Five Rings

by Jerry Thornton

  Colts head coach Tony Dungy was on the NFL Rules Committee. At the owners meetings that spring, he complained to them that, in the words of ESPN, “Peyton Manning’s futile attempt to get the ball to receivers while being suffocated by New England defenders caused Indianapolis coaches to scream that the coverage was illegal. And, it seems, the league listened.”

  The rule stipulates that once the receiver is more than 5 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, defenders are only allowed “incidental contact.” Dungy lobbied the committee on behalf of his team, decrying how the Patriots’ defensive backs were allowed to hit his receivers too far upfield. That the officials weren’t calling it tight enough. Or they were cheating. Or something.

  No one except the people in that room knows exactly what Dungy’s arguments were. We can only speculate that they weren’t the arguments he was making when he was in Tampa in 2000, coaching tough, physical, bruising specimens like defensive tackle Warren Sapp, linebacker Derrick Brooks, and strong safety John Lynch. But by early 2004, he was a convert to finesse football.

  Dungy got the committee to change the rule on pass coverage, or in their official spin, to make the old rule “a point of emphasis.” Call it what you will, it was outlawing defense. Any time you see a pro football game ruined by a game-changing penalty because some cornerback laid the back of his hand on some tight end’s shoulder pad or because some free safety gets a 50-yard pass interference for making a face at a receiver, you can thank Tony Dungy, the Colts, and the 2004 Rules Committee.

  Thanks to the trade the Patriots made with Baltimore on Draft Day 2003, they had not only their own first-round pick at No. 32, but the 21st overall pick. As I remember it, there was no real consensus as to what their obvious needs were, though, due to age and the fact he’d only signed a one-year deal, Ted Washington was already gone, so a stout tackle for the middle of their defensive line would be nice. The problem in 2004 was that was not a particularly deep draft class at that position, and unless they made a move, all the good ones were expected to be gone by the time they drafted.

  But the Patriots caught a totally unexpected break. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were considered a mortal lock to take a nose tackle at No. 16, and the best in the draft was Vince Wilfork, out of the University of Miami. But they didn’t. Instead, they passed on the home state kid who graded out at the top of every draft scout’s ratings in favor LSU wide receiver Michael Clayton.

  That left just five picks between the Patriots and the player perfectly suited to their needs. By all accounts, none of the five teams in front of them was projected by the draft gurus to be looking for help at the interior of their defensive lines. The bad news is that the draft gurus tend to be shut-ins with zero inside information whose only qualification for draft punditry is the fact that they own a laptop and therefore haven’t the first clue what teams are looking for.

  And that includes me. I distinctly remember sweating out that hour waiting as each selection was made, hoping Wilfork would continue to fall to New England.

  He did.

  The Patriots didn’t have to move up to get him. They simply sat there at 21 and let all 325 pounds of the ideal replacement for Ted Washington fall gently into their laps. The first thing we learned about Wilfork was that he was married with children. The fact that he was a family man helped offset any lingering worries about him coming out of the most notorious program in all of college football.

  The U of Miami had a nasty reputation going all the way back to the 1980s, when Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew was allegedly paying players cash for scoring plays and vicious hits. Then came the rivalry with Notre Dame, “The Catholics vs. Convicts” era. Then in the 2000s, a Ponzi schemer named Nevin Shapiro was convicted of giving gifts and cash to several Hurricanes players, including Wilfork. Wilfork owned up to taking gifts from Shapiro—but while his teammates were getting cars or jewelry, what Wilfork and his wife Bianca accepted said everything about the man: they got a washer and dryer.

  With their own pick, the last of the first round, the Patriots took tight end Ben Watson, a six-foot-three, 255-pound physical specimen out of Georgia, who became semi-famous in football circles when he scored a 48 on his Wonderlic, the standardized test that measures cognitive ability and problem solving. That is the third highest score since the NFL has been using the test. The drafting of Watson might have seemed like a bad reflection on Daniel Graham, whom they’d drafted with the 21st pick just two years earlier. But as it turned out, it was an effort by Pats coaches to evolve into a versatile two tight end offense. It was a process that would take years to finally achieve its full potential.

