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5.

“BEWARE THE PISSED OFF PRETTY BOY”

­October–­November 2014

I have a favorite old quote about Washington, D.C., from Senator Thomas Gore, a progressive Democrat from Oklahoma who served in the 1930s (and was grandfather of the acerbic writer Gore Vidal). With its architectural grandeur, Senator Gore said, our capital would someday “make wonderful ruins.” I have similar thoughts sometimes when I approach a gleaming ­twenty-­first-­century football stadium. Stadiums constitute the true measure of an NFL owner. Or “stadia,” to use the plural form the league will often deploy when discussing “venues.” The NFL loves anything that evokes ­Rome—­e.g., Roman numerals for Super Bowls, never mind what happened to Rome.

The vast buildings rise like monuments to a market legitimized as sufficiently Big League to deserve an NFL franchise. And then you imagine these coliseums abandoned one day, as “wonderful ruins” for anyone studying the passions and priorities of a civilization after it falls. This is not a complete fantasy in certain “markets”: the Houston Astrodome, billed as the Eighth Wonder of the World when it opened in 1965, now sits forsaken in the shadow of the Houston Texans’ lustrous NRG Stadium; Detroit’s 80,­000-­seat Silverdome opened in 1975, was deserted after it closed in 2006, and has suffered a spectacular public decay ever since (a YouTube video of the trashed fossil in 2014 is a haunting thing to behold).

As I pursued Brady, I made my first ever trip to Gillette Stadium, the Patriots’ home since 2002. In week five of the 2014 season, I flew to Boston from D.C. and drove south to Foxborough to see the Patriots host the unbeaten Cincinnati Bengals (4–0) in a Sunday Night Football game. Patriot Place, as the larger complex is called, rises along a could-be-­anywhere blotch of car dealerships, billboards, and ­fast-­food franchises on Route 1 between Boston and Providence. No one lives at Patriot Place.

Robert Kraft described Gillette to me as a “diversified” stadium, meaning that it offers fans a diversified menu of ways (shopping, dining, game tickets) to be separated from their money. Because football is such a perfect TV sport, in both production and ratings, teams must offer extracurricular attractions to entice ticket buyers; only 7 percent of NFL fans have ever attended a game live.

People outside New England who experience Foxborough as a recurring set of the NFL TV studio might believe the town is a quaint village of greens, Revolutionary War monuments, and assorted Ye Olde tropes. Returning from commercial breaks, networks reinforce this Disneyfied version of New England with stock shots of a steeple, a cider mill, maybe a landmark in Boston, which is a ­forty-­minute drive away. A huge replica of a lighthouse looms over the north end zone, though you’re as likely to see a real lighthouse in inland Foxborough as you are an actual Minuteman strolling through Harvard Square. In real life, Gillette Stadium is a concrete football Oz that reeks of merchandise, corporate sponsorships, and winning. Fans of the team have witnessed an astounding run of fifteen consecutive ­ten-­win seasons by the Patriots; the stadium has sold out every game since Kraft bought the team in 1994, including ­pre- and postseason games. I’d still much rather watch on TV.

I arrived a few days before the game and paid a visit to Guerrero in his TB12 lair at Patriots Place. Guerrero, who was ­forty-­nine at the time, is a practicing Mormon of Argentine descent with a master’s degree in Chinese medicine from a college in Los Angeles that is no longer in business. His philosophy is built on three components, he told me: “We work on staying physically fit, emotionally stable, and spiritually sound.” Guerrero shared with me a mantra that he and Brady invoke a lot: “Where your concentration goes, your energy flows, and that’s what grows.”

Brady is always telling his teammates to see Guerrero. It can be a tricky part to play with teammates. The Patriots have their own training, conditioning, and medical program. When I asked Guerrero if the conventional philosophies that govern training and treatment in the NFL ever clash with what he is doing, he said, “Most of the time.” I later put the same question to the Patriots’ owner, Robert Kraft. “It doesn’t come without its challenges,” Kraft replied. “It’s not a straight line.”

Brady barely hides his contempt for many of football’s traditional training methods. He told me about one of his teammates, an offensive lineman hampered all year by a bad shoulder. The guy’s shoulder was “on fire,” Brady said, and he was told to strengthen the area. Brady winces. “I’m, like, the guy presses seven hundred pounds and you need to make him stronger? The guy can lift a fucking car.” Brady’s tone can edge ­toward proselytizing.

“The reality is,” Brady said, “if you want to live a better life, and you want to live well, you’re probably gonna have to take some different steps.” He shares with me a word he learned in Sanskrit, mudita. “It’s, like, fulfillment in seeing other people fulfilled,” Brady says.

