Patriot Reign

by Michael Holley

  Back on the field for the play, Warner had to improvise. When the week began, Belichick said he wanted to take away the quarterback’s primary option and make him hold the ball. His primary option, Faulk, was covered. So he held. Then he began to scramble to his right. Only fate could concoct what Warner was facing now: he was being chased by linebacker Roman Phifer, a thirty-three-year-old veteran who began his career with the Rams—the Los Angeles Rams. Phifer pursued at such an angle that almost anything he did was going to be bad for Warner. He had cut off a passing lane and was in position to make the tackle.

  “Now get his ass, Phife!” Ryan, his position coach, screamed from the coaches’ box.

  Phifer grabbed Warner and the ball was sprung from his hands. There it was, lying on the 3, there for safety Tebucky Jones to pick up and run with the other way. Upset? This was on its way to being a blowout. Jones ran down the field, and some of the Patriots on the sideline instinctively ran with him. Antwan Harris was one of those sideline players, and in the excitement he didn’t notice that there was an eighty-three-year-old man standing behind him. It was Steve Belichick, who had been attending practices all week. The elder Belichick wound up on the ground as Jones ran by with what appeared to be a 97-yard fumble return for a touchdown.

  As Belichick was helped to his feet, he didn’t want to talk about himself. He was asked if he was all right and he replied, “Hell, yeah. I’m fine.” He was more concerned about the flag lying in the opposite end zone. “Sonofabitch,” he sighed. Robert Kraft saw the flag as well. He briefly thought of Bill Buckner and the baseball championship that slipped through the legs of New England in1986.

  Faulk hadn’t been open because Willie McGinest had him in a bear hug. It was an easy call to make. Holding, New England. Two plays later, Warner ran 2 yards up the middle for the first St. Louis touchdown of the day.

  It had taken fifty minutes for the Rams to solve the Patriots’ riddle. They were officially hackers now, having finally decoded the system. We are playing our asses off, Belichick thought. But we’re starting to wear down. And that was just the defensive story. The Patriots weren’t doing much on offense. Brady could recite all the variations of the Rams’ “Cover 2” defense, but he couldn’t find a way to get much movement against it. After the Warner touchdown, the Patriots answered with three plays and 8 yards. They held the ball for about a minute and a half before punting it away.

  The game was turning. The Krafts, sitting in a seventh- level box, weren’t interested in the news at their door: someone from the NFL wanted to escort them to the field to watch the final few minutes of the game. They didn’t move. They were reminded again, and Robert Kraft made it simple. “If we win, they’re not going to start the postgame without us. So we’re going to wait to see what happens.” The owner waited. There were casual fans in the box, and there was a professional—Saints coach Jim Haslett—in there too. Everyone knew the Rams were capable of tying the game late. There was also the chance that they’d win it.

  The league’s MVP now had the ball with seven minutes and forty-four seconds to play. The Patriots were winning, but Warner had leverage. He knew that their defense, which had just been on the field ninety seconds earlier, was in retreat. He started from his 7. Eighty seconds later he had the team at midfield. Plenty of time. Six minutes and seventeen seconds to play. He drove the team to the New England 38, but here were those conceptualists rising again. They had thrown off his timing just so, and he was holding the ball with no place to go. McGinest was approaching one second and on him the next. Sack. Second- and-9 had become third-and-25.

  This time Belichick wanted the timeout. It was his last one. He saw how worn down his team was, and he obviously saw the stakes. He consulted with “RAC,” which was what Crennel’s colleagues called him.

  “RAC, we can’t give up this play. We can’t give up a first down on third-and-25. I mean, that will kill us.”

  Having known Belichick since 1981, when both were Giants coaches, Crennel knew that “We can’t give up this play” was a lot more layered and accusatory than it sounded. It really meant that there was no excuse for anyone—player or coordinator—to make a mistake at this moment in the game. It really meant that champions make these plays and that a bad, poorly coached defense is one that has no hope of getting off the field on third down.

