Belichick and Brady

by Michael Holley

  Pash’s response to such pleading and warning, twenty-five minutes later, was laconic: “I want to acknowledge your note and Stacey’s note to Greg. I have seen the ESPN story. I have no reason to think it came from our office but I certainly do not condone leaks which I do not [sic] serve anyone’s interest.”

  They were having different conversations, at different levels of urgency, and that wasn’t going to change. Remarkably, the Patriots didn’t protest the biggest fundamental flaw in the investigation. On one hand, the league said Ted Wells was acting independently. On the other, the league said that Pash was the coleader of the investigation.

  Wells, as a solo investigator, most certainly had the ability to be objective; Wells, working along with Pash, was tethered to the league agenda, no matter what his intentions were. As one of the top attorneys in the country, he could easily poke holes in and destroy a similar setup if, for example, it was used in an attempt to undermine one of his clients. But there were too many intersecting layers here. Wells and the members of his team, Lorin Reisner and Brad Karp, had worked with and defended the league in the past in, as they cited on the Paul, Weiss website, “several litigation matters.”

  For the Patriots, it felt like something big was going to happen. Wells had requested the cell phones of many people he wanted to interview. When he asked for Brady’s and kicker Stephen Gostkowski’s, each told him no. Wells countered to Brady and his representative, Don Yee, that he didn’t need the phone, per se. What would suffice instead was any communication that was relevant to inflation or deflation of the ball. Brady and his representatives declined again. Wells didn’t say anything at the time, but he believed Brady was making a crucial mistake.

  Each week, at every corner, it seemed that the Patriots were in a brawl of some sort. The league hadn’t announced its ruling on the Patriots’ tampering charge against the Jets, but a contractual decision needed to be made on the principal involved.

  The Patriots had enough cap room to pick up Darrelle Revis’s sizable option, but it would change who they were as team-builders. They’d have to let three or four good players leave (which some fans supported) to hold on to one All-Pro player at those numbers. They declined his option and tried to make a deal that was more cap-friendly. But he got his ring, and now he was ready to be a Jet again. They gave him $39 million fully guaranteed in March.

  There was foreboding in the region in April. Where was that report from Wells and Pash? What was it going to say? Were the Patriots going to be cleared? Or would the NFL find that McNally had actually made an unusual bathroom break: stop in, take a smidgen of air out of a bag of footballs, and then walk out, all in ninety seconds?

  The latter scenario is what most people outside of New England believed. Some would support their argument by using that tweet from Mortensen, still uncorrected, that had reached its eighty-fourth consecutive day of posting on April 15. But if there was a day not to think about air pressure, it was that one. Early that morning, word began to spread that the jurors in the Aaron Hernandez murder case had reached a verdict. Even though the prosecution never produced a weapon or a motive, it put together such a compelling case that the defense, in closing arguments, admitted for the first time that Hernandez was at the scene of the crime on the June 2013 night that Odin Lloyd was murdered. The defense argued that Hernandez, then twenty-three, didn’t know what to do after witnessing his two friends, who were to be tried separately, commit the horrific act.

  At roughly 10:25 a.m. on the fifteenth, the jury agreed that they didn’t believe that version of events. They convicted the former Patriots tight end of first-degree murder. His sentence was a formality: life in prison without parole. He’d spent almost two years in custody, continuing to walk into court with confidence and nonchalance. He often joked with his attorneys, his fiancée, and court officials. There were times when he even chuckled when prosecution witnesses were testifying against him. That was his consistent behavior from the day of his arraignment in June 2013 to the moment he was convicted.

  As the verdict was read, his mother and his fiancée sobbed loudly as they hugged and rocked slowly back and forth. Hernandez shook his head, the first time that he displayed a sense of disbelief, and made eye contact with his fiancée and mother. “Be strong,” he said to them. “Be strong.”

