15 Years - The Hit Heard 'Round The World
6On this day in history, September 23rd 2001 the future of the NFL was forever altered when Mo Lewis took out Drew Bledsoe, the then-starting quarterback for the New England Patriots. Mo Lewis had no way of knowing that his actions would set the wheels in motion that would ultimately launch an NFL dynasty that, while by no means undefeatable, is certainly a force to be reckoned with.
You may not like Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, or the Patriots as a whole but you’ve got to respect them, since Brady got his big chance the Pats have racked up an impressive record:
- 182 Regular Season Wins
- 22 Postseason Wins
- 3:1 Win-Loss Ratio
- 4 Super Bowl Championships
- 6 Conference Championships
- 13 Division Championships
As for Brady, he’s done pretty well for himself:
- 58,028 Passing Yards
- 428 Passing Touchdowns
- 3 Time Super Bowl MVP
- 2 Time NFL MVP
- 11 Time Pro Bowl Invitee
- 2 Time NFL Offensive Player of the Year
- 3 Time AFC Offensive Player of the Year
- 4 Time NFL Passing TD Leader
- 2 Time NFL Passing Yards Leader
Without Bledsoe’s having been disabled by Lewis, it’s hard to say whether Tom Brady, a 6th round 199th draft pick (Bledsoe was drafted first overall) brought in as a fourth-string quarterback, would ever have gotten the chance to show the world what he could do – Bledsoe had just signed a ten year, 103 million dollar contract with New England when he was injured and the prospect for Brady, at least with the Patriots, appeared dim.
Of course, with every triumph there often comes a tragedy and this story is no different. Drew Bledsoe would never again start a game for the New England Patriots. He played for another five seasons following the 2001 Patriots season, three for the Buffalo Bills and two for the Dallas Cowboys before retiring from the NFL in April 2007. Every cloud has a silver lining though, and in this case that silver lining is the respect, admiration, and yes even love of the fans he played for during the bulk of his career. On each of Bledsoe’s three visits to New England representing the opposing team he was cheered and in 2011 Patriots fans voted Bledsoe into the New England Patriots Hall of Fame.
Isn’t it amazing how a single hit can have such a major impact? We watch players get hit every week, injuries come and go, and it’s hard not to wonder who else has been left sitting on the sidelines because they were brought in as backup for a star player and never got their day in the sun. How many Tom Bradys have left the NFL after a few seasons, flat ass broke and dejected, their dreams of making it big in the NFL crushed, to return to their normal lives as a mechanic, a firefighter, a securities trader? One thing is for sure, the repercussions and reverberations from this hit are still being felt today.
- 4 comments, 24 replies
- Comment
No, I really don’t.
http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/13533995/split-nfl-new-england-patriots-apart
It’s a fascinating piece by Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham, one that essentially brands the Patriots as cheaters far beyond a few taped signals and a rogue ball boy with a needle. Their findings are that the Patriots were far deeper into tweaking the system than anyone knew and that Goodell’s overreach in Deflategate was caused by his undue haste in dismissing Spygate.
While you should read the whole thing — maybe not you, Patriots fans who still somehow think Bill Belichick and Tom Brady are virtues of paragon — here a five completely damning sentences from the piece:
• “During pregame warm-ups, a low-level Patriots employee would sneak into the visiting locker room and steal the play sheet, listing the first 20 or so scripted calls for the opposing team’s offense. (The practice became so notorious that some coaches put out fake play sheets for the Patriots to swipe.)”
• “A former Patriots employee who was directly involved in the taping system says “it helped our offense a lot,” especially in divisional games in which there was a short amount of time between the first and second matchups, making it harder for opposing coaches to change signals.”
• “During games, Walsh later told investigators, the Patriots’ videographers were told to look like media members, to tape over their team logos or turn their sweatshirt inside out, to wear credentials that said Patriots TV or Kraft Productions. The videographers also were provided with excuses for what to tell NFL security if asked what they were doing: Tell them you’re filming the quarterbacks.”
• “At Gillette Stadium, the scrambling and jamming of the opponents’ coach-to-quarterback radio line — “small s—” that many teams do, according to a former Pats assistant coach — occurred so often that one team asked a league official to sit in the coaches’ box during the game and wait for it to happen. Sure enough, on a key third down, the headset went out.”
• “Goodell said that he had spoken with Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and then-head coach Andy Reid and that “both said the outcome of the [February] 2005 Super Bowl was legitimate,” an assertion contradicted by the private feelings of many senior members of the team.”
And there are so many more excerpts that could have been chosen. The article is a veritable gold mine of showing The Patriot Way is basically a hoodwink. That’s what’s so galling about it: New England would still probably win without these shenanigans. But because of them, it’s completely fair to call their dynasty into question.
