed gallons of gasoline onto the fire at a September rally by advising NFL owners to handle your average protester this way: “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired!”
The league couldn’t defend the indefensible position of keeping Colin Kaepernick unemployed while lesser quarterbacks were signed, and couldn’t adequately explain why their television ratings were tanking, or how much the decline was related to the protests. Malcolm Jenkins of the Eagles had been among the more prominent and thoughtful voices of dissent, leading a coalition of players to hash out issues with the owners and meeting with community, police, and congressional leaders in pursuit of reform. His white teammate Chris Long, a former Patriot, had created one of the year’s more unifying snapshots when he wrapped his arm around Jenkins during the anthem. On the New England side, things were a bit more complicated. Trump’s good friend Kraft said he was “deeply disappointed by the tone” of the president’s remarks about the players. Two days after those remarks, while some Patriots players (including Brady) linked arms in solidarity during the playing of the anthem before a game against Houston, 16 black Patriots took a knee while many in the Gillette Stadium crowd booed.