  Nothing that the Patriots experienced could compare to the gravity of the Hernandez situation. Their issues were merely workplace grievances. But as trivial as they were when contrasted to the society at large, there was something bothersome about them. They were talking to an entity, their own league, that either wasn’t listening to them or listened and rejected every idea that they had. The major issues that had to be resolved were the findings of the report, which had begun nearly one hundred days earlier, and the status of the tampering charge against the Jets.

  Talking with the league was not enjoyable, though. The Patriots felt like a state abandoned by its own country. The NFL never said, Hey, you’re on your own. It didn’t have to for the feeling to be internalized.

  At least, a week after the verdict, there was the respite of going to the White House. For some. Even that trip turned into a controversy when Brady elected not to go and gave no reason for missing the trip with his team. Was he angry? Busy? Making a political statement? It wasn’t clear.

  The team carried on without him and seemed to enjoy the trip to the capital. Some players went to visit the veterans at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center before hanging out with a bunch of their fans in the House and Senate. With Bill Belichick standing to his right and Robert Kraft to his left, President Obama couldn’t resist letting the moment pass without mentioning the number one Patriots topic in America.

  “I usually tell a bunch of jokes at these events, but with the Patriots in town I was afraid that eleven out of twelve of them would fall flat.”

  There were groans. Kraft and Belichick tried to force smiles, while a few of the players actually did laugh. Sore subject. Much more sore than anyone knew because this was the point Glaser was trying to make in those private e-mails to Pash. The inaccurate story would never be referred to as inaccurate anymore because it had existed so long on its own without being straightened out. The Patriots knew this all too well. It’s why they still had to remind major outlets, such as ESPN, and reporters that, no, the Patriots never did tape a Rams walk-through in 2002. A Boston Herald article just said they did.

  “All right, all right,” the president said, “that whole story got blown a little bit out of proportion.”

  Puns all day long. Was this Wes Welker or Barack Obama?

  Eventually, the president got to the substance, saying that “Belichick and Brady is the most successful player-coach tandem, perhaps, in NFL history.” He even gave up the podium, creating a photo op for the ages: Belichick, in a suit and tie, behind a lectern that read SEAL OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

  Shortly after returning from Washington, the Patriots had to know that the league report was going to go harshly against them. This could no longer be considered paranoia or coincidence; every time members of the organization felt that they had a good case for something, the league either ignored them or shut them down. The NFL said nothing about the leaks. It said nothing about the incorrect PSI numbers. It didn’t engage in constructive e-mails. And now, the league ruling on whether the Jets tampered was insulting and unprecedented. The NFL agreed that the Jets tampered. The penalty: $100,000. Roger Goodell had spent years droning on about the shield and the integrity of the game. Now he was saying that a divisional rival broke the rules, got the player it wanted all along, and the punishment was just one hundred grand. So why the moralizing about air pressure in the balls?

  The previous two tampering cases, both on Goodell’s watch, had led to the offending teams losing fifth- and seventh-round picks as well as swapping draft positions, in the fifth and third rounds, respectively.

  Just when the Patriots were ready to shake their fists at the i
njustice of that, it dropped. The date was May 6, 2015. It was Wells’s report, all 243 pages of it. It had footnotes, it had a science section, it had a table of contents, and, most important, it had these phrases: “generally aware” and “more probable than not.”

  “For the reasons described in this Report, and after a comprehensive investigation, we have concluded that, in connection with the AFC Championship Game, it is more probable than not that New England Patriots personnel participated in violations of the Playing Rules and were involved in a deliberate effort to circumvent the rules,” Wells and his team wrote. “In particular, we have concluded that it is more probable than not that Jim McNally (the Officials Locker Room attendant for the Patriots) and John Jastremski (an equipment assistant for the Patriots) participated in a deliberate effort to release air from Patriots game balls after the balls were examined by the referee. Based on the evidence, it also is our view that it is more probable than not that Tom Brady (the quarterback for the Patriots) was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities of McNally and Jastremski involving the release of air from Patriots game balls.”

