Patriots

8 things we learned from Episode 3 of the Tom Brady documentary, ‘Man in the Loonshit’

Mike Vrabel and Tedy Bruschi joined Brady to recall the 2004 flavour.

Belichick Gatorade Super Bowl
Bill Belichick and his father, Steve Belichick, afterwards getting a Gatorade bath from Tedy Bruschi following the Patriots’ Super Bowl XXXIX win.
AP Photograph/David J. Phillip

In the 3rd episode of the newly-released Tom Brady documentary, “Man in the Arena,” word focuses on the team’s successful bid to repeat as Super Basin winners.

Notably, no NFL champion has managed to lucifer the feat of the 2003-2004 back-to-back Super Basin-champion Patriots in the ensuing years. The episode focuses on the team’southward journey in 2004, and the overarching “edge” mentality—a reference to the team’s collective competitiveness—that many of the players in the group shared.

As in previous episodes, former Patriots players back-trail Brady in recapping events. In Episode iii, erstwhile New England linebackers Tedy Bruschi and Mike Vrabel provide new commentary.

Hither are a few notable things from “The Edge,” which was released on Tuesday morning:

In highlighting that era of Patriots teams’ competitiveness, the documentary goes into detail about the trash-talking that took place.

“Did you lot give him s***?” Vrabel was asked in one scene. “Oh e’er,” he acknowledged. “Nobody was off-limits, I think. Nosotros tried to proceed a proficient experience for when to make jokes and when not to.”

“He’s the one that probably gave Tom the most s*** talking trash,” Bruschi said of Vrabel.

“Tom’s a big boy,” Vrabel justified. “He can handle it. Like, he’ll talk plenty of s*** back. Don’t worry.”

“Your quarterback’due south not quite as innocent as we all believe,” Vrabel added.

Internal word vs. the public narrative

I of the pillars of the Patriots’ mentality during the Beak Belichick era has been most not giving too much “bulletin-board textile” to the opposition, and to avoid saying anything controversial in public.

Bruschi offered an unusually candid cess of how this worked from the team’due south perspective in 2004.

“Nosotros felt like we had information technology figured out,” he recalled. “Nosotros knew how to balance ‘One game at a time, blah, blah, blah,’ forth with, ‘We’re the best that there is.’ Being able to have those two types of mentalities, and still know when to bring them out.

“Okay, in front of the media, this is what Belichick wants,” Bruschi explained. “But so, within ourselves and the way we play on the field, it’southward about domination. I hateful nobody tin can crush us and having that attitude. It’s a delicate little residuum, but the expectation was to win every game considering we knew we could.”

Belichick and the concept of “suppressing success”

After winning 21 games in a row between the end of the 2003 flavor and the start in 2004, the Patriots were finally browbeaten in October of that flavour past the Steelers. The 34-20 defeat to Pittsburgh was a wakeup call for New England.

“Sometimes it’south skilful to have a reset push button during a season,” Bruschi acknowledged of the loss.

“I think in the finish, Motorcoach Belichick loved the fact that that happened,” Brady said of the defeat against the Steelers. “After 21 games, I recollect he was prepare for the chimera to outburst.”

Brady added that while it was difficult for Belichick to reasonably continue up his critiques of the Patriots during the unbroken string of wins, an actual loss “gave him all the reasons he needed to come in and get pissed off at the team.”

Brady even went through an expletive-riddled example of how Belichick addressed the Patriots following a loss. However, as Bruschi reasoned, Belichick “did information technology when we won, anyway.”

“I used to call it ‘suppressing success,’” Bruschi remembered. “We can play our best game and we tin win past 21 and the defense can hold them to peradventure three, 10 points, but that’south the beauty of football game. Yous tin pick five plays that didn’t become well. And the coach can either decide to move on, we won the game, or he tin can double-decker hard and pick those v plays, and brand you lot see that still you take work to do.”

“It’south a difficult life to alive that,” Bruschi said of the Belichick way. “You meliorate have thick skin. Yous better take mental toughness, and you lot really have to look at why he’s doing information technology. And if yous do it that way, you lot can accept information technology easier.”

The Patriots, every bit Brady pointed out, were built on a dearest of competition because that was what Belichick wanted.

“Belichick loved the contest,” said Brady. “And I think he really loved seeing guys compete against one another. He loved the fact that we’d go out there and attempt to vanquish each other up. He loved the fact that there’d be fights. He loved the fact that at that place would exist guys talking south*** to one some other. I call up he created that surround considering he just wanted to see contest.”

Every bit both Brady and Vrabel noted, a common saying amidst the squad became nigh “getting the border.”

“That’s what nosotros were,” Brady concluded. “We were the edgers.”

The 2003-2004 Patriots knew they were going to beat the Colts.

Having defeated the Colts twice in 2003—including in the AFC Championship—the Patriots were confident in facing Peyton Manning and the high-flying Indianapolis offense in 2004.