@Pavlov I won’t even get into detail about my personal feelings regarding whether the bitch relating to “Spygate” was even legitimate in the first place. Suffice to say that in my opinion it was much ado about nothing and the Patriots involvement has no bearing on that feeling. There is a longstanding tradition in sports of doing your best to figure out what your opponent is going to do next and an equally longstanding tradition of teams attempting to thwart their opponents’ attempts to do so. In fact, let’s reference your own article:
Figuring out what your opponents’ signals mean is not a new tactic and I would characterize the Jets’ whinging as the latter, an attempt to thwart the Patriots’ attempts. It just so happened to capture the public imagination and get blown out of proportion because of the high profile nature of the accused team.
Never mind that the Jets had been caught violating the same ‘rule’ (it was a memo, it takes more than a memo to make an actual rule in the NFL) by the Patriots the prior season and faced no consequences whatsoever – they claimed they didn’t film the Patriots’ signals but since nobody independently reviewed the footage we’ll never know… guess who went unpunished? Of course, there still to this day isn’t a rule on the NFL books forbidding taping of signals, just where you can film from, so this lack of punishment fits in one sense and yet falls short when you consider the case that followed a year later when the Patriots were nailed for the same.
I could get into all of these quoted allegations in depth but honestly I can’t be bothered and I doubt anything I say is going to sway you anyhow. Real quick though:
You might find this educational, the things fans like to get outraged about, especially when discovered being done by a perennially successful team, are quite often common practices, how many instances have been recorded for your team? http://yourteamcheats.com/
But hey, I don’t expect you to just accept it like that, go ahead and believe what you like, it’s not like Brady does better with firmer more-inflated balls or that it’s more probable than not that Roger Goodell was looking out for his own interests throughout the whole appeal process with Tom Brady or anything like that. I mean hell, it’s not like any sane and reasonable person who wanted to emphasize the unbiased nature of the proceedings and the damning nature of the evidence would have recognized that overseeing the appeal of their own decision represented a clear and undeniable conflict of interest and sought to find an alternative to preserve the integrity of the investigation.
The league itself lacks integrity as a whole, to allege that any one team is the consummate cheater is beyond absurd when look at objectively. Regardless, this thread was really more about the remarkable turn of events that took place following the hit in question and the opportunity it created for a player who might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Thanks for fixating on one sentence fragment!
@Pavlov Yes, this. Particularly as an Eagles fan… Sorry, but regardless of other teams ‘decoding signals’ and other tactics, the Patriots have gone above and beyond in using every illegal method possible.
@cinoclav interesting point of view. I wonder what Byron Maxwell would think of your self righteousness. Or Jeff Blake.
The reality of the situation is that the Patriots are in the limelight in a way the Eagles (and most every other team and their fans) only wish their team was, to be quite frank because of their success the Patriots are being more heavily scrutinized than most, anything found is being more widely disseminated, and relatively commonplace practices are being declared cheating by resentful fans and blown out of proportion. Never mind that the news media runs with any story they think will generate clicks for ad revenue whether it’s true or not (see “St. Louis Rams’ walkthrough practice, New England Patriots”) – once it gets picked up by the public it’s the truth and any evidence against it is just some coverup.
@jbartus On the contrary, they’re in the limelight because of the reason for their success. It’s that reason they’re more heavily scrutinized. Not because they won but how they won. The Steelers have been successful, hell even the Ravens have won a couple in the last fifteen years. But you might notice, there is not one other team that has raised so many red flags and garnered so much criticism.
No one is being self-righteous. It is not my smug opinion that they’ve cheated and they’re in the spotlight for it. It’s fact with actual evidence (that was destroyed.)
We get it, you’re a fan. You’ll defend them to the end. If you were a fan of another team you’d very likely see it a different way. Just a suggestion, stop being so crazily defensive about them. I’m fond of you here but sheesh, you really define ‘homer’ when it comes to the Pats.
@Pavlov if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying
@Kevin Yah, that’s the problem
@cinoclav the problem is that you’re willfully ignorant of what is done in the NFL. Did you even look at the link I posted? I wouldn’t need to be so ‘crazily defensive’ if people didn’t let their jealousy (yep, I said it, get over it) prevent them from being sensible. You people (yep using it too) love to get all hung up about a destroyed cell phone, something that is perfectly reasonable for a celebrity to do and something Tom Brady had no reason not to do once told they wouldn’t need it, and choose to blind yourselves to the fact that the physical cell phone doesn’t matter for shit.
The service provider could have provided detailed messaging logs which would have given the NFL everything they needed but the NFL didn’t ask for that. Why? It didn’t fit into their agenda. Goodell desperately needed to save face after a tumultuous couple of years wherein the league had been demonstrably soft and taken a lot of flak for it.