  Back on the field Warner attempted to pick up the first by finding Holt near the sideline. The pass was incomplete. There were four minutes to play. If the Patriots could squeeze out a couple of first downs, this game was theirs. With no timeouts, the Rams weren’t going to be able to stop the clock.

  But there would be no firsts for the Patriots. They gave the ball to Antowain Smith, the running back who had done a good job all day. He lost 2 yards. Brady threw a safe pass to Smith on the next play—“0 Flood 130 D Pivot X In.” It was a 4-yard gain to the Patriots’ own 22. Thinking about the clock at this point, Weis told Brady to go with Smith again. They got 3 yards out of that run and were forced to punt.

  Now the brilliance of the Rams shone: they got the ball at their 45 with 1 minute and 51 seconds to play. Twenty- one seconds later the game was tied. The Patriots were blitzing and in man-to-man coverage. Proehl got open, took an 11-yard pass from Warner, and ran 15 yards after the catch for a score.

  Seventeen apiece, with 1:21 to play.

  The Rams’ sideline was energized, and the Superdome itself was pulsating with murmurs and anticipation. In the Fox TV booth, analyst John Madden was saying that the Patriots—at their own 17 with no timeouts—should play for overtime.

  In the huddle Brady was unaware of any extraneous sound. He was never one to wander while he was working. He was at work now. He grew up loving sports and competition so much that he would ask his parents if he could wear his team uniforms to church. He went to the University of Michigan, where he wouldn’t sleep on nights that he threw interceptions inside of two minutes—and those were two-minute drills in practice. If he hadn’t been good at football, he would have become a businessman. Winning was his business these days, and he didn’t want to be congratulated for thinking that way. Winning—and winning late—is what good quarterbacks are supposed to do.

  So while the drama of the game may have excited many, he was calm when he heard Weis’s voice in his helmet: “Okay, Tommy. ‘Gun F Left 51 Go/OPEQ.’ Look for Patten versus man. If not, Troy or J. R. Be careful with the ball.”

  He was careful. “J. R.” was third-down back J. R. Redmond. He was Brady’s man on the first two plays, good for 13 yards.

  “Clock it, Tommy,” Weis said.

  He spiked the ball into the turf. There were forty-one seconds left, and his team was positioned at its 30. This was going to happen. All I have to do is recognize the coverage, make sure guys are lined up right, read my progressions, and make the throw.

  “ ‘Gun Trips RT 64 Under X Go.’ ”

  He found Redmond again. This time it was an 11-yard gain, and Redmond stepped out of bounds to save time.

  They were at their 41. They had thirty-three seconds left. They had the best kicker in the game simulating kicks on the sideline. This was going to be easy. He missed on “G Patriot RT 64 MAX ALL IN XQ”—for Brown—so the same play was called again.

  Brown caught the ball over the middle, ran 23 yards, and stepped out of bounds at the Rams’ 36. Brady knew Vinatieri could make it from here. But there was time to get him closer.

  “ ‘Gun Trips RT 68 Return.’ Tommy, throw it to Wiggins and then clock it.”

  He located Jermaine Wiggins, the tight end from East Boston, for 6 yards. He clocked it with seven seconds remaining. The ball fell to the turf and then bounced up again into his waiting hands. He held it as if he were posing for a picture. Bringing style to the mundane, the sixth- round pick suddenly looked cool.

  Vinatieri would step out soon to attempt a 48-yard field goal. Who wouldn’t want a good kicker now? What coach wouldn’t want his kicker to be his most consistent player in a situation li
ke this? Perceptions and legacies were going to be affected with this attempt.

  Patriots and patriots alike wanted this kick to be good. Just to say I told you so. Just to prove that substance and grit and unity were not outdated terms. Everyone could relate to not being tall enough, slim enough, fast enough, rich enough, young or old enough. That was the Patriots’ appeal. Their roster and their staff were filled with people who were holding on to some previous slight that they couldn’t or wouldn’t forget.

