Patriot Reign (21 page)

They lost to the
Patriots two days after Christmas, 31–0. It was a perfect score. Perfect for
Jackson, who would occasionally pop up on Belichick’s TV saying, “They love
their coach!” Belichick didn’t think it was funny. Why no phone call from
Jackson? No letter? No admission staring into the camera, just as he had done
on September 14? Belichick wasn’t done with him, and the Patriots weren’t done
with the NFL. They were going to the play-offs, with the top seed in the
conference throughout. They were going to claim the trophy that they couldn’t
even defend one year before. The next time they went into that auditorium, it
wasn’t going to be a breakup meeting. They were going to sneak by Tennessee in
the cold and beat Indianapolis again, this time in the snow.

Against Buffalo, they knew they had gained some type of redemption. “The
way this season went for us was definitely a shock,” Milloy told Ron Borges of
the
Boston Globe.
“We opened the year beating them 31–0, and
now we lose to them by the same score. That puts the exclamation point on the
difference between us. I’m ready to go home for a while and just get away from
football.”

Milloy had not finished on top.
Financially, yes. But he was going home to get away from football, and his old
teammates were headed to Houston to play more of it. For the second time in
three years the New England Patriots were going to the Super Bowl.

Between the live music and the conversations of
six thousand people, it was difficult to hear anyone talking at the dinner
table. You could look at the person sitting across from you and attempt to read
his lips, but if you wanted to talk without straining, it was best to turn to
your immediate left or right. Since that was the story on a Monday night in
Houston, Bill Belichick could have made the case that he had the best seat in
the house.

It was January 26, 2004, and Jim Nantz was
hosting the first big event of Super Bowl Week at Houston’s Reliant Arena. This
was a gala celebrating the city’s most impressive sports stars, a function so
heavy with celebrity that the
Houston Chronicle
correctly
noted that Carl Lewis and Hakeem Olajuwon couldn’t make it and the star
power of the roster still was not diminished. The roll call
sprawled like the six hundred square miles of the city itself, from Bum
Phillips and Earl Campbell to Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan to Rudy Tomjanovich
and Moses Malone back to Sheryl Swoopes and Mary Lou Retton. This was “A
Houston Salute,” but it was an event for all of Texas: large, colorful, and
bold. For those keeping tabs on karma, it was the first clue that the New
England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers were six days away from italicizing
the NFL’s championship game.
Super
Bowl XXXVIII, without a
doubt.

So much had changed for Belichick and the Patriots in the
two years since they had last played for a title. They were the subjects of
pity and condescension then, a group of players expected to aspire to silver
medals rather than the silver Lombardi Trophy. But they beat the St. Louis
Rams, earned the trophy, and eventually lost their ability to reside on the
margins. They were not the anonymous Patriots anymore. They were not the
underdogs. They were winners of fourteen games in a row, the second-longest
streak in league history. They could no longer take the position of critical
outsiders, here to surprise the privileged of their sport. They
were
the insiders now, and their privilege could be seen in
the seating chart for dinner.

Mark Fredland, Belichick’s friend
from high school and college, sat to the coach’s right. George Herbert Walker
Bush, the forty-first president of the United States, sat to the coach’s left.
(Barbara Bush was sitting at a table with Panthers head coach John Fox.)
Patriots owner Robert Kraft sat to the left of Bush, and NFL commissioner Paul
Tagliabue sat to the left of Kraft. There was no way to downplay it: this table
was special. Berj Najarian found that out as he sat across
the table and prepared to snap a casual photo of Belichick and President Bush.
As soon as Najarian took the picture, he heard disapproving voices: “Hey,
hey….”

Two Secret Service men suddenly approached the
table.

“He’s okay,” Dan Kraft, one of the owner’s four sons,
assured them. The agents were at ease again. There is no such thing as casual
or private when a president joins you for dinner.

Bush and
Belichick talked about the Massachusetts school they both attended, Phillips
Academy in Andover. They remembered that Bush spoke to Belichick’s class— the
class of 1971—and that one of the coach’s classmates was a kid from Texas named
John Ellis. Yep. John Ellis Bush, also known as “Jeb.” Belichick was impressed
with the fullness of the eighty-year-old man’s career. Like Steve Belichick,
Bush had been an officer in the Navy. He had been a businessman, a member of
the House of Representatives, and director of the CIA. He was now a sportsman,
into skydiving and football. He was a Patriots fan who developed a friendship
with Robert Kraft in the early 1990s; Bush was even at the first regular-season
game at Gillette Stadium in September 2002.

