It was less than a month from the beginning of the season and football fans were live-tweeting quotes from a federal judge. There was the merger of football and the law on a daily basis, which led to everyone being a member of the debate team. Every word and mannerism of Judge Berman was parsed. Court dates became just as important as, if not more important than, preseason games. Both sides, from the lawyers to the fans on the street, routinely convinced themselves that they had an advantage.
Kessler was a rock star; Kessler was overmatched. Brady was being railroaded; Brady must have done something because those underlings wouldn’t lift a finger without his permission. The air came out of the football due to the ideal gas law; the air came out because The Deflator went into that bathroom with a needle and drew it out. The Patriots are great and other teams and fans are just jealous; the Patriots habitually cross the line, and other teams are sick of it. It was the dominant topic in New England, much more so than the Patriots themselves. They had won the Super Bowl six months earlier, but it didn’t feel that way. Their fans never got that victory-lap summer, that carefree, toes-up-at-the-beach summer that most champions and their observers enjoy. They didn’t know if they were going to unveil a Super Bowl banner on September 10, the night of the opener, or if that would be the evening that Brady’s burden—that four-game suspension—would begin.
When Brady walked out of court at five thirty p.m. on August 12, he got a preview of what was to come, regardless of Berman’s ruling. “Cheater, cheater…” he heard as he got into a car and was driven away. Patriots fans were with him every step of the way, for obvious reasons, but the nation wasn’t following New England’s summer reading schedule: twenty pages of Goodell’s appeal rejection, 243 pages of the Wells Report, and 457 pages of the appeal hearing transcript. It was far from J. K. Rowling and Stephen King. Who wanted to spend a summer like this? Besides, the average football fan, whether in media or in the break room, wasn’t using those documents to form an opinion. Most of them had their minds made up already.
On September 3, 2015, the day Judge Berman’s decision came down, it was worth noting that Brady had accumulated eleven wins while playing in the state of New Jersey against the Jets and Giants. That was cool, but this was better: He was now 1-0 in Manhattan, essentially playing a road game against the NFL, the biggest, baddest, and richest giant in North American sports. He had taken the league to court and had his suspension vacated.
New England reacted as if a war had been won. Television and radio stations interrupted programming with flashes of BREAKING NEWS. Fingers couldn’t move fast enough as tweets and retweets were being processed with Brady-themed expressions of joy. Gronk tweeted a picture of Brady celebrating a touchdown by riding on the back of the big tight end. He wrote, “Let’s go! This season to be one heck of another ride. #PatsNation.” Devin McCourty tweeted an applauding meme of NBA star Kevin Durant, who had delivered one of the most inspirational and emotional MVP speeches ever. The caption was Durant’s money line, delivered to his mother, “You the real MVP.” McCourty wrote, “Judge Berman U know what u are.” Brady jerseys and Brady-slogan shirts (FREE BRADY, DEFLATE THIS, and GOODELL SUCKS) could be seen all over the region. An elementary school principal, Mark Springer, learned the news and shared it on the PA system; his teachers, preparing lesson plans and classrooms, reacted with shouts and high fives. The latter was fitting, because the old elementary school script had been turned on its head: The bully had requested a three o’clock meeting by the bike rack, and this time he was the one who walked away with the bloody nose.
For now, no one was worried about the appeal immediately filed by the NFL. Sure, it was going to be heard, but not until after the season. There were also the words of the nation out there, the one with forty-four states and a negative view of the Patriots. They argued that the win was one of procedure, not a declaration of innocence. Commentators in New York, and even a couple in Boston, got it in their heads that Berman was somehow starstruck by Brady, and that’s why he ruled as he did.
Brady used his personal Facebook page to post a message that was celebratory and reflective.
The regular season starts tomorrow morning and I can’t wait to fully commit my energy and emotion to focus on the challenges of the 2015 NFL season. I want to thank my family, my friends, all of the fans, past and current players and my teammates for the support they have given me throughout this challenging experience. I also want to thank Judge Berman and his staff for their efforts to resolve this matter over the past five weeks. I am very grateful. My thanks also to the union’s legal team who has fought so hard right along with me.
While I am pleased to be eligible to play, I am sorry our league had to endure this. I don’t think it has been good for our sport—to a large degree, we have all lost. I am also sorry to anyone whose feelings I may have hurt as I have tried to work to resolve this situation. I love the NFL. It is a privilege to be a member of the NFL community and I will always try to do my best in representing my team and the league in a way that would make all members of this community proud.
I look forward to the competition on the playing field and I hope the attention of NFL fans can return to where it belongs—on the many great players and coaches who work so hard every week, and sacrifice so much, to make this game great. Most importantly, I look forward to representing the New England Patriots on Thursday night in our season opener. I hope to make all of our fans proud this year… and beyond!
His words were wiser than he could have imagined when he wrote them. There were going to be many conversations like the one his father, Tom Sr., had with San Francisco radio host Chip Franklin. Reacting to the big news of the day, Franklin told his KGO audience that he’d rather have out-of-football Tim Tebow over “Tom Brady, who is a cheater—a cheater and a bad sport and a big freaking baby.” He went on to say that Tebow is a winner and that Brady is a system quarterback who doesn’t have the commanding presence of Tebow. He was interrupted by a phone call from the quarterback’s namesake.
“You’re being silly,” the senior Brady said. When the host asked him whom he would rather have, Tebow or his son, he replied, “That’s a stupid question. But more important than being stupid on that point is the prior point you just made about Tom Brady telling the ball boys to put a pin in the ball. You have no evidence… you are full of crap.”
The elder Brady had a couple of things in his favor on this call. He was incensed, perfect for talk radio, and he understandably was well versed in the facts. While readership of the Wells Report was high in Boston, it certainly was not in San Francisco. Brady made a reference to the host’s deficiency as he answered a question about why the quarterback disposed of his phone. “If you read the Wells Report, which you probably didn’t, Wells said that Brady cooperated one hundred percent. The second thing that the Wells Report said was, ‘We don’t need your phone.’ If you don’t need somebody’s phone, what the heck do you care what happens to the phone?”
The tense conversation lasted for just a few minutes, but it lasted long enough for some cutting and honest commentary from the senior Brady. When Franklin began to say that he was merely offering analysis based on the “facts” from the NFL, Brady interrupted, “Wait a sec, wait a sec. Is that the same facts that Chris Mortensen put out, that all the balls were underinflated by two pounds? It’s all lies. It’s all ESPN. It’s all NFL propaganda. Don’t you get it? The only person who has testified under oath in this is Tom Brady. We know that Goodell has lied. He lied in the Ray Rice case. He lied in this case. He lied in the Peterson case. How many times do you need to know that this guy is a flaming liar?”
The exchange was coming to a close, and Brady had one more piece of advice for the host: “If you’re going to be on the radio, know the facts.” The NFL, the most powerful sports brand on its continent, had the resources and the operatives to create its own facts. How many Franklins were out there on the radio, reciting the league’s version of the Brady Chronicles, without a
Tom Brady Sr. to edit and check them?
One week after Judge Berman’s ruling, the Steelers were in Foxboro and Goodell was not. The 2014 championship banner was unfurled and the sellout crowd could finally let go after an entire offseason of holding its breath. At times they sarcastically chanted for the commissioner, who has a summer home in Maine. “Where is Roger?” they teased as they reveled in the return of Brady. Pittsburgh would have to be the first team to pay for the stressful offseason and the contentious NFL leadership. So much for Brady and the preoccupations of his training camp. He completed twenty-five of thirty-two passes for 288 yards and four touchdowns. He looked the same, and so did the Patriots. They won again, 28–21. Once again, they also had to defend themselves postgame.
Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin revealed in his press conference that at times his headset wasn’t functional. When he expected to hear his coaches, he instead heard a familiar accent saying pro-Patriot things. Former Patriots quarterback Scott Zolak, who grew up twenty miles from Pittsburgh, was now a New England analyst on the Patriots’ flagship radio station, WBZ-FM. The signals got crossed and Tomlin could hear the high-strung “Zo” and his Pittsburghese, talking about the prowess of Brady.
It was strange. Tomlin was asked postgame if his headset went out. “That’s always the case,” he answered. A reporter sought clarification and wanted to know if that was always the case at Gillette Stadium. “Yes,” the coach replied. He was asked exactly what happened and he said, “We were listening to the Patriots’ radio broadcast for the majority of the first half on our headsets.” The implication was that the Patriots did this to them, although the league pointed out that it was in control of the headsets. The problem was due to an electrical issue, made worse by the weather.
Living as a perpetual suspect. That’s what it meant to be a Patriot in 2015. Tomlin’s complaint had a way of bringing everyone back to the street penalties of a scandal. The NFL’s accounting department had already logged the $1 million air-pressure fine, and those 2016 and 2017 draft picks had evaporated into a computer program. Within weeks, Jim McNally and John Jastremski would be allowed to return to Foxboro and work for the team again, albeit with different job titles. But on the ground level, there was something folks were always trying to pin on you. There were always logic-defying tales from the underground, untold stories, conspiracies, plots.
It wasn’t just Tomlin. ESPN and Sports Illustrated had both published stories about the illicit ways of the Patriots. They talked about videotaping, but also mentioned interns who were instructed to sweep trash cans and locker rooms for opponents’ scouting reports and game plans. One story suggested that the Patriots offered warm sports drinks. Another one said that the stiffness and overzealousness of the air-pressure penalty was due to a leaguewide view that the Patriots had skated too easily with Spygate. For fans who tried to understand how a team could be so competitive year in and out, they’d believe anything. Why not? If the Patriots would take the time to train their cameras on other coaches… perhaps… possibly… maybe…
Just one game into the season, an unprompted Belichick used a conference call to defend his system, past, present, and near future. He had turned sixty-three in the spring, and his statement years earlier was that he wouldn’t be coaching pro football well into his seventies. He was still at the top of his game, and so was Brady. The assumption a decade ago was that maybe burnout would get to the coach and age would slow down the quarterback. But those maladies weren’t wearing on either of them. The innuendo and tragicomic investigations were burdensome.
“I just think overall it’s kind of sad, really, to see some stories written that obviously have an agenda to them with misinformation and anonymous-type comments. Writing about warm drinks and trash cans, stuff like that, it’s just, I think it’s a sad commentary. It’s gone to a pretty low level; it’s sunk pretty deep.”
Ten years ago, he wasn’t always willing to look back. There was so much work to be done and a feeling that so much more could be accomplished. They had won three out of the previous four championships and all aspects of the organization were healthy. The quarterback was in his prime, the franchise vaults were lined with extra draft picks, and the same word could be used for the salary cap and the reputation of the Patriots: clean.
For the current Patriots, games just aren’t questioned; plays, legal plays, are questioned. Belichick watched the Titans and Lions run offensive sets with unusual formations, to varying results. He and Josh McDaniels studied it, tweaked it to their needs, and brought it out for the play-off win over the Ravens. John Harbaugh claimed that no one in the league had done it before, although it happened twice already that season. The league apparently believed him and the rule was changed in the offseason.
Change is inevitable and necessary. Sometimes it is also messy and infuriating. On this day, Belichick doesn’t mind looking back and thinking of some of those men who kept making those great plays, seemingly on demand. All of the guys who came in early to the meetings and took notes. The guys who refused to be idle during down moments in practice. There were so many great professionals, too many to name.
