There’s a page on Facebook titled “I HATE THE PATRIOTS!!” and more than 128,000 people have liked it.
A Public Policy Polling survey conducted before this year’s Super Bowl found that 41 percent of respondents believed the New England Patriots cheated to reach the NFL’s championship game.
Baltimore Ravens pass rusher Terrell Suggs has said New England’s first three Super Bowl championships were “questionable.”
The Patriots are, according to that same poll, the second-most hated NFL team behind only the Dallas Cowboys. The survey found that only 28 percent of respondents see Bill Belichick, the team’s no-nonsense coach, as a favorable character.
While the Patriots have a rabid and loyal following throughout New England and are widely respected for their success on the field, the past several months also have revealed the flip side: Outside of their fans — and even among some opponents who respect the franchise’s results, if not its attitude or all its methods — the team is one of the most despised in the NFL.
Last week, an NFL-commissioned report by investigator Ted Wells confirmed that the Patriots deflated footballs during this year’s AFC championship game. Quarterback Tom Brady was suspended four games, and the franchise was fined $1 million and docked two draft picks, including next year’s first-rounder. On Thursday, the Patriots fired back, engaging the NFL league office and keeping a never-ending scandal alive a while longer.
“The conclusions of the Wells Report are, at best, incomplete, incorrect and lack context,” began the nearly 20,000-word rebuttal, assembled by a law firm that represents the Patriots. The response wasn’t just self-defense; it was, by virtue of a document 15 times as long as the Declaration of Independence, a pronouncement of war. The Patriots asked the league itself, and with it Commissioner Roger Goodell, to kindly step outside.
“You’ve got to admire it,” said former NFL defensive back Fred Smoot, whose career spanned a decade in which New England won three of its four Super Bowl championships. “I mean, I hate them. That’s the bad part. I hate everything about the Patriots. And I love it at the same time.”
The Patriots hate centers mostly on the team’s success: In an era in the NFL defined by parity, New England has won 12 of the past 14 AFC East titles. Since winning its first Super Bowl after the 2001 season, when the Patriots were a likable underdog to the St. Louis Rams and quarterback Tom Brady was a baby-faced backup who took over for the injured Drew Bledsoe, New England has appeared in all but five AFC championship games.
But they don’t just win. They refuse to relinquish their crown. They don’t apologize.
Belichick and Brady represent the only two mainstays from that first title — plenty of time to collect bitterness and a few nicknames. “The pretty boy and the mad scientist,” Smoot said of the quarterback and coach who, though wildly different in demeanor and presence, are in many respects each other’s alter ego.
Belichick doesn’t hold news conferences as much as he tolerates them, barely reacting to some questions and refusing to disclose more than NFL rules require. He exudes annoyance, even after victories, and advises players to say as little as possible during interviews. After the 2013 season, when the Patriots won 12 games and dominated their division, the Wall Street Journal watched video of each Belichick news conference from that year; all told, one of the most successful coaches in NFL history smiled seven times that season.
Belichick is known as a master at preparation. No detail is too small, no advantage too slight — or, in some cases, beyond the rules — to exploit. In 2007, the Patriots and Belichick were disciplined for videotaping an opponent’s defensive signals; Belichick was fined $500,000, the largest hit ever to an NFL coach’s pay, and galvanized a reputation the Patriots are willing to win at any cost.
“He knows his guys can’t be touched, and he knows the game plan put in is going to be perfect for your team,” said Smoot, who admitted that for all the resentment he used to fantasize about playing in Belichick’s defense. “It’s that perfection that they chase that just leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
New England lost to the New York Giants in the Super Bowl after going 16-0 in 2007, a significant but singular flaw in an otherwise historic season, and throughout the year Belichick told the locker room that no one outside the team facility believed the Patriots were any good. The hate, as Belichick saw it, was fuel. “They honestly believe that everybody is out to get them,” said Donte Stallworth, a wide receiver on that team. “You embrace it. You love it.”
Against the Ravens in a divisional playoff game in January, the Patriots used a wrinkle in the rule book to confuse their opponent, this time using a player lined up as an ineligible receiver. New England used the ploy three times in its comeback victory, including once that resulted in a touchdown, and Baltimore Coach John Harbaugh drew a flag for yelling at officials that the tactic was unfair.
Although Patriots owner Robert Kraft maintained the Patriots did nothing wrong, the NFL’s owners voted in March to change the rule anyway, making it so ineligible receivers must stay within the core of the formation. “We didn’t take advantage. We executed according to the rules, and we’ve always tried to do that,” Kraft said after the vote.
Others don’t quite see it that way.
“Belichick doesn’t care,” retired safety Ryan Clark, now an ESPN commentator, said in January. “He truly does not care what people think of him. He doesn’t care that you may think he answered the questions a certain way. I don’t think he even cares that he’s being considered a cheater. The bottom line with him, he’s going to everything and push the rules in every way in order to win football games and find ways to win them.”
Brady, dashing and charismatic as he is, is seen as one of the NFL’s favorite sons — protected more so than most quarterbacks. The “tuck rule” was just an obscure paragraph in the NFL rulebook before officials ruled during a 2001 AFC divisional playoff game that Brady hadn’t fumbled against the Oakland Raiders. He got his own rule in 2009, when the league instituted a harsher policy on defenders making contact with quarterbacks below the knee after he missed most of the 2008 season with a knee injury.
That year Suggs, the Ravens pass rusher, fell next to Brady’s knee during a game. Suggs grazed Brady’s leg but drew a flag anyway. He hasn’t liked Brady ever since — chirping about the quarterback’s hair, his attitude and officials’ apparent protection of him.
“Everyone just seems to worship the guy so much,” Suggs told reporters in 2013. “Not me, though.”
If the league office showed favoritism toward Brady and the Patriots, this past week seemed to signal the end. Brady’s four-game suspension was a result of the quarterback’s refusal to cooperate fully in an investigation that concluded Brady was “at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities” during the AFC championship game.
Brady, who conducted a brief but vague interview last week at Salem State University in Massachusetts, hasn’t directly addressed his role in “DeflateGate” since before the Super Bowl — though his agent, Don Yee, criticized Wells’s integrity in compiling the report.
Regardless, the story continues, hackles are up again. The newest twist is that two unpopular entities — the Patriots and the league office, which oversaw a 2014 season beset by numerous off-field scandals — will square off. Goodell has appointed himself to hear Brady’s appeal, though the players’ union has asked the commissioner to excuse himself in favor of a neutral mediator.
Smoot, as painful as he said it would be, will be backing the Patriots. “It’s two villains, and at the end of the day I’m going to ride with the team. It shouldn’t be like that, but I’ve got to ride with the players,” he said. “Hard as it is, I’ve got to pull for the Patriots. I’ve got to pull for them and pretty boy Tom Brady.”