Five Rings Read online

  Week 6 brought another impressive statement win over the Colts in Indianapolis, and again the hero was someone other than the quarterback. This time it was wideout David Patten, who became the first player since Jim Brown (that is, THE Jim Brown, the greatest football player of the 20th century as well as the star of all-time testosterone-fueled classic films as The Dirty Dozen and Running Man, so you take your hat off when you speak his name, mister) to rush, catch, and throw a touchdown in the same game. Those three plays alone were good for 29, 91, and 60 yards, or 180 yards of total offense, and sent a message to opponents that Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis was willing to try anything, so they’d better be prepared.

  The message was delivered. Patten tried another pass the following game against Denver, and it got picked off. Brady, facing the starting quarterback on his National Champion Michigan team, caught the interception flu from Patten, tossing four on the day after going a record 162 attempts without one to start his career. It was enough to make a lot of people who were buying in on Brady as the better alternative to Bledsoe start saying, “C’mon, Drew. How long does it take a guy to come back from a devastating, near-fatal injury to his vital internal organs, anyway? Rub some dirt on it and let’s go.”

  The next game was the one where Romeo Crennel’s defense really began to show what a nuclear-capable world power they were becoming. They knocked Atlanta’s starting QB Chris Chandler out of the game with six sacks, and then against his backup, rookie Michael Vick, who would eventually become the most mobile quarterback of all time with a 1,000-yard rushing season on his résumé, added three more.

  Their biggest test would come with a week 10 ESPN Sunday Night Football matchup with the St. Louis Rams. As team nicknames go, the Rams’ “Greatest Show on Turf” was always a little too Madison Ave. for my liking. It never rolled off the tongue like the Cowboys’ “Doomsday Defense” or Pittsburgh’s “Steel Curtain,” but it was an accurate description.

  Two seasons earlier, the Rams struck gold with a backup quarterback no one knew but who was thrown into the fire when the starter got injured and led them to a Super Bowl title. (Nod slowly if this sounds at all familiar.) Kurt Warner was signed by the Rams to back up Trent Green based on his work in the Arena Football League, which is the equivalent of drafting a guy into the NBA because you saw him playing Pop-a-Shot at a Dave & Buster’s. After Green was injured in preseason, Warner took over head coach Dick Vermeil’s team, mastered coordinator Mike Martz’s offense, and won the league’s MVP award and a Super Bowl. Also, America’s heart once we found out he loves Jesus, adopted his wife’s children from a previous marriage, and used to stock shelves in a grocery store at night to pay the bills while never giving up on his dream.

  More to the point, the man could throw a football as well as anyone in memory. Vermeil, being no dummy, understood what a hot commodity Martz was and decided to end his career on a high note and let Martz be the head coach. Under him, the Rams were in their third year of running the most prolific, hard-to-defend offense in the league. If the Patriots had any realistic shot at making a playoff run, this was the kind of team they’d have to prove they could beat.

  They didn’t, exactly. It was a tough game. They stayed with the Rams to an extent. Granted, Warner lit them up for 401 yards, but after Belichick was on his knee on the sidelines telling his defense, “Slants and in-cuts! That’s the game!” they adjusted. Terrell Buckley jumped a route to intercept Warner and returned it for a score. A Brady-to-Patten touchdown with just under 8 minutes to play made it a one-score game, 24–17 St. Louis. But they couldn’t get the stop they needed. To be more specific, they never touched the ball again. A long Rams drive that featured four first downs killed the clock and any hopes of tying the game up.

  That evened the Patriots record to 5–5. But they came out of that loss with a level of confidence they didn’t have before. Whether it was real or they’d just revert back like they had in those losses to Miami and Denver was anybody’s guess.

  If you predicted they wouldn’t lose another game the rest of the season, you would’ve met the legal standard to be committed as a danger to yourself and others. You might have been insane, but you would’ve been right.

  There were other kinds of insanity that were about to grip all of New England, though. And they were not the fun, overly optimistic kinds. They were the kinds that only affect football regions that have a full-blown quarterback controversy and a selfish, team-killing malcontent running around shooting his mouth off.

  The first news to hit right after that hope-filled loss to the Rams was that Drew Bledsoe was healthy and about to be put on the active roster for the home game against the New Orleans Saints. For over two months, the Bledsoe vs. Brady argument was strictly an academic one, like medieval monks debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The battle lines were drawn between the “You Can’t Lose Your Job Due to Injury” people and the “Play the Hot Hand” crowd. It was largely an abstraction. Now, as the monks could never say, shit was about to get real.

  I don’t have the polling data in front of me, but my recollection was that, like most public debates about vital issues that deeply affect our lives, it was split right down the middle. Think of the raging Twilight Team Edward vs. Team Jacob war that nearly tore the country apart a few years ago and you’ll get the idea. I know in my own family it was divided right down the middle. My brother Jack was the first guy I know who was all in on Brady and never wanted to see Bledsoe under center again. Our brother Jimbo was a pure Bledsoe loyalist and saw anyone who wasn’t as an ingrate.

  Personally, while I know the hottest places in Hell are reserved for people who fail to take sides in a time of crisis, I was still waiting-and-seeing. But this game was it for me. I’d seen what Brady could do when he had the job. Now I wanted to see how he’d play under the pressure of having the best QB in franchise history and the highest-paid player in football in full uniform giving him vicious side-eye.

  Belichick did not make us wait. He was asked at a presser about the process of determining who would get the starting job and actually joked about it. “Oh, we poll the coaches. We’re gonna poll the fans. We’re gonna poll the fourth graders. The barbers. We’re gonna poll everybody.”

  But he immediately declared that Brady was the starter, not just for the New Orleans game but for the rest of the season. “That’s what Mr. Kraft is paying me to do. And that’s what I’m going to do,” he said. “I’m going to make the decision that’s best interest of the football team. That’s T-E-A-M. As in ‘team.’”

  Bledsoe was visibly furious. I mean, he did his best to say the right things. He didn’t take a flamethrower to the place or anything. Asked if he was hurt or upset, he answered, “Next question.” Asked if he saw this coming, he said, “Let’s just say I’m looking forward to the chance to compete for my job.” Not exactly incendiary stuff when you read it. But he said it with all the nonverbal clues saying otherwise. Like when you ask your wife if something’s bothering her and she says, “Not at all. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” It was clear nothing was fine.

  You could see his point. The reason Brady got those last nine starts was because Bledsoe was injured while balling out, putting his health—his life, really—at risk trying to pick up a first down. It’s not fair that he’d be punished for that. But Belichick wasn’t in the business of fairness. He’d lost his only other head coaching job because his bazillionaire owner moved his team out from under him and there wasn’t a lot of fairness in those burning Belichick dummies. And if the price of winning was being unfair to one player, he was willing to pay it.

  If you were in the business of covering sports, it was gold. It was the kind of divisive story line that programmers dream about when they’re napping on the rug and their legs are twitching and they start quietly barking. It led all the sports reports nationally, filled column space, and flooded the talk radio phone lines.

  Any doubts I was left with were gone once
the Saints game started. Brady produced arguably his best game of the season. Aided by 191 rushing yards, he was 19 for 26 with 258 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions, and a near-perfect passer rating of 143.9. In short, he was flawless. The Patriots led 20–0 at the half and rolled to a 34–17 final. I was Team Tom, now and forever. And I was not alone.

  Whatever high that produced lasted until later on that night, when Terry Glenn went on WBZ-TV’s live “Sports Final” to celebrate an impressive win by his teammates and throw a fit about how unhappy he was. Asked if he still wanted to be a New England Patriot, he answered, “I did,” pronouncing it “deed.” As in “I DEED. D-I-D deed.” While we were all excited about the gift of the instant catchphrase he’d given us, it was one of the most selfish, tone-deaf moments anyone could ever remember.

  Notwithstanding that his team was starting to put it together, or that the Patriot who felt like he was getting screwed was taking the high road for the greater good of the team, this was the fall of 2001. Not to make everything about real life, but body bags were still being carried out of Ground Zero and brave men were losing their lives attacking terrorist caves. No one was in the mood to hear some man-child bellyache about his contract for the following year.

  Besides, all Glenn’s bitching did was draw attention to the fact that the Patriots didn’t need him. It was making Belichick’s point of having a team that works together being more important than a team filled with freakishly gifted athletic specimens. That was something Belichick would prove many more times. And this was the beta test.

  For sure, the Patriots acted like it. Trailing 13–0 at the half to the Jets, they rallied to outscore them 17–3 in the second half to give Belichick his first Patriots win against them in four tries. The following week, Troy Brown proved he really was the anti-Glenn with an 85-yard punt return against the Browns to give his team a 27–16 win and his coach back-to-back revenge wins against former employers.

  The next game featured the most bizarre moment in a season filled with them, that looking back makes it seem like this whole run was the result of predestination. In overtime in Buffalo, David Patten caught a Brady pass for a first down at the Bills 41. But he got hit by Keion Carpenter, was knocked unconscious, and fumbled, the ball recovered by Nate Clements. After reviewing the turnover, the officials saw that while Patten was out cold, his foot was touching the ball while his head was out of bounds. By rule, that means a dead ball, and the Patriots keep possession. A few plays later and they won on a Vinatieri field goal.

  That set up a showdown against the Dolphins that was expected to be the last game ever played in Foxboro Stadium. Under normal circumstances, there would be ceremonies to mark the great, historic, and unforgettable moments in the history of the old place. But nobody really had much to work with—unless they wanted to show highlights from all the drunken Monday Night Football riots. Or the night the cops ran out of lockup space so they handcuffed guys by the dozens to the chain-link fence. Or perhaps the time an EMT was resuscitating a heart attack victim and a guy pissed on him. Or my personal favorite, when fans stormed the field, tore down the goalposts, and carried them out of the stadium and up Route 1 until they hit a high-tension wire and electrocuted two morons, who sued and won.

  But mostly they just brought out the guy who drove a snowplow on the field to clear a spot for the field goal kicker to beat Don Shula’s Dolphins 3–0 back on December 12, 1982. They even introduced the driver, a guy who was on work release from prison, to a standing ovation. That was a special moment. Not long ago, in one of those weird occurrences that happen when you’re plugged in with this Patriots fan base, I had a guy ask me if I remembered the snowplow driver’s name. “Mark Henderson,” I told him. Did I know what he was in jail for, he asked? “No,” I said. “He broke into my house,” the guy replied. There is nothing like being in the presence of fame like that.

  The Patriots won, giving them the edge over Miami in a potential tiebreaker at the end of the season. They celebrated by doing a victory lap around the field to thank the fans and say good-bye to the old dump they’d never have to see again, because any playoff game would likely be on the road. Or so we thought.

  While the Patriots were winning every game, Jon Gruden’s Raiders were stumbling badly down the stretch. They were 11–2 at one point and seemingly a lock for home field advantage throughout the playoffs, but they lost their last three in a row, the first being a razor-thin loss to the Titans where Tennessee took a 13–10 lead on a go-ahead field goal with 1:48 left, and Raiders’ kicker Sebastian Janikowski missed one in the final seconds. The final loss was that last game against the Jets that had been rescheduled due to 9/11. Jets kicker John Hall barely made a 53-yard field goal in the final minute for the win.

  The Patriots’ rescheduled game against Carolina was a different story. By the time they met, the Panthers had lost 14 straight and were about to fire their coaching staff. It was the easiest game of the season for New England, a 38–6 blowout and the AFC East championship. Instead of hoping to travel to Oakland for a playoff game, the Pats had a week off, followed by another home game they didn’t expect. And while they were relaxing with the weekend off, the Raiders would be forced to play the Jets again in the Wild Card playoff.

  Another anomaly of this season was that it was the first in which the NFL decided to schedule playoff games in prime time on Saturday nights. The Jets at Raiders was the first, and Oakland won it easily, 38–24.

  I mention this because it’s another prop gun on Anton Chekhov’s stage wall.

  4

  Snow Bowl

  The second Saturday night playoff game ever scheduled was Oakland at New England, on January 19, 2002. Like the frigid AFC championship game against Jacksonville five years earlier, the conditions gave the Patriots a colossal advantage against a warm weather team. In this case, maybe more so.

  At kickoff, Foxboro Stadium looked like the set of every Very Special Christmas episode of every television show ever made. Visually, it was a tableau of swirling snowflakes that might have just been cut out of paper with safety scissors by a million classes of first graders, falling onto a blanket of pure white. Public opinion was that Robert Kraft, who was an influential member of the NFL’s Broadcast Committee, personally requested that his team get the prime-time game. The Raiders have always been convinced he pulled strings just to give his team an even bigger home field advantage. It doesn’t do their argument a hell of a lot of good that the NFL had been scheduling late-season Saturday night games for years, and the only other postseason one ever had been hosted by . . . the Raiders. The week before.

  A generation removed from criminals driving mini snowplows, the yard markers were being cleared by regular, law-abiding citizens with leaf blowers on their backs. It was like playing a postseason football game on a frozen lake. But whatever weather advantage the Patriots might have had didn’t do them much good, as they got booed off the field at halftime with the Raiders holding a 7–0 lead.

  A Vinatieri field goal was answered with two by Janikowski to give Oakland a 13–3 lead. Regardless, no matter whom you were rooting for, there’s no denying it was beautiful television. At some point I was sitting in the den in the basement by the woodstove in front of my crappy, pre–high def TV when my adorable Irish Rose came down from putting the kids to bed and asked how the game was going. As God is my witness, I said, “The Pats are down 10. And while obviously I hope they come back and win, I will never forget this game.”

  Not long thereafter, the Patriots made a game of it. Nine straight Tom Brady completions put the ball at Oakland’s six. Brady awkwardly dropped back to pass, and saw no one open. He then awkwardly decided to tuck the ball and run with it. Awkwardly, he ran it in for the touchdown. And then, the kid who grew up near San Francisco tried to imitate 49ers running back Tom Rathman’s spike. Awkwardly. The ball came out of his hands awkwardly, his feet slipped out from him awkwardly, and he face-planted into the snow . . . you get the picture.

&n
bsp; But the Patriots had a pulse, though it was slow and not very strong. The Patriots defense came up with a huge stop on third and 1 when Richard Seymour penetrated to upend Zack Crockett and force a punt. It was 13–10 Oakland when New England got the ball at their own 46 with 2:06 left and no time-outs. After a 7-yard completion to Kevin Faulk, the 2-minute warning stopped the clock. This is when the Chekhov’s Gun I’ve been going on about went off.

  In a 2017 NFL Network special called Timeline: The Tuck Rule, Raiders’ defensive back Eric Allen said he was near the Patriots’ sideline when he heard Charlie Weis tell Brady the Pats would line up with three receivers on the right running slants, and Brady would throw to the backside receiver, also running a slant. Brady confirmed the call was “Trips Right Slant 68 D Slant.” And since the weakside linebacker was up on the line and that area of the field looked open, his read was to the single receiver on the back side.

  The problem for Brady was that was exactly what the Raiders wanted him to see. The Patriots got the look Allen had told them to expect and called the perfect play to bait Brady: a zone blitz in which a defensive lineman would drop into the open-looking area. The blitzer would be Brady’s Michigan teammate with the talent for championship plays, Charles Woodson.

  The Patriots did not have Woodson blocked. He came in clean without Brady ever seeing him. He lunged, reached out, the ball came free, and Greg Biekert fell on it at the Raiders’ 48. Brady fumble. Oakland ball. And all they have to do is kneel down three times for the win because New England can’t stop the clock.

  It would seem. For a while.

  The first thing that went wrong for the Raiders was that the play was all of 10 seconds too late. It came at 1:50 of the game. In order to challenge a ruling with more than 2 minutes, a team has to have a time-out left. The Patriots were fresh out. But close calls, like turnovers, under 2 minutes were entirely up to the officiating crew. So referee Walt Coleman went under the hood to look at the replay. In Oakland Raiders legend, it was the longest review in NFL history because Coleman was desperately searching for something, anything, to justify giving the ball back to the Patriots. In New England lore, he took one look at the replay and said, “Oh, shit,” because he knew they got the call wrong and spent the rest of the time figuring out where to spot the ball for the Pats’ next play.