  Lots of people were on their feet now, holding hands or hoping for a miss. Veteran defensive end Anthony Pleasant was on the sideline, thinking of his friend Rob Burnett, who had won a ring the previous year with the Baltimore Ravens. Pleasant also thought of Scott Norwood. “Make it,” he whispered. “I hope we don’t do like Buffalo.” Gil Santos was setting the scene for his listeners in New England. Santos, the radio voice of the Patriots, was concerned with the details first. Down, distance, placement. He liked to let people know the snapper (Lonie Paxton) and the holder (Ken Walter). “If it gets screwed up—if the snap is high or low— you want the people to have a sense of what happened,” he once explained.

  Vinatieri, man of routine, was walking toward the field. He was trying to concentrate, but he heard chatter from his own team. It was tight end Rod Rutledge, taunting one of the Rams.

  “Yeah, motherfucker. We about to win the Bowl.”

  Walter knew Vinatieri wanted to say something, and he knew that this wasn’t the time for the kicker to be talking. “I’ll handle this,” he told Vinatieri. “Hey, Rod. Can you shut up?”

  There was no more talking. The ball was snapped, the hold was impeccable, and the kick gave Vinatieri exactly what he had been seeking on Saturday night: perfection. The kick was worthy of its own frame, powerful and high and unmistakable. It was a poll with immediate returns, a dramatic moment that eliminated all dramatic excess. There was no wait to see if it would sneak inside a post or barely clear one. It was a center cut. Santos had been trained to look at the officials before commenting on a field goal, so there was some hesitation in his call: “The kick is up and it is… good. It’s good….” He was informing, smiling, crying, and embracing—his wife and son were in the booth—at the same time.

  The Krafts were still in their box, with a panoramic view at the 50. They had a family hug for this kick, and they had a family hug for themselves. They remembered how the Patriots were almost moved to St. Louis in 1993 and how their family bought the team in ’94. They remembered the financial and public relations messes—from bankruptcy to bombast to Bill Parcells—that forever trailed the Patriots through most of the 1980s and the 1990s. They remembered 1971, when they were the Krafts of Graylynn Road in Newton. Just a family of season-ticket holders who were hoping Jim Plunkett could help deliver a championship.

  In the coaches’ box, Scott Pioli had been standing on the stairs between the first and second levels. He had been standing for the entire game, hoping that the team he helped build could find a way to win. When the kick went through, Pioli fell down the stairs and into tight ends coach Jeff Davidson. The box, tense and serious most of the time, erupted. Pioli hugged Davidson, Brian Daboll, Berj Najarian, everybody. They all lost themselves for a moment until someone mentioned that they had to leave the box and head to the field.

  There was red, white, and blue confetti on the carpet as the organization celebrated. Belichick, now finally and rightly clear of Parcells’s shadow, was hugged by his daughter Amanda and lifted in the air by safety Lawyer Milloy. McGinest was in tears. A group of Patriots scouts, in seats twenty rows from the field, congratulated each other and fans they had just met. Guard Mike Compton fell to his knees as if he were worshiping. Another lineman, Joe Andruzzi, carried the American flag. His brother, Jimmy Andruzzi, was a New York City firefighter who had barely escaped the Twin Towers on September 11.

  Patriots 20, Rams 17. Everyone with any connection to the team began to move toward a roped-off area reserved for the champions. And, really, that meant all of them.

  An hour after the game, Pioli and his wife, Dallas, walked from the Dome to the Fairmont. They had already cried, sharing the moment with Pioli’s parents and all his buddies from back home in Washingtonville, New York—Matt, Tom, Paul, and John the Worm. Three friends from college were there as well. Pioli then received a call from his friend Mark Shapiro. Pioli and Shapiro had met when they both worked in Cleveland. They had talked of their championship dreams for years. Now Pioli was the director of player personnel for the Patriots, and Shapiro was the general manager of the Cleveland Indians.

  “Scooter,” Shapiro said, calling Pioli by his nickname, “great job, man. I just got two words for you: collar stays, dude!”

  Shapiro had watched Pioli interviewed on TV. The collars on Pioli’s shirt were pointing in the air. He had raced from the box—but not before taking a Super Bowl banner as a souvenir—to be on the field. Shapiro knew he could tease Pioli for looking frazzled on the night that he became a champion. He knew how hard it was to help build a team that was both successful and dignified. They both laughed, and not just because Pioli didn’t have plastic collar stays. He wasn’t even sure what they were.

