“Someone else was calling the shots,” Parcells later told Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy. “That was something that bothered me because I wasn’t 100 percent confident in the people that were doing it.”22
But from the outside looking in, it was a match made in heaven. New England fans now had arguably the best coach in the league and an owner who was like them, one who bled Patriots red, white, and blue. The relationship between Kraft and Parcells appeared to work at least for the first couple of seasons, as the Patriots played before sellout crowds and had even managed to sniff the playoffs.
In 1996, Parcells reunited with defensive genius Bill Belichick, who had been recently fired in Cleveland. The two men had a long and successful history together since joining the Giants in 1981, Parcells as defensive coordinator and Belichick as special teams coach. During those early days in the Meadowlands, the pair had shared an office and stayed together at the Hasbrouk Heights Sheraton, where they forged a solid working friendship. Soon, Belichick began to assist Parcells with the defense, and when Parcells was handed the reins of the franchise in 1983, he promoted Belichick to defensive coordinator, despite the initial misgivings of the Giants’ resident superstar Lawrence Taylor, who believed Belichick couldn’t lead the defense because he’d never played the game.23 Taylor, a future first-ballot Hall of Famer, became a quick believer in Belichick as the Giants racked up victory after victory and earned two Lombardi Trophies behind one of the league’s greatest defenses.
Now Parcells introduced his protégé to Robert Kraft, who liked him and agreed to go over budget and hire Belichick as assistant head coach. Together, Parcells and Belichick mounted a solid season, winning eleven games behind Drew Bledsoe’s twenty-seven touchdown passes and more than a thousand yards gained on the ground by running back Curtis Martin. That year also saw the emergence of defensive stalwarts Willie McGinest, Ty Law, and Tedy Bruschi. The Patriots knocked off the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Jacksonville Jaguars to secure a trip to Super Bowl XXXI against the mighty Green Bay Packers and all-world quarterback Brett Favre.
This marked just the second time the Patriots would be stepping onto the sport’s biggest stage. But Parcells could not get over Kraft’s constant meddling, despite the fact that Terry Glenn, the owner’s draft-day favorite, had set a rookie record with ninety receptions. It eventually got so bad that Parcells and Kraft were no longer speaking to each other, so Bill Belichick often served as a go-between with the two. The head coach voiced his frustration to his close friend, Boston Globe columnist Will McDonough, who then splashed details of the soured relationship between owner and head coach across the front page of the newspaper in the days leading up to the big game. The rift, according to the longtime newspaper man, was more like a chasm. McDonough intimated that Parcells was done with the Patriots after the Super Bowl, win or lose. Kraft was especially hurt by the timing of the column, which ran just days before the game, in which the Patriots were already big underdogs. New England lost the game 35–21 to the Packers in a matchup that was never truly competitive. Bill Parcells did not fly back to Boston on the team plane, and the marriage was over. All that was left for the divorce lawyers to do was to divide the assets and agree on compensation. The league’s worst-kept secret was that Parcells would head down Interstate 95 to coach the New York Jets, the Patriots’ biggest AFC rival.
“It blew my mind, to be honest,” Robert Kraft admitted years later in an interview with ESPN. “How does he go and accept another job somewhere?”24
Kraft said that he investigated the issue and believed that the NFL was working diligently behind the scenes to support the move. “The undercurrent was that having Bill Parcells back in New York running the Jets was good for the NFL,” Kraft surmised. “It also told me that the league office was not as pure as I might have thought.”25
Parcells would eventually be free to coach the Jets, and in return Kraft would receive a number of draft picks and a check for $300,000 to the Patriots’ charitable foundation.
The Patriots’ owner took Belichick and his wife, Debby, out to dinner to discuss the coaching vacancy and told him that although he thought he was a good coach, the timing was not right to hire him. The owner needed to make a clean break from Bill Parcells and his coaching minions.
Bob Kraft had rid himself of an insubordinate head coach, but he still had a young star quarterback named Drew Bledsoe to continue to build his team around as the Patriots looked toward the new millennium.