  15

  Last Season Meant Nothing

  Bill Belichick’s off-season efforts to keep his team grounded weren’t showing much result in his team’s first preseason game against Cincinnati. In fact, they looked horrible in all aspects. To him, it was a sign that his players didn’t think they’d have to work like they had to win those championships, that they could turn the effort on and off. He saw it as what the parenting experts like to call a teachable moment, and what most football experts call the chance to stick your foot up everyone’s ass and break it off.

  Down 21–0, Belichick pulled all his starters off the field and replaced them with the second-unit guys. Then after the half, he put all his starters back in and made them play the entire rest of the game against Cincy’s scrubs. If it was humiliating, it was meant to be. Think Herb Brooks in Miracle, making his U.S. Olympic team skate gassers after tying some low-level European team while screaming, “Again! . . . Again!” It was a wake-up call, and it delivered the message that he was not going to let anybody dick around, regardless of what they’d done in the past. Last season meant nothing.

  That last lesson was made a little harder to drive home once the regular season started. This was the year the NFL began a new tradition of starting the season with a Thursday Night Kickoff game, hosted by the defending champion. It was basically like a Super Bowl Lite, with a pregame concert and fireworks, the championship banner dropping on national television, and a patch with the Super Bowl logo on the champs’ uniforms. The last thing Belichick wanted was for his players to be surrounded by reminders of how great they were and how glorious their triumphs.

  Apparently, he was successful in beating that right out of their systems, because they responded with an impressive, if far from easy, win over the Colts. Despite giving up 200 rushing yards and getting flagged for four penalties under the new rules the league had put in place (two defensive holdings, illegal use of the hands, and pass interference), they held Peyton Manning to 254 passing yards and kept the Colts scoreless for the last 11 minutes on the way to the 27–24 victory, thanks in very large part (pun not intended, but I won’t disown it) to Wilfork’s late fumble recovery and the miss of a last-minute field goal by Indy kicker Mike Vanderjagt.

  They’d succeeded in outlawing defense, but so far games were still won on the field, not legislatively.

  The next couple of games were easier, producing wins over Arizona and Buffalo, the latter of which was highlighted by a Tedy Bruschi strip-sack of Drew Bledsoe that was recovered by Richard Seymour for a 68-yard scoop-and-score touchdown. But during these September games, Patriots players were also focused on the biggest opponent of them all.

  No, not Love. History.

  The win over Buffalo was their 18th straight victory, going back to the Redskins game in September of 2003, tying them for the all-time most consecutive wins record held by a half dozen teams—one of which was the Miami Dolphins of 1972–73. And as inexorable fate would have it, the Patriots were flying to Miami to set the record there.

  They got the win, 24–10. If it wasn’t a dominant win, it was at least convincing. Tom Brady mostly handed off to Corey Dillon and let him rush for more yards (94) than Brady threw for (76). The offensive player of that game for the Dolphins was an undrafted rookie wide receiver they’d picked up from San Diego who didn’t catch any passes, but he did return f
ive punts for 41 yards, five kickoffs for 101 yards, and handled all of Miami’s kicking, converting on an extra point and a field goal.

  This obscure but versatile 23-year-old out of Texas Tech got himself noticed by Patriots coaches that day. His name was Wes Welker.

  The Pats extended the record with a win at Seattle the following week, then made it 21 consecutive games with a win over the Jets that was exactly the kind of defensive cockfight all those “points of emphasis” were supposed to eliminate. New England scored on its first three possessions and New York its second, but neither scored again as it ended 13–7. Tampa Bay Tony Dungy would’ve loved it. Indianapolis/Rules Committee Dungy probably shed a single, manly tear.

  But quite honestly, one of the best team-oriented records you can break was being largely—ignored isn’t the right term—not talked about. But for the best of all reasons: because New England had something even better to celebrate. Something even more historic.

