Patriot Reign

by Michael Holley

  “If I said a guy was a first-round pick, the Colts picked him, and if he turned out to be a bust, they wouldn’t have looked down on me. They wouldn’t have said I was a bad grader. Because that player in the Patriots’ system might have been successful.”

  Pioli reads all the things the scouts have written and listens to many of the things they have to say. During a meeting he knows whom to push in front of everyone and whom to pull to the side. It is a diverse group. Pioli has known his director of college scouting, Tom Dimitroff, since Cleveland, when he worked with Dimitroff’s father. In this environment of long days and fast food, Dimitroff may be the only vegetarian in the league. Kyle O’Brien is the young scout from Harvard. Hallum is an expert on southern sayings and offensive linemen. Lionel Vital is the former NFL and Canadian Football League player who sometimes acts out the words on his reports. When “L. V.” says a lineman has strong hands, he clenches to illustrate. Larry Cook is the former driver’s ed teacher with an instructor’s sense for something amiss. Cook was skeptical when he watched former UCLA quarterback Cade McNown work out—and scrape to find receivers to catch the ball for him. That was when he knew there must be a story with McNown and his teammates. And there was a story. When the Bears drafted McNown in the first round, there were some scouts who were uneasy with the pick. The Bears would soon find out why: McNown developed a reputation as a quarterback who was not tough enough or accountable enough to be a great starter.

  The Patriots scouts’ knowledge of the system, originally created by men like Bucko Kilroy and the late Dick Steinberg, is essential. Pioli and Ernie Adams wrote in new material and tweaked some of the old information to make it precisely for Belichick’s Patriots. You have to know the book and system terminology. Have to. You never know, as Licht learned one Friday afternoon in October 2002, when a random quiz is coming. He walked by Belichick’s office on his way to his own. The coach asked if he could talk to him about “a few guys.” Fifty players later, Licht was still answering Belichick’s questions.

  “And then, while you’re talking, he’s typing notes into his computer,” Licht says. “And he’ll say, ‘Yeah, yeah. I saw this guy versus Penn State. He’s just kind of flopping around. I don’t think that’s our type of guy.’ ”

  “Our kind of guy” is someone who can be quantified. The Patriots’ grading system for players has its own music and melody. It is the marriage of science and art, instinct and intellect. There is a New England alphabet and New England numerology. Every player who puts on a silver helmet is defined in these terms.

  First, there is a twelve-letter lowercase alphabet. These are known as “alerts.” A lower-case “a” does not stand for excellence; a player gets that if there are concerns about his age, either too young or too old. A “c” is for a character concern. An “x” is for an injury problem. A “t” is someone who will make special-teams coach Brad Seely happy, while a “tt” is a special-teamer so good—someone on the level of a Steve Tasker or a Bennie Thompson—that he can make the roster for his teams ability alone. A report, for example, reading “6.50ly” should be clear to everyone: that’s an overachiever who is a “Make It+” player, which is a solid pro. He is a transfer student, which means the scouts had better have the inside details of why he transferred from his previous school. Putting a “y” on a player lets Pioli know that there has been a transfer. The “l” alert is for someone who finished his college career at a lower level of competition, either Division 1-AA, Division 2, or Division 3.

  The scouts also use thirteen letters in the upper-case alphabet, although you can double or triple the letters in some cases to make your point. The top two letters—“A+” and “A”—mean what you would expect them to mean. If Pioli and Belichick see those letters on a report, they know they are looking at a player who will be wearing a yellow jacket and giving a speech on the steps of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. A “Q” is a rare player who happens to be height-deficient. “C” is for some circumstance—it could be anything—that has restricted a very good player’s production. A “P” is for players such as Adam Archuleta of the Rams and Mike Vrabel and Tedy Bruschi of the Patriots. They are top projection players who are being counted on to play a position in the pros that they didn’t in college. Bruschi was a defensive lineman at Arizona who became a linebacker with the Patriots. Vrabel was an All-Conference defensive end at Ohio State who became a linebacker, first with the Steelers and then in New England.