Chapter Five
The Underdog
As the 1997 NFL season began in Foxboro under new and untested head coach Pete Carroll, the young man who would determine the future of the New England Patriots was 805 miles away in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and wrestling with the biggest decision of his life to that point. Tom Brady had just turned twenty years old and he wanted to go home—back to San Mateo, California.
He had been playing or not playing for the University of Michigan for the past two years. Redshirted as a freshman, Brady was now officially entering his sophomore season with the Wolverines and had just received word that he was getting passed over for the starting job at quarterback in favor of fifth-year senior Brian Griese, son of Miami Dolphins great Bob Griese.
Michigan had been a long shot for Brady from the start, when his father, Tom Sr., a University of San Francisco graduate and owner of a small insurance agency in San Mateo, shelled out two thousand dollars to produce fifty-four highlight videos of his son’s high school career. The reels included an introduction from Tom’s high school coach Tom McKenzie, who described him as “a big, strong, durable athlete with an excellent work ethic.”26
Stanford University, the University of California Davis, and even tiny St. Mary’s College in nearby Moraga, were on the target list. The younger Brady tossed out the University of Michigan as another option. His dad didn’t think it would hurt, so they sent a VHS tape out to Ann Arbor.
Brady was the only boy in a household with three older sisters, all great athletes in their own right. Sister Maureen, nearly five years older than Tom, was a star softball player in high school. As a seventeen-year-old pitcher, she played her way onto the U.S. junior Olympic team and won a scholarship to Fresno State University. Sister Nancy was also a softball standout, while middle sister Julie played soccer in high school and later at St. Mary’s College. Young Tom’s weekend schedule revolved around whatever sport his sisters were involved in at the time. Their mother, Galynn, would squire the brood from field to field. The Brady girls were routinely written up in the sports pages of their small local newspaper, and Tom lived deep in their shadows. Around town, he was known as Maureen Brady’s little brother. As a youngster, Tom played basketball and baseball, and most observers figured his future glory as an athlete would be made with a catcher’s mitt. But the idea that a kid from San Mateo could one day become a major sports star was not a novel one. It had happened three times before in two different sports. Future NFL Hall of Famer Lynn Swann caught his first passes as a member of the Junipero Serra High School Padres, while both Barry Bonds and Gregg Jefferies had competed on the same field of dreams as Brady before launching their storied careers in Major League Baseball.
Tom was consumed by baseball and didn’t play organized football until his freshman year at that same private Catholic high school, when he was fourteen years old. At that stage, he was a doughy kid with a strange mopped mane of the kind popular with some skateboarders his age. Although he had turned heads on the baseball field, he was considered “just another kid” on the gridiron. Brady served as backup quarterback on a freshman team that played nine games without scoring a single touchdown en route to a winless 0–8–1 season. But his coaches soon discovered that he had a strong arm and natural command of the huddle, strengths he had developed as a baseball catcher. When Brady began playing junior varsity as a sophomore, he developed a sign language with his receivers that he continued to use throughout his career.
“When he saw a DB [defensive ba
ck] playing too tight, Tom would pull on his face mask and it would change a short route into a streak,” said John Kirby, Brady’s high school teammate. “I knew the ball would be coming to me and he’d put it right on the money. And he did it time after time. Just like he does now.”27
Leading the varsity squad beginning his junior year, the young quarterback threw for 3,514 yards and thirty-three touchdowns over the next two seasons. Teammate John Kirby caught forty-two passes from Brady in their senior year. His feats on the baseball field were equally impressive. Over two years playing varsity baseball, Brady batted .311 and smashed eight home runs and eleven doubles. Pro scouts saw great potential in the six-foot-four, two-hundred-pound lefty. The Montreal Expos worked him out at Candlestick Park and were impressed by his arm strength, hitting power, and his presence. The stage wasn’t too big for the young man from San Mateo.
Still, Brady seemed to have his heart set on a career in football. He earned MVP honors at the prestigious Cal State football camp heading into his senior year and was ranked among the top high school quarterbacks in California. Brady got his first taste of television as a senior when he was profiled by Bay Area football legend and NFL Hall of Famer Dan Fouts for KPIX in 1994. When the young quarterback came out of the Serra High School locker room and introduced himself to the San Diego Chargers great on the football field before the interview, Fouts sized him up and then whispered to his producer, “This is the guy. This is the guy to watch.”28
The two quarterbacks sat on the Serra High bleachers, and Fouts asked Brady to describe his strengths as a quarterback.
“Everybody tells me I’ve got a pretty strong arm, which is good. I’m pretty accurate with it,” he replied nervously with hands folded in front of him. “I think I need to work on my speed a little bit but hopefully that’ll come in time. Pretty good work ethic so I think I can get the job done.”29
Brady exuded a quiet confidence in the interview and not the cockiness projected by the other top prep players profiled in the story. Fouts’s producer agreed with his assessment. Tom Brady was indeed the guy to watch.
But the big-time college football programs didn’t see it.
Only a single college scout attended one of Brady’s games during his senior year. The scout flew up from USC and liked what he saw but ultimately couldn’t sell Brady to his boss, head coach John Robinson.
When Brady’s highlight reel landed on the desk of Bill Harris, an assistant coach at the University of Michigan, Harris was impressed by the player’s ability to make short, intermediate, and deep throws. He then shared the tape with the Wolverines’ quarterback coach, who also thought Brady was worth taking a closer look at. Harris flew to San Mateo to meet with Brady, his parents, and head football coach Tom McKenzie.
“I found out that he played baseball and that he was a catcher. I’m thinking in my mind, you know, catchers have to be tough. So this kid is going to have that toughness you want if he’s back there getting beat behind the plate,” Harris recalled.30
Brady was invited to visit the Michigan campus and voiced his desire to play for the storied program, which had won ten national titles by 1994. Head coach Gary Moeller called Brady at home to say “We want you.” It could have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but Moeller was fired in early May after punching a police officer during a drunken incident at a Detroit-area restaurant. Defensive coordinator Lloyd Carr took over the reins of the program as Brady entered Michigan.
When he arrived, there were seven quarterbacks ahead of him on the depth chart.
“I remember being out there on the first day of practice, thinking, ‘Man, I’m better than these guys,’” Brady recalled. “But of course I wasn’t. But that was always my attitude.”31
During his sophomore season, with junior quarterback Scott Dreisbach on the sideline recovering from an injury, the starting job came down to a slugfest between Brady and the older Griese. Most observers called it a draw, but under Coach Carr’s regime, the tie went to the upperclassman. Brady was hurt by the decision, and for the first time in his life, he actually thought about quitting. He contemplated relinquishing his dream to play for Michigan and transfer to another school, mostly likely Cal State. Brady then marched into Coach Carr’s office to voice his frustration. The coach didn’t coddle the quarterback.
“You know, Tommy, you gotta worry about yourself,” Carr told him. “You gotta go out and worry about the way you play. Not the way the guys ahead of you are playing, not the way your running back is playing and not the way your receiver just ran the route.”32
Brady chewed on Carr’s words and wrestled with the decision overnight. He returned to the coach’s office the following day with a renewed focus and determination. Brady pulled a chair in front of Carr’s desk and looked him straight in the eye.
“Coach, I’m not gonna leave, and I’m gonna prove to you that I’m the best quarterback.”33
Carr saw the fire in Brady’s eyes, and that burning desire spilled over to the practice field and “The Big House,” Michigan Stadium, where he led the team to ten wins. He threw for fourteen touchdowns and 2,427 yards. Brady was named team captain in his senior year, and his previous on-field performance should have been enough to secure him the starting job, but Coach Carr had other plans. He was coveting thy neighbor’s house and looking toward the future. Carr had recruited local high school legend and All-America quarterback Drew Henson with the intention of starting him over the solid, reliable Brady.
Michigan teammates compared the rivalry to a race between a draft horse (Brady) and a quarter horse (Henson). From afar, Henson had everything. He had unbelievable quickness and a rocket-like throwing arm. He was the most talented quarterback Lloyd Carr had ever seen.
Tom Brady, on the other hand, was a slow, skinny fourth-year junior with average arm strength and the speed of a tortoise. But those closest to the two quarterbacks saw something else. “As a quarterback in practice every day watching this, it was never really a decision; it was always Tom’s job,” said senior backup Jason Kapsner. “Tom earned the job in practice every day. Drew was never a leader. He hadn’t earned it in practice, but there was a lot of pressure to play Drew.”34
The threat imposed by Henson’s father was that if Drew didn’t get the opportunity to play, he’d leave the program and focus solely on his promising career as a baseball player in the New York Yankees system. Once again, nothing came easy for Brady. He sat alone late at night inside the team’s practice facility studying game film. He took extra snaps at practice and threw passes until his arm felt like it was hanging by a thread off his shoulder. Five days before Michigan’s season opener, Coach Carr still hadn’t announced his starting quarterback. When pressed by reporters, the coach replied, “What time’s the game? 3:30? You’ll see then.”35
Unwilling to make a decision, Carr instead chose to play both quarterbacks in shifts. Brady would start the game, Henson would play the second quarter, and the hotter hand would emerge from the locker room after halftime to finish the contest. Brady finished four out of five of the team’s first games. During a showdown with in-state rival Michigan State, Carr chose Henson over Brady in the second half, but the young phenomenon couldn’t find the end zone and the Wolverines fell behind. Panicked, Carr sent Brady back into the game and watched him nearly pull off a comeback win. Michigan managed to hold on to its number nine ranking but lost again the next week to unranked Illinois and Carr threw up his hands, telling reporters, “I have no idea how this team will rebound.”36
The answer was Tom Brady. Coach Carr gave up the idea of platooning his quarterbacks and decided to ride his draft horse the rest of the way. Michigan would not lose another game. Brady led the team in wins over Penn State and Big Ten archrival Ohio State and capped off the season with a stellar performance before a national audience in the Orange Bowl, defeating the Alabama Crimson Tide 35–34 in overtime. He threw four touchdowns in the win and set a school record for pass completions in a single game
with thirty-four.
“He [Brady] won this game,” Michigan’s star receiver David Terrell said moments after the victory. “Tom Brady showed poise. He showed the heart of a leader, the heart of a lion.”37
Yet, despite an epic performance on college football’s big stage and the praise heaped upon him by his Michigan teammates, Brady found his pathway to the pros littered with land mines.
Chapter Six
Game Changers
The moment Bill Belichick returned to New England to take over the Patriots in February 2000, he realized that he had inherited a weak and dysfunctional team, one that was a far cry from the squad that played in the 1996 Super Bowl.
He also knew that the stadium on Route 1 in Foxborough would mark the end of the line for his head-coaching career if things didn’t go right. As a defensive coordinator, Belichick had won two Super Bowls with the New York Giants under Bill Parcells and had appeared in a third as Parcells’s assistant with the Patriots. But as a head coach, he’d tanked in his five-year stint with the Cleveland Browns, turning off media and fans alike with his prickly personality while sporting only one winning season. But as others, like former Giants general manager George Young, saw limited potential in Belichick as a head-coaching candidate for any team, Robert Kraft thought differently. He saw a coach whom he could trust and work with. The head-coaching job in New England was now open after the firing of Pete Carroll, who struggled to replace the larger-than-life Parcells and most recently had failed to make the playoffs. The timing was finally right to bring in Belichick, a man who could relate to Carroll in that he, too, was having difficulty trying to emerge from Parcells’s big shadow. Kraft hoped to lure Belichick away from the Jets, where he had served once again as assistant head coach and defensive coordinator under Parcells. Kraft sent a fax to the Jets’ front office requesting permission to interview Belichick. Parcells got his hands on the fax and immediately resigned from his position as head coach, which triggered a clause in Belichick’s contract that elevated him to head coach following Parcells’s departure. It was an attempt by Parcells to checkmate his former boss.
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