  Now it was time for Pioli and everyone else to exhale and wait until tomorrow before thinking about the ’02 season. He tried to go to the team party, but it turned out that the selfless, anonymous team he put together was a little too anonymous for his own good. He wasn’t recognized at the door and was told he couldn’t get into the VIP section. He and Dallas decided they would hang out instead with their friends from home. Brady got into the party, where he relaxed with rapper Snoop Dogg.

  “Look at this,” Snoop said, standing in the Imperial Ballroom. “It’s the MVP of rap here with the MVP of the Super Bowl.”

  Belichick was also at the Fairmont, in the hotel bar. He had wanted to stop in at Pat O’Brien’s in the French Quarter, but security had advised against it. There were thousands of people outside. They had just watched or heard about one of the best Super Bowls ever played. Belichick would be mobbed out there. So he sat with his wife, Debby, and a half-dozen friends. He drank Hurricanes, laughed, and talked football until 4:30 Monday morning. He slept for ninety minutes and then got ready for the day-after press conference with Brady and NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

  By noon he was on Northwest flight 9965. The team was leaving New Orleans for Boston, where there would be a downtown parade the next day. Belichick sat near Pioli on the plane, and they compared their lists for the expansion draft. Their Lombardi Trophy wasn’t even twenty-four hours old. But shortly after takeoff, they had already begun thinking about how they could win another one.

  CHAPTER 6

  REVERSAL OF FORTUNE

  The man at the front of the room hates giving this speech, although he has never lacked the confidence to give it. Anyone who knows him can tell you that. Bill Belichick hates to stand there, his entire team and coaching staff before him, and talk about the phenomenon of intelligent men— some of the same men who only nine months before had been champions of their sport—playing dumb football. Or, as he said after the 28–10 loss to the Green Bay Packers, “We have a lot of smart guys in this room, but on the football field we play like a bunch of fucking morons.”

  If you are one of the players flinching at the harshness of these words, you might as well begin packing. There is no way you are going to last as a New England Patriot. This is one of the reasons the Patriots’ college scouts are asked by their bosses, “Can this player handle tough coaching?” What they really want to know, without the euphemism, is whether a prospect can deal with being “motherfucked” when things are not going well.

  Most of the players in this auditorium could. They had to. This is a profession where political correctness never caught on. There is no liaison in Human Resources who monitors the way your supervisor talks to you. The players know their head coach can be profane, even when he is not angry. He has an extensive vocabulary—expletives
not included—but he stores it like a precious sports car when he is here. He knows ambiguity doesn’t work in the NFL. Some people may not like his brand of bluntness, but at least they understand it. That’s what’s important in this business where misunderstandings lead to losses and layoffs.

  He has visions of how football teams should be built and how the games should be played. He is secure enough to allow these visions to be inspected, four or five times per year, for soft spots and holes. There is frequent self- scouting and self-analysis, his version of 3,000-mile checkups to see if everything is running well. He prefers to have advisers and scouts with strong opinions, and at times he demands that those opinions be stated. As with his preparation for the Super Bowl, he will ask the football people closest to him—Scott Pioli and Ernie Adams—what they think, unafraid to hear ideas that are inconsistent with his own. He does the same thing with his assistants and other coaches he speaks with by phone. There are times when he talks strategy with his friend Nick Saban, the head coach of Louisiana State University. Saban will explain how he approached a play or situation at LSU, and Belichick will shake his head and say, “That makes a lot of sense. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  It’s hard to find something that irritates him more than a lack of preparation and thought. When potential free agents arrive in Foxboro, one of the first things they’re shown is the computer system. They are told that the video guys—Jimmy Dee, Fernando Neto, and Steve Scarnecchia—are on the second floor. They are reminded that they can better understand their responsibilities simply by walking up a flight of stairs or clicking a mouse. Jimmy Dee is used to cornerbacks asking for tapes on wide receivers and safeties asking for breakdowns on tight ends.