Belichick and Brady

by Michael Holley

  Once the damage-control specialists and public-relations spin doctors were finished and the Facebook post had been deleted, the tone all around was respectful. But it was totally fraudulent, nothing close to the way it really was. The same was true of a few other things connected to the Patriots.

  Fans in New England were worried about a tight end, but they were concerned with the wrong one. A video of Gronk had surfaced in Baton Rouge during Super Bowl week. He was again shirtless, dancing freely even as a black cast restricted his left forearm. There was yet another video in Vegas, another shirtless occasion, and this time there were wrestling moves along with the dancing. A few weeks after the Ravens beat the 49ers in the Super Bowl, Gronk had his third forearm surgery in three months. This was to clean up an infection that was caught early, and it wasn’t expected to extend his recovery time. Gronk had accumulated thirty-nine touchdowns in thirty-eight regular-season games, but his prosperous social life always made news. He was frequently thought of and portrayed as a partying frat boy with no boundaries.

  “His arm is OK. His behavior is not. Gronkowski didn’t break any laws or any bones in Vegas. But his bare-chested shenanigans are growing old, even if he’s not,” Christopher Gasper wrote in the Globe. “He has a responsibility to the Patriots, to his teammates, and most importantly to himself to make sure he doesn’t do anything that could hinder or jeopardize what looks to be a Hall of Fame career.”

  If people only knew.

  Gronk was fine. It was the other tight end, Hernandez, who was unraveling. And it wasn’t new; it just hadn’t been revealed to the public yet. He’d likely been holding on to a heartbreaking secret for nearly eight months, and although it would remain hidden a few months longer, it would soon be exposed. He’d been socializing with several friends with criminal records and one of them, Alexander Bradley, had accused him of shooting him in the face after they argued in a car heading north of Miami. That was in February, when the cameras were on Gronk and his dancing. Gronk dancing topless was ice cream and cookies compared to this. Bradley lost his right eye, allegedly from the shooting, and filed a civil complaint specifying his multiple facial surgeries and current disabilities, due to the actions of Hernandez.

  In the past few months, Hernandez had also been spending time with the boyfriend of his fiancée’s sister. The man’s name was Odin Lloyd, and he was a semiprofessional football player for the Boston Bandits. He lived on a tough street, Fayston, in a tough Dorchester neighborhood. Lloyd didn’t have his own car, but he would sometimes drive ones either owned or rented by Hernandez. They’d hang out in Boston clubs and drive back to Hernandez’s safe house, in Franklin, Massachusetts. Or they’d hang out in Hernandez’s mansion, in the finished basement, where a long pool table with a Patriots logo on it sat. The reminder of his employer didn’t stop Hernandez from smoking marijuana a few feet from that table. He was still doing that, and doing it daily. He knew how to smoke and not get caught by NFL testing. Anyone who really knew him understood that the “failed a single drug test” story he tried to sell the public was high fiction. He was doing what he had to do to keep his real life from his Patriots life, and it was still working in March 2013. It wouldn’t be for long, though.

  In March, Wes Welker found that the market for his services wasn’t as strong as he expected it to be. The Patriots had once offered him $8 million per season, but he wasn’t drawing that type of interest in free agency. His market had changed, and the Patriots had changed course. They signed Danny Amendola of the Rams to replace Welker. That left Welker in one place, Denver, for two years and $6 million per season. He’d be one of the few receivers who could say he caught a bunch of passes from Tom Brady one season and Peyton Manning the next.

  Any type of criticism over Belichick’s personnel decisions came to a stop on Marathon Monday in Boston. The April day had begun normally, with the Red Sox game being played in the morning as the road race took over the city. But soon there were reports of a bombing on Boylston Street, the same street where championship teams had rolled through town in duck boats. There were three fatalities and hundreds of injuries.

  When it became clear that the terrorists were from Cambridge, two young men who had been described by some as prototypical “normal neighbors,” there was shock. How could people just down the street lead such depraved double lives like that? It was the question of the year; blind trust was becoming increasingly problematic.

