Then Belichick Said to Brady …

The Best New England Patriots Stories Ever Told

By Jim Donaldson

Triumph Books

Copyright © 2009 Jim Donaldson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60078-239-8

Contents

foreword by Andre Tippett,
acknowledgments,
introduction,
1. The Snow Game,
2. The Vagabonds,
3. Homes Sweet Homes,
4. Talented Teams,
5. Billy Sullivan,
6. 1985,
7. Hall of Famers,
8. The Big Tuna Era,
9. Bill Belichick,
10. The Golden Boy,
11. Robert Kraft,
12. Drafts,
13. Super Bowl XXXVI,
14. Super Bowl XXXVIII,
15. Super Bowl XXXIX,
16. Almost Perfect,
17. Dominant Dynasty,
sources,

CHAPTER 1

The Snow Game

Snow was falling.

No, that’s not exactly right.

To say that snow was falling brings to mind a quiet, Currier and Ives scene of an idyllic New England winter evening.

It was anything but quiet at Foxboro Stadium the night of January 19, 2002.

Snow was swirling and whirling. The chilled fans in the sellout crowd of 60,292 were stamping their feet trying to keep warm and to spur on the Patriots, who were battling the Oakland Raiders in an AFC playoff game that would change the history of the franchise.

“It was a lot of snow,” quarterback Tom Brady recalled, “and it started about three or four hours before the game.”

The snow was pelting down heavily throughout the game — large, powdery flakes like feathers from a pillow that had burst open. The snow was blowing up, down, sideways, in any and all directions, making it seem as if the game was being played inside a giant snow globe. It was a winter wonderland. And, for Patriots fans, a football fantasyland.

Right there in the middle of it all was Adam Vinatieri, the Patriots’ kicker. He was in the eye of the storm, and all eyes in Foxboro Stadium were on him.

There were 27 seconds remaining in the AFC semifinal playoff game, and the Patriots were trailing the Raiders 13–10. The ball was on the Oakland 28-yard line. Seven yards behind that, and 45 yards from the goal posts, was Vinatieri, standing in ankle-deep snow.

“There were three or four inches of snow on the ground,” he said. “Whenever you get a few inches on the ground, and it’s still falling, that makes it pretty tough. It was sticking to the bottom of your shoes, so you never really felt you could get sure footing. And we were out of timeouts, so we didn’t have a chance to clear away the snow from the spot where we wanted to kick.”

The fact that the Patriots even had a chance to kick and tie the game was a minor miracle. They trailed 13–3 after three quarters. But with Brady completing nine consecutive passes on his way to setting club playoff records for passing attempts (52), completions (32), and passing yards (312), the Pats cut their deficit to 13–10 with 7:52 left in the game when Brady capped a 67-yard drive by scrambling six yards for what would be his team’s only touchdown.

The Raiders had a chance to wrap up the game when, with 2:24 remaining, they had a third-and-1 at their own 44. They gave the ball to Zack Crockett, who was stopped shy of the first down by linebacker Tedy Bruschi.

Oakland coach Jon Gruden wisely decided to punt. Troy Brown fielded the kick at the New England 19 and returned it 27 yards but fumbled when he was hit. Fortunately for the Patriots, their Pro Bowl special-teams specialist Larry Izzo recovered.

Brady threw for seven yards to running back Kevin Faulk just before the two-minute warning, after which he ran five yards himself for a first down at the Oakland 42 with 1:50 left in the game.

Then came the play for which the game always will be remembered — fondly in New England, frustratingly in Oakland. “The Tuck Rule Play will forever be a part of NFL legend,” said Mike Pereira, the league’s vice president of officiating. “Since the current system of instant replay was adopted, no reviewed play has been more debated or discussed.”

Charles Woodson, the Raiders’ All-Pro cornerback, came on a blitz, hitting Brady and knocking the ball loose as his arm was moving forward in either an attempt to pass the ball or as he was trying to bring it down and tuck it away.

Brad Sham, announcing the game nationally on radio, said, “Shotgun for Brady. Blitz. Back to throw. Rushed. Hit! Fumbled the football! It’s still on the floor and the Raiders have recovered! This one’s going to lead to the end of the season for the New England Patriots.” That’s how it looked to just about everyone watching, both in the snow-covered stands and on television.

It’s certainly how Woodson saw it. “He pumped the ball, brought it back down,” Woodson said. “Ball came out. Game over.”

That was the way it seemed to Patriots safety Lawyer Milloy, standing on the sideline. “The game’s over. That’s what I was thinking,” Milloy said. “The game is over.” But it wasn’t over. Far from it.

Because the play occurred in the last two minutes, there was a call for a review from Rex Stuart, the replay official in the press box. So Walt Coleman, the referee, went to the sideline and ducked under the hood of the replay monitor. While both teams waited tensely, he reviewed the play.

“I was hurting pretty bad,” said Vinatieri, recalling his emotions. “And then, all of a sudden, they were reviewing it and giving us a ray of hope.”

When Coleman finally emerged from under the replay hood, returned to the field, and turned on his microphone to announce his ruling, it was so quiet in the stadium you could hear a snowflake hit the ground.

“After reviewing the play,” he said, “the quarterback’s arm was going forward. It’s an incomplete pass.” The crowd roared. The Raiders groaned. The Patriots had a second life.

“From what I saw on the field,” Coleman explained later, “I thought the ball came out before his arm was going forward, so that’s why I ruled it a fumble. When I got over to the replay monitor and looked at it, it was obvious that his arm was coming forward. He was trying to tuck the ball, and they just knocked it out of his hand. His hand was coming forward, which made it an incomplete pass.”

Brady, not surprisingly, agreed. Gruden, not surprisingly, did not.

“I knew I was throwing the ball,” Brady said. “I’m glad they ruled it the way they did.”

“I thought it was a fumble,” Gruden said. “But the officials thought otherwise.”

Patriots coach Bill Belichick insisted that the controversial ruling was the right one. “Anybody can complain about the rule all they want,” he said, “but that’s what it is. When you look at the play, that was the correct ruling.”

What at first appeared to be a game-ending fumble was overturned on the basis of Rule 3, Section 21, Article 2 of the NFL Rule Book, which states, “When a player is holding a ball to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his arm starts a forward pass, even if the player loses possession of the ball as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body. If the player has tucked the ball into his body and then loses possession, it is a fumble.”

While the Patriots still had the ball, they still had to get into field- goal range. They did — barely — on the next play as Brady threw to wide receiver David Patten for 13 yards. They would have liked to get closer, but Brady’s next two passes were incomplete and, after he gained a yard on third down, Vinatieri trotted carefully on to the field.

“When you’re in a situation like that,” he said, “it seems like everything slows down a little bit. You just have to focus and hope for the best.

“We were pushing the envelope a little bit. We wanted to get a little bit closer, obviously. That was a real low-percentage kick, especially in those conditions. How many times would I make it if you gave me a hundred shots? I don’t know — 10, maybe.”

One in 10?

As far as Patriots fans are concerned, Vinatieri’s kick was one in a million because it forever altered the history of a franchise that for most of its first four decades of existence was filled with far more frustration than glory.

“I was wearing the longest cleats I could get my hands on,” he said. “They were like shark’s teeth. When I went out there, I said to myself, ‘Just kick it as best you can.’ I tried to stay over my feet so I wouldn’t slip. That’s probably why the trajectory was so low.”

That’s one reason. Another was that he was kicking a ball that, in the freezing cold, was hard as a rock. Vinatieri also had to be careful with his approach in order to maintain his footing on the snowy ground. And who knew what would happen on the snap from Lonie Paxton or whether holder Ken Walter, who also was the Patriots’ punter, could handle the ball properly?

“The job Kenny did was amazing,” Vinatieri said. “He had to catch a ball with snow on one end and try to place it as quickly as he could.”

The conditions were atrocious, but the snap was perfect. So was the hold.

And the kick? Aesthetically it wasn’t much to look at. It was a low line drive that seemed to scuttle rather than soar toward the uprights.

But beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, and when the ball went sailing through, it meant that kick would be remembered as a thing of beauty that would be a joy forever.

“I kind of line-drived it,” Vinatieri said. “But, when I looked up, I knew it was going to be straight enough. I had to wait to see if it would be long enough. After that, it was time to be happy.

“Looking back at it, it’s probably the most difficult field goal I’ve ever had to attempt. It’s certainly the one I’m most proud of.”

That’s quite a statement from a kicker who would two times go on to boot last-second Super Bowl–winning field goals.

“We were down three points,” he said. “I had to hit it to tie the game. And the field conditions — I don’t know if I’ve ever kicked in conditions worse than that.

“I’ll always remember the Super Bowl kicks. Those are great memories. But if you ask me what was my best kick ever, I’d have to say that one against Oakland.”

That one kick — that one, magical, captured-in-a-snow-globe moment — marked a turning point for the Patriots, who only the year before had finished last in the AFC East at 5–11.

They won the coin toss to gain first possession in overtime and never gave up the ball. With Brady completing all eight of his pass attempts, the Patriots drove from their own 34 to the Oakland 5. Then with 6:31 showing on the scoreboard clock, Vinatieri kicked the game-winning 23-yard field goal. There was never a doubt he’d make that one. Not after he’d hit the one from 45.

“I felt like we had one taken away from us,” said Jerry Rice, the Raiders’ Hall of Fame wide receiver.

Twenty-five years earlier the Patriots felt they’d had a playoff victory taken away from them in Oakland. In that game referee Ben Dreith made a controversial roughing-the-passer call against Raymond “Sugar Bear” Hamilton.

The Raiders were trailing 21–17 and, with only 57 seconds left to play, were in a third-and-18 situation at the New England 27. Kenny “Snake” Stabler, Oakland’s gutsy, gimpy-kneed quarterback, dropped back to pass and just managed to get the ball off — incomplete — when he was hit in the helmet by the flailing arm of nose tackle Hamilton.

Hamilton insisted he tipped the ball first, but all Dreith saw was the hit on Stabler. This came on the heels of a noncall when Oakland linebacker Phil Villapiano virtually tackled tight end Russ Francis on a third-down play that would have enabled the Patriots to maintain possession with the clock winding down. The whole situation left the Pats — and all of New England — with a bitter taste in their mouths.

It wasn’t until nine years later, in 1985, that the Patriots would win their first NFL playoff game. They got to the Super Bowl that season, only to be trounced 46–10 by the Chicago Bears.

New England fans also were disappointed in their team’s second trip to the Super Bowl, in the 1996 season, when the Patriots not only lost to the Packers, 35–21, but lost coach Bill Parcells to the New York Jets as well.

A dark cloud, it seemed, continued to hover over the franchise as it had from the beginning. That cloud hung until that snowy night of what would be the last game played in the old stadium in Foxboro. That magical night when Vinatieri’s kick sailed through the snowflakes and the uprights, sending the Patriots on their way into a new era — one in which they’d win three Super Bowls in a span of just four years, go on to have a perfect 16–0 regular season in 2007, and become the dominant team of the decade.

“It was quite a way to send that stadium out,” Brady said. “I mean, what more do you want from a football game?”

CHAPTER 2

The Vagabonds

Their team name should have been the Vagabonds, not the Patriots. That’s what they were: wanderers, moving from place to place with the changing seasons without a place of their own to call home.

They started out as the Boston Patriots and played their first three seasons at Boston University Field, off Commonwealth Avenue, on the site where baseball’s Boston Braves played before moving to Milwaukee in 1953.

In 1963 the Patriots moved to Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox. They spent six seasons there before leaving to play at Boston College’s Alumni Stadium in 1969, which almost burned down during a preseason game against the Redskins. In 1970, the year the Patriots moved again — this time to Harvard Stadium, where they weren’t allowed to use the Ivy Leaguers’ locker room and had to put on their uniforms in a nearby hotel and then walk across the university’s playing fields to the stadium.

Through all those years, Billy Sullivan dreamed of building a stadium in Boston that his Patriots could call home. Unfortunately the dream was more of a nightmare.

The city had never been hospitable to professional football. Among the franchises that failed in Boston were the NFL Braves, who became the Redskins and moved in 1937 to Washington, and the Bulldogs of the American Football League. There also were the Shamrocks, who finished first in the AFL in 1936 but proved no luckier in the long run than any of Boston’s other pro football teams, which also included the NFL Yankees (Is it any wonder they weren’t popular in Beantown?) and the Bears, who played in the AFL in 1940.

But Sullivan felt the time was right to bring pro football back to Boston and began to seek an NFL franchise.

“My first memory of pro football,” Sullivan’s youngest son Patrick said, “is watching the championship game between the Giants and the Colts in 1958. After that game my father had his first ‘serious’ talk with me. I remember him saying to me, ‘Patrick, this game is the game of the future.'”

Behind the scenes, Sullivan had been having conversations with the Red Sox, who were considering leaving antiquated Fenway Park — built in 1912 — about sharing a domed stadium in the suburbs. With such a facility, Sullivan was confident that Bert Bell, the NFL commissioner, would grant Boston an expansion franchise.

The discussions reached the point where Sullivan had an elaborate scale model of the stadium constructed by an architectural firm. One of the primary backers of the proposed project, a brewing company in western Massachusetts, asked Sullivan to send the model to them for a look.

He was hesitant because the Red Sox were adamant about keeping the matter hush-hush. “But they paid for it, so we couldn’t say no,” Sullivan said of the beer executives. “We asked them to be very careful about publicity.” They weren’t.

A reporter from Springfield attended a cocktail party where the model was on display, and the story was all over the news the next day — April 1, 1958. Sullivan always remembered the date, because it was the same day he was named president of Metropolitan Oil Company.

“I was driving to work,” he recalled, “and, on the radio, I heard a report about our stadium plans. The Red Sox were annoyed and walked away.”

Soon after, Bell died. “I began to feel that I wasn’t meant to have an NFL franchise,” said Sullivan. Tenacity, however, was one of Sullivan’s strong points.

As a longtime acquaintance once described him, “He’s like sandpaper — he wears you down.” In 1959 a new league with an old name — the American Football League — was taking shape. By that fall there were seven teams, and an eighth was needed.

There stood Sullivan, eager to get into the game — even in Boston, where most football fans could not have cared less. Most of them rooted for the Giants, who were one of the NFL’s best teams and whose games were televised throughout New England every Sunday afternoon. With Boston College, Harvard, and other colleges playing on Saturdays, the Patriots decided that Friday nights would be best for them.

“We knew we had to go a long way to win over the fans,” said Gino Cappelletti, one of the Patriots’ first stars. Cappelletti later became an assistant coach and for many years has been the color commentator on the team’s radio broadcasts. “That first year,” he said, “you’d tell people you played for the Patriots, and they’d ask, ‘Who?’ In those days, the Giants were the favorite team in New England. They had all the household names — Frank Gifford, Andy Robustelli, Y.A. Tittle, Sam Huff. But slowly but surely we started getting our own fans.”

At the outset, many of the Patriots didn’t know each other. “We must have gone through a couple hundred players that first year,” Cappelletti said. “There was so much confusion that one guy stayed in camp three or four days after he was cut, until one of the coaches caught him loading up his tray in the lunch line.”

Tom Yewcic, who was a quarterback and punter for the Pats from 1961 to 1966 and like Cappelletti later became an assistant coach, remembered, “We used to joke about the three teams at the Patriots’ camp-one going to the airport with the players just released, another arriving from the airport with a new bunch, and the one on the practice field. You made sure not to get to know anybody real well.”

(Continues…)Excerpted from Then Belichick Said to Brady … by Jim Donaldson. Copyright © 2009 Jim Donaldson. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
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