The Patriots were looking anything but fulfilled on the field. They began the 2014 season ­2–­2 and had just been destroyed by the Kansas City Chiefs, ­41–­14, on a Monday night. Brady, who threw two interceptions, was pulled in the fourth quarter and replaced by rookie quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, a ­second-­round selection out of Eastern Illinois University, and the highest draft pick the team has used on that position since Brady became the starter.

A reporter asked Belichick after the game “if the quarterback position would be evaluated.” The coach chuckled, shook his head, and said nothing. He dispatched subsequent questions with “We’re on to Cincinnati,” a reference to the Pats’ next opponent, and he said it enough that it became the catchphrase example of Belichick’s tunnel vision and general noncommunicativeness.

Fans and the press across the NFL were drunk on Schadenfreude. The Patriots had become widely resented for reasons that go well beyond jealousy. Fort Belichick is known as a paranoid and joyless place whose inhabitants are not above pushing rules to gain a “competitive edge.” Haters prefer the far less euphemistic term “cheating.” It’s a charge that stemmed from the so-called Spygate incident of 2007, in which a Patriots employee was caught illicitly videotaping the hand signals of opposing coaches. For critics, that episode is like the first Ebola exposure from which everything nefarious about the Patriots can be sourced.

The Patriots would beat the Bengals ­43–­17, with Brady completing 23 of 35 passes for 292 yards and 2 touchdowns. He performed with urgency and even vengeance. “Trust me when I tell you,” the actor Rob Lowe would tweet before halftime, “beware the pissed off pretty boy.”

I saw Brady briefly in the winning locker room. He was wrapped in a towel and carrying a toothbrush, exiting a shower room. “Nice seeing you here,” he said to me. “You picked a good week.” I told him I’d see him soon. “Awesome,” he said.

The victory began a ­seven-­game winning streak that left the Patriots tied for the best record in the league, 9–2. I returned to Gillette the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as the Patriots were preparing to play the 8–3 Packers. It was a dreary, sleeting day in ­Foxborough—­a perfect backdrop for a Belichick news conference. The coach looked to be in an especially foul mood, like he was about to vomit. I thought of an Onion headline from a few years earlier that seemed apt at this moment: BILL BELICHICK FORGETS ABOUT LOSS BY RELAXING IN THE BATHTUB FILLED WITH WARM ENTRAILS. Back to live action, when Belichick was asked whether it was an advantage that he had never faced Aaron Rodgers, the Packers’ quarterback, he said: “I mean, it is what it is. Whatever hasn’t happened hasn’t happened.” In response to a question about whether he saw any similarities between Rodgers and Brady, Belichick said, “They both wear number 12,” then headed off.

When Belichick was done, Stacey James, the team’s longtime head of media relations, opened the Patriots’ locker room to reporters for the ­league-­mandated ­forty-­five-­minute period. Locker rooms are not comfortable places for people who don’t belong there. Reporters are not sanctioned in the sanctuary, only briefly ­credentialed—­and at best tolerated. Unwritten rules govern most interactions. As an outsider among interlopers, I was unfamiliar with most of them. Nearly all of the thirty or so media ­bull-­rushers were from New England outlets. A good number of them carried some food or beverage item from Dunkin’ Donuts. Quite a few of them seemed to be named Ryan.

Players walked around in various states of undress. Their eyes were fixed on their phones and headphones were fastened on. Reporters clustered around a few of the more prominent and talkative actors, like defensive back Devin McCourty and tight end Rob Gronkowski. The rest of the media massed in the middle of the room, talking quietly among themselves and reading ­Twitter—­out loud if there was something germane. “Aaron Hernandez murder trial delayed by other Aaron Hernandez murder trial,” said one TV reporter, reading a headline on BostonMagazine.com. I laughed, maybe audibly. Bad idea. Hernandez, the homicidal tight end, must never be mentioned in his former team’s locker room, let alone chuckled at. Fortunately no one heard me.

Brady walked in wearing a red, white, and blue ski cap. He took a seat at a stool in front of his locker. He was given a wide berth, at least twenty feet in all directions. It is understood that Brady, given his star power, would do his own media sessions from a podium once a week and after games.

Otherwise the King must not be approached. I didn’t realize this and walked up and said hello. ­Stink-­eyes were trained my way from some of the Ryans. How dare I address Zeus directly? Brady did not seem to mind, however, or was willing to humor me. We chatted for a minute or so. He wished me a happy Thanksgiving and I headed back to the scrum of Ryans.

