Belichick and Brady

by Michael Holley

  There was a lot to look forward to and a few new names to learn. For that reason and others, many Globe readers probably glanced over a story on July 18. It was exactly the kind of article some sports fans skipped because they were using sports to escape the depressing tales of city life. It was sad, though: Two young men, twenty-nine and twenty-eight, from Boston’s strong and proud Cape Verdean community, had been killed in a drive-by shooting on Shawmut Avenue, near downtown. The initial speculation was that it was a gang-related shooting.

  But the young men, Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu, had no gang ties and no criminal records. They were friends who worked together at a cleaning company in Dorchester. They had left a club around two a.m., got into a car with three other friends—de Abreu was driving and Furtado was in the front passenger seat—and began making their way home. They were waiting to turn left onto Herald Street when a silver Toyota 4Runner with Rhode Island plates pulled up beside their black BMW. The driver of the 4Runner was angry and yelled, “Yo, what’s up now?” He then fired six gunshots into the car and sped off. The three friends in the backseat survived; Furtado and de Abreu were dead when police arrived at 2:32 a.m.

  “They were my employees, but they were also very good friends of mine, like brothers,” said their boss, Jose Centeio. “This is a mystery, why anyone would want to kill two people who never bothered anyone. They had no issues with anyone, and I’m sure of that, because I spent a lot of time with them.”

  No one in New England would have presumed that a player at Gillette Stadium might have known exactly what happened that night on Shawmut Avenue. Reporters wanted to talk about Gronk and his celebrity offseason. He and Matt Light had angered some fans by dancing, happy and shirtless, after the Super Bowl loss to the Giants. Next, Gronk was in a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial; hung out at the ESPYs; had a nude photo shoot with ESPN magazine; and met with the Kardashians about the possibility of a Gronk family reality show.

  Hernandez was asked about his summer, compared to Gronk’s.

  “I just chill,” he answered. “I don’t pay attention to all that stuff, but I’m sure he was having fun. I definitely get laughs when people tell me about some stuff, but I’m more laid back, chilled and relaxing.”

  One month later, with camp over and great anticipation for the season, the Patriots had an announcement: Hernandez had agreed to a new contract. It was for seven years and $41.1 million. He was assured of at least $16 million in guarantees and he received a $12.5 million signing bonus. In a single offseason, the Patriots had ensured that the Gronk-Hernandez combination would be together until at least 2018. One of the first things Hernandez did with his money was donate $50,000 to the Myra H. Kraft Giving Back Fund.

  “Now, I’m able to basically have a good chance to be set for life and have a good life and I have a daughter on the way, and I have a family that I love,” Hernandez said. He was emotional as he talked about the Patriot Way and how Robert Kraft had changed his life. He said he was moved by the contract because it was Kraft’s way of saying that he trusted Hernandez’s character and decision-making skills. He seemed amazed by the opportunities that the contract afforded him and his family.

  “It’s just knowing that they’re going to be okay, because I was happy playing for $250,000, $400,000. But knowing that my kids and my family will be able to have a good life, go to college, it’s just an honor that he did that for me. He gave me this opportunity. So the $50,000 to help his foundation, obviously it’s basically saying thank you.”

  It didn’t take long for Gronk and Hernandez to make the Patriots look wise for their investment. In the first game of the season, at Tennessee, both tight ends caught six balls and both had touchdowns. There had been chatter about Welker’s role being reduced, and the Titans game seemed to suggest it was more than a rumor. Welker had just fourteen receiving yards in the game, on three receptions. Other than that, as well as a bloody nose from Brady and some questionable calls by the replacement officials (the regulars were being locked out), there wasn’t a lot of negative news to report.

  In less than a year, Wes Welker had watched the Patriots sign linebacker Jerod Mayo, Gronk, and Hernandez to significant contract extensions. As they were being extended, he was being reduced, on and off the field. Welker indicated that the team had initially made him a two-year offer worth $16 million and then changed it. Later, he backtracked from the story, but something wasn’t adding up. He wasn’t the biggest contract priority, and he was on his way to being a secondary on-field priority before an injury changed things.

  Early in game two, an uncommon home loss to the Cardinals, receiver Julian Edelman caught a short pass from Brady, with Hernandez blocking to Edelman’s left. When Edelman was tackled, his momentum carried him toward Hernandez’s right ankle, and the receiver landed hard on it. Hernandez immediately grabbed the ankle as he rolled on the ground. This didn’t look good. He was going to be out for a while. With Hernandez injured, Welker’s importance increased again. He was able to accomplish a milestone, too, in the game. He caught five balls, which gave him 562 catches as a Patriot, the most in franchise history.

  Three games later, with Hernandez still missing with the severe ankle sprain, the Patriots hosted the Broncos at Gillette. Denver’s new quarterback was Peyton Manning, who had been cut by the Colts following his spinal fusion surgery and season away from football. Indianapolis was now led by rookie Andrew Luck, while the Broncos expected Manning’s record-setting right arm to get them to the Super Bowl. Although the game was hyped as the thirteenth Brady-Manning matchup, the star of the afternoon was Welker.

  He looked like the same Wes, grabbing thirteen balls for 104 yards and a touchdown in a 31–21 win. He stayed on the field after the game to do a “talkback” interview on Comcast SportsNet with host Michael Felger and a familiar analyst duo, Troy Brown and Ty Law. Asked about his big game, in light of his diminished role at the beginning of the season, Welker said it was enjoyable. “It’s definitely nice to stick it in Bill’s face once in a while, so this is a good one.” All four of them laughed, and all four of them realized just how true the statement was. A couple of days later, predictably, Welker said, “I don’t know what else to say about it; it was a joke. But Bill and I, whether y’all believe it or not, have a good relationship. It was a joke, and I’ll make sure to keep that in-house going forward.”

  The lack of a contract, the reduced offer, and then the reduced role had led to the “joke,” so it had history and heat attached to it. And Belichick didn’t think it was funny. The next week, in Seattle, it was Brady’s turn to be the object of someone’s humor. Hernandez returned, for the first time in a month, and had a touchdown. But the Patriots couldn’t hold a 13-point fourth quarter lead and wasted a 395-yard passing day from Brady. They lost 24–23. A second-year cornerback, Richard Sherman, intercepted Brady and then badgered the dejected quarterback as he walked off the field at the end of the game. Later, he posted the picture on Twitter with the caption “U Mad Bro!”

  Brady was mad, and it had nothing to do with Sherman. The Patriots were 3-3 and inconsistent. They were able to slip by the Jets the next week in overtime. The Gronk-Hernandez offense was back again, with the tight ends combining for eleven catches, 132 yards, and two touchdowns. It was back, and then it was gone. Hernandez played those two games against the Seahawks and Jets, but his ankle wasn’t responding the way it should have. He was going to miss the next few games and, if all went well, he’d be back in a month.

  The Patriots didn’t need Hernandez on November 18 against their old rival, the Colts, and their new quarterback, Luck. A strong passer and runner, Luck was able to do some breathtaking things on the field. But he was mistake prone, throwing three interceptions in this game, and the Patriots took advantage. It seemed that they could score whenever they needed to, but they stopped just short of 60 in a huge 59–24 win. Although Gronk had one of those Gronk games, eleven catches and two touchdowns, that wasn’t what drew postgame interest.
<
br />   Late in the game, on the Patriots’ final extra point, Gronk went to block his man, former teammate Sergio Brown. His left forearm seemed to collapse on the spot. Fluke injury. His arm was limp, and he went to talk with Dr. Thomas Gill, a man whose name was going to be in the news a lot in the next several weeks. The forearm was broken. The biggest question of all was for Belichick, who had a starter on special teams. The head coach always did that, and it wasn’t often that it warranted attention. But Gronk had been hurt on a meaningless play in a meaningless point in a blowout. People wanted to know, why was he even there? On his weekly Boston radio segment on WEEI, Belichick tried to answer.

  “You only have so many players. You only dress so many players. Somebody’s got to play. I think you’ve got to be careful when you’re trying to run a team, to go up to one guy and say, ‘Michael, we’re going to leave you in the game because we care about you, but Glenn, we’re going to take you out because you’re really important. You other guys go in there because if something happens to you, we don’t really care’… I think football players play football. I don’t know how… you tell me which guy is going to get hurt and I’ll get him out of there. I don’t know how you do that.”

  Fortunately for the Patriots, they had a few things in their favor. It was November, which still left time for Gronk to return, at least for the play-offs. They were losing Gronk, yes, but Hernandez was returning. Ten games into the season, the two tight ends had played together for just three full games. Most important, there was a clear path to a home play-off game, if not a first-round bye, because the division was more mediocre than usual. The Jets were without Darrelle Revis, who was out for the season with a torn ACL. After two seasons when it seemed that Rex Ryan and the Jets would be a difficult matchup for the Patriots, the Jets were average in 2011 and even worse in 2012.

  The Patriots got a big win over the Jets in the first post-Gronk game, 49–19, and the American sports fan got a win, too. One of the silliest plays in football history occurred in the first quarter, with the Jets already trailing 14–0. Quarterback Mark Sanchez went to run on a busted play, and as he carried the ball, it popped free after hitting the backside of his own guard, Brandon Moore. In soccer, it would have been an own goal. In football, this was being called the butt fumble.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life!” Cris Collinsworth exclaimed on NBC.

  The fumble was scooped by Patriots safety Steve Gregory and returned for a touchdown. The Patriots were 8-3 after the win and the Jets were 4-7. The next week, in Miami, New England won the division, the tenth division title for Belichick and Brady.

  There was a win at home the next week, against Houston, and Hernandez looked like the player he had been last season. He caught eight passes and scored twice in an easy 42–14 win over the Texans. Other than his ankle issues, he didn’t indicate that anything was bothering him. He had mentioned in the summer that he was expecting a daughter, and she had arrived in style one month earlier, on November 6, her father’s twenty-third birthday. Hernandez and his fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins, named the child Avielle. When his teammates heard the news, they overwhelmed him with hugs, smiles, and slaps on the back. Brady talked about Hernandez during his press conference and said he thought the tight end would be a “great dad.”

  It was interesting that Hernandez always seemed to be on the verge of saying something else when he talked about the humbling moments in his life. Without prompting, he frequently talked about “bad decisions” and “having someone to talk to” and “doing the right thing.” On first listen, they were just clichés. But he wasn’t reciting them like many athletes do when they want to get out of an interview as quickly as possible. He was speaking from a deep place, yet with a filter. The word that stood out, distinctly, when he talked about his life now was “reckless.”

  “Best birthday gift you could have, having a daughter on your birthday and especially Daddy’s little girl,” he said a couple of days after Avielle’s birth. “It’s an honor, and I couldn’t ask for my life to be better at this point. My life is pretty good, and thank God for that, and it’s a blessing; I still feel blessed daily. It definitely changed my life and I’m going to look at things differently. I’m engaged now, I have a baby, and it’s just going to make me think of life a lot differently and doing things the right way. I can’t just be ‘young and reckless Aaron’ no more.”

  Before the Patriots’ next game, December 16 against the 49ers, there was a moment of silence on the field. Many people watching the game on television missed a large part of it due to coverage of President Obama speaking at a memorial service in Newtown, Connecticut. There had been a mass shooting there two days earlier, and the nation was still trying to comprehend how and why it happened. “No single law, no set of laws, can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society,” the president said. “But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this.”

  In addition to the moment of silence, the Patriots wore a decal on the back of their silver helmets. The Associated Press carried a powerful photograph of the Newtown logo on the back of Hernandez’s helmet. To the left of the blue “81” was a black ribbon with “Newtown” written above it. The site of the tragedy was thirty miles from Hernandez’s hometown. It was hard to think about football, and the 34–31 loss to the 49ers didn’t elicit much criticism from anyone.

  Heading into the new year, after a 12-4 close to the regular season, there was optimism with the Patriots. Gronk had played briefly in the regular-season finale to test his arm. A plate had been inserted, and he felt fine. He’d have two weeks to rest it before the first play-off game at home, against the Texans. Finally, there would be a chance for the young tight ends to play together, healthy, for the first time since September. As for Welker, for all the conversation about his evolving role, it settled into the same as it always was. He may have said he was joking about sticking it in Belichick’s face, but he was going to have a chance to do that in free agency. He followed his 122-catch 2011 season with 118 catches in 2012. Someone was going to be willing to pay for that kind of production.

  There wasn’t a lot to worry about pregame with the Texans. The Patriots had handled them in December, without Gronk, and they were likely to crush them this time with him. Eight plays into the game, though, there was a problem. A season-ending and season-changing problem. Brady went deep for Gronk down the right sideline, and in the tight end’s effort to catch the ball, he landed on his left arm. He had been positioned in such a way that when he fell, the point of impact was at the top of the surgically inserted plate. The arm was broken, again, in a different place.

  The win over the Texans was secure, and the Patriots were headed to the conference championship game for the second year in a row. It was a great accomplishment, but everyone had seen enough of the Gronk-Hernandez program to understand how good things could be when those two were together, and how problematic the Patriots offense could be without them.

  Belichick was asked about Gronk, the tight end’s health, and the decision-making of the team’s medical staff after the game. He wasn’t in the mood for any of the questions.

  Was Gronk 100 percent when he went out there or was there a chance he wasn’t completely healed?

  “I covered that yesterday,” he replied. “He was cleared medically. I don’t have anything to add to it.”

  He was asked if putting Gronk out there was riskier, given the presence of the plate.

  “I have nothing to add to it,” he said.

  He knew he was being pushed for more, and the questioners knew it, too. He knew it was game-changing, and so did the reporters, but he wasn’t going to give them what they were looking for. They would have continued to ask if he had wanted to play the game, but he reached the point where he didn’t want to dance any longer. He became annoyed when a reporter tried to use the side door with the questioning, asking about the evaluation process, in general, when trying
to discern if an injured player is ready. The head coach spoke slowly and condescendingly this time.

  “I [pause] have [pause] nothing [pause] to [pause] add [pause] to [pause] it.”

  The conversation was finished, but the topic wasn’t. The Ravens were coming back to town, but this time they believed they were on a mission. Ray Lewis, their Hall of Fame linebacker, had announced before the play-offs that this would be his final season.

  After a competitive first half, which ended with the Patriots leading 13–7, the game fell apart on New England. It was still just 14–13 at the end of the third quarter. But one play into the fourth, Anquan Boldin caught a three-yard touchdown pass and yelled loud enough for the entire stadium to hear him. This was personal for Baltimore. It wasn’t just because they wanted to win for Ray. They thought they had been the better team last season when the Patriots beat them by a field goal.

  Following the Boldin score, the Patriots’ villain, Bernard Pollard, struck again. The safety was flat-out bad luck for anyone in a Patriots jersey. When he was nearby, the doctors had to be on alert. Running back Stevan Ridley tried to make a move in the open field and lowered his helmet to take on Pollard. The safety lowered his helmet, too, and it resulted in a nasty collision and a Ridley fumble. It didn’t take long for quarterback Joe Flacco to find Boldin, again, and it suddenly wasn’t much of a game. The Ravens won 28–13. They were going to the Super Bowl in New Orleans. And if that wasn’t obvious enough, they did their own broadcast after the game.

  “Have fun at the Pro Bowl!” shouted linebacker Terrell Suggs. “These are the most arrogant pricks in the world, starting with Belichick on down. Tell them to have fun at the Pro Bowl. Arrogant pricks. That’s funny. Ever since Spygate, they can’t seem to get it done. I don’t know what it is.”

  It got even more inflamed when Welker’s wife, Anna Burns, posted to Facebook after the game, “Proud of my husband and the Pats. By the way, if anyone is bored, please go to Ray Lewis’ Wikipedia page. 6 kids 4 wives. Acquitted for murder. Paid a family off. Yay. What a hall of fame player! A true role model!”