Patriots have come a long way

Bill Burt

February 03, 2008 01:58 am

— EDITOR’S NOTE: Sportswriters Bill Burt and Hector Longo, reporter J.J. Huggins and photographer Paul Bilodeau are in Glendale, Ariz., to cover the Patriots’ build-up to Super Bowl XLII and the doings of local fans who have made the trip.

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Mike Haynes brought his 8-year-old son to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro for a mini-family vacation the last few years.
“He is amazed at the place, the team and everything about the franchise,” said Haynes, a Pro Football Hall of Famer who played with the Patriots from 1976 to 1982.
“He comes and meets the players, like Tom Brady. It’s like a fantasy world over there.”
Like many fathers, Haynes, 54, could tell his son a story about a very different sort Patriots than the ones he knows today. It would be about disorganization, botched opportunities, and, at times, misery.
But that’s a story for another time, when his son can handle it.
“He’s having too much fun,” said Haynes, who is in Phoenix this week as an NFL representative. “I wouldn’t want to ruin it for him. He’s too young.”
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Gil Brandt isn’t too young. In fact, he’ll turn 75 on March 3, after a long and illustrious career in the NFL.
He spent 29 seasons as general manager of the Dallas Cowboys.
Brandt was part of a team that included coach Tom Landry, whom he started with in 1960 and eventually retired with in 1988.
They had losing seasons the first five and finished with a 7-7 record the next. Then Landry and Brandt enjoyed 20 straight winning seasons with the Cowboys.
The Cowboys made the playoffs 18 of those 20 seasons. They made four trips to the Super Bowl, which sounds a lot like what’s happening on Route 1 in Foxboro.
“It all starts at the top,” Brandt said. “It’s organization. It’s everyone on the same page with a common goal. We had that.”
The Patriots of yesteryear did not.
“The Sullivans were a wonderful family. I could talk about Billy Sullivan a long time. He did a lot of great things for the league and the Patriots,” Brandt said. “There would be no New England Patriots if it wasn’t for him.”
Brandt, who now writes for weekly columns for NFL.com, said he likens the Patriots’ problems over the years to a “poker game.”
“They just didn’t bring enough chips to play,” he said. “They were competing against multimillionaires, guys who had fortunes. Money always seemed to get in the way.”
Brandt recalls his teams not looking forward to the trip to Foxboro.
“I remember a Monday night they hated the locker rooms,” he recalled. “They were tiny. Everyone would bump into each other. There weren’t many showers.”
In short, he said, “It wasn’t up to the NFL’s expectations.”
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The visitors’ locker room?
That was the least of the Patriots’ problems in their early years.
“The” problem, according to Haynes, was distractions.
“When I look back at my career there, it seemed like distractions always got in the way,” said Haynes, who was drafted by the Patriots in the first round with the fifth pick overall in 1976, a pick the team got because of its disappointing 3-11 record in 1975.
He said back then, players never seemed to get a chance just to focus on winning, like the 2007 Patriots do.
“Every year, it seemed like somebody was out of camp with a contract dispute,” he said. “It was disheartening, because of the players and coaches and even the scouts we had. We had talented people throughout the organization. But they would be here and in a while, they’d be gone.”
Former coach Chuck Fairbanks, however, was extra special, Haynes said.
“He was a lot like Bill Belichick in some ways. He really was,” he said. “He was great at identifying talent. You look at his drafts and they were amazing. You look at the players he brought in like John Hannah, Steve Grogan, Sam Cunningham. ... I could go on and on.”
Fairbanks had powerful long-range vision, Haynes said.
“We were the first team to really implement the ‘3-4’ defense,” he noted. “I can’t say enough good things about Coach Fairbanks.”
Haynes’ first five seasons with the Patriots were the most successful for the team up to that point — five straight winning seasons and two playoff berths. But Haynes also had five different defensive-back coaches in that time period.
“And each guy had his own philosophy,” he said. “One guy wanted me to play back. Another wanted me to play press coverage, and one guy said he didn’t care what we did.
“Even through that we had success,” he said.
Haynes left the Patriots after the 1982 season. As a star player in the league (six Pro Bowls in seven seasons), he would command too much money.
The Patriots’ cornerback was traded to the Raiders. The Patriots got a first- and second-round draft pick, and Haynes got a new lease on his NFL life.
“I learned right away the difference between the organizations,” he said. “The Raiders’ goal was, from Day 1 of camp, to get to the Big Dance (the playoffs). With the Patriots, it was a big deal to win a game. It was just different.”
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Money problems seemed to dog the Patriots long after Haynes was gone.
The Sullivan family had some bad investments with a failed Michael Jackson Tour, and confusing sales of Sullivan Stadium and the parking lots to separate ventures.
The franchise rebounded on the field in the mid-1980s, getting to the Super Bowl in 1985. As in the 1970s, however, the success was short lived.
Patrick Sullivan, the owner’s son and former general manager, made one move that Brandt said changed not only the Patriots’ fortune, but the Cowboys’, too.