“This organization has won a lot of games, but particularly in reference to the great teams from ’01, ’03, ’04, back in there, and all the great players that played on those teams, to take away from what those guys accomplished, what those teams accomplished, how good they were, how many great players we had, how well they played in big games, how they consistently showed up and made big plays, game-winning plays, it’s just not right. I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth on it, but that’s how I feel about it.”
A lot of those guys are still applying the lessons that they learned from one another and Belichick, bringing their football concepts to the mainstream American workforce. In Indianapolis, former linebacker Rosevelt Colvin runs a UPS store. He hears himself being Patriot-like when he manages people and makes hiring decisions. His typical interview questions make it clear what he’s looking for: Do you have transportation? Does your voice mail work? Are you a drama person? If you wake up at nine and the store opens at nine, what’s the first thing you do? If you take a shower, we open thirty minutes late; come right in and we’re only ten minutes behind.
All over the country, Ty Law is running Launch, his trampoline-experience business, like an NFL team. When he played, he noticed that fans didn’t just like football. They liked the pre- and postgame traditions, the smell of burgers and chicken during tailgates, Frisbees and cornhole in the parking lot three hours before kickoff. He designed Launch the same way. “It ain’t just the jumping,” he says. “You’ve got to have a certain energy, a certain experience. The jumping is just a by-product.” After many battles with Belichick over contracts, Law is the economist now. He and Magic Johnson sat down for hours discussing business principles. Now Law frequently goes to his phone for the app that provides up-to-the-second financial reports from his ten Launch locations in Massachusetts, Florida, Connecticut, and North Carolina.
Tedy Bruschi, Roman Phifer, Matt Cassel, and many others still keep in touch with a free-flowing and often irreverent group text. They can all comment on the familiar Patriot on TV, Bruschi. They probably have no idea how much preparation he puts into work with his new team, at ESPN. He has multiple TVs in his home office and spends half of the week watching and taking notes on every game in the league. He’s mastered the ESPN video system and sometimes helps new production assistants efficiently find film. He e-mails producers with segment ideas, complete with captions and graphics they can use.
Being a Patriot means that the lessons are always in you, even when you’ve been gone for a decade. Phifer still views the notebooks he kept and continues to be amazed by their depth and efficiency. A dozen years out of football, he still uses Belichick phrasing. “Bill always told us, ‘Know your personnel,’” he says. “You have to know when and why a change-of-pace running back is out there. What’s this tight end like to do? Know your personnel. I use it in e
verything. I can be talking to a friend of mine who’s complaining about a relationship. ‘Hey man, you’ve got to know your personnel…’”
If this season has a mission statement, Belichick has unintentionally defined it with his tribute to all the players who have provided a foundation for the 2015 Patriots. Every game is a defense of the system, today’s and yesterday’s. Every completed pass proof that Brady does it naturally.
Brady marched through the schedule, throwing touchdown passes and settling scores. There were those 28 points against the Steelers, followed by forty against the Bills, and 51 against the Jaguars. In an instant, 3-0. A squeezing of the Cowboys left them with 6 points and the Patriots with 30. The Colts, who started the air madness, were next in Indianapolis. Local bakeries had cakes with deflated football designs. There were re-creations of that night in Foxboro, when a conference championship game became an afterthought.
Many predicted that the Patriots would roll the Colts as they usually did. The Patriots did win, but there was nothing usual about it. The highlight of the night was a sloppily executed special-teams play in which the Colts tried to surprise the Patriots on fourth-and-three. If John Harbaugh wanted to see an illegal formation, this is what he was looking for: The Colts had nine players near the sideline and two, Colt Anderson and Griff Whalen, on the line of scrimmage. Whalen, a 195-pound receiver, was the center. Anderson, a 195-pound defensive back, was the quarterback. Several Patriots stood over the unprotected pair, almost daring them to run a play with no linemen and no chance to go anywhere. In one of the more bizarre decisions in NFL history, they did.
“What in the world?” Al Michaels wondered aloud to an NBC TV audience and his broadcast partner, Cris Collinsworth. “You tell me.”
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