  In between the Seahawks game and the Jets game, the Red Sox had pulled off nothing less than the greatest comeback in the history of North American sports. After getting stuffed in a locker by the Yankees the year before, they’d hit an even lower point, falling behind 3–0 in the ALCS, the third game of which was a 19–8 debacle at Fenway.

  For all the gut-churning losses I’d seen in my lifetime, I’d never experienced anything like that. That’s the one that broke my will. My whole life I’d listened to bitter old-timers tell me I was a fool for being invested in that team and promise me they’d always choke. That 19–8 game finally made me believe them. I felt like a dope for having done my older son’s room over with Red Sox wallpaper, a Sox bedspread, a Sox wastebasket, etc. At the trading deadline they’d traded Nomar Garciaparra, leaving me with two kids’ closets loaded with Nomar jerseys and T-shirts. And to make things worse, in the off-season New York had signed Alex Rodriguez out of nowhere after the Sox had spent weeks trying to get him. This humiliation was complete. Or was one game away from being complete.

  Until they came back in game 4 to win after midnight. Then had another walkoff win in game 5 the next afternoon, making it two in the same calendar day, followed by one of the gutsiest, most clutch performances in our lifetimes, Curt Schilling bleeding through his sock on an ankle repaired by experimental surgery to shut down the Yankees lineup and, as he’d promised, make 55,000 New Yorkers shut up.

  What happened in game 7 was unforgettable. Winning the series by completing the first four-game comeback in the 130-year history of the sport just made all that misery the year before worth living. It turned it into nothing more than the second film in a movie trilogy that ends with something dark and sinister happening. It was just Darth Vader cutting Luke’s hand off or Gollum threatening the Hobbits under his breath.

  I’m sorry I bailed on them for the first time in my life. But I’m not sorry. Even though it felt like the Rapture came and I didn’t stay among the true believers, it was a normal human reaction. In the inevitable HBO sequel Reverse of the Curse of the Bambino that followed, Boston comic Denis Leary put it best. “Anyone who says they thought the Sox would win when they were down 0 and 3,” he said, “is lying through their teeth. Lying through their fucking teeth.”

  Regardless, I had no regrets when they capped off the comeback with a 10–3 win. At Yankee Stadium, no less. The crowd shots of the insufferable New York celebrities all looking like they were praying for death is one of the greatest sights my eyes have ever seen—and I’ve not only watched the sun set over the Grand Canyon, I’ve seen Scarlett Johannson’s leaked nudes.

  Billy Crystal. P. Diddy. Spike Lee. All decked out in Yankee hats, Yankee warm-up jackets, and unfathomable sadness. On the HBO sequel, I compared it to that part in A Christmas Story where Ralphie finally beats up Scut Farkus. I stand by that.

  As an added bonus, Rodriguez did nothing in the ALCS, except be the creative genius behind the most embarrassing play of the series when he slapped the ball out of Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo’s glove rather than be tagged out. It was a loser play, and the umpires correctly ruled him out. It also drew attention to the fact that in a huge moment with Derek Jeter standing on first imploring his superstar teammate to deliver, A-Rod tapped a 40-foot dribbler. That play was the perfect symbol of the Yankees spectacular collapse. And gave us a perfect villain in A-Rod.

  It was glorious, made that much better by the fact that the Jets came to Foxboro four days later. And however many Jets fans there were who also liked the Yankees, they had to endure a postscript of emotional abuse while the Pats streak went to 21.

  Just three days after that, the Red Sox pulled off a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first World Series in 86 years. It’s a cliché, but it’s true to say that the moment transcended sports. When a team people care about goes anywhere close to that long without being rewarded for their efforts, it becomes something bigger. Everyone has a story about some loved one who didn’t live to see it. The cemeteries were littered with Sox memorabilia for some deceased relative who died too soon. For me, it was a dad who was born the year after they last won it and a mom who died the year before this one. Both of my parents went box-to-wire without ever having a World Series win in their lifetimes. So you can be damned sure I woke my three-year-old out of a sound sleep and held him in the light of the television so that, if this never happened again, he’d at least have this one.