Sullivan traded a pick that allowed the 49ers to draft Jerry Rice, a wide receiver who eventually had a Hall of Fame professional career. If the 49ers hadn’t drafted Rice, Brandt would have taken him for the Cowboys with the very next pick.
“They (the Patriots) basically traded Jerry Rice,” Brandt said. “That one still hurts.”
The transition from the Sullivans to Victor Kiam, an Remington electric razor magnate who bought them in 1988, brought even more distractions. From 1989 to 1992, the Patriots won only 14 games, a mark that three Bill Belichick teams have hit in one season.
“It was disappointing, because we had some great people in the organization and some great players,” said ex-Patriots linebacker Andre Tippett. “We just had too many things going on that kept us from being great.”
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Ex-Patriots quarterback Scott Zolak bridged the gap from the old New England Patriots to the new New England Patriots.
“I remember we started the 1992 season at 0-9 and then we had won two games, my first two as a starter,” said Zolak, who was drafted in 1991 by then- team president and general manager Sam Jankovich.
“Well, Sam comes into the practice bubble with these two guys with bushy hair, a father and a son,” he said. “I shook their hands and chatted with them a little bit about them being season-ticket-holders and telling me about their family.”
He remembers the conversation well.
“The father told me, ‘I’m going to own this team some day,’” Zolak said. “I thought he was crazy. I just laughed.”
Those two “bushy-haired” men were current owners Robert and Jonathan Kraft.
The Krafts eventually did buy the team in 1994 from James Busch Orthwein, who had planned to move the franchise to St. Louis before the league stepped in and pushed for “local” ownership.
The difference between the Krafts and the Sullivans, who equally loved this area and franchise, was their bankroll,
Brandt said.
“You can’t compete in this league without having resources,” he said. “They had their (paper company), which has been very successful. They came into this league with a plan to make the Patriots great.”
Zolak said the difference between the Orthwein group and the Kraft family was like night and day.
“Everything changed,” he said. “They inherited (coach) Bill Parcells, who also played a role in what has happened to this franchise. I think we have to give Bill credit. But the Krafts brought discipline and continuity to the team.”
He said at the beginning the Krafts were around a lot — which the teams hadn’t experienced much with previous owners. It kept players on their toes, he said.
“This was a local family who loved the Patriots,” Zolak said.
Zolak said his biggest wake-up call was the 1996 NFL Draft, on two accounts.
One, Robert Kraft, over the displeasure of Parcells, decided to cast the deciding vote in drafting Terry Glenn. That sent shock waves not only over the New England area, but the Patriots locker room.
Two, the next day Parcells drafted the rugged defensive tackle Christian Peter of the University of Nebraska. But reports surfaced that Peter had been arrested eight times, including charges for rape, and the pick was rescinded.
“I remember Mrs. Kraft getting involved when she heard about Peter’s arrests,” said Zolak, who married a local woman and lives in the South Shore. “That to me sent a message to everybody: Character matters.”
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Two more moves by the Kraft family also especially stand out in moving the Patriots toward their current success.
Robert Kraft hired Bill Belichick to coach and run the football operations, and he built Gillette Stadium.
“Mr. Kraft takes chances, but they’re calculated chances,” said Tippett, who found out yesterday he gained entrance into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“I think the fact that he had the guts to hire Bill Belichick as coach says it all. I don’t know of anybody that thought that was a great move.”
Kraft got killed by the media, he said, “But that move had as much to do with our success here as any.”
As for the stadium, Robert Kraft said it was a dream when he first bought the old Sullivan Stadium (he renamed it Foxboro Stadium). The team was still owned by Victor Kiam at the time, and Massachusetts politicians finally agreed to help fund the infrastructure for the proposed new stadium on Route 1.
By the time it was finished and its doors officially opened in September 2002, the Patriots were defending Super Bowl champions.
Like most Kraft projects, it was built under budget and on time.
“I am in awe of the place over there,” Haynes said. “It’s remarkable. It’s one of my favorite places to go in the league.”
But Kraft’s football team is even more awe-inspiring.
They are on a run of epic proportions, especially in a financially restricted era when championship teams are supposed to come and go.
The New York Giants were in the 2000 Super Bowl. They were rebuilt four seasons ago and are back seven seasons later.
The Patriots, though, never left. And tonight they’re chasing the history books, going for the second undefeated season in NFL history.
The win also would seal their fourth title in seven seasons.
“When the Patriots had their last ring ceremony (in the spring of 2005), I noticed that Robert Kraft had the Lombardi Trophy cut into his lawn,” Brandt said.
“I realize that might not be a big deal to a lot of people, but to me it represented what the Patriots are about. They are professional in everything they do. “
Did it cost a little extra money to do that to that lawn?
“Sure,” Brandt said. “But it shows your people that you care about the little things. It also shows you have a lot of money.”
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Bill Burt is senior sports editor for The Eagle-Tribune. You can e-mail him at bburt@eagletribune.com.

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