  The opinions were swift, and in some cases immediate. Hosts from both of Boston’s full-time sports radio stations picked through the report and read chunks of it live on the air. ESPN went to live coverage and got takeaways from its analysts. CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and NPR all had coverage. Twitter had Wells, the Patriots, Brady, and “more probable than not” all trending. It was a day that showed the power and weakness of the media. The power is that the news got out fast. The weakness is that no one had time to read it before being asked to comment on it. So there was some skimming and then incomplete concluding.

  Still, some of the arguments were fascinating. The Patriots slammed the report as “incomprehensible.” Don Yee, Brady’s agent, said that Wells and the league went into the investigation with its mind made up and that “there was no fairness in the Wells investigation whatsoever” and that the report was “a significant and terrible disappointment.” Wells, taking exception to the criticism of Yee and others about his work, held a conference call to address some of the point-by-point attacks.

  “I think it is wrong to criticize my independence just because you disagree with my findings,” he said. “I totally reject any suggestion that I was not independent or that the report was slanted in some way to reach a particular result.”

  He said Pash assisted as a facilitator and not much else in the process. That statement would be revisited and tested in several weeks. He also said that the Patriots cooperated with him except in one major area. He wanted another interview with “The Deflator,” McNally, who called himself that in a text to Jastremski in May 2014. The Patriots countered that they had made him available four times to Wells, and a fifth interview was just excessive. For those who didn’t read the report, the texts between McNally and Jastremski were all they needed to see. The dude called himself The Deflator. What else is there to say?

  The report was so divisive that it split a football family. At ESPN, analyst Damien Woody discussed the findings with analyst Tedy Bruschi. Both former Patriots. They practiced together. Traveled together. Essentially lived with each other for four years and won a pair of Super Bowls together. Now they sat across from each other, on TV, and had a tense back-and-forth over The Deflator and Brady.

  Woody: These guys handle the rock, handle the ball. So you mean to tell me that Tom Brady when it comes to these individuals working on the equipment staff, that he wouldn’t know who these guys are?

  Bruschi: This is what I believe. Tom Brady would not tell anyone to do anything illegal. That’s what I believe.

  Woody: And that’s fine.

  Both: We disagree.

  Bruschi: You think Tom Brady would tell someone to do something illegal?

  Woody: Yes!

  Bruschi: That’s fine. I do not believe that. I know Tom Brady. I know his integrity. I can vouch for him. I’ve spent a lot of time with him, all right? I vouch for this guy’s integrity, up and down, as long as you want me to do it. He would not ever tell anyone to implicate themselves or do something illegally that would circumvent the rules of competitive play. That’s not who he is. That’s the person that I know. And that’s what I believe.

  Woody: It wouldn’t be the first time that an athlete has been caught with his pants down in a situation like this. I respect Tom Brady just like you respect Tom Brady.

  Bruschi: You don’t respect him!

  Woody: Why is that? I do!

  Bruschi: You don’t respect him. You’re saying that he told these guys to break the rules.

  Woody: Okay, but that’s like the same thing as my kids in certain situations… They might tell me a story. That doesn’t mean I have less respect for them.

  Bruschi: Tom Brady had said that he did not tell them. In his press conference, post–AFC Championship Game, he said, “I had no knowledge of the situation.” In so many words. You don’t believe him.

  Woody: Right. I don’t. You do.

  Bruschi: A guy that you played with for years and won two Super Bowls with… and you don’t know him?

  Woody: I do know him. But that’s okay, though.

  Bruschi (his most animated now): Then you know him as someone who would say, who would tell someone, “Man, listen. Go break the rules. Deflate those balls after I’m done with them.”

  Woody: We’re talking about a competitor.

  Bruschi: Do you believe that?

  Woody: We’re talking about the ultimate competitor.

  Bruschi: You really believe he would do that?

  Woody: Why not? It happens… Everyone is always—

  Bruschi: My former teammate, my friend Tom Brady, would not do that.