As he sat at
dinner—surrounded by sports, entertainment, and political celebrity—Belichick
had no idea that the entire week would unfold like this. There would be more
celebrities sitting, standing, and sometimes controversially performing in the
vicinity of his team. There would be more coincidence, a trend that ended with
their quarterback and kicker reprising the dramatic moments from New Orleans in
2002. There would be surprises, a mild fight with the league, a frightening
close call that would have nothing to do with football, and
late-night curses for Tom Jackson and Warren Sapp.

O
ne day after seeing stars at the
gala, Belichick was back in a more normal setting. He was having dinner at
Houston’s, a few minutes away from the Inter-Continental, the Patriots’ hotel.
Fredland and Najarian were there again— Najarian didn’t have a camera this
time—along with a few members of the media. Armen Keteyian of CBS, Steve Cohen
of WFAN in New York, and Wendi Nix of WHDH-TV in Boston were all able to see a
relaxed Belichick cover a number of topics. He is conversant in several areas,
so there was no need to cling to football subjects. But with that said, on
January 27, Belichick knew exactly what his team needed to do to beat the
Panthers. His players felt the same way.

“I felt like
I was ready to play the game on the Sunday we landed in Houston,” Tom Brady
says. “We had an extra week of preparation, and it helped. I felt like I was
more prepared for that game than any other one of the year.”

There
were some things about the Panthers that concerned Belichick. This was a group
that had begun to identify with the Patriots of 2001. They believed they were
among the toughest and most overlooked players in the league and had not
received their proper due all season. They had won two play-off games on the
road, including an NFC Championship game win in which they allowed just 3
points to the Philadelphia Eagles. The perception was that they were a
conservative offense that relied on the legs of running back Stephen Davis. But
Belichick, Romeo Crennel, and Charlie Weis knew better.
They respected Fox, offensive coordinator Dan Henning, and special-teams coach
Scott O’Brien, who had been on Belichick’s staff in Cleveland. The Panthers
were clever with their offense. They would give the appearance of a pure, empty
backfield but remix that look by having a six-man protection scheme. They liked
to send receiver Muhsin Muhammad in motion to take advantage of his exceptional
blocking. They liked “wide routes” where they would pass to the halfback in the
flat and suddenly turn the play into a moving screen. The receiver they’d send
deep was Steve Smith, who was effective because he was quick and aggressive
enough to escape the jam at the line of scrimmage.

They didn’t
have to be studied and decoded, as the Rams had been two years before. But they
were difficult to prepare for because they took the Patriots’ approach: they
didn’t make it easy for you; they made you plan for everything.

The Panthers had one of the most impressive defensive lines in football
with Kris Jenkins, Julius Peppers, Brentson Buckner, and Mike Rucker. The
foursome allowed Carolina to have defensive depth and range. The Panthers had
four versions of “Cover 2” and three versions of “Cover 1.” They blitzed
corners, safeties, and linebackers. Sometimes they would sit in a zone and let
the pressure come naturally from their line.

Tampa Bay had played
the Panthers twice in the regular season and lost both times. Warren Sapp, a
Buccaneers defensive tackle, believed he had seen enough of the Panthers to
know what the difference in the game would be. During an interview with Michael
Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser of ESPN’s
Pardon the
Interruption
, Sapp said the Panthers’ defensive line would overwhelm
the men assigned to protect Brady. He threw in a shot at Patriots guard Russ
Hochstein, who would have to start because regular Damien Woody suffered a torn
MCL in the divisional play-off win against Tennessee.

“I don’t
even think it’s a fair matchup,” Sapp said. “I don’t see how they’re going to
get it done, because I think Russ Hochstein started for them in the AFC
Championship game, and I’ve seen Russ Hochstein block, and he couldn’t block
either of you two fellas. Damien Woody was the best lineman they had, but Russ
Hochstein, trust me, my friend, he couldn’t block either of you two.”

What Sapp didn’t understand was that the Patriots had planned for this
situation, specifically and generally. They knew when and where Carolina was
going to try to shoot the gaps, and they were ready to counter it. They would
ask tight end Daniel Graham to stay in and help with the blocking on some
plays. At other times they were comfortable enough to have a running back pick
up the blitz if it came from the weak side. They realized that the back might
be, in certain situations, five-foot-eight-inch Kevin Faulk. The assignment
wouldn’t be as tough as expected for other reasons too. One was Brady, who
could quickly read defenses and change the protection if necessary. “Having
Brady is like having Belichick on the field—only Brady has a better arm,” Rob
Ryan says. It was also a plus that all of the New England linemen were astute
enough to make calls. The job wasn’t just left to the center.