I mean really, even if Tom Brady and the Patriots organization were deflating the balls (again, bear in mind that Tom throws better with an over-inflated ball) can you really sit there and tell me that there is any kind of justification wherein the punishment for allegedly doing so (remember, they didn’t have any conclusive evidence, there was no smoking gun, it was just ‘more probable than not’ in the eyes of one man who had no motivation to be impartial and based solely on circumstantial ‘evidence’ and faulty ‘science’) warrants a punishment in excess of the punishments given to players for intentionally trying to injure another player? And don’t even get me started on the whole appeal to Goodell to reverse his own decision thing, even Goodell isn’t stupid enough to not see how there’s a conflict of interest there.
The fact is that you are being self righteous because you are willfully ignorant of your own teams’ practices and damn yourself with your own words when you state as fact that there’s ‘actual evidence’ while at the same time admitting that nobody’s ever seen it.
Sigh…
TL;DR
@compunaut your laziness is not my responsibility. I do find it interesting that you haven’t done me the courtesy of reading what I had to say but you apparently felt we should be interested in and /or care that you couldn’t be bothered.
@compunaut essentially a great story and reflection on the way our lives are so often shaped by things out of our control. There’s no knowing the hidden talents of the people who never get a chance to show it, so be ready if you ever get the opportunity.
@hisgrossness it ain’t no Rudy for fucks sake and our lives are constantly shaped by things out of our control if you think any of us has control over anything you are delusional
bullshit idol worship of a cheating POS
@hisgrossness thanks for seeing the forest despite the trees!
@jbartus Chill, dude. I read it. I guess I should have said just “TL”. I just get tired of the expository idol worship.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@compunaut apparently you too were unable to see the forest for the trees. Shame.
@fucker I was just trying to literally shorten the original post without adding my own thoughts and opinions to it. I pretty much hate the Pats and Brady but I realize that many people love em and to me It just isn’t worth arguing about.
@jbartus I try to think the best about people and stay positive… you dirty Patriots scum! Go Hawks!
it’s also the birthday of bruce springsteen, ray charles and julio iglesias
@jbartus
I guess you are allowed to be a fan.
And the Kraft family doesn’t seem to think they should own, run, coach the team, and play all the positions as well.
Like someone in N TX wants to.
@f00l Cowboys fan then?
I’d like to see Jerry Jones take the field, that’d be a hoot!
@jbartus
I’d like to see that too.
Perhaps as a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader.
Oh please please please please someone on the internet make a giphy of that.
I’m making a joke, but for all I know, he would like to do that also. Perhaps that’s why the face-lift.
@jbartus
Oh Lordy Lordy
Let’s see if this loads
@f00l just for you.
@f00l only a star, nothing to say? Last time I spend an hour making a custom gif for you.
@jbartus
Busy day. Apologies. I have no effing idea how you did that, and it is incredible, and one of the reasons you didn’t get a real response was that I was too busy showing your work to every person I could persuade to view your Jerry-improvement.
You are now very popular here, even if you are a Pats fan. We know that the Pats aren’t the reason we suck. We know why we suck.
(I will take a zero position on the “Pats are normal”/“Pats are evil” controversy above. I don’t know enuf, don’t care enuf, and wish some thoroughly neutral party [not the NFL] would adjudicate it.)
I know you don’t owe me this:
but as gorgeous as that Cheerleader was before she merged with Jerry, what I really want is a DCC - a really good one - with Jerry’s face and either Jerry’s hair or the trad Cowboy hat they sometimes wear. And Pom-pins of course.
<feel free to think I am an asshole for whining about this! feel free to ignore or retaliate!>
That girl is so lovely that she still looks “not Jerry” a bit too much. Really nice moves tho. Really. I want to study with her dance teacher.
@f00l
You and me both! People love to look at Brady’s appeal being overturned and point at it as evidence of his guilt when the courts weren’t even ruling on Deflategate, their involvement was limited by the terms of the CBA to ruling upon a labor dispute between employee and employer. It sucks.
@f00l the problem is that 1) it seems to be policy that the DCCs all have long hair that is left flowing and 2) you want it in animated GIF form. If I could ignore number 2 I might be able to put something together.
@jbartus
You don’t have to do this at all. And seriously, don’t, unless you’re amused to do it, and don’t care about the time/energy. We’ll live.
We just look at him and wanna say: (sigh) “Jerry, please let go”. If you wanna mess with it, go with what inspires you. He is our very own billionaire-clown.
His kids can’t make him thoroughly “emeritus” soon enuf, even if they managed to roll back time and put him out to pasture 25 years ago.
It hurts to remember Landry & Schramm.