How do I know? Because I have worked for some of the great signal stealers in the game. I am not going to dime anyone out; I’m no rat. But trust me, it happens all the time. In fact, it happens so often that everyone in the NFL knows who the signal stealers are and makes sure to hide their calls when they play them. And as much as it happens in the NFL, it happens much more in the college game, where the absence of radio communication means they have to call plays from the sideline.
My point is that the Patriots push the envelope and leave no stone unturned to a degree that is unmatched in football. Just don’t confuse Belichick’s obsession with all-out preparation for cheating. It ain’t. And don’t get me started on Deflategate. That was not some sinister conspiracy. I’m not sure it was anything at all. What I do know is that no one in the building that I talked to—Belichick included—had any idea about any of it.
Belichick ends his final meeting with directions for each and every coach. He starts with special teams, urging O’Brien and his assistant, Joe Judge, to make a play before getting in a little dig that he gleaned from my research: In our last nine postseason games, our special teams took 10 penalties. We cannot continue to beat ourselves, Belichick says. No one disagrees.
He turns to McDaniels to let him know that he wants the offense to put our best groups out there early so that we start fast and play with the lead. Most teams have an offensive script that doles out when each contributor gets involved, and that script depends on game situation and management. Because Belichick wants that early lead, he wants almost nothing held back—not formations, not players, not core plays. Playing with the lead, he says, is crucial against Kubiak, because it forces him into more drop-back formations, which are not a strong suit of his schemes. In this mode Belichick comes across as a chess grandmaster who is playing out both sides of the board in his head at all times, not just his moves but everything his opponent might do to counter them.
Belichick continues down his list: He wants to check from run to pass, not just pass to run; he wants to support Solder, our offensive tackle, early in the game against Suggs with a chip-blocking running back; he wants everyone to be sure where the yardage sticks are on crucial downs and to be aware that the Ravens will be all over Gronk on first and second downs. He wants to make first downs on all second and shorts—to stay out of third downs; he wants McDaniels to remember that once he sees their defensive game plan, he will know their game plan (the Ravens don’t make many adjustments); he wants the offense to spread the Ravens out deep in our own territory.
Finally, he tells McDaniels the one play he does want to save for the second half: our unbalanced line play, or what has come in the last week to be known as the “Baltimore play.” “I don’t want them to have time to adjust,” Belichick explains, thinking that using it in the first half would preclude his coming back to it in the second because the Ravens would have halftime to study it.
As for the defense, Belichick emphasizes keeping the line fresh for the fourth quarter because he senses the game will come down to the final minutes, as so many of the past battles with the Ravens have. Belichick tells Patricia he wants to start the game with calls we’re familiar with to avoid early mistakes; he wants us playing clean, sharp, and fast. Plus, he’d rather get Kubiak to show his hand and then make the necessary adjustments before running more exotic calls. Belichick is still worried about cut blocks and wants to make sure the coaches in the skybox are paying close attention to how our defensive linemen are being handled. He reminds Patricia one more time to keep an eye on Campanaro and lets him know to expect more 11 personnel (one tight end, one back) from the Ravens on first down while warning about assuming they’re going to run the ball out of 12 personnel (one tight end, two backs). Belichick is pretty confident they will come out throwing regardless of the formation.
After encouraging everyone to keep his poise and focus and to forget about bad plays as soon as they happen, there is nothing more to do or say.
The planning is over.
It’s time to play.
SATURDAY: PREGAME
The team—even Brady—spends the night at the hotel, and the next morning Belichick addresses them before everyone heads to the stadium. He is no rah-rah Rockne type; his well-worn monotone never rises or betrays emotion. Think Dragnet’s Joe “just the facts, ma’am” Friday. Still, the players don’t know quite what to expect from this meeting, as Belichick never does the same thing twice. This time, Belichick shows the team a short tape of the season’s positive plays to reinforce the fact that when we focus and do things correctly, we are tough to beat. Everyone is feeling pretty good as he stresses one more time what we need to do to win.