  “Just remember,” Pioli said in an early draft meeting, “Bill can do things with ‘P’ types if they’re good enough. We’ve got two starting linebackers that are projection players.”

  When the scouts are asked to put a player into a specific box, they have eight groupings from which to choose:

  Starter: 9.00–9.99 A+, 8.00–8.99 A, and Q (height-deficient) 8.00–8.99

  Circumstantial Starter—a first-year NFL starter whose production has been restricted by some circumstance, which may include an NCAA rules problem, problems with an agent, or a personal or family conflict: C7.00–7.99

  Make It +—a player who is not expected to start in his first season but is expected to contribute in year one and eventually develop into a starter:6.50–6.99

  Dirty Starter—could start, but something about the player is restrictive (maybe not enough speed or athletic ability); the manual says this could be the category for over- and underachievers: 6.00–6.49

  Make It—a backup who won’t win or lose a game for you: 5.50–5.99

  Free Agent—not expected to make the team but could rise to the “Make It” level with time in NFL Europe or on the practice squad: 5.00–5.49

  Pats Reject—a reject by Patriot standards, but could land somewhere else in the NFL:4.90–4.99

  Reject—doesn’t belong in the NFL: 1.00

  Three dimensions of a player—major factors, critical factors, and position skills—are graded on a scale from 1 to 9: 1, according to the manual, is a “reject,” and 9 is that Hall of Famer. Highlighted in red, atop the grading chart, is a reminder: “The key number is 6…. If a player is 6 in any factor or skill, we will be satisfied with his performance of this skill or critical factor. He is not going to dominate. However, this is a solid level of performance or competence. This is the type of grade that leads a player to the ‘Make It+’ level.”

  Major factors are the same for all positions. All players are judged in seven categories: personal/behavior, athletic ability, strength and explosion, competitiveness, toughness, mental/learning, and injury/durability. The categories in critical factors and position skills are in flux, depending on the position.

  During the amending and rewriting of the book, the Patriots sketched a silhouette of a quarterback and unknowingly came up with a Tom Brady portrait. “It fits him to a T,” Pioli says. The book says several things about what a quarterback for the Patriots must be, but four of them stand out:

  “Be the mentally toughest and hardest-working player on the team.”

  “Be able to take a big hit and then walk into the huddle and call the next play.”

  “Have his head screwed on straight enough to handle the pressure and scrutiny to which all NFL QB’s are subjected. (A Ryan Leaf fiasco can cripple a franchise for years.)” (“You couldn’t get anyone to say anything nice about Ryan Leaf when he was leaving,” Pioli elaborated one day in his office. “His teammates were happy to see him leave Washington State. He was an asshole.”)

  “If you want to know who the good quarterbacks are, watch the passes they complete under a heavy rush. Watch the first downs they get on third and long, passing into heavy coverage. Listen to what their teammates have to say about them.” (The previous quote is from an athlete whom Brady grew up imitating and to whom he is often compared—Joe Montana.)

  The descriptions are perfect. What he doesn’t understand, Brady teases, is that “they waited so long to take me. Come on. One hundred and ninety-nine?”

  The Patriots got lucky with Brady. He shouldn’t
have been available to them nearly two hundred picks into the draft. In one sense, the Brady selection is a wonderful story. It allows football fans to forever claim that championships can be won without a highly selected quarterback. But then, the Brady story can also be perceived as an understated evaluation. If the Patriots knew what he could be, they would have never taken Adrian Klemm and J. R. Redmond before him. Going into the 2003 off-season, the Patriots couldn’t have—as silly as it sounds—any Brady episodes. They would need to recognize the most talented players early, and try to select them. But before they could select them, they had to travel to Indianapolis. There, the entire league would engage in the annual ritual that comes before selection. That would be the scouting combine or, frankly, inspection.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE MEAT MARKET

  In the weeks before Indianapolis, Pioli, Belichick, Larry Cook, and Jason Licht had begun to develop an occasional routine. They would meet in the draft room, before the early draft meetings, and shuffle some magnetic names on their tentative draft board. Although Belichick’s displeasure with the defense was by now well known in the building, he concentrated on all positions.