  The people running the city of Boston did the mental math and realized that because of all of the above—the 86 years, the comeback, the decent weather, the dead grandmas—there was no way they could fit all the people coming into the same plaza where the Patriots rallies were held. So they skipped the City Hall part of it and just held a “Rolling Rally,” meaning a parade that had no stopping point. The duck boats took them down the streets and up the Charles River and went back to the barn. It was perfect. And it set the template for any championship celebrations to follow, if we could ever be so lucky. Hint: we could be so lucky.

  As hard as it was to process the Red Sox not only winning, but winning the way they did, it was even more so when you looked at it in the context of two Patriots titles. The region had gone 15 years without a championship. Now we’d had three in two years. The last time one market had pulled off the unique trifecta of two Super Bowls and a World Series in so short a span was the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989–90. The “Loserville” thing was finally something we could laugh about—with a big, hearty, back-slapping, “Fetch me my drinking horn!” Viking laugh.

  The Patriots took the record win streak to Pittsburgh on Halloween, where it died a frightening death at the hands of the Steelers.

  The Pats fell behind 21–3 at the end of the first quarter and never truly made a game out of it. It was New England’s first look at Ben Roethlisberger, the massively scary, defensive end–sized 22-year-old quarterback they drafted out of Miami of Ohio. One game into the season, the 11th overall pick took over for veteran Tommy Maddox and his job was never in doubt after that. By the time Roethlisberger was done with the Patriots, he’d won all six of his NFL starts, this one by a score of 34–20.

  What was most interesting about this game was the reaction from both sides. After having their record win streak broken, the Patriots, to a man, recited Belichick’s already established “We got outplayed, outcoached. We have to do better” mantra. Bruschi admitted they’d gotten their asses kicked.

  Veteran leaders on the Steelers took a different approach, with linebacker/semi-professional rageaholic Joey Porter caught on camera shrieking, “They will never be on our level! Never, ever, ever be on our level!!!”

  When the video made its way around the cable networks, everyone in New England had the same question: “What level?” Seriously, what level was Porter talking about? Because the Patriots had just won 21 straight games. They still hadn’t gotten the New Flag smell out of their second Super Bowl banner. And the first one had come at the expense of Pittsburgh in their own building. Yet the last time the
Steelers had won one, Porter was still filling diapers. Hearing one of their key veterans talk about being on different levels was something the Patriots could file away in the mental file folder they’d saved as “Bulletin Board Fodder.”

  Even though it was nearing the midway point of the season and his team was 6–1, Bill Belichick continued to get ready for each week as he always had: with a healthy, balanced diet of preparation, pessimism, and paranoia. To put it in a nicer way, to always be ready for the worst, no matter how good things were looking.

  Thinking Big Picture, he realized that other NFL teams and college programs would be starting to consider his two coordinators for their head coach jobs, and he needed to start grooming successors. To replace defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel, he was looking toward defensive backs coach Eric Mangini.

  Part of Mangini’s increased responsibility involved experimenting with Crennel’s defense in ways that no one could’ve seen coming, because those ways were either genius or madness.

  In the Pittsburgh game, Ty Law was injured and out for the season. While losing one of the great cornerbacks in the history of your franchise sucks every time it’s tried, they weren’t totally screwed. There was some depth there, led by Asante Samuel and including Tyrone Poole, Randall Gay, and all-time Funny Namer Earthwind Moreland. Still, they couldn’t withstand too many more losses and had to be ready in case of an emergency.

  So during that week, Mangini approached Troy Brown and told him he was going to need him to take reps at defensive back. For a minute there, Brown thought he was being punked.

  Mangini was not joking. Tedy Bruschi, who was in a defensive meeting, casually turned around to see Brown sitting behind him, and did a double take. Those two had been with the team longer than anyone, and seeing Brown there had to feel like finding an Art History major sitting in your AP Finance class. But it was for real.