Bruschi described the Colts every bit “the number i overall picks, and the white jerseys, and they play in the dome and they got the pretty crime and all that stuff.”

Beating—or, equally Bruschi noted, “squashing”—the Colts was a regular action that New England not simply enjoyed, but expected. Ahead of the playoff rematch in January, 2005, the Patriots (once once again playing at home in the snow) were total of optimism.

“You but feel powerful going into Gillette Stadium and just having the fans and having the weather condition, and you just know that it’s not happening, man,” Bruschi said of the Colts’ chances that day.

“We were challenging them differently in each game,” Brady said of how the Patriots played in those games, “whereas [the Colts] were trying to run the same blazon of plays and take the same formula. I mean we were pretty fired upwards.”

Unsurprisingly, the Patriots prevailed 20-3.

“Y’all know those games where yous only look [at] guys’ faces and they just know they’re beaten?” Bruschi asked. “It’s just so cool when it’s the showtime quarter.”

The Patriots played a “perfect game” to vanquish the Steelers in the AFC Title.

While New England players seemed to enjoy playing Manning and the Colts, the Steelers offered a bigger problem. In improver to the opponent, Brady also was dealing with the influenza.

“We booked a hotel belatedly right subsequently we won against [Indianapolis], and a lot of hotels were unavailable,” he recalled. “And then we had this southward***hole hotel that we stayed in. Guys were like quarantining in their rooms because we had a lot of guys that were sick.

“I actually had the flu pretty bad the dark before the game,” Brady said. “I was like in slow-motion. I wasn’t sure how I was going to play.”

As for the Steelers, Bruschi—recalling the regular flavour loss—admitted that “you know these guys are good, and this is going to be difficult.”

Brady said that playing in Pittsburgh was “a very intimidating place to play, considering not only do they accept a bang-up defense, it’s all 65-70,000 of the yellow towels screaming, yelling, not to mention, they were 16-ane at that point.”

Merely as the game played out, Brady was able to milkshake off his illness and play well. He hit Deion Branch for a lx-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter to get New England off to a fast start.

“It was 1 of the great throws I’ve ever fabricated in those conditions because information technology was freezing out,” said Brady.

In a matchup of two physical teams, Bruschi theorized that information technology was “almost similar who’s the better tough guy.” In the end, information technology was the Patriots, who won 41-27.

“If I would say at that place was a perfect game of football game played at the highest level, I would say that would be the game,” Brady explained. “If we could replicate that, we would never lose a game.”

The unsung punt of Super Bowl XXXIX

With less than a infinitesimal to get in Super Bowl XXXIX, as the Patriots tried to protect a 24-21 lead, New England had to punt the brawl back to the Eagles for 1 final possession.

Patriots punter Josh Miller placed the brawl perfectly and so that it could downed inside Philadelphia’southward five-yard line. It’due south a moment that’s been forgotten by history, but it was a crucial play in the squad’south win.

“Nobody ever talks about the punter, but man that guy fabricated a kicking that pinned them down within the [five-m line], and it was like it almost sealed the game,” said Bruschi.

Bruschi also added that though he had Eagles running back Brian Westbrook equally his coverage assignment on the last Philadelphia offensive play, he simply rushed Donavan McNabb instead, helping to force the championship-clinching interception made by Rodney Harrison.

Bruschi on the Gatorade bathroom he gave Belichick and his father

Having helped the Patriots clinch a third Super Bowl win in four years, Bruschi said that he had but i thought.

“It’s the beginning time ever that I went to the Gatorade saucepan,” Bruschi recalled. “I said, ‘I’m going to get this a**hole expert.’ Belichick, you know? I refer to him [like] that fondly, of course. I dear that a**hole, okay?

“I went and got that bucket and picked that affair upwardly, and right equally I got it right [higher up him], I saw him with his dad,” Bruschi continued. “I was like, ‘Oh human, I don’t want to ruin this moment.’ Then I held it just for dissever-second more, then I gave it to him anyway, and information technology felt good because those Gatorade showers are a sign of a title and a big win, just as well it’s the players proverb, ‘Nosotros told y’all we could exercise it. Take that.’”

The 2004 team was the culmination of a “moment in time.”

Brady acknowledged that he was “tired” in the aftermath of Super Bowl XXXIX, differing from the level of excitement he felt after his showtime two championship wins.

“I think I was becoming a bit overwhelmed,” he said, albeit that his level of delivery “took a price on me, I needed to regroup.”

In a larger sense, the team sensed that change was incoming. The veteran core that had held together for the iii Super Bowl wins was going to experience some level of breakup.

“I think that 2004 [team] was the culmination of a great four-year run of football, of success, of realizing our potential,” said Brady.

“We had a moment in fourth dimension,” he added, “and I think nosotros should appreciate it, realizing that moment in time wasn’t going to last forever. Nosotros didn’t know that was the end, but when I await back, from the time we won the Super Basin to the end of the 2005 flavour, that was the final chapter in that part of our squad’s history. And and then it had to exist rebuilt.”

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