The Long Snapper Read online

  After thirteen years in the NFL, Brian certainly knew that outward expressions of gratitude and sentimentality were seldom part of the farewell routine, and almost never for anyone but a major star. Still, the way things ended in Carolina seemed harsh to him. After damaging cartilage in his right knee early in training camp, Brian played through the 2000 season as best he could because that was what his coaches wanted him to do. Sure, there were times when he had to beg off an assignment. But that was all part of the plan that was discussed with him: Play through the pain as best you can, when you can. A surgeon will clean you up after the season. And then you’ll be back in the mix next year.

  It did not happen that way. On Friday, March 2, 2001, two months after Brian had his surgery, Scott O’Brien called to let him know that the Panthers had decided to go in a different direction. They did not want him back. They were done with him. “Hardest call I’ve ever made,” O’Brien would later say. “I mean, the guy had been laying it all on the line for me for years.” Five with the Cleveland Browns. Three with the Baltimore Ravens. Two with the Carolina Panthers. But Brian was thirty-five. His knee was a question mark. And the Panthers had decided to replace him with a younger model. Three days later, they would sign long snapper Jason Kyle, a free agent who had played the previous year with the San Francisco 49ers.

  Brian was understandably upset about losing the Carolina job. But it was the bigger picture that really brought him down. The rest of the league was done with him, too. Or at least everything very much looked that way. What would he do for the rest of his life? Where would he find his affirmation in the “real world” that awaited him beyond the familiar performance-based environment of professional sports? Of course, Brian had no way of knowing that the New England Patriots would eventually offer him one final glimpse of life in the NFL—a second chance that he never could have seen coming.

  Six

  One of the strangest things about being out of football was the recurring dream he kept having in the dead of night. In the beginning it came to him only once in a while. Then the frequency increased. There were variations. But the primary sequence was always pretty much the same: Brian would walk into the meeting room of an NFL team, all the sights and sounds so vivid, so real, and he would feel a wave of panic. Because nobody in the room knew who he was. Everybody stared at him and wondered what he was doing there. He felt like a new student showing up for the first day of class at a school where all the other kids already knew everybody. Where should he sit? What should he do? What should he say? Once the anxiety of the dream yielded to the reality of being awake, Brian usually required a few minutes to pack away the feelings of insecurity, to convince himself that he was actually forever done with football and would never have to face what he had just experienced with his eyes closed.

  He was wrong about that. On the morning of Wednesday, December 17, 2003, his first official day of work as a member of the New England Patriots, Brian could not help but think of the dream that was so familiar to him. In fact, walking into his first team meeting, he could hardly believe what he was doing. Wow, this is that moment from the dream, Brian thought. How surreal is this? And he felt just as awkward as he did when he was sleeping through the scene. Brian was extremely self-conscious as he nodded hello to teammates he did not know. Maybe all eyes were not actually on him, but he sure felt as if they were. The way Brian figured it, everyone in the place had to be wondering, “Who is this guy?” The meeting room was filled with black, theater-style seats. Brian was concerned about sitting in one that might belong to someone else. That would be a bad way to start. So he turned for help to one of the few players he had known for years—punter Ken Walter—and they sat together without anyone else really paying any attention to them.

  Once everyone settled down, Bill Belichick started with a few brief announcements, including a matter-of-fact introduction: “We have a new member of the team. Say hello to Brian Kinchen.” A few of the more colorful “characters” on the team had long before established a standard response to the introduction of a newcomer. They would welcome him with a chorus of uniform shout-outs: “New dude. New dude.” The only time they altered their greeting was when the new player had already been around the NFL long enough to be considered a sage veteran. Brian’s teammates might not have known exactly how old he was—thirty-eight—or that he had just become the oldest player on the team. But their modified words of welcome made it perfectly clear that they knew they were taking on an elder. “New old-dude,” they called out. “New old-dude.”

  The new old-dude just smiled. And his eyes were wide open. Brian was not dreaming this time. He was indeed back in the NFL—back as part of the hottest team in the league.

  The Patriots had come a long way in just a few months. Sure, it was easy to look at them now and see only glorious possibilities. They had league glamour boy Tom Brady—already the youngest quarterback ever to win a Super Bowl and drawing comparisons to Joe Montana, of all people—directing the offense with great confidence. They had a stingy defense loaded with solid veterans: Ted Washington and Richard Seymour on the line; Tedy Bruschi, Willie McGinest, and Mike Vrabel at linebacker; Rodney Harrison and Ty Law in the backfield. They had a head coach who could hardly be discussed without the media pundits somehow working the word genius into their analysis. But things did not look nearly as good back in early September.

