Big Game

by Mark Leibovich

  Atlanta scored first in the second half, another touchdown: 28–3. It was more of the same. Until it wasn’t; and then things got blurry.

  Patriot running back James White caught a short touchdown pass from Brady with 2:06 left in the third quarter. Stephen Gostkowski missed the extra point. It was that kind of day. The Pats got the ball back, moved down the field; but the drive stalled, they settled for a field goal (that kind of day): 28–12.

  Brady and his receivers were starting to click, finally. But time was the issue, as it often is. There was no one better at racing it than Brady, but MVP Matt Ryan now controlled the clock and ball. Until he didn’t! Sack, fumble, and Brady back on the field. No more Twitter and politics, hello football game.

  The Falcons controlled the ball for less than a minute—they burned almost no time on the clock. Brady didn’t either. He hit a six-yard touchdown pass to Danny Amendola, two-point conversion run by White, 28–20 with 5:56 left.

  There was now actual noise in the stadium. Pats fans travel much louder than their Foxborough versions. But the full comeback was still a long shot—again, because of time. If Ryan and the most potent offense in the NFL could get two or three first downs and a field goal, it would be over. Julio Jones caught an insane 27-yard pass along the right sideline to give the Falcons a second first down of the drive and put them at the Patriots’ 22, well inside field-goal range. Now they would surely run the ball three times, kill some clock, kick a field goal, and that would be the end. Unless it wasn’t.

  A sack and holding penalty took Atlanta out of range; an incomplete pass on third down froze the clock. The punting team came out and Brady started at his own 9.

  Belson kept reading me things off Twitter but I wasn’t listening. Brady was suddenly in one of those mechanical zones of his: passes to Chris Hogan, Malcolm Mitchell, Amendola, two to White, and a fingertip-on-turf revelation by Julian Edelman. I envisioned Brady humming to himself as he worked.

  The Falcons’ defense looked like they were running in sand. Another touchdown by White, conversion by Amendola, and we were headed to overtime. The ending felt determined at this point, even before the Pats won the coin toss and Atlanta’s body language resembled Sunday morning at a frat house. The comeback materialized so fast yet also felt suspended in clouds. But it was only a matter of time.

  (Spoiler alert:) 34–28, Pats in OT. James White again, TD from two yards out, ruling on the field confirmed.

  On an escalator to the postgame avails, I was a few steps down from an older African American gentleman wearing a Patriots #31 jersey. “Jonathan Jones,” the man told me when I asked who 31 was. “He’s my son.” Really! “He made some plays,” I said. Jones was an undrafted rookie free agent out of Auburn, an undersized cornerback who made the roster as a special teams demon. His dad looked like he could have been crying but might have been just spent. I congratulated him. “My son won the Super Bowl,” Mr. Jones said in response, saying it like a question, as if he wasn’t sure it was real.

  I struggled through the bedlam. Martellus Bennett had his three-year-old daughter, Jett, on his lap. She hijacked his press conference (talking about her dog peeing on a rug) until he took it back. “It’s like waking up and eating cake for breakfast,” Bennett said of this experience. “It’s super cool.”

  Patriots started filing out of their locker room. It sounded raucous in there. Offensive linemen were smoking cigars. A bunch of players were holding boxes of pizza as they walked out. They were headed to some victory party and fully prepared (with pizza!). Brady had his game jersey swiped in the postgame commotion, it was later learned. Kraft would compare the heist of Tommy’s shirt to “taking a great Chagall or Picasso.” The FBI became involved, among other international law enforcement entities—more off-season reality-show fodder. Eventually the jersey would be recovered from the media figure who swiped it. The guy was from Mexico! Really, how on-message can Trump’s team be? Or maybe this was a moment to put our national divorce on hold and submit to the powers of pliability.

  I caught Brady and Guerrero walking out together. Brady’s face was stuck in a far-off smile. They walked down the hallway and crowds parted for him. The whole tableau was a groggy trance. No one—not even participants—had processed what just occurred. This would require film review. I rewatched the Fox broadcast five times, though it never took that long because I always started at 28–3. When you can control the clock, you do it.

  Miguel would die a few days later. He would rewind some things if he could—and who wouldn’t? But I made it back in time to be with him at the end, and that was a hell of a party.

  25.

  TURN-ONS

  February 2017

  Literally no one is happy for you, Patriots fans. Everything good about sports is wasted on you. Any enjoyment to be had as a neutral observer of last night’s game—objectively, it really was one of the greatest Super Bowls ever, if not THE greatest—is soured by the fact that you bloated bags of shit are, through sheer cosmic luck, the beneficiaries of the Patriots’ greatness.

  —DREW MAGARY, DEADSPIN, FEBRUARY 6, 2017

  I was really beginning to think that people don’t like us. Where do we apologize? Oh, fuck it.

  Congrats, Patriots fans! You are the official team of the alt-right! They’re all yours. More important, your team is now emblematic of an America that is distorted beyond recognition: a place where people are less revered than the bold and brave companies that maximize delivery and efficiency by phasing out every last trace of humanity and treating people like coal to be shoveled into a furnace.

  —MAGARY, DEADSPIN, SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

  Tough but fair. But where were we?

  At the posh league tailgate before the Super Bowl, I had parked myself next to a five-star table where Bob Kraft was seated along with his son Jonathan, Jerry Jones with his son Stephen (the Cowboys’ CEO), and a few others. As owners of one of the participating Super Bowl teams, the Krafts were enjoying Prom Queen status at the party. People kept coming over, hugging them, and saying things into their ears, paying respects.

  Jerry Jones was riding high on the Cowboy saddle himself, even more than usual. He had learned the night before he would be part of the Hall of Fame class of 2017. David Baker had informed the finalists of their fates. “If you don’t make it in, you get a phone call,” Jones explained to me. “If you’re in, Dave Baker himself comes to your room.”

  Jones had been in a suite with his family, hoping for the phone not to ring. And then, wouldn’t you know it, God knocked on the door just after dinner with word of Jerry’s immortality. He would be introduced on the field, along with the rest of his Hall of Fame class, at the end of the first quarter—Jerry would be introduced I mean, not God, though there seemed little difference at this point.

  “I fully expect to be booed on the field,” Jones predicted correctly.

  But for now, Jerry was a king of the village, taking congratulations from a receiving line of their club, a few sounding sincere. Everyone knew that Jones had craved Canton. Everyone does, but Jerry especially. He figured, with his three rings, work on the league committees, and all he had done to “build the NFL,” this honor was past due. Kraft, of course, felt the same about Robert K. Kraft. And he was a ring up on Jones, two by the end of the night.

  As I watched the old tycoons seated a few feet from each other, I wondered whether Jones would trade his Gold Jacket for another Super Bowl ring—or whether Kraft would trade one of his rings for a Gold Jacket. I would get around to asking both of them, but not then as they were busy getting their rings and asses kissed before kickoff.

  * * *

  —

  Now that the games were done for a while, it was time to return to the dueling Caligulas. Who was first among billionaires? Seasons come and go but another Big Game is perennial—the struggle to be considered the biggest, swingingest member of the Membership. Was it Jon
es, the devilish Arkansas wildcatter who owns the league’s most valuable team, or Kraft, emperor of the league’s presiding dynasty? The frisky septuagenarians had a shadow rivalry going. They competed for rings (Kraft 5, Jones 3), Gold Jackets (Jones 1, Kraft 0), franchise value (Dallas $4.8 billion, the most valuable team in the NFL, per Forbes; New England finished second at $3.7 billion), and other intangibles. Kraft was the first owner to buy a dedicated team plane, a Boeing 767 christened AirKraft. He has led trips to Israel with several Hall of Famers; Jones traveled with a half dozen Gold Jackets to the Vatican. Both men prized the limelight and company of celebrity friends. Both go way back with Donald Trump, and yes, competed for his public affection, too.

  It was not lost on Jones that Trump had so conspicuously cozied up to Kraft during his 2016 presidential campaign. And did so even more after Trump won the presidency and Kraft’s team won another Super Bowl. Within a few days of the game, Kraft joined the newly inaugurated President Trump and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan for an exclusive dinner at Mar-a-Lago. (This inspired the political journalist Sasha Issenberg to tweet that Abe should “reciprocate by forcing Trump to have dinner with the owner of the Nippon Ham Fighters.”)

  Some of Jones’s fellow owners had described Jones as the NFL’s Donald Trump. He was a big-talking billionaire showman easily dismissed as a carnival barker. He has a tendency to believe he runs the league, or should, or that his own exceptionalism should prevail over the plutocratic socialism he and his thirty-one fellow owners have entered into. “Jerry sometimes forgets that it’s a kibbutz,” Kraft has complained to his partners. When I asked Jones how he felt being compared with Trump, he was thrilled. Trump’s rise, he said, “is one of the great stories in America. And let me tell you this,” he went on: “The president ain’t no joke. He’s got as good a chance to be right as any of them.”

  Kraft is more demure in his self-grandeur but no less transparent. He does his best to be calculating and please as many audiences as he can. Like any politician, Kraft tends to say quite different things for public and private consumption. In our interviews, he was constantly going off the record. This could become annoying, as he would then sometimes contradict something he had just said for the record.

  Kraft’s friendship with Trump provides a case in point. Kraft loves being a presidential buddy, but is also aware that many of his high-rent friends don’t approve. So Kraft is quick to mention to his friends—privately—that he disagreed with Trump on many issues, and with many of the incendiary things the president has done and said. But he would rather have the presidential ear and try to be a positive influence. He tried selling Arthur Blank on this line, which the Falcons owner was not buying.

  “I said, ‘You fucker, you’ve given him a lot of money,’” Blank told Kraft. “‘You have influence and spend time with him,’” Blank persisted. “‘Robert, there are things he’s saying and doing that are not great for this country. And the smartest people in the world today, you know they’re viewing him as a four-year mistake.’”

  This is the same Krafty jujitsu he deploys when the topic of Roger Goodell comes up. As an “influential owner” with a national profile, Kraft has been tireless in his support. Within the Membership, Kraft is eager to be considered the commissioner’s ranking mentor—the so-called assistant commissioner. But when talking to “our fan base,” Kraft is eager to pass himself off as their kindred soldier, just another fan still aggrieved over Deflategate.

  I asked Kraft, in an interview at his Gillette Stadium office early in the 2017 season, whether he still counted himself a supporter of the commissioner’s. It was clear he was. Kraft that summer had been a prime mover behind a new contract for Goodell. But there was also his Goodell-hating “fan base” to consider: at the season opener against the Kansas City Chiefs a few days earlier, Pats fans had greeted Goodell by waving seventy thousand towels bearing the commissioner’s likeness adorned with a clown’s nose.

  Kraft paused to ponder my question about whether he supported the commissioner. He looked across his desk at Stacey James, his PR bodyguard. “Yes, yes,” Kraft said finally, pushing the word out. “I think it’s a very difficult job. I’ve learned to compartmentalize.” He said he only wants what’s in the best long-term interests of the NFL.

  “And you think Goodell is the best person to be leading the NFL?” I asked again, maybe betraying skepticism.

  “Can we go off the record?” Kraft said.

  By all accounts, Myra Kraft’s death in 2011 devastated Robert Kraft. He mentioned “my sweetheart” several times during our discussions. He spoke to me about how “the guys in the locker room saved me after I lost my sweetheart.” One senses with Kraft a bit of a weary soul, no matter how many red carpets he walks, how many billions he has, or how many “guys in the locker room” have become honorary family members. “I cried myself to sleep every night for a year after my wife died, until I met my girlfriend,” Kraft told me. Hearing Kraft say this, it’s impossible not to feel compassion and even warmth for the man. But then Kraft repeated the words nearly verbatim in my subsequent two visits to his office, and the sentiment—while no doubt sincere—started coming off like a line.

  At the time of this particular conversation, Kraft’s girlfriend was a blond shiksa/actress/dancer named Ricki Noel Lander. She was nearly forty years Kraft’s junior. They met at a dinner party about a year after Myra’s death, at the home of Giants co-owner Steve Tisch in Beverly Hills.