The
larger point, though, was the development program for linemen that the Patriots
had written into their scouting manual. It was an outline for those players who
weren’t ready to contribute but “may be able to compete
within a year with strength and development and intense individual technique
refining.”

Hochstein was not ready to play when he came out of
Nebraska, even though he had arrived in Lincoln as a 240- pounder and left as a
295-pound All-American. He still wasn’t ready when Tampa selected him in the
fifth round in 2001 and then released him a year later. He wasn’t initially
ready for the Patriots or their offensive line coach when he was signed in
2002. Dante Scarnecchia was similar to many coaches on the New England staff.
He wanted things done right, and he wanted you to stay until you got it right.
In Hochstein’s first year with New England, Scarnecchia didn’t think the guard
brought enough vigor to his upper- body training. He called him a “bullshitter
in the weight room.”

All of that had changed by January 2004.
Change, in fact, was another Patriots element that was difficult to analyze.
They were forever in motion—in a good way. They forced you to update your
scouting reports on them weekly, because what you saw two months ago might be
irrelevant today. So Sapp was probably right about the ’02 version of
Hochstein. The Bucs did, after all, give up on him. But he was valuable to the
Patriots, and even the man he replaced could see it.

“Russ is like
three-quarters of the guys on the line,” Woody explained. “He doesn’t have the
greatest athletic skills, but he’s an overachiever, he works hard, and he’s
smart. That’s about it. I think Warren was jealous. We were in the Super Bowl,
and he was at home eating a sandwich.”

Figuratively, that was
true. Literally, Sapp was on the loose at Tuesday’s Media Day, the annual
breeding ground for the absurd. Sapp had a microphone, an
NFL Network camera crew, a bodyguard, and curious members of the media
following him around the Reliant Stadium field. He approached Hochstein and
asked, “Aren’t you glad I made you the center of attention?” Hochstein stared
at Sapp and replied, “No more questions.” Sapp would later joke about Hochstein
moving as if both of his shoes were tied together.

Maybe it wasn’t
so overt during the season, but the Patriots were used to the skeptics. There
was Sapp. There was Tennessee guard Zach Piller, who said he would be shocked
if the Patriots won the title. Following the AFC Championship game, when league
co-MVP Peyton Manning threw five interceptions, there were complaints that the
Patriots might have stretched the rules with all of their contact at the line.
The Patriots obviously won a lot, but the feeling was that they didn’t win by
large enough margins to snuff out the hope of their opponents.

“I
don’t want to say that we didn’t get any respect, because we did,” Brady says.
“I just don’t think a lot of teams felt we were that good. They thought we were
good, but not like the 49ers or the Steelers or Cowboys.”

That was
part of their motivation during the week. They had been reminded many times
that they and the Panthers had accomplished the same thing. All they had done,
on Wednesday of Super Bowl Week, was qualify for the game. Would they really be
considered one of history’s great teams if they lost the Super Bowl? Who would
be talking about the fourteen-game winning streak then? These were the things
they talked about when they went to the second level of the Inter-Continental
and held their meetings in Champions Ballroom. They talked about it at lunch,
on the first floor, in a room called “Legends.” They tried
to have good practices at Rice University so they would be ready for whatever
Carolina showed them. Their actual practices were good in terms of execution
and speed. But there were other problems.

“We can’t practice
here,” Belichick said as he watched his team run. The coach didn’t like the
layout of the field. Just over a yard away from the playing surface, Belichick
saw what he described as drainage pipes. He thought the field was too wet, and
after seeing Rodney Harrison do a split—unintentionally—during one sequence, he
made up his mind. He was going to the league and telling it that the venue had
to be changed. He made his case and was told that the alternative venue was the
Houston Texans’ practice bubble. It was to be used when it was raining. “Well,”
Belichick said, “let’s pretend it’s raining.” He was told that the league did
not want to favor one team and thus create some type of unfair advantage. He
said he was not looking for an advantage. He just wanted to keep his players
from injuring themselves on a sloped field that he said “looks like a fairway.”
Belichick wasn’t going to let this one go. He pressed, and the venue was
changed.

As the Patriots moved toward the weekend there was more
to think about than the condition of the practice field. Belichick had been
told by NFL security that there had been an issue at the Panthers’ hotel.
Carolina was staying at the Wyndham Greenspoint in north Houston, about twenty
miles and twenty-five minutes away from the Inter- Continental.