  In May, incredibly, Gronk had his fifth surgery in fifteen months: four on his forearm and one on his ankle. He was scheduled for a sixth, in June, to repair a herniated disc. All of the procedures and rehab for them were going to lead to missed games at the start of the 2013 season. Yet with the definite absence of Welker and the possible absence of Gronk, Brady went on WEEI and tried to remain optimistic.

  “He’s dealing with his situation,” he said of Gronk. “I want him out there helping the team win. He’s been battling through a long time. His mental toughness and excitement and what he brings to the team are really unmatched. When he’s healthy, I’ll be excited to have him out there. It will be nice to see what our offense can be like when Aaron is out there, and Rob’s out there, and all the other guys that have been injured are out there and can contribute fully to the team.”

  Hernandez would never be out there again because the life he was accused of living, a secret one, finally enveloped his football career. Brady had asked his receivers to work out with him in California in April. Hernandez was there, but when he wasn’t catching passes, he was paying for guns. He went to a Bank of America in Hermosa Beach, California, and wired $15,000 to a man named Oscar Hernandez of Belle Glade, Florida. In turn, a few days later, the Florida man sent a rifle, a .22-caliber Jimenez pistol, and a Toyota Camry to Hernandez in Massachusetts. The car and guns would eventually become items of great interest for authorities who’d search Hernandez’s house.

  Bill Belichick allowed the Patriots to leave minicamp one day early, on June 13, a Thursday morning. Hernandez spoke with reporters about being ready for training camp and helping the team. But other things were on his mind for his long weekend. The night before and even earlier that morning, he had been texting with Ernest Wallace, a friend from Bristol who had a long criminal record, including numerous drug violations. Wallace was sixteen years older than Hernandez, but it was Hernandez who was giving orders.

  And give orders is exactly what he did after spending a Friday night and early Saturday morning with Odin Lloyd at a Theater District club called Rumor. On Sunday, Father’s Day, he urgently texted Wallace, who was in Connecticut. “Get ur ass up here.” Wallace, driving a Nissan Altima that was rented for him by Hernandez, arrived at Hernandez’s home a couple of hours later. He was joined by another friend from Bristol, Carlos Ortiz. Together they traveled to Dorchester to pick up Lloyd. He got in the Nissan after two a.m., and they headed back to North Attleboro.

  After three a.m., the car turned into an industrial park, one mile from Hernandez’s home. Lloyd texted his sister, Olivia. “U saw who I was with. NFL… Just so U know.” Hernandez had allegedly been agitated. He said he was having a hard time trusting people. There was speculation that Lloyd had information about the secret on Shawmut Avenue. It was Hernandez who would eventually be accused of targeting those Cape Verdean immigrants after the night at the club. The reason? They had accidentally bumped into him, causing his drink to spill. He felt that they didn’t apologize, and perhaps they were trying to test him.

  So it was Aaron Hernandez, star football player, who allegedly decided to leave the club, get in his Toyota 4Runner, and wait until two unsuspecting men got into their BMW. He saw them, ran a red light to catch up to them, and fired six shots. A week and a half later he went to training camp. A month after that he signed a new contract. And less than a year later, he was in an industrial park, one mile away from a $1.3 million mansion. One mile away from his fiancée and eight-month-old daughter, the family that was going to keep him from being “young and rec
kless Aaron.”

  There were five shots, authorities believe, from a .45 Glock. Hernandez, Wallace, and Ortiz returned to the player’s house, and Hernandez’s elaborate video system even captured him on camera holding a gun that appeared to be a Glock. Lloyd’s body was found by a teenage jogger later that evening. When Lloyd’s pockets were searched, keys to a rental car were found. They were in Hernandez’s name.

  It was over. When police knocked on his door late on June 17, he talked for a while and then said, “What’s with all the questions?” Unfortunately for him, they were just getting started.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SECOND-GUESSING

  A tanned Bill Belichick, familiar pencil tucked behind his right ear, stepped to the podium for the most difficult press conference of his career. It was hot outside, with the late July temperatures in the upper eighties, and the activity inside the room at Gillette Stadium made it even hotter. There were more reporters than normal, more cameras, more bright lights. All the Boston television stations went to live coverage, as did ESPN.

  Everyone was looking for the football coach to go beyond football. Everyone was looking for him to at least partially answer a question that tugged at millions of NFL fans and observers, but one that very few knew the answers to.

  How did we get here?

  How did it get to the point where, on July 24, 2013, the head coach of the New England Patriots was describing how an accused murderer was in this same building just over a month ago? According to the timeline put forth by prosecutors and investigators, Aaron Hernandez had killed two people and then gone to training camp a week and a half later. He had donated in the name of giving back to the community a month after that when, if the allegations were true, he had actually been a menace to the community. He had spent an entire season meeting and practicing, playing and traveling with men who had no idea how much of a danger he might have been to all of them. Was there any hint, any small detail about Hernandez that didn’t connect at the time, but now, with the benefit of hindsight, provided a clue of the types of things he did when he left the stadium?

  All around this room, people wondered. They wondered about Belichick, who drafted him, coached him, texted with him, and was even hugged by him a few times. Had he ever met Alexander Bradley, the godfather of Hernandez’s eight-month-old daughter? It was Bradley who said he could get Hernandez marijuana on demand; Bradley who, these days, considered himself a former Hernandez friend because, he alleged, Hernandez shot him in the face in February and then left him on the side of the road bleeding. There were many instances like that, when you put up a split screen and watched on one side the made-for-TV league fulfill the football calendar, preparing for the scouting combine, free agency, and the draft, while on the other side Hernandez allegedly orchestrated sociopathic actions in private.

  Did anyone in Foxboro recognize the faces that were now frequent images online and on the news? Did Belichick, Robert Kraft, or even a teammate recall seeing or meeting Ernest Wallace or Carlos Ortiz? The last time Belichick spoke to the media here, on June 13, he was announcing a day off for the players so they could start their summer vacations early. Aaron Hernandez’s mind wasn’t at rest, though. He texted Wallace that same morning, June 13, and said things were getting crazy. He was frantic, telling him that he needed clips, perhaps for ammunition, and CDs from a car, as soon as possible. He was restricted in minicamp because he was recovering from shoulder surgery. But it turned out football wasn’t preoccupying his life. There were no texts about the shoulder and taking it easy in his real life. He was on the go, to Boston clubs and Providence restaurants, to a Dorchester neighborhood to pick up Odin Lloyd and then to an industrial park in his own neighborhood to allegedly kill him.

  How in God’s name did we get here?

  Belichick stood in front of the room, occasionally shifting to the side as he read from a prepared statement he had written himself. It was a lot different from the internal writings he had done for football players. Now he was writing for and speaking to a national audience that was hanging on and parsing every word and intonation. He and the organization were on trial in a sense, because there had been lengthy blogs and debates around the region and country about what the Patriots should have known and could have done.

  “It’s a sad day,” he began. “It really is a sad day, on so many levels. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of the victim, and I extend my sympathy to everyone who has been impacted. A young man lost his life, and his family has suffered a tragic loss. There’s no way to understate that.”

  He looked down and sighed. It was quiet in the room.

  “When I was out of the country, I learned about the ongoing criminal investigation that involved one of our players, and I and other members of the organization were shocked and disappointed at what we had learned. Having someone in your organization that’s involved in a murder investigation is a terrible thing. After consultation with ownership, we acted swiftly and decisively.”

  He was referencing the release of Hernandez on June 27. He had certainly seen the footage by now, of Hernandez being led out of his house wearing black sneakers, red-and-black gym shorts, and a white T-shirt draped over his torso and his hands in cuffs. That morning, similar to others in the past week, there had been media members camped near Hernandez’s house. His teammate Deion Branch lived across the street and there was such a scene that Branch was advised not to come home. Just before nine a.m. on the twenty-seventh, two black sedans and a North Attleboro police car parked in Hernandez’s driveway. The cars emptied, and seven men went to the front of the house: one knocking on the door, one ringing the doorbell, two standing on the stairs, two standing on the sidewalk, and one near the driveway. When the door opened, all of them went in. They returned minutes later with Hernandez and escorted him purposefully past the hydrangea and into the backseat of the police car.

  Hours later, Hernandez was a former Patriot. One month after that, his former coach was in a room trying to explain, as appropriately as he could, that this was not normal for him, either. The Patriots had taken plenty of so-called character risks over the years in the draft and free agency, but no one ever thought they’d lose a gamble so spectacularly.

  “Robert and his family and I, since I got here in 2000, have always emphasized the need for our team and our players and our organization to represent the community the right way, on and off the field. We’ve worked very hard together over the past fourteen years to put together a winning team that is a pillar in the community, and I agree one hundred percent with that… Our players are generally highly motivated and gifted athletes. They come from very different backgrounds. They’ve met many challenges along the way and have done things to get here. Sometimes they’ve made bad or immature decisions but we try to look at every single situation on a case-by-case basis and try to do what’s best for the football team and what’s best for the franchise.

  “Most of those decisions have worked out, but some don’t. Overall, I’m proud of the hundreds of players that have come through this program but I’m personally disappointed and hurt in a situation like this.”

  Belichick spoke for a while, trying to explain scouting, evaluation, and determining a player’s football readiness. Not including Hernandez, he had drafted 123 players between the ages of twenty and twenty-three since taking over the Patriots, more choices with one team than any coach in the league. He thought he had a feel for them all, from the super high achievers to the fifty-fifty borderline types. Aaron Hernandez wasn’t the first kid he’d drafted who smoked marijuana and messed around with guns. Some at-risk young men he’d come across had responded to his direct messaging: “You can’t come here and do all that shit anymore, understand?” Others never got it and therefore didn’t make it.

  There were scores of others, he wanted the crowd to realize, who didn’t need a push. He had drafted a cancer survivor one year; an author in another season; the son of a Hall of Fame offensive lineman (who became
a Pro Bowler himself) in yet another; a player who passed up a $250,000 workout bonus so he could study in the summer and get his college degree; a rugby player who wanted to try football; a cowboy who was tougher than the ones in Westerns—a guy who had played an entire season on a torn ACL. Not to mention the players acquired via trades, free agency, and waivers.

  But this room of media members was reflective of the viewing audience, which was representative of the society at large. There were many with a thirst for something else. They wanted to know why he didn’t know. Why no private eyes? Why wasn’t there more aggressive vetting of the buddies? Why didn’t he see all the red flags in the blue body ink?

  The real answer made everyone uncomfortable: Sometimes you never know. If it hadn’t been for the death of Odin Lloyd, police officials may have never made the link between Hernandez and the double homicide in Boston’s South End. Robert Kraft said the entire Patriots organization was duped by Hernandez; a lot of people were. In a football sense, getting rid of his history was easy. The Patriots cut him and they offered to buy back Hernandez jerseys from all fans who had them. That was simply transactional. But there was another side to it, from all the people who interacted with him and never suspected a thing, even after the death of Lloyd.

  The day after the murder, Lloyd’s girlfriend, Shaneah Jenkins, got a phone call in the middle of the night. It was a Massachusetts state trooper, informing her of the tragedy. She immediately left Connecticut for Massachusetts, where she first visited Lloyd’s family in Dorchester. She then traveled to North Attleboro to see her sister, Shayanna. As she was grieving the loss, she began to pace from the living room to the dining room, where she saw Hernandez. He put his hand on her shoulder, rubbed it, and told her that he’d been through losing a loved one, too, and it gets better with time.