Belichick and Brady

by Michael Holley

  Vrabel was opinionated, and he was also a player representative. He and others in the league knew what Goodell and the owners had in mind. They wanted a new collective bargaining agreement where they could significantly reduce the players’ portion of revenue, which was at 60 percent. If that reduction didn’t come, there would likely be a lockout following the 2010 season.

  “They raise the ticket prices twenty-five percent, but the salaries don’t go up twenty-five percent. Nobody gave Tom Brady a twenty-five-percent raise,” he told Ron Borges, now of the Herald. “The fans are paying twenty-five percent more to see the entertainers, but the entertainers aren’t being paid twenty-five percent more. That needs to be talked about. You look around at what they’ve built here. Every bit of it is tied to the team, but none of that revenue is included. I’m curious about how that goes. How’d this get built? Where did the revenue come from? The financing’s based on the value of the team and the ties to it, but they keep all that revenue.”

  The “here” he talked about was Patriot Place, an outdoor mall next to the stadium that included restaurants, a movie theater, a performance center, retail shops, and a hotel. His questions were valid, maybe valid enough to prepare the road for him out of town.

  As the regular season came to a close, the Patriots found themselves in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable position. They needed help from a former friend, Mangini, to get into the play-offs. The problem was that they hadn’t played well enough against potential play-off teams, and they didn’t own the tiebreaker in the East. So they faced the possibility of finishing 11-5 and missing the postseason, unless the Jets could beat the Dolphins. The Jets had been unreliable down the stretch, losing three of four, and with their quarterback, the erratic Brett Favre, it became four out of five.

  The Jets were out and so were the Patriots. The non-play-off seasons were viewed through completely different lenses. For Cassel and for Belichick, they were viewed optimistically. In New York, they were calamity. It had been two straight disappointing years for Mangini, who was fired.

  With Romeo Crennel also fired in Cleveland, it meant that Belichick’s two previous coordinators were out of work. He was still Belichick, though, and so two new names with Patriots connections became hot prospects on the job market. One was McDaniels, who had turned down interview chances after the 2007 season. He was ready now, and Cleveland and Denver were among those interested. The other name was Scott Pioli, the man who had slept on the couch in Belichick’s dorm when the coach was coordinating the Giants defense. Pioli had wanted to learn, and Belichick had allowed him to crash on the pullout so he wouldn’t have to make daily ninety-minute round-trip drives. Cleveland, where he started, wanted to talk. Kansas City wanted a sit-down as well.

  The Pioli-Belichick relationship was a rare model. It was proof of all the things Belichick could be, as well as what he never could or would be again. He’d been gracious enough to mentor a kid he barely knew. He’d watched him grow from a Browns scouting assistant who was making airport runs in the early 1990s to a Patriots vice president who sat next to him on the plane, talking strategy, in 2008. It was an inimitable tale. He and Pioli, technically, were colleagues. But they’d vacationed together, done silly weight-loss competitions together, argued over players, shared holiday dinners, had been uncle and godfather figures to each other’s children, confided in each other about the present and future, happily discussed football and family dreams.

  The present-day Belichick could never be as casual and open as he had been in the old days, even if he’d wanted to. He was a Hall of Fame coach now, a national celebrity. There could never be an organic mentorship like the one with Pioli. Also, frankly, the souring of the relationship with Eric Mangini had made him think of the pitfalls of giving so much. He’d be much more guarded going forward, so Pioli had seen the best of him and the last of him like this.

  Brady wasn’t used to being injured like he was now, but he knew the drill with coordinators and front office executives getting new opportunities. He’d seen it play out, over and over. He’d stay in touch with everyone, no matter where they went. When he gave updates on the status of his knee, and all the reports about infections and setbacks, he’d likely give them to a new coordinator and new vice president of personnel. He’d even have a new backup in the quarterbacks’ room.

  Every year, a few more people from the Super Bowl days in New Orleans moved on. Brady saw some of them traded, some departed in free agency, and some retired. McDaniels and Pioli got new jobs, McDaniels in Denver and Pioli in Kansas City. Their initials were on the foundation walls, too. “JM” and “SP.” Of course, some players from this team were leaving. You could always guess a few; the others, no matter how much you braced for it, were always a stinging surprise.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FRANCHISE SHIFTS

  There is usually a pencil tucked behind one of Bill Belichick’s ears, his constant reminder to be ready when an idea flutters and then suddenly drops. An insight about his franchise is always nearby. There is a coaching point for himself, an area of emphasis for an assistant, or an illustration for the players. The pencil is both symbolic and essential for what lies ahead in 2009. It’s time to restructure, rethink, and ultimately rewrite the franchise. Fortunately for him, he’s been a part of this process a couple of times already.

  Nearly twenty years earlier, in Cleveland, he had insisted on vivid language throughout the organization. He was serious about it. Details mattered. Words mattered. He wanted everyone to be precise in their descriptions of who a player was and what he could do, so precise that you could practically feel, touch, and see that player coming to life off the page.

  He and Mike Lombardi, his top personnel man at the time, had spent months on the writing of the new scouting manual. They were building something from scratch, so they were wise enough to be patient with the unknown. It was going to take a while to turn some core ideas into an articulated football world. They knew that intelligence, power, and versatility had to be part of their players’ profile, but that still wasn’t specific enough. By the time they started to figure it out, they got fired.

  In 2000, in New England, Belichick’s writing partners were Scott Pioli, Ernie Adams, and Bucko Kilroy. They wrote with clarity and power, accurately describing some of their championship players before they were even in the building. They wrote of their ideal defensive lineman: “He must be able to play with fast, strong hands. Two-gapping is not a passive catch and read technique. It involves knocking the offensive line back and establishing a new line of scrimmage. If the defensive tackle gets doubled, he can’t get moved back. He must be able to hold his ground and work laterally. He must be able to disengage and make plays.”

  One year later, they got that guy, Richard Seymour. He went beyond the description, actually. He was faster, stronger, bigger, and smarter than the prototype. He was far and away the number one player on their draft board, even though many fans had swooned instead for Michigan receiver David Terrell. But when Terrell’s career was ending four years later, Seymour was dominating through his third consecutive first team All-Pro season.

  For the most important position in football, Belichick and his writing team coveted the same general concepts that other franchises did. Of course they wanted a quarterback who was a leader, good decision-maker, and accurate passer. But even those traits can be subjective to scouts who are trying to give the boss what he wants. So the specific instruction was that the quarterback must “throw accurate passes that can be caught by our team. Pretty spirals don’t count if they land out of bounds, or even worse, if the defense can put their hands on the ball. The word ‘accurate’ means that if the ball is supposed to be thrown to the receiver’s right number, that is where the ball gets thrown. It does not get thrown to his left number.” As for his style around the team, their quarterback-on-paper would be held to a higher standard than everyone else. He’d be smart, a natural leader and tone-setter, a man who couldn’t be outworked or o
utstudied by anyone.

  That was their guy, too. Good fortune allowed them to be in position to select Tom Brady; their good writing allowed them to quickly appreciate what they had in him. He was a mold-breaker as well, showing an ability to ascend in his personal life—cover shoots, commercials, movie cameos—while maintaining genuine connections with his boys.

  It was no wonder that going into the 2009 season, the Patriots’ decade had included six division titles, four conference championships, and the three Super Bowl wins. They’d had two foundational players emerge from the pages of a football manual and leap firmly into the starting lineup. They were the capstones of the offense and defense, so any conversation about changes with them was naturally a conversation about changes with everyone. Many of the organization’s parts were movable, but these two weren’t.

  Some type of planning session needed to happen. Brady was coming off major knee surgery, and there had been delays in rehab due to a postsurgery infection. It was premature to think about his career being in jeopardy, and it also seemed unfair to expect him to be the same quarterback he was in 2007. He’d be in the same offense with a different coordinator in Bill O’Brien. As for Seymour, he was still playing at peak level. He was in the final year of his contract, and the team needed to pay him and defensive tackle Vince Wilfork.

  There was a lot to think and write about.

  Belichick’s insistence on writing what he wanted to see shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone. He and his father had combined their collection of football literature and put it on display at the Naval Academy. You spend that much time collecting and reading books, and a love for language and ideas is inevitable. In fact, Belichick’s habit of writing things down longhand and then later putting the information into a Word document was the same approach David Halberstam used throughout his career. The author conducted interviews with pen/pencil and paper and then made the transfer to the computer. It was as if it wasn’t real until it was first on a page.

  After Halberstam died in a car accident in the spring of 2007, several of his friends shared remembrances. Paul Simon said he didn’t have a “Ted Williams song” for Red Sox fan Halberstam, so he dedicated a tender version of “Mrs. Robinson.” John Lewis, the Georgia congressman and civil rights leader, talked about Halberstam’s compassion. Anna Quindlen marveled at his fearlessness and journalistic vision. In Boston, Belichick went on WEEI radio and spoke of him reverentially. He rattled off the names of a half-dozen Halberstam books and, in some cases, offered plot summaries.

  “He was a very vibrant man; a brilliant guy,” Belichick told the radio audience. “He had a great background in just about every area. It wasn’t just sports. It was politics. Religion. World affairs. People. You name it. He was a very interesting man who pulled a lot of different people together. He could carry on a conversation with pretty much anybody.”

  Only on the surface was it ironic that Belichick, usually a man of few public words, would find the appropriate ones in that situation. Pulling a lot of different people together and finding common strands was the essence of coaching; investigation, discovery, and problem-solving were staples of writing. Belichick literally was the writing coach as he set things in order for the upcoming season.

  He had to formalize his good-byes to Pioli and Josh McDaniels. Pioli had been at his right hand for nine years. He’d been next to him on the duck boats in downtown Boston, in the draft room when Seymour and Brady were selected, even on Nantucket in the summer.

  McDaniels, for eight years, had been the student who had accepted the professor’s critical red pens and cross-outs. He’d come a long way from the coaching assistant who was instructed to write out the play, of course, so he’d know the game better. His submitted work to Belichick used to be returned with dozens of sticky notes, pointing out misidentifications and other errors. Labels. Details. Specifics. He’d driven the importance of those to McDaniels, and the sticky notes became fewer and fewer. The young assistant not only learned to label better; he became a better thinker.

  Now they were off to Kansas City and Denver, and it wasn’t real until it was on paper.

  “To sum up in words everything Scott Pioli has meant to this organization and to me personally would be difficult, if not impossible,” Belichick wrote in a statement. “From the day I met him, he has demonstrated a passion for football and respect for the game that is second to none. It has been extremely gratifying for me to follow Scott’s career ascension from the bottom of the totem pole in Cleveland to his place as a pillar of championship teams in New England. Now, with the opportunity to steer his own ship and a vision of building a winner, there is no more capable, hardworking, loyal, team-oriented person than Scott Pioli.”

  For McDaniels, Belichick had authored a booklet of things to expect as a head coach. No first-time head coach, no matter his age, could grasp the breadth and scrutiny of the job. McDaniels, thirty-two, was no different. The book was private; the statement was for all to see and hear.

  “Josh McDaniels is one of the finest people and brightest, most talented coaches I have ever worked with. Since joining us eight years ago, Josh performed a variety of roles and excelled in every one of them. Between his work on defense, in scouting, player evaluation and coordinating the offense, Josh is a very well-rounded coach whose outstanding body of work speaks for itself.”

  It was now Bill O’Brien’s turn to shape the offense that McDaniels had inherited from Charlie Weis. He had refined and updated it so it reflected the evolution of Brady and the league. O’Brien’s mission was to keep adjusting the offense while finding out who the postinjury Brady was. It was Nick Caserio’s turn to help Belichick find the next seventh-round gem like Matt Cassel. Caserio would be the one supervising the search for the next free agent, like Mike Vrabel. The linebacker had fit so perfectly that it was hard to believe that he’d begun his career outside of New England.

  Late in the 2008 season, he had shared his disbelief of the owners’ claims that the collective bargaining agreement wasn’t a good deal for them. He specifically mentioned Robert Kraft and his outdoor mall, Patriot Place. He didn’t think it would have been possible without the performance of the players. Could Kraft have disagreed with Vrabel and still kept him on the team? Sure. But that was just a theory, because in March, Vrabel and Cassel were traded to Pioli’s Chiefs. Belichick gave the move the writing treatment that it deserved.

  “When Mike arrived in 2001, we knew we were adding a solid outside linebacker. But where Mike took it from there exceeded our highest hopes. Mike Vrabel epitomizes everything a coach could seek in a professional football player: toughness, intelligence, playmaking, leadership, versatility, and consistency at the highest level. Behind the scenes, Mike’s wit and personality is one of the things we have all enjoyed about coming to work every day. The toughest aspect of my job is the day I stop coaching people like Mike, who did everything in his power to contribute to team success.

  “Of all the players I have coached in my career, there is nobody I enjoyed working with more than Mike. In the same way people recognize guys like Troy Brown, we appreciate and thank Mike Vrabel. He is one of the very special Patriots champions.”

  It wasn’t a rebuild, not with Seymour and Brady still on the roster, but why did it feel that way? Why did it feel different? The Patriots had dealt with this drain before, several times. It was the parade after the parade, the exodus of various personnel off to see if they could make it away from home.

  The Patriots received a second-round pick, number thirty-four overall, in the Cassel-Vrabel trade. The selection was a reminder that although the Patriots were in transition, they weren’t too far away from their draft roots. As they had done several times in the past nine years, they took an asset and maximized it far beyond its original value. In a sense, they were draft flippers. Cassel had been the 230th overall pick in 2005. By 2009, the Patriots had moved pick 230 for pick 34, and it was all based on the 2008 performance of the twenty-seven-year-old
quarterback. It was a great financial move for him as well because he had entered 2008 making $520,000. As soon as he got to Kansas City, he signed a $63 million contract with $28 million guaranteed.

  At fifty-seven years old, Belichick was as energized and focused on the job as he had ever been. He wasn’t thinking of retirement, although the league was starting to look like the head table of a Belichick reunion dinner. His lieutenants were stationed all over the country. Thomas Dimitroff was the general manager in Atlanta. Pioli and McDaniels represented Kansas City and Denver. Mangini had replaced Crennel in Cleveland. Jason Licht had left for Philadelphia and Arizona, but was now back in New England. And there were a handful of college coaches he leaned on for insight on players and collegiate trends: Chip Kelly and Pat Hill on the West Coast, Kirk Ferentz in the Midwest, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer in the Southeast, and Greg Schiano in the Northeast.

  During the April draft, some clues about the 2009 season began to reveal themselves. The 2007 and 2008 drafts had been headlined by a safety and a linebacker. In 2009, Belichick traded out of the first round in exchange for extra picks now and next year. He wound up with four second-rounders: Oregon safety Patrick Chung, Boston College defensive tackle Ron Brace, Connecticut cornerback Darius Butler, and Houston offensive lineman Sebastian Vollmer. It was obvious that something was stirring on defense, and what it was became tangible in the summer.

  Before that, though, there was good news. Brady was back. He wore a huge, black brace on his left leg, and there were times when he seemed a step off during the early days of team activities. He had a rebuilt body and workout routine, courtesy of a trainer named Alex Guerrero. The two of them reworked Brady’s throwing program as well as his diet. Brady returned to the office, so to speak, and it was similar to when he left. Randy Moss and Wes Welker remained the primary receivers, and the Patriots had signed a potential third option in thirty-seven-year-old veteran Joey Galloway. He looked lost most of the time in the scheme, and it even seemed that a rookie seventh-rounder, Julian Edelman, was getting it quicker than he was.