  After they had analyzed a player, they would line up the board. This was based on two things: the prospect’s grade according to the team’s grading system, and the prospect’s skills compared to people already on the team.

  For example, the Patriots had high grades for USC safety Troy Polamalu. They put one of their positive alerts on him—“tt”—to indicate his exceptional special-teams ability. It wasn’t enough to say, “Polamalu is good.” The more precise question became, “Do you like Polamalu more than Lawyer Milloy? How much better is he than Tebucky Jones?” And so on. The magnetic strip was then placed on the board accordingly. If there was a lingering uncertainty about a player, his name was tilted on the board, a reminder that there needed to be more discussion or investigation.

  The strip now told more of a story: you knew where the player ranked among his college peers, and you could see where he projected as a player with the Patriots.

  It was critical for Pioli and Belichick to have a sense of their preliminary board before Indianapolis. Lots of things were certainly going to change between February and April. But they still needed to have a plan for how they were going to approach the NFL’s annual job fair. They were going to have a meeting on February 17, the day before the combine, to talk about pro free agents. What was the sense of going to Indianapolis and devoting an inordinate amount of time to, say, linebackers when that would be a free agency priority? (Yet, they had had a January 31 deadline for submitting a list of players they wanted to interview at the National Invitational Camp, which is what the combine is formally called. By the time the Patriots actually interviewed some of the people on their list, their interest in those players had changed—for better or worse.)

  They had already identified the man they wanted most in free agency. While fans and draftniks had them selecting everyone from Boss Bailey to E. J. Henderson to Gerald Hayes, the Patriots knew the player they needed was already in the league. It was Rosevelt Colvin of the Bears, a twenty-five-year-old outside linebacker with pass rushing skills. Colvin was considered one of the top free agents available. Belichick had an insider’s scouting report on him because one of his best friends in the league, Jerry Angelo, was the Bears’ general manager.

  It wasn’t going to stop with Colvin. In the needs meeting the day after the season, a “Star” defensive back—one who matched up in the slot—was discussed. Belichick didn’t like what his team did on third down, and he didn’t think Terrell Buckley was as physical as he needed to be to play inside. So the Patriots were going into free agency and the draft looking for two types of corners—insides and outs. They had two picks in the first round—numbers 14 and 19—and they already knew they were likely to hold on to the first one and draft a defensive tackle.

  Maybe the plan was loose, but they could travel to Indianapolis with it.

  No other professional sport has anything resembling the combine. It is a week of probing and testing, gawking and prodding. The players are asked to strip to their shorts and told to look straight ahead and then turn to the side as they are videotaped. They walk around with assigned numbers and groups, which seem to be just as important as first names. The interviews sometimes seem more like interrogations. The Crowne Plaza at Union Station is the hotel transformed into a league compound.

  Teams can submit up to sixty players they’d like to speak with, for fifteen minutes at a time, in their private rooms. There is a horn for the start of the interviews, and a horn signaling their end. The system was instituted because in the “free market” teams would fight over players, arguing that they had gotten to the prospect first. And silly games would be played, like a team sending attractive young women to escort players to its headquarters.

  That’s unnecessary in the new system. All of the talking is scheduled. It is up to the coaches, scouts, and general managers to draw out the information they most want to hear.

  “Everybody in the NFL is dealing with the same names,” says Cook. “It’s like a lot of things. When you go to a bar at night, that girl appeals to you. But that one over there, argh, she’s ugly. The next guy thinks she’s pretty cute. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. We’re looking at the same numbers, the same math, the same measurables. But we all have different takes on what it means.”

  As the Patriots welcomed players into their Crowne Plaza suite, they were focusing mainly on character and intelligence. They are good interviewers, mostly because they are prepared. Sometimes they ask a player if there is anything in his background that they should know about, even if they already know about it. Their repertoire of interviewing techniques is diverse: good cop–bad cop, sympathetic listener, wiseass. Pioli and Cook are almost always in the room. Coaches usually come in when players at their positions are being interviewed. They rarely leave an interview not knowing how they feel about a player.

  When Illinois receiver Brandon Lloyd came in, he was asked why he was choosing to do an online “diary” of the combine. “David thought it would be a good idea,” he said, speaking of his agent, David Dunn. They nodded. Fifteen minutes later Weis had a one-liner for the road: “Enjoy your writings now, because when we draft you we’re going to tell you to shut the fuck up.”

  Boss Bailey, the linebacker from Georgia, impressed them with his honest analysis of his game. The scouts had said a few weeks earlier that Bailey missed too many tackles by overrunning plays. That was exactly what he said about himself.

  They were thoroughly entertained by receiver LaTarence Dunbar of Texas Christian and defensive end Alonzo Jackson of Florida State. Dunbar was confident and full of energy, excited to talk with Seely about special teams. He mentioned his kickoff returns for touchdowns so often that Seely said, “Now wait a second. Are these different touchdowns or are you talking about the same ones?” Jackson walked around the room and shook hands with everyone. When he saw Romeo Crennel, he said, “This is the man, right here. The defensive coordinator, the man I need to see.”

  Some players who came into the room were humble. Some, like Ohio State safety Mike Doss and Notre Dame safety Gerome Sapp, knew where everyone was supposed to be when Crennel quizzed them on defense. Some couldn’t articulate their own assignments in their college schemes. Some, like Pittsburgh defensive back Torrie Cox, acknowledged their mistakes and gained the respect of the Patriots. Cox said he once got into a fight with former teammate Antonio Bryant. The coaches paid attention then, because Bryant’s demeanor had turned them off the year before. “So why’d you fight him?” Cox was asked. He replied, “That mouth of his. Sometimes that mouth of his gets to be too much.” There was laughter followed by, “Torrie, you just went up a notch in our eyes.” Some players just lied about their skirmishes.

  Across the street from the hotel, players worked out at the RCA Dome. Belichick sat high in the Dome seats watching the workouts, but he did
n’t put a lot of stock in what was happening on the field. A lot of other teams didn’t either. They were more interested in the exhaustive medical testing. Anyway, workouts were becoming so rare at certain positions—like running back—that Derek Watson of South Carolina State got an ovation just for running the 40.

  Belichick and Pioli spent some of their time catching up with friends around the league. Pioli had breakfast with his father-in-law, Bill Parcells. Belichick talked with Super Bowl–winning coach Jon Gruden of Tampa Bay. “I wrote an article about you in the New York Times,” Belichick said. “Did you see it?” Less than a month earlier, a Belichick column headlined “O.K., Champ, Now Comes the Hard Part” appeared on the Times op-ed page. It was a thirty-seven- point essay on what to expect after winning the Super Bowl. “I didn’t see it,” Gruden said. “I want to check that out, man.” Chicago head coach Dick Jauron, who played for Belichick in Detroit, stopped by. The three of them talked and laughed near the field entrance of the Dome. They all have had to play versions of The Game with the media, so it was strange to see them as their relaxed selves: wearing jeans and sweatshirts and sneakers and enjoying a football atmosphere.

  All of them had an idea of what players they liked. No one said anything about it. Or if they did, it was a test to see the others’ reaction. Belichick did have a few light moments with two members of the Oakland Raiders. He started to say hello to Al Davis and kept walking, and Davis said, “Don’t even think about walking by me. Come over here.” He and Raiders general manager Mike Lombardi, Belichick’s former personnel director in Cleveland, talked about what they would do to get New York Jets receiver Laveranues Coles on their team. “I’d give up our second-rounder for him,” Belichick said. “Hey, I’d give up one of our firsts,” Lombardi answered. (Washington, though, just gave up money by signing Coles to a free agent contract.)