He finishes with a short discourse about sticking together, handling the inevitable ups and downs of the game, and never giving in—just as Chris Kyle never gave in.
It’s not especially eloquent, but it’s remarkably prescient.
Meeting over, Belichick drives directly to the office to start his final preparation. He goes over the practice video once more on the off chance that something has escaped his notice. He is not looking to have a conversation; he values this alone time. We all know better than to break his quiet focus. Even when he brings the video to the weight room to watch during his pregame workout, he is left alone, a prizefighter before a championship bout.
* * *
—
His weatherman’s prediction is accurate; the shining sun is fighting a losing battle. Once night falls, it will be even worse, and that is bound to have an adverse effect on our home field advantage. It’s not that fans won’t show up—of course they will—it’s that they will all be bundled up in scarves and gloves, and that will deaden the noise in the stands.
After watching the first half of the Seahawks-Panthers game in my office, I’m pretty convinced that Seattle will be the NFC’s representative in the Super Bowl. The Seahawks lead at halftime 14–10, but I know from the scouting I did in the weeks leading up to the playoffs that they are a dominant fourth-quarter team, so an early deficit against them is hard to overcome. They just keep grinding until they wear you down. I see little hope for Carolina.
As I walk onto the field an hour and a half before kickoff, the stadium looks like a postcard. The sky is dark, but the moon is a lamppost. It’s a perfect night for football.
SATURDAY: GAME TIME
As is the norm when the Patriots win the coin toss, we defer, hoping for a dominant three and out to set the tone. But today, despite all the time, energy, and expertise we put into preparing for the Ravens, very little goes as planned. And that begins with the coin-toss tactic. Just as Belichick said they would, the Ravens come out firing. They throw on nearly every first down (another Belichick prediction) and score in just five plays. Before our fans have even settled into their seats, we’re down 7–0. So much for starting fast. We certainly didn’t game-plan for this.
To make matters worse, our offense starts slowly, too; after one first down, we’re forced to punt. We’ve been preparing for this game around the clock for a week, and five minutes in, the team has done nothing Belichick asked of it. But just as he preached at our staff meeting on Tuesday morning, Belichick shows no signs of panic. He’s as calm as can be on the headset. You’d think we were up three scores by the tenor of his voice. Maybe a little panic is in order, though, because on their next drive the Ravens march down the field again, in 11 plays this time, mixing the run and the pass, to go up 14–0. The stadium falls deathly silent.
Mike Tyson has a great line that he may or may not have borrowed from Joe Louis: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” That is exactly what has just happened to us. And that makes all the work we did to prepare exponentially more important. We have to stick with the plan. Our interior line holds the Ravens’ pass rushers at bay, and with time and space, Brady begins to chip away. Getting the ball to Gronk and others
, we answer quickly, scoring a touchdown from the 4-yard line with Brady running it in on third and short. Yes, Brady ran it in. Apparently, someone was listening to Belichick preach all week about the importance of converting on third downs in the red zone. (Gronk, by the way, will never come off the field and will end up with 108 yards receiving.) Later, after our defense steps up, Edelman has a 19-yard punt return that gives us good field position. (Our special teams play is tilting the field in our favor, and suddenly it makes sense that Belichick led off every meeting with that unit.) Now the game feels more like the one Belichick envisioned. Moving the ball down the field with his arm this time, Brady caps off the drive with a touchdown pass to Amendola to tie the score. With just under four minutes to go in the half, if we can stop the Ravens one more time, we can use the next two possessions—the last of this half and the first of the next half—to build a lead.
And then, wham! Another sock to the jaw.
Brady throws a rare interception, and you’ll never guess who the Ravens go to when they need a touchdown at the end of the half. Right, Daniels. Or, as Belichick referred to him all week, “fucking Daniels.” It’s as if the entire team slept through our week of game prep. We squander our first possession of the second half, too, and Baltimore scores again to take a 28–14 lead. If there was no panic before, that’s no longer the case. Now the headsets carry a definite urgency and maybe even a hint of fear.
From everybody but Belichick, that is. Instead, as the offense takes the field, the coach instructs McDaniels that it’s time to break out the Baltimore play. Belichick has a keen sense of timing, rhythm, and momentum, especially in bigger games, and he realizes that we no longer have the luxury of holding anything back. Of course, the mere fact that he has such a play in his pocket—like one of the gadgets in Batman’s utility belt or a “break glass in case of emergency” cabinet—is remarkable in and of itself. It’s as if he knew we’d need something like this to rattle the Ravens and shake us out of our deep freeze. (If I didn’t know better, I’d say Belichick enjoyed using our reputation for playing fast and loose with the rules to our advantage.) The unbalanced look completely baffles the Ravens, sending their staff into a wild frenzy. We gain 16 yards on the play—not bad, if less than we were looking for—but it delivers a secondary benefit: It sends the Ravens’ bench into a tailspin. The cheating Pats are DOING IT AGAIN! That’s how I interpret their body language, anyway. Across the field, head coach John Harbaugh is apoplectic, screaming and ranting at Vinovich. Apparently, he doesn’t know the NFL rule book and/or he missed the Alabama-LSU game.
Belichick sees how much the play has flustered Baltimore, so he decides to go for the jugular and double down. Run it again, he tells McDaniels. This time we flip the formation—this one’s called “Raven”—and the play gains 14 yards. But the impact is much greater. Harbaugh looks as though he might stroke out before getting called for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that moves us inside their 5-yard line. I’m pretty sure that’s what Belichick referred to during Wednesday’s film study as a “dumb fucking penalty.”
Two plays later, we score. It’s 28–21. My intimations of panic have dissipated. The crowd is going nuts. The Ravens are rattled.
Game on.
With our defensive linemen fighting off the Ravens’ cut blocks and our corners and safeties limiting Flacco’s chunk plays downfield, we get the ball back at our own 30. Over the headsets, I hear Belichick remind McDaniels about the double pass play. It works perfectly as Edelman heaves it to Amendola to tie the score. The Ravens are on the ropes, but Harbaugh doesn’t seem to get it. He’s still bitching about those unbalanced formations. It almost makes you feel sorry for him. Almost.
As the fourth quarter begins, Baltimore goes on a 15-play drive that brings them to a third and seven at our 7. This is clearly a “gotta have it” play. Every Patriot knows where the ball is going. We prepared for this moment, and now all we have to do is operationalize Belichick’s mantra. Practice execution becomes game reality. The coaches and Belichick are all yelling that we have to get Daniels. On cue, Flacco sends a pass toward his tight end—who is double covered. The ball sails over his head, and the Ravens have to settle for a field goal. Fun fact: The Ravens finish just 1 of 9 on third down while the Patriots convert on 6 of 11, and it proves to be the difference in the game.
Knowing we can take our first lead of the game, Brady marches us 74 yards, capping things off with a 23-yard touchdown pass to LaFell, bad toe and all. With the front of the pocket clean, Brady was repeatedly able to step up, avoid Suggs on the edge (he managed just half a sack in the game), and pass for 367 yards. Now, with slightly more than five minutes to play, Belichick and the staff urge the players to stay in the moment. Our defense is fresh, remembering Belichick’s instructions this morning to keep something in the tank for a late, desperate surge by the Ravens.
The final minutes of a playoff game are a now-or-never war—football at its best. The Ravens’ next drive involves all their receivers—including Campanaro, who makes a tough catch over the middle. Right before the two-minute warning, the Ravens are confronted with a fourth and three. When they break the huddle, Belichick “takes a Kodak”—a quick mental picture of the Ravens’ formation—to try to predict what they will run. But on this, the ultimate “gotta have it” play, we know what’s coming next: a pass to Daniels. We know it, but we just can’t stop it; the Ravens convert. We know not to take stupid penalties, too, but we jump offside anyway, gift-wrapping a second and five for the Ravens. But we also know this: When you’re in four-down territory, the best time to take a shot is on second down. And when Flacco does a poor job of looking off the safety, Duron Harmon intercepts the ball.
The pick seals the win. The Patriots become the first team in playoff history to overcome two 14-point deficits.
The game was a war. We took their best shots, stayed together, stuck to the plan, kept fighting, and turned my memo into memories.
8
WHILE I HAVE YOU
MY BIGGEST PET PEEVES
I’m not looking to be consistent; I am looking to be correct.
—AL DAVIS
Do you know what the most significant invention of the twenty-first century is? The mute button on the television remote. Bruce Springsteen was right when he sang that there were 57 channels and nothing on, because today I have my choice of more than 257 channels and, I swear, I’m still at a loss. Unless there’s football, of course. Thank goodness for the gridiron. I don’t care who’s playing or whether it’s college or pro, I just love to man my position as a professional armchair quarterback. When football is on the big screen, I’m constantly chirping to Millie—or, let’s be honest, to no one at all—that whoever I’m watching should do this or call that or try the other thing. It can be annoying, I’ll admit, but it keeps my instincts sharp. I watch some basketball, too, especially when former NBA coach Hubie Brown is the analyst. It’s as if he’s coaching both teams at all times. We’re kindred spirits. He watches his game the way I like to think I watch mine.
But you don’t have to sit with me long to realize that I get irritated quickly. Not with the game but with the way most commentators describe—or don’t describe—what’s happening on the field. That’s where the mute button comes in. I’m not blaming the men doing the talking—I know that’s a tough gig. It’s just that my training in the sport allows me to see things they don’t notice, and I can’t just turn it off. Ask Millie.
One of the big problems is that the analysts are almost all former players who are blinkered by the perspective of the position they played. They don’t see the whole field. It’s not their fault; it’s just their background and, to be fair, the nature of their sport. In baseball, players play offense and defense. In basketball, same thing. Football is way more specialized. You can go to positional meetings all week—heck, all year—and never have any idea of your team’s overall gam
e plan. When Hall of Fame Cleveland Browns tight end Ozzie Newsome retired and became a personnel man, he told me, “I have no idea what actually happens upstairs.” Why would he? During his playing career, he was focused only on his position responsibilities. (Ozzie sure was a quick study, though; within a decade he was hoisting the Lombardi Trophy with the Ravens.)
Football strategy may not be rocket science, but there is more to it than meets the eye. Fans critique a particular play call or coverage breakdown without having any idea of the broader narrative. What seems obvious to them is almost never what’s really taking place. What all you armchair quarterbacks need to do is turn the sound down and instead take your cues from the guys who may have a broader understanding of the game.
That’s where I come in.
Here are some of my pet peeves, common strategy mistakes that continue to spoil my weekends, along with an explanation of what’s actually going on. Each is sick-making enough in its own right; the fact that they occur again and again with a stunning lack of on-air critique just compounds my dyspepsia. I’d like to think some of what follows, should it be read by those with influence, will cause changes in strategy—on the field or at least in the broadcast booth—but I have my doubts. I am, however, fairly confident that after you read it, I won’t be the only one screaming at the TV as I stab at the mute button every Sunday.
WHEN THEY CALL TIME WITH 2:05 ON THE CLOCK
At crunch time in the NFL, Andy Reid is one guy who can make me scream in agony as if I’m watching Santino heading toward the toll plaza in The Godfather. When his Chiefs are in the two-minute drill, my pleas of “Sonny, no! It’s a trap!” become “Andy, no! It’s a trap!” But Santino never listens, and Reid never learns.
Gridiron Genius Page 21