  Five days before the 2003 season opener, Belichick ended a contract dispute with co-captain Lawyer Milloy by releasing the star safety—a seven-year veteran and four-time Pro Bowler, one of the best-known and most productive members of the 2001 championship team. The Patriots had already generated a plethora of questions by following their first Super Bowl victory with a 9–7 record that failed to earn them a spot in the 2002 playoffs. Now this: a controversial personnel move causing turmoil in the locker room. Players were angry and confused. They did not want to lose such an important teammate. Plus, they were well aware that if Belichick could say good-bye to someone who had contributed as much as Milloy had, he could just as easily dump almost any of them. The cold reality of players coming and going, for financial or other reasons, was by no means anything new in the business of professional football. But the departure of Milloy triggered unwanted media attention and became a major distraction—all of which was only heightened when Milloy quickly signed with the Buffalo Bills, who happened to be the Patriots’ first opponent of the season. Playing in front of a fired-up home crowd, the Bills pummeled the Patriots from start to finish. They intercepted Brady four times. Milloy made one of the interceptions himself and also had a sack of Brady. Final score: Bills 31, Patriots 0.

  Clearly, the Patriots had some major regrouping ahead of them if they wanted to make something of their season. They responded with a solid victory, 31–10, on the road against the Philadelphia Eagles, and then they claimed their home opener with a 23–16 win over the New York Jets. But the Patriots still were not hitting on all cylinders. In the fourth week of the season, they were stunned by one of the weakest teams in the league, the Washington Redskins, who defeated them 20–17. At the end of September, the Patriots had a perfectly mediocre record of two wins and two losses, and questions were again flying. What was wrong with them? Was the Super Bowl victory a one-time fluke? Were Belichick, Brady & Company moving toward a repeat of the previous season, heading down a path of futility that would ultimately dead-end prior to the playoffs?

  The Patriots did not panic. Belichick continued preaching about preparation and execution. He kept reminding his staff and players that all they could do, all they had to do, was stick together and take one game at a time. That was exactly what they did. Brady and his receivers started clicking with a short passing game that kept costly mistakes to a minimum. The defense stiffened, confusing opponents with a variety of coverages and displaying a remarkable knack for forcing turnovers at the most opportune times. The victories started piling up. They were not always pretty: The Patriots gained only twenty-nine yards in
the first half against the New York Giants. They scored only nine points, and won by only six, against the struggling Cleveland Browns. They needed overtime before putting away both the Miami Dolphins and the lowly Houston Texans. As Belichick had long been known to proclaim, though, “A win is a win.”

  After their two-and-two start, the Patriots ran off seven consecutive wins leading up to the heavyweight matchup that everyone had been waiting to see. In one corner, Belichick, Brady, and the Patriots. In the other, Tony Dungy, Peyton Manning, and the Indianapolis Colts. The date had been circled on calendars for months: November 30 in Indianapolis and on national television. The teams had identical 9–2 records. But they were quite different. The Patriots were dominant on defense. The Colts were an offensive juggernaut. Unless things in the NFL were to change dramatically in the next month, the outcome of this game would be critical in seeding for the upcoming playoffs and would probably determine which team would get home-field advantage if the Patriots and Colts were to meet again during the post-season. There was one other factor to consider: pure pride. The Patriots and Colts had a long history. And they really didn’t care a whole lot for each other.

  That only added to the tension as the game turned into an epic back-and-forth thriller. The Patriots jumped all over the Colts in the first half and stretched their lead to 31–10 in the third quarter. Then the Colts stormed back with three Manning touchdown passes to tie the game at 31–31 in the fourth. And all of that was only prelude to the real drama. The Patriots went back in the lead with a thirteen-yard touchdown pass from Brady to Deion Branch. But the Colts were far from done. With less than four minutes remaining and a first down at the New England eleven-yard line, they had an excellent opportunity to pull even again, but ended up having to settle for a short field goal. That left the Patriots with a four-point cushion, 38–34, with only 3:27 to play, but their offense was unable to run out the clock. Indianapolis got the ball back just inside New England territory, and Manning went to work. Six plays later, the Colts had first-and-goal at the two-yard line with forty seconds left in the game. They could manage only a single yard on three plays, though, so the whole game came down to this: Fourth-and-goal at the one. Fourteen seconds on the clock. Manning handed off to star running back Edgerrin James…James looked to run up the middle…but outside linebacker Willie McGinest charged in off the edge and stuffed him for a loss of a yard. Game over. