Going into the postseason, there was the familiar excitement, but finality as well. Charlie Weis had already been hired as Notre Dame’s head coach, and he would go to South Bend, Indiana, as soon as the season was over. Romeo Crennel was likely to get a head coaching job, too, with some speculating that he would go to Cleveland. There were always new players, new challenges, and seemingly the annual personnel surprise from Belichick. If the players ever were going to mimic the head coach, now was the time to copy his short-term focus, his obsession with recognizing the moment and dominating it.
That spirit could be felt long before the beginning of the divisional play-off game against the Colts. The Patriots were playing at home, but they had an underdog’s edge, and a lot of it had to do with their depleted secondary. Ty Law, the corner whom Manning had a difficult time solving, was out for the season with a broken foot. He would most likely end his Patriot career watching the team’s Super Bowl run. He had seen up close, with some of his best friends, how Belichick and Scott Pioli thought; it was probably going to be a story of economics. In the absence of Law and Tyrone Poole, the corner depth was so scant that Troy Brown, a receiver, had logged an incredible 250 snaps in the secondary.
Imagine, the MVP of the league, owner of the best passing season in NFL history, scanning a secondary that included Brown, a couple of second-year players in Asante Samuel and Eugene Wilson, and Harrison. It seemed like a terrible idea until it began to snow shortly before kickoff. This was one of the Patriots-Colts talking points on the compare and contrast list. The Patriots loved the elements and bad-weather games. Manning had never won in Foxboro, and the thought was that snow and wind and sleet, typical winter weather in New England, bothered him.
That certainly appeared to be the case throughout the game. Brady consistently gave the ball to Dillon, who didn’t look much smaller than the Colts’ linebackers and safeties. He had run hard all year, piling up a team-record 1,635 rushing yards. The locals had given him a rhyming nickname: “Clock Killin’ Corey Dillon.” He ran hard against the Colts as well, staying in bounds and accepting hits when he didn’t have to. And that was the thing. He wanted the hits and the contact. This was going to be a long day for Manning, maybe the longest of his career. The crowd ridiculed him, randomly chanting lines from his popular TV commercials. Cut that meat! Why were they saying it? It didn’t matter. They had held Manning and the Colts to a field goal. Their 20–3 win gave them a return trip, with Dillon this time, to Pittsburgh.
The last time the Patriots were in western Pennsylvania for a play-off game, the city swelled with Super Bowl pride. Lawyer Milloy had noticed it and was ready for a fight. Law, who was from nearby Aliquippa, had noticed and had vowed to shut down Pittsburgh’s receivers. Damien Woody sensed what they did, and couldn’t wait to hit somebody. Drew Bledsoe had been ready to bounce into the game and, just like in the make-believe world of animation, had arrived in the nick of time to save his teammates.
This time, all those guys were gone. Only the foolish were surprised by the Patriots, this machine of a team that had, remarkably, a quarterback who had never lost a play-off game. And he had played seven of them, going into the conference championship at Heinz Field. He played the whole game this time, and one of his early throws seemed to be a taunt to his critics. Some of them said he couldn’t throw deep, so he faked a handoff to Dillon, and then dropped back for a sixty-yard launch to Deion Branch. Touchdown. It was 10–0 then, and 24–3 at halftime.
There were no tears this time over the Lamar Hunt Trophy, which goes to the AFC Champion. There was just expectation. They had won, again, 41–27, and were on a run in which they had been victorious in twenty-seven of their previous thirty-one games. Now they were headed to another Super Bowl. On their way there, Tedy Bruschi and Roman Phifer looked at each other and thought the same thing. Phifer was the one who dared to break the silence.
“Man, if we win this thing, we’ll be like the teams we watched as kids. We’ll be like the Steelers and Cowboys. We’ll be a dynasty.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
BONDS AND BREAKS
Two days before his team’s biggest game of the season, Bill Belichick had an idea that he was excited to share with his defensive players. He wanted to add a wrinkle for the Philadelphia Eagles to consider, a wrinkle that they wouldn’t have seen anywhere in the New England film because it wasn’t there. The Patriots hadn’t run the scheme, called Dolphin, all year.
The players were so used to seeing this experimental side of Belichick that none of them paused to raise points and ask questions. Such as a glaring one: Why now? The team had dominated its competition in the postseason, including its silencing of the Colts. The defense had been elite for two years now, finishing first in the league in 2003 and second in 2004. Why mess with a good thing? Why overthink it?
For Belichick, questions like those are signs of fear and mediocrity. His players understood that he was constantly searching for the perfect matchup. They trusted that he had put the film work in to justify whatever unconventional concept he offered them. They had seen him in action with the clicker in his hand, analyzing the film, and they knew they were watching the best in the industry. Bar none.
Many of them had come to New England feeling good about their ability to detect tendencies on film, but he was much more detailed and analytical than all of them. He’d let the film run for a second or two, reverse it, and then go forward again to the first couple of seconds. They all thought they were seeing what he did, but they weren’t. They’d be looking at the point of attack, and he’d go somewhere else, to an infinitesimal place that he believed was the glue of the entire play. He was amazing that way. And he approached new plays reasonably: If there’s any delay in “getting it” in practice, it won’t be a part of the game.
Dolphin certainly was going to make it into the core of the Super Bowl game plan. It called for Tedy Bruschi and Mike Vrabel to fill the “A” gaps, the areas between the center and the guards, while Roman Phifer took advantage of a favorable matchup he had against tight end L. J. Smith, who wasn’t a strong blocker. The linebackers picked up the defense quickly, and it was as if this twist had been a part of their repertoire the entire year.
“We prided ourselves on being intellectuals and students of the game,” Phifer says. “And obviously that’s a reflection of Bill.”
Each of the linebackers knew the defensive signals, even if Bruschi was the official signal-caller. They lined up according to Bruschi’s instructions for the sake of order, but they already knew what to do. Bruschi was similar to the leader in a familiar call-and-response exercise; everyone knew his lines as well as their own, yet they respected the tradition of having a song leader. Sometimes defensive lineman Richard Seymour would tell the linebackers that he was going to tweak his stunt, and the ’backers would in turn adjust the call based on Seymour’s freestyle. It was advanced communication, and they had refined it through years of practice competitions, pop quizzes, and play-off wins against record-setting players and teams and, sometimes, in record-setting conditions.
This was a close group, a brotherhood, and they all knew enough to anticipate playing in the Super Bowl and to dread the ending of the game, too. They always expected to win these games, and who could blame them? Twenty-two of them were playing in their third Super Bowl in the last four years, and they had an eight-game postseason winning streak. That wasn’t normal. The last team to do that was Vince Lombardi’s Packers of the 1960s, an era when there was no salary cap or unrestricted free agency. Those elements were the lifeblood of the modern game, and that’s what made each of these championship runs so emotional. It’s not like the group was going to return as a whole next year.
The coordinators, Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel, were definitely leaving. Joe Andruzzi, whom Tom Brady once teased as a “little, fat guard,” was a free agent and in line for a fat contract, probably on the open market. David Patten’s contract was expiring, and some team out there was likely to look past “fiscal responsi
bility” and all the other things the Patriots said, and pay for Patten’s speed and championship profile. Ty Law wasn’t going to have to ask for his release this time; the Patriots were almost guaranteed to move on from the cornerback and his $12.5 million cap number. Seymour had completed his second consecutive season as a first-team All-Pro and wasn’t going anywhere. But a protracted vacation wasn’t out of the question. He was twenty-five and had far outperformed his contract. He was one of the few Patriots who had the leverage and temperament to hold out for a better deal.
