Five Rings Page 10

  It was especially weird for the players on the field. For instance, Troy Brown ran back a punt for a touchdown, only to see the officials throw flags in an area that usually means a penalty on the return team. But the crowd started going nuts. “It surprised me to hear the cheers, but I knew something good had happened, like they picked up the flag or something,” he said.

  Something good had happened, but to the wrong team. Or the right team—just not Brown’s team. With the Red Sox trailing by a run and just four outs away from elimination, David Ortiz had delivered a two-run double that scored Nomar Garciaparra and Manny Ramirez off Oakland closer Keith Foulke to give the Sox the lead. There would be a series-deciding game 5.

  The Patriots, meanwhile, were also winning a wild game that saw them score 31 points in the second half, capped off by a 65-yard interception return for a touchdown by Ty Law that won it, 38–30. Law had hobbled off the field with a sprained ankle in the first half. But because the Patriots’ defense had already gone without nine different starters due to injury already on the season, Law wanted to tough it out. “He was jumping up and down asking me to come in,” Belichick said.

  McNair saw a hobbling Law as a target like the wounded animal in a herd. He should’ve seen him as a threat. “I thought I could get it in there with the bad leg he had,” McNair said. “He broke on it, did a good job, and that was the ball game.”

  It was more than just the ball game. It was the Patriots’ first true signature win over a championship contender. Their next would come two weeks later.

  In the meantime, we learned that, as good as pro football had been to New England lately, there was no limit to the torment baseball could put us through. The Red Sox were Sid from Toy Story and their fans were playthings to be pulled apart and tortured in his filthy, white trash room.

  As fate would have it, the timing of The Curse of the Bambino could not have been better, because just a few weeks after it first aired, Sox fans had to endure what most of them would call the worst loss in team history. And that is saying something.

  The Sox had faced the New York Yankees in an American League Championship Series no one would ever forget. This was in the peak period of arguably the greatest rivalry in sports history, with both rosters filled with household names, legendary players who truly hated each other. These were the teams of Pedro Martinez and Mariano Rivera. Derek Jeter and Garciaparra. Ramirez and Paul O’Neill. The fan bases despised each other and there was more bad blood than a Quentin Tarantino film.

  This was the series decided by Sox manager Grady Little panicking in the moment, leaving Pedro Martinez in game 7 way longer than he should have, blowing a lead and single-handedly sending the Yankees to the World Series. It was tougher to swallow than any of the losses we’d talked about in Curse.

  I knew if I went to bed I’d just stare at the ceiling/into the abyss all night long. So instead, I sat at the computer and wrote this 2,000-word screed about how much it sucks that the Sox can’t just ever lose in a normal fashion; they always have to lose ironically. This was in the day when the networks were sometimes putting an active major leaguer in the broadcast booth for the postseason. And for this entire series, that player was Bret Boone, Aaron’s brother. So after listening to him crack wise about his sibling for seven games, the punctuation mark at the end of the whole horrible saga was having to look at his goofy face grinning ear-to-ear.

  I sent the column to a guy from the local paper who had done the interview with me about the HBO show and told him to do what he wanted with it. Publish it. Save it. Delete it. I just needed to vent and this was an important part of my therapy. He liked it enough to put it on the editorial page and asked if I wanted to do one every other week for the low, low price of no money, and I agreed. I discovered that writing was a good outlet for me, that I enjoyed it.

  But within a few months I came across another newspaper, one of those free ones they have in boxes in the city. It was called Barstool Sports. They said they were looking for writers, so I emailed them. I heard back from the founder and publisher, Dave Portnoy. I sent him a few samples of the columns I’d written for the town paper, plus a recap of a Pats game I had posted on the Patriots Planet message board. “If you want to write for me, you’re hired,” Portnoy replied. “It doesn’t pay anything.” Whatever. I accepted, on the logic that it would keep me writing and, who knows, maybe lead to something.

  A couple of days after that debacle in the Bronx, Grady Little was fired. It was welcome news, but not satisfying enough to fill the emotional void. For that, we’d have to turn our lonely eyes back to the Patriots. They were at Miami and found themselves in a tie game with 2 minutes left, and Dolphins kicker Olindo Mare lining up for a high-percentage, 35-yard field goal that would give them the lead. But tackle Richard Seymour shot a gap in the protection, penetrated, and blocked the kick, which was recovered by Troy Brown, sending the game to overtime.

  The teams traded possessions in the extra session until Dolphins quarterback Jay Fiedler, from midfield, took a shot down to the Patriots’ 20, which was picked off by cornerback Tyrone Poole. It took New England all of one play to put the game away, on an 82-yard completion from Brady to Brown over the entire Miami defense that went 50 yards in the air before Brown caught it and jogged the rest of the way for the winning score.

  It would be a nice narrative to say that the overtime touchdown bomb to beat Miami was the exact moment the Patriots went from being the team that had rallied around Tom Brady, as they had in 2001, to the team that was led by him. A nice narrative, but not true. Because just two games later they were barely squeaking out a 9–3 win at home over the 3–5 Cleveland Browns.

  What would be much more accurate would be to say that this team was learning to be game-plan specific. They were finding ways to win, regardless of what it took from week to week. They were Transformers, able to morph from a high-speed tractor trailer in fifth gear one game into an Optimus Prime, standing his ground and trading punches with you the next.

  11

  Schopenhauer on the Fifty

  The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said that “genius hits a target no one else can see.” On the other hand, Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann said, “Football coaches aren’t geniuses. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.” So it comes down to which of them you want to go with: the great proponent of transcendental idealism, or the guy who at Notre Dame changed the pronunciation of his family name so it would rhyme with “Heisman.” Personally, I’m with the German. Because I watched Bill Belichick for a lot of years.

  The best proof of Belichick’s genius-level football IQ came in the way he had his teams prepared for almost any situation, regardless of how rarely it came up in actual games. There could be no better example of the Patriots’ situational awareness than their week 9 Monday night game at Denver. In the seven years since that postseason when Jacksonville did them the enormous favor of knocking the Broncos out of the playoffs, the Patriots had lost three of four in Denver. And it looked like they were about to make it four of five.

  Trailing 24–23 with just over 3 minutes to go, the Patriots were pinned on their own 1-yard line by a Denver punt. Three Brady incompletions took seconds off the clock and left them stuck punting from their own end zone. That’s when the snap from long snapper Lonie Paxton sailed over punter Ken Walter’s head.

  To be more specific, it sailed a good 30 feet over his head and directly into the upright with an audible clang. Denver fans went bananas. Patriots fans watching from home sat there stunned for a moment. What was that? An accident? Did it count? Does Denver get points for that? It was like that time when I saw the escalator at the mall lose power and it was so unexpected no one knew what to do for a second.

  And in the same way those shoppers realized they weren’t going to need rescue crews to get them off, we suddenly reasoned out what had happened. Belichick had ordered the punting unit to take the intentional safety. The fact that the snap happened to hit the goalpost
was irrelevant. They would free kick the ball from midfield down by three. Which, while less than ideal, was a hell of a lot better situation to be in than punting the ball to midfield down by one.

  It was a gamble, but one that relied on Belichick’s defense to make a stop and give his offense time to tie the game with a field goal. Both units delivered.

  Romeo Crennel’s defense produced a 3 & out and gave Charlie Weis’s offense the ball at New England’s 42. But Weis was in no mood to play for overtime. Aggressive play calling produced four-of-five Brady completions, three of them over 16 yards, the last of which being an 18-yard touchdown strike to David Givens for the win.

  The following Sunday they won again, but in an entirely different way. This was another prime-time matchup against the Dallas Cowboys. To Pats fans with long enough memories, it was a grudge match.

  Earlier in the year, Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones had lured Bill Parcells out of his third career retirement and back onto the sidelines. For his part, Parcells had brought old, missed-by-no-one man-child Terry Glenn to the Cowboys. The Patriots still had a lot of core players who were on the squad when things turned sour between Parcells and the Pats. Glenn had only been gone two years, so there had to be some hot, spitting hatred still lingering there from the teammates he’d quit on. But no one on the team talked about it. Bill Belichick especially used his Men in Black strobe light thing to make everyone at his press conferences forget how much history he and Parcells had and made it a nonstory.

  The game itself was the polar opposite of some of the games they’d played earlier. It was a total defensive struggle. Trench warfare, with yards being paid for with thousands of lives.

  Parcells had wasted no time in Dallas putting together a tough, aggressive, attacking, blitz-happy defense. And while it was effective for the most part, Tom Brady was beginning to love when teams blitzed him. Defense is a zero-sum game; every extra pass rusher you send is one fewer pass defenders you have. As he was getting more experienced at reading coverages, Brady came to love having fewer defensive backs to worry about. Fewer guys in coverage meant fewer decisions to make about where to go with the ball, and he could get his throws off before the rush got to him.

  Early on in the game, the Cowboys came with a blitz, and he exploited it for a 46-yard completion to Deion Branch. That set up an Adam Vinatieri field goal for the first points of the game. In the third quarter, Brady took advantage of another Dallas blitz to hit David Givens for a 57-yarder that led to a touchdown run by Antowain Smith. The Patriots defense did the rest on the way to a 12–0 win.

  After the game, Brady was both happy about the win and disappointed that Dallas had stopped blitzing him after the Givens catch. “If they came with another one, we had exactly the right play ready for them,” he said. He never got the chance.

  It wasn’t exactly an artistic masterpiece, but for a Gillette crowd hell-bent on reminding Parcells how well they were doing after the messy breakup, it was euphoric. It helped even more that Glenn finished with one catch for 8 yards. And did Pats fans let him know how much he wasn’t missed? They did. D-I-D, deed.

  The next week was clearly a letdown in the aftermath of an emotional night in Foxboro. At Houston, against the decent-but-still-expansion Texans, the Patriots barely escaped without an embarrassing loss. In fact, it took an 80-yard, 2½-minute Pats drive to tie the game with 0:40 left and send it to overtime. After a potential Vinatieri game-winning kick was blocked, it took two defensive stops and a final 75-yard drive to set up Vinatieri’s eventual game-winner. And the reaction by their veteran radio play-by-play guy Gil Santos said it all. “Now let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.

  What followed next was whatever the polar opposite of a “letdown” is. “Let up” doesn’t work. In fact, there probably isn’t a direct antonym for it. But you could argue that in terms of its effect on the rest of the season and the history of the franchise, there hasn’t been a more significant regular season performance in Patriots history.

  The Patriots were 9–2 and headed to Indianapolis to face the Colts, who were also 9–2. When the Houston Texans were formed, giving the NFL 32 teams, the league was realigned to give it eight divisions of four teams each, which meant that the Colts, a longtime division rival, suddenly found themselves playing in the newly formed AFC South. Therefore, the Pats and Colts hadn’t met since those two blowout New England wins in 2001.

  In the interim, the Colts had become a world superpower.

  Coached by former Tampa defensive guru Tony Dungy, they possessed the second-highest scoring offense in the NFL. Peyton Manning, the former No. 1 overall draft pick, was having the first of his many MVP seasons. Around him were such skill position weapons as running back Edgerrin James (1,200 rushing yards) and wideouts Marvin Harrison (1,200 receiving yards) and Reggie Wayne (800). While they oddly weren’t a great defense under Dungy, they were still dangerous, anchored by Dwight Freeney, one of the best pass rushers of his era. It was obvious going in that this game was going to be a huge factor in determining home field advantage in the AFC playoffs.

  To that end, the players were treating it like a playoff game. Back in training camp, Richard Seymour had approached Rodney Harrison to say that he was nominating him for team captain. That would be an honor any time, but given the fact that Harrison had only been around a few weeks, it meant the world to him. And he responded like he always had in San Diego, which was to outwork everyone. Not that he was always able to; he’s told the story of showing up to his first day with the Patriots hoping to be the first one at the gym, so he got there at 7:30 a.m., only to find Tom Brady there in the middle of a workout. So the next day he got there at 7:00 to be greeted by Brady saying, “Good afternoon.” The next day, it was 6:30 and Brady was asking if he’d slept in.

  Harrison wasn’t going to let that happen the week of the Indy game, so he showed up at 6:00 a.m., only to find Willie McGinest already there lifting weights. Captains just doing captainy things.

  The game didn’t just live up to the hype; it exceeded it. The Patriots jumped out to a 17–3 lead before a Manning touchdown pass made it 17–10 with 12 seconds on the clock before halftime. But then Bethel Johnson fielded the subsequent kickoff at the 8-yard line and took it 92 yards for the score as time expired.

  Another Patriots touchdown in the third quarter made it a 31–10 game and it looked like another rout was on. But that was before Indy’s offense found some kind of afterburner they didn’t have in those two blowouts in 2001. They scored on three straight possessions, all on Peyton Manning touchdown passes, one of which came on a one-play drive after a Brady interception.

  With the game now tied at 31, Bethel Johnson returned another kick 67 yards to set up a go-ahead touchdown pass from Brady. With the score 38–34 Patriots, Ken Walter shanked a punt 18 yards to hand the Colts the ball at midfield. The Patriots were out of time-outs, out of momentum, out of answers on defense, and losing their grip on the lead.

  In one of those excruciating moments that you hate when you’re living them but actually make life worth living, the Colts got the ball down to the New England 2, first and goal. A run up the middle by Edgerrin James was stuffed by Tedy Bruschi and Mike Vrabel. Another attempt by James was stopped by Bruschi and Rodney Harrison. The Patriots desperately needed to get their crap together but, being out of time-outs, caught a break instead.

  Or cheated, depending on whom you talk to.

  McGinest pulled up lame, sitting on the ground clutching his leg. He said he’d hurt his knee when his cleat got stuck in the turf. Harrison later called it a cramp, so I don’t know. All I do know is that the clock was stopped for the injury time-out and, by rule, McGinest had to leave the field for one play, which turned out to be a fade route to wide receiver Aaron Moorehead. Which was worse, the decision to target a man who finished the season with a total of seven receptions with the Game of the Decade on the line or Manning’s pass, is a topic historians have debated ever since. All anyone knew for sure is tha
t they were both terrible and the game came down to one play for 1 yard.

  It went to James again. Up the middle again. And he ran directly into the slopes of Mt. Washington. Ted had blown up future All Pro center Jeff Saturday and pushed him a yard deep into the Colts backfield. As James tried to break it outside, he was met by McGinest, who had given a pre-snap look like he was going to drop into coverage, but run-blitzed instead. He hauled James down for a loss of yardage, and the game was over. Then, miracle of miracles, he recovered from his nonspecific leg injury long enough to sprint up field, high-stepping and pumping his fist in celebration, as an entire domed stadium full of Hoosiers did whatever the 2003 version of a WTF?! bitmoji was.

  New England called it “situational awareness.” The rest of the world called it “cheating.” Regardless, it gave birth to one of the 21st century’s best team rivalries and would serve as the true beginning of one of sports’ all-time great individual rivalries: Brady vs. Manning.

  You wouldn’t have known it at the time, seeing them so helpless in that second half against the Colts, but the Patriots defense was turning into a force of nature, and, whenever possible, combining with actual nature to make life miserable for opposing offenses.

  The morning of the next game, at home against the Dolphins, a freak snowstorm dumped feet of snow in a matter of hours. It was so bad that the next day I was heading to my day job in the City of Champions, Brockton, Massachusetts, and roads still hadn’t been cleared. So what was normally the last 5 minutes of my 30-minute commute was basically Hour 2 of my commute. And we’re used to this sort of Winter Storm Atomic Wedgie. One can only imagine what it was like for a football team getting off a plane from Miami.