Brady returned to what he was doing at his stool, which involved stretching out a pair of ­gloves—­a task he appeared completely locked into. It was as if the rest of the nonfootball bubble did not exist, a place where he would, by necessity, need to transform into a less organic self (i.e., someone who has to make small talk with a clueless locker room invader). He stood up after a few minutes and headed out through a door marked athletic training.

“In front of seventy thousand people, I can be who I am,” Brady would say in a Facebook documentary, Tom vs Time, that came out a few years later. “If I want to scream at somebody I can scream at somebody. I can be who I am in a very authentic way.” As Brady says this, it’s impossible not to extend the thought a ­beat—­and then he does so himself: “That is hard for me when I walk off the field.”

Brady has described the sport as being “synonymous with my being” in a way that nothing else in his life could ever be. He can sit for hours in his den watching game film on his laptop, so fixated on the riddles and subtleties before him that hours can pass without his even noticing. Football for ­Brady—­and I’ve heard countless other athletes say versions of ­this—­is also the ultimate reprieve from the grind and bullshit of reality. It offers him his best shot at freedom.

JAMES WALKED OVER AND ASKED ME IF I WANTED TO MEET “MR. Kraft.” Deadpan and efficient, James might have the toughest PR job in the league. He is charged with running interference among a competitive group of beat reporters, a mumbling control freak of a head coach, and an ­image-­conscious owner. James, a native of Washington State, grew up rooting for the Seahawks and joined the Patriots in 1993, the year before Kraft bought the team. He adheres to a stubborn and even slightly Baghdad Bob manner of devotion to the so-called Patriot Way.

The Patriot Way is a term of admiration, ­self-­congratulation, or derision, depending on who is using it. To fans and insiders the Patriot Way stands for the selfless, no drama, “Do Your Job” mentality at the core of the team’s ­success—­an almost Maoist decree of labor for the collective. “Ignore the Noise” is another Belichick mantra (trademarked, licensed, merchandised) that is often invoked by the Greek chorus of Pats fans who make most of that noise.

“No days off, no days off,” Belichick started yelling at one of the team’s ­post–­Super Bowl celebrations in front of Boston City Hall. Bizarrely, he would go on to chant the phrase nine times until he was joined by a good portion of the ­crowd—­many of whom had taken days off from work to attend the rally.

To detractors, of course, the Patriot Way reflects a humorless and win-at-­all-­costs monolith. And while I’m grateful for all the victories Belichick has coached, I’d rather jump into raw sewage than go to work every day for Bunker Bill. In case Coach was thinking about asking me.

The Patriot Way is ­also—­and I say this in the most respectful possible ­way—­complete bullshit. People use “the Patriot Way” as a catchall to justify all manner of cold decision making. The term is thrown around like it is some secret organizational sauce. When successful institutions rise to the level of having a “way” attached to them (IBM, Goldman Sachs), they are often too good to be true and invite comeuppance: I ­remember thinking this after baseball’s St. Louis ­Cardinals—­they of the “Cardinal Way”—­were busted in 2015 for hacking into the computer database of the Houston Astros.

Players who might have previously had “issues” on other teams, or in college, come to New England as damaged goods, often on the cheap. They then, as the story goes, get a taste of the Patriot Way. They adopt the ethic and get contorted into the mold. Upon signing a $40 million contract extension in 2012, Aaron Hernandez talked about how buying into the Patriot Way had changed him. He went from being a talented but troubled young man at the University of ­Florida—­considered a “character risk” and thus lasting until the fourth round of the 2010 ­draft—­to being a Pro ­Bowl–­caliber tight end. “You get changed by the Patriot Way,” Hernandez said in an emotional press conference after signing the new deal. He talked about how touched he was that Mr. Kraft would make such a ­long-­term commitment to him. He pledged $50,000 to a charity named for Kraft’s late wife, Myra. “I said, ‘Aaron, you don’t have to do this, you’ve already got your contract,’ ” Kraft said at the press conference. “He said, ‘No, it makes me feel good and I want to do it.’ And that made me feel good.”

Even given how Hernandez wound up, Kraft continues to invoke “the Patriot Way,” especially the idea that the Patriots are like a family, at least to him (if not to the “family members” that Belichick will jettison for cheaper parts). Kraft, who is now ­seventy-­six, cuts a more rumpled figure in his office than the magnate we see on TV. During games, Kraft will sit in his private box watching the action through binoculars from a raised seat, giving an impression of a king on a highchair. He wears bright suits with expert pocket squares. He is always accompanied by his son Jonathan, and often some celebrity arm candy, like Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Elton John, or Jon Bon Jovi (as with many fans of the Patriots, they seemed to all peak in the seventies and eighties). Announcers narrate these money shots by praising, in Kraft’s case, his stewardship of the dynasty and contributions to the league and, of course, to so many charities.