Phifer, now thirty-six, wanted to return but knew it wasn’t going to be in New England. He had been pulled aside by linebackers’ coach Dean Pees after the fifth game of the season. He was told that Belichick didn’t like what he was seeing on film, and that if his play didn’t pick up he’d be cut during the season. Phifer knew what Belichick was seeing. The linebacker looked at himself in those film sessions, and he saw a player who was stiff and a step slow. He was supposed to be a guy who could stop the run and cover, but there was a play in that fifth game, a win over the Seahawks, that had bothered him and Belichick. Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck had faked a toss to running back Shaun Alexander, and the back had almost lounged there as if he were out of the play. Then he suddenly ran full speed up the sideline, where Hasselbeck hit him for a big gain of twenty-four yards. Phifer was supposed to be on Alexander. He wasn’t close.
After the warning from Pees, Phifer’s play picked up markedly. In the play-off win over the Colts, he got a big hit on Edgerrin James and immediately felt something pop in his right shoulder. Torn labrum. He didn’t play much in the conference championship game in Pittsburgh. But with a chance to start in the Super Bowl, to be a contributor to this team that could be remembered as a dynasty, there’s no way he was going to miss the opportunity. He was a right-handed player who couldn’t lift his right arm, but he still had full range of motion with his left. He’d get the job done that way. Not many people in the game as long as he’d been in, fourteen seasons, gave much thought to the condition of their postcareer bodies. If you thought about that too much, you’d never make it to year fourteen, or even half that long. But there was no question the game wore you down, at times in life-threatening ways, and players were starting to think of that more than ever.
Everyone, regardless of their age, knew that the NFL’s year to year was akin to real life’s generation to generation. Time moved at warp speed here, with no space for gradual and thoughtful change. It had been only a year ago, minutes after the Super Bowl win over the Panthers, when Belichick had asked Phifer, “So are you gonna keep playing? Or are you gonna call it a career?” The coach had asked in a hopeful way, as he appreciated the skill and professionalism of the linebacker. Phifer had replied, “I’m in.” Just one year later, he knew there wouldn’t be any polite asking. He was at the point in his career when a private meeting with the boss wasn’t likely to produce good news.
On the day of the game, with Dolphin fully committed to muscle memory, Bruschi roamed the Alltel Stadium field in Jacksonville and began to look into the stands. He saw his wife, Heidi, there along with two of his three sons. It was hours before the game and they were already in place. He knew the kids would be restless, so he ran over to them with a plan in mind. He took a boy in each arm and they all made their way to the field. Then he slowly backpedaled as they chased after him, and he went down in a heap as he let them playfully pile on and tackle him. He and Phifer had talked about becoming a dynasty and now here they were, on February 6, a couple of hours away from making it happen. They couldn’t possibly know all the reasons why this would be their last game playing together, but they had a feeling that this was it.
Brady was excited for the game to begin, and his reasons were different from those of his teammates in their thirties. He had talked about winning a third title at the previous year’s parade, and he hadn’t been pandering. He always believed that he should win, and he had a case with the best offense of his career. He had a particularly strong relationship with Deion Branch, the receiver who shared a mastery of the offense with him. Branch was finishing his third season in the offense, and he had gained his quarterback’s total trust by knowing his assignments on his first day as a pro.
Branch was always in tune with Brady, so when the quarterback would begin to scan the defense and eventually identify the player who is the “Mike,” primarily the linebacker who keys the defense, Branch would know what to do. “All of your sight adjustments are based on that call,” Branch says now. “If you miss that call, you’re going to miss the whole play. Tom is expecting you to make the adjustment off of what he’s just identified. You have to see it the way that he does. It can be very complex.”
It was simple for Brady and Branch. They almost always saw the defense the same way. In the win over the Panthers, Brady was the MVP and Branch was his leading receiver, securing ten catches for 143 yards. They expected tight coverage from the Eagles, who had given up exactly the same point total as the Patriots during the regular season. Their defense was coordinated by one of Belichick’s friends, Jim Johnson, with the two men often chatting during the season to compare notes about opponents. Brady and Branch weren’t surprised when they often faced what they called a Cover 2, Man Under defense. The Eagles had their safeties protecting everything over the top, with linebackers and corners underneath taking away the passing game. “One of the toughest defenses to throw against,” Branch says.