  When Ricki-Bobby first became an item, the age difference between the couple was widely remarked upon. Kraft then turned up in a strange and heavily mocked audition tape featuring the bikini-clad Ricki, the latter of whom was trying out for a role in the film The Internship, starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. The clip of Kraft’s not-quite-Oscar-worthy performance ends with Kraft’s punching some guy in the face while uttering the immortal words “Fuck you, pussy.” (Just watch the thing—it’s all over the internet.) Kraft would issue an apology and promise to “stick to my day job” in the future. The audition tape was filmed at a studio in the basement of NFL headquarters at 345 Park Avenue; it was Goodell himself who authorized Kraft and Ricki to use the studio, though it is unclear whether he knew the exact nature of the eventual audition tape. (Sadly, Ricki did not get the part.)

  Ricki-Bobby dated on and off for a few years. In between, Kraft has been seen at various functions with much younger blond friends. At the commissioner’s party a few nights before the Super Bowl in Houston, Kraft was accompanied by a stunningly gorgeous blonde in a very tight dress, who couldn’t have been older than thirty. When you mention Kraft’s name around the league, his collection of “friends half his age” is often the first thing people mention. They do so with both mockery and envy. In the case of NFL owners, moral high ground in this category is not crowded. No shortage of them has lacked for much younger playmates. There is apparently some overlap, too. At the end of a heated session during an owners’ meeting in New York in late 2017, Jones rose to deliver a Kumbaya speech. He mentioned the owners’ unique brotherhood, according to a source in the meeting, which included league officials and about half the Membership. This occurred during a period of discord over players’ protesting the national anthem. “We’ve shared great success and adversity,” Jones said. “Even girlfriends,” he added, breaking into his devious smile. It was not clear to my source exactly which owner(s) Jones was directing this last part to.

  Late in the 2017 season, rumors began circulating that Ricki, who lived in Los Angeles, had given birth to a new daughter, assumed to be Robert’s. Kraft, then seventy-six, threw a party at his Brookline mansion the night before the 2017 AFC Championship Game in which “Robert’s baby” was the subject of much whispering among the guests. The New York Post broke the news of Ricki’s baby a few weeks later, leading the usually buttoned-up Patriots to issue a statement saying, “Robert Kraft is not the biological father.” Beyond that, the team said, they would ha
ve no further comment, and subsequent inquiries were met with the paternity equivalent of “We’re on to Cincinnati.” It is not known whether Jerry Jones sent flowers.

  From a pure ego perspective, it nagged at Kraft that Brady and Belichick are considered the twin masterminds of his dynasty. Kraft feels he deserves equal billing. And perhaps he does, as the owner who hired Belichick in 2000, who drafted Brady and then kept the machine together for approaching two decades. But of the trilogy, Kraft is by far the hungriest for recognition. He is always reciting his team’s accomplishments under his watch (nine Super Bowl appearances, thirteen trips to the conference championship game). The old football reproach against excessive end-zone celebrations—“Act like you’ve been here before”—has been lost on Kraft.

  Once, when I was in Kraft’s office, I asked him if he felt he received enough credit for his team’s success. “Since there is so much focus on Brady and Belichick,” I clarified, aware that I might have been picking a scab. “Sweethaht,” Kraft said in his Boston-accented honk (he addresses people as “sweethaht” sometimes, often when agitated). “When you own the team, at some point someone figures out that ownership can mess it up. And maybe if you look around the league, you’ll see maybe that has happened. I’ll tell you, they’ll be no team in the NFL that will win consistently without having good ownership, so I don’t worry.”

  I admit that I felt a measure of fondness for Kraft, and not just because he owned the team I rooted for. He was such a familiar and smaller-than-life figure. He felt accessible. I knew a lot of people like him when I was growing up in Newton, Massachusetts, not far from where he and his sons would stop en route to the stadium on Sundays to pick up roast beef sandwiches from Provizer’s Deli on Commonwealth Avenue. He used the term “tush” a lot. At the beginning of our discussions, Kraft would make a point of saying that he agreed to talk again because he “felt a connection” to me. And maybe he did, but again. When he said this a third time, it began to feel manipulative.