Patriot Reign (20 page)

There
would be no misses on Sunday. The game plan was not complicated. After their
analysis of the Cowboys, the coaches came up with the following reminders for
the players:

• Get ahead and take Dallas out of their ball-control offense. Force
  them to pass to win.
  
• Disguise coverages.
  
• Set edge versus run.
  
• Keep Quincy Carter in
  pocket.
  
• Be physical, jam, disrupt, and
  reroute the receivers—especially number 88 (Terry Glenn).
  
• Jam number 20 (Richie Anderson).
  
• No big
  plays.
  

• No turnovers.
  
• Control the ball.
  
• Beat man-to-man
  coverage.
  
• Pick up the blitz.
  
• Block
  number 59 (Dat Nguyen) on runs.
  
• Third-down
  conversions.
  

Belichick told his players not to be
distracted by the soap opera, so he literally followed his own advice on
Sunday. Television cameras captured him with his back to Parcells during
pregame warm-ups. At that time there was no acknowledgment of the man nicknamed
“the Tuna.” Earlier in the day Parcells had been visiting Scott and Dallas’s
four-month-old daughter, Mia. Now he was trying to guide the surprising Cowboys
to another win, a win that would at least guarantee an even 8–8 season.

The Tuna’s former coaches were no dummies. They had put their microscopes
on the obvious flaws of his team. They knew they could confuse Carter by mixing
three- and four-man fronts. Even if Carter knew what was coming, the Patriots
were going to force him to have the most accurate day of his career to win. And
if he did those two things, there still was the issue of his running game—the
Patriots believed they could stop it too.

Offensively, the
Patriots got everything they wanted, and they got it early. Maybe too early,
Belichick realized later. The Cowboys blitzed, as the
Patriots expected, which meant man-to-man coverage for the receivers. On a
third-and-6 play in the second quarter, Brady threw to Givens, and the young
receiver ran for 57 yards. That set up a 2-yard touch- down run by Smith, good
for a 9–0 Patriots lead. Brady could have picked apart the Dallas blitzes all
day, which was why the Cowboys stopped. And that was a problem.

“Our blitz game plan was effective early and led to 9 points,” Belichick
explained afterward. “But when Dallas went to coverage, we did not have enough
in the passing game to attack them.”

So it became a zone game, and
the scoring slowed. There were no problems defensively. Troy Hambrick averaged
2.6 yards per carry, Glenn caught one pass, and Carter had a quarterback rating
of 38—20 completions, 37 attempts, 3 interceptions. Just like in the old days,
the coaches saw the formations and knew what was coming. One adjustment they
did make was checking to zone when the Cowboys receivers came out in tight
splits. They made the switch so they wouldn’t get picked on crossing patterns.
That situation came up four times during the game.

There was no
way the Patriots were going to lose. They knew what was coming, they knew they
had the talent to stop what was coming, and they stopped it. Simple. Belichick had some things to quibble with, such as the 10 unassisted tackles by
Nguyen, 4 dropped balls, and 33 yards rushing by Carter. But he was happy. His
team won, 12–0. He walked to midfield after the game to greet Parcells, and his
former boss surprised him with an awkward hug. Belichick walked off the field
and wrapped up another game week with an unemotional press conference. This
game—with its buildup and context and personalities—wasn’t
like all the others. Some observant and mischievous person on Belichick’s staff
apparently realized that. When the coach walked through the locker room and
into a back office, he saw a small item resting on his desk. It was a stuffed
tuna.

W
ith Parcells and the Cowboys off
the schedule, there wasn’t going to be any other off-field opponent for the
Patriots. Playing the rest of the season would be comparatively easy—at least
in terms of concentration. The week after Dallas, on November 23, the Patriots
went to Houston and won a game they probably should have lost. Trailing 20–13
with 48 seconds to play, they got a touchdown from Brady to Daniel Graham—on
fourth-and-1. In overtime the Texans advanced to the New England 40, apparently
inching into field-goal position. But Willie McGinest dropped running back
Domanick Davis for a 5-yard loss to take the Texans out of
range.

Finally, with forty-one seconds left in
overtime, they won the game on Adam Vinatieri’s 28-yard field goal. “There are
at least 1,000 ways to win a football game,” Michael Smith wrote in the
Boston Globe
, “and the New England Patriots obviously intend
on sampling every one.”

He was right. They were 9–2, winners of
seven consecutive games. They had Harrison, who did for them what Bryan Cox had
done in 2001. Cox was the linebacker who had come on the team and earned
respect instantly. Harrison was the same way. He was a gentleman during the
week. Sometimes reporters would crowd around his locker and
try to ask questions at the same time. “Ladies first,” he would say, noticing a
female journalist. He would check around the locker room, making sure that
players were getting the proper rest and nutrition. “Are you hydrating?” was
one of his popular questions. He was one of the players who instituted a fine
system for mistakes in games and practices. If coaches made mistakes on calls,
they would get fined too. He brought some nastiness to the field. He wanted to
make sure that players would remember that the punishment he delivered was
different from the average player’s. You couldn’t find the gentleman during the
game.

The defense had gone from one of the league’s worst to its
best. The Patriots would position now-healthy Ted Washington toward the side of
the line where the other team most wanted to run the ball—and the team wouldn’t
run the way it wanted to. Washington was also a force in defensive line
meetings, making sure that other players knew their assignments and what two or
three plays had to be stopped. There were cerebral players at every position.
The strong-side linebacker, Mike Vrabel, always surprised the coaches by what
he was able to remember and what he had the audacity to say. Vrabel could
recite coaching notes—“They’re ninety-two percent run out of this
formation”—and still be instinctive enough to make plays. He was funny too.
Once Belichick was warning the players about what the media were going to say
to the team. “They’re going to come in here and blow smoke up your ass,” the
coach was saying. “They’re going to give you blow jobs, tell you how great you
are, they’re going to pile it on thick….” He finished talking and looked around
the room. Vrabel’s hand was raised. The coach braced
himself for some kind of comeback.

“Yeah, Mike,” Belichick
said.

“What was that you were saying about blow jobs?”

The whole team laughed. And there was a good combination of laughter and
business during the season. Josh McDaniels, one of the coaching assistants,
came up with a Friday segment called “bonus cuts.” He would show twenty-five
plays that illustrated the key points the players needed to remember. He
realized that attention spans were short on Fridays, so he made the package
must-see film by adding the bonus cuts at the end of them. Sometimes it was
footage of himself and Eric Mangini in high school and Pepper Johnson and Rob
Ryan in college. There was a clip from Johnson’s brief announcing career in New
York. The anchors went to him on a live shot, and Pepper, seemingly surprised,
threw up his hand in front of the camera and said, “Hi, guys.” The players
walked around saying that for weeks. They even included the quick wave to sell
the joke, a joke that never got old. Later in the season one of the bonus cuts
showed a drawling Joe Namath saying to ESPN reporter Suzy Kolber, “I want to
kiss you.” That exchange took place in New Jersey, when the Patriots were
playing the Jets. The players loved bonus cuts. The three or four times
McDaniels didn’t include them at the end of his presentations there would be
groans in the auditorium.

It was turning into a great season for
the Patriots. Their defense was reliable and accountable. And now they were on
their way to Indianapolis, where, when it mattered most, they wouldn’t
relinquish a single yard.

T
his is how quickly things can
change in professional sports. Over the course of eleven weeks, “The Lawyer
Milloy Situation” had become “The Buffalo Game” for the New England Patriots.
Whenever anyone got cocky in Foxboro, the response was always, “Remember
Buffalo.” There was no mention of the fact that one had helped create the
other.

It was an old topic anyway, and few people
referenced it. Too many things had changed. Eugene Wilson, the rookie
cornerback, was now playing safety with Harrison. Tyrone Poole, whom his
teammates nicknamed “Chompers” (he has large teeth), was playing like a Pro
Bowler at the corner opposite of Law. In training camp Poole seemed indifferent
about being with the team. A religious man, he said God had cleared his mind
and helped him concentrate on football again. And Washington, the defensive
tackle who liked to shout out, “Mornin’!” for no apparent reason, was back in
the middle of a defense that alternated between three-four and four-three
fronts.

The Patriots were in downtown Indianapolis, preparing to
face the 9–2 Colts. They probably would have been favorites if the game had
been in Foxboro. But the Colts were in their climate-controlled comfort, and
they were averaging 27 points per game. They were going to be tough to
stop.

It wasn’t so tough in the beginning: the Patriots took a
31–10 lead into the third quarter. But then the Colts tied it at 31 in the
fourth. New England went ahead on a Deion Branch touchdown,
but Mike Vanderjagt’s 29-yard field goal made it 38–34. That’s when the RCA
Dome carpet was transformed into a stage, the venue for one of the most
dramatic finishes of the season. When the Patriots couldn’t move the ball and
had compounded their problems with an 18-yard Ken Walter punt, the Colts had
the ball at the New England 48 with 2:57 to play. (Walter was released the next
day, after a season of bad punting. During the Patriots’ evaluations in ’02 one
of the coaches had suggested that Walter see a sports psychologist.)

The Colts were moving now, quarterback Peyton Manning pointing and
directing at the line of scrimmage. It took Manning two minutes and seventeen
seconds to get the Colts to the 2. There were forty seconds left. And if
anything justified Belichick’s insistence that the defense had to be better,
this was it. This was a stand. The ball was six feet away from the goal line.
It was also a measurement of a different kind. This was going to show how far
the Patriots had come. It was going to show how study and preparation could aid
athletic ability.

The ball got three feet closer to the goal after
one Edgerrin James run, with twenty-four seconds to play. The coaches had
called for Harrison to blitz from the edge. But he noticed that the play was
heading inside and changed on his own, stopping James’s progress. The Colts
tried to run a quick play on second down and sneak James in. But Washington was
positioned to the side where the play was to be run, and he was good at
splitting the guard-center gap. He led the up-front pushing, and Harrison, Tedy
Bruschi, and Wilson stopped James for no gain. There were eighteen seconds
left, and it was third down.

Three feet away.

Manning called time. The Patriots knew it was going
to be a pass, most likely a fade route on Poole. “Smell shit,” Rob Ryan said
from the coaches’ box. The Colts were bringing in a rookie receiver, Aaron
Moorehead, who hadn’t been a factor all day. Of course, they were going to him.
Wilson told Poole that he would help him on the jam, so Moore- head was out of
position from the start. The Patriots were ready for the fade, and it sailed
out of the end zone.

Fourth down with fourteen seconds to play and
thirty-six inches to defend. The Colts went with James, and McGinest, for the
second week in a row, blew up a key play in the backfield. He was able to get
there because Washington was in that gap again. If McGinest—who had bluffed a
jam and decided to charge instead—hadn’t taken out James, someone else would
have gotten him.

The Patriots won, 38–34. They weren’t a lot
better than the teams they played. Sometimes the difference between them and
others could be measured in points. Other times it was inches. The wins had
begun to take on styles and themes, like the work from your favorite artist.
The Patriots were becoming a brand. There was such a thing as a “Patriots’ Guy”
and a “Patriots’ Win.” The games were close enough to be dramatic, but physical
enough for teams to understand that they weren’t going to win.

Consecutive win number 9 was the division winner in the snow, 12–0 over
the Dolphins. Fans, with at least eighteen inches of it at their feet, made
snow confetti when Bruschi scored the lone touchdown. He got into the end zone
and fell to his knees, surprised that he had turned the game with a pluck of a
Jay Fiedler pass. As “Rock & Roll Part 2” played, the snow flew into the
air on each “Hey!” Number 10 was a knockoff snow sequel—the snow came
late—over the Jaguars. Eleven was worthy of an off-off-
Broadway location—or New Jersey—against the struggling Jets. Number 12 was
destined for song or poem, one with the closing line an ironic twist of the
first line.

That’s because number 12 was Buffalo. The Bills were
6–9, incapable of scoring consistently. Bledsoe looked bad, nothing like the
quarterback who had commanded so much of New England’s attention in the
Bledsoe-Brady debates. Milloy was not a factor. The Bills, statistically, were
worse than they had been the previous year.