It didn’t matter. Brady was determined to get his receiver the ball. They had only one miscommunication the entire game, on a third-and-nine. Branch was certain, based on his read, that Brady was going elsewhere. He got the message when Brady clarified on the sideline. “Hey, I’m just trying to get you the ball.”
Over and over, that’s exactly what happened. Brady would see the creases in the Eagles defense and Branch would run to them. He’d snag the ball out of the air, run as much as he could, and then smartly go to the turf just before an Eagle had a clean shot at him. Branch tied a Super Bowl record with eleven receptions for 133 yards. This time, he got the game’s MVP trophy and Brady got to deliver on the promise that he had made to all of New England a year earlier.
The communication between Brady and Branch was flawless, but the same could be said of many relationships on the team. It had been like that in the Super Bowl and during the entire season. They knew they were no longer being judged by division titles or appearances in the play-offs. They were chasing the ghosts of the game now. A lot of the communication was unspoken during the season, like when players would look at Rodney Harrison in practice and see the intensity and speed he brought to it. Not wanting to be shown up, they did the same thing. Or maybe it was not wanting to be the first one to leave the facility. Or to not be the first one to miss an answer on one of Belichick’s tests.
Not much had to be said after the game, when there was a three-man huddle with Belichick, Crennel, and Weis. This wasn’t even year-to-year transformation; it was moment-to-moment. They had gone into the game as one staff and, as soon as it was over, they were in that huddle as head coaches of the Patriots, Browns, and University of Notre Dame. They weren’t a trio at that moment, and they were unlikely to be that again.
There were other sweet, unspoken moments at the end of the 24–21 win. Bruschi, naturally, was drawn to a beautiful father-son snapshot. His time had come before the game, a thirty-one-year-old father and his preschool-aged sons. Now he noticed Belichick on the sideline, with his arm draped around his eighty-six-year-old father, Steve. It couldn’t have been more perfect than this for Belichick, winning the Super Bowl next to the man who taught him the game. He could remember being eight years old and hearing Steve’s typewriter as he composed his scouting book, Football Scouting Methods. It was his mother who edited the book; Bill was the one who wanted to be a part of the life that the book described. This was a family affair, and Bruschi punctuated it with a celebratory douse of father and son. The Belichicks loved it.
After the game, Bruschi could be seen on the field smiling and holding up three fingers. Dynasty. Just as he and Phifer and many others had imagined. The night would be full of music, laughter, dancing, and wine. They would savor it as long as they could, and then prepare for the departures. The veterans thought they had steeled themselves for this, so there was nothing in football that could sneak up on them. But that was football, not civilian life.
Nine days after the Super Bowl, Bruschi was back at home and he still couldn’t get enough of the season. Heidi and the boys were asleep and he was awake in the master bedroom, watching football. He had come across the NFL Network, and a replay of the conference championship game in Pittsburgh was on. He had played in the game, replayed it in his mind several times, and now he wanted to watch it again. He looked at it for a while and then he began to doze. He was in a deep football dream, or so he thought, trying to wrap up Jerome Bettis in a tackle. He was acting out his dream, though, and when he awoke at four a.m., his arms were in the air.
Several hours later, he and Heidi realized that he’d had a stroke. It was tough to settle the contrasts. In the Super Bowl, just a week and a half earlier, his boys had run after him on the field. Now, in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, he could hear their tiny footsteps behind him as they were curious about the flashing lights of the ambulance that he was being carried into. He heard them behind him only because he couldn’t see them; there was darkness in his left eye.
It seemed that his career was over.
As Bruschi underwent surgery and rehab, the Patriots went about their expected football business. Bill Andruzzi called in to a local sports radio station, angry that his brother couldn’t generate interest from the Patriots and had reluctantly signed with Cleveland instead. “If the Pats had offered him anything decent, he would have stayed,” his brother told the station.
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