  Woody: We’re talking—playing in a league where everybody is trying to look for the competitive edge. I’ve tried to look for the competitive edge. Everyone is always looking for the competitive edge to stay on top. Do rules get broken sometimes? Of course they do!

  The two of them had a host to moderate their discussion, but it was unnecessary. They not only represented themselves and their personal opinions; they staked flags for two of the most passionate camps that were arguing the details of this case nationally. Bruschi would be the overwhelming president of the New England states; Woody would have the rest of the country. Truly, it was The Nation versus Patriots Nation.

  In New England, though, the borders got tighter. The walls were fortified. For or against? You had to declare, early in the conversation. They mobilized in person and online. They monitored and quickly identified friends and foes. For example, Damien Woody, former Patriot who attended Boston College, was now an enemy for his comments on Brady.

  “I honestly felt like I was being excommunicated from the entire city of Boston,” Woody says now. “Throughout the whole thing, I used common sense and the smell test. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Tom. I love him. He’s the GOAT. Some people were like, ‘Damien must be bitter’ or ‘It didn’t end well with the Patriots.’

  “Look, I never thought that this was anything big. I was blown away by how big this thing got. ‘Defend the Wall!’ and all this other stuff. It’s not that serious. I felt the media was being irresponsible about it. Some of ESPN was irresponsible, too. I was asked a question about it and I gave an honest answer. I’m always willing to have a healthy conversation about it.”

  Real conversations were impossible to have once the league announced its penalties: the loss of a first-round pick in 2016, the loss of a fourth-round pick in 2017, a $1 million fine, and a four-game suspension for Brady. It was the biggest fine in league history. Wells said in his report that he found no fault with Robert Kraft, Belichick, or equipment manager Dave Schoenfeld. The penalty suggests the league believed otherwise. If the harshness was due to Spygate eight years earlier, the league is admitting that it is reprosecuting a violation that has already been paid for by the Patriots. Are they assumed to be guilty as long as Belichick is their co
ach and Kraft is their owner?

  The weekend before heading to San Francisco for the league’s spring meetings, Kraft talked with Sports Illustrated’s Peter King. The owner wouldn’t characterize his relationship with Goodell. He wouldn’t say whether he planned to sue the league. He wouldn’t get into the much-debated text messages of Jim McNally and John Jastremski or why they were suspended if the Patriots did nothing wrong. But it was clear that he was angry and considering his options.

  “I just get really worked up. To receive the harshest penalty in league history is just not fair. The anger and frustration with this process, to me, it wasn’t fair. If we’re giving all the power to the NFL and the office of the commissioner, this is something that can happen to all thirty-two teams. We need to have fair and balanced investigating and reporting. But in this report, every inference went against us… inferences from ambiguous, circumstantial evidence all went against us. That’s the thing that really bothers me.”

  It sounded like Kraft was ready to fight when he went to the Bay Area. Many of the people in his hometown certainly were. They were the ones who offered to buy him drinks in New Orleans in 2002. They slapped him on the back down on Bourbon Street, called him Bobby, ecstatic that their owner was one of them. He had sat on those aluminum benches at old Foxboro Stadium like they had. He knew the distance they had traveled, as Patriots fans, to even have a franchise for which to cheer.

  They didn’t have to hear that conversation with King to know exactly how he felt. They got it.

  So when he held a press conference saying that he would reluctantly accept the penalties…

  When he said he wanted the rhetoric to stop, and that the Patriots were one of thirty-two in this collective…

  He didn’t sound like one of them anymore.

  He sounded like one of them. As in the billionaires’ club. No one from Kraft’s old neighborhood, in Brookline, begrudged him for making money. They didn’t care about that as much as they did roots. Had he forgotten about them and decided to protect his influence and committee connections in the league? That had to be it. He and his attorneys had been fighting with the league since January. It was now May, and one thing should have been clear to this most successful businessman: The league was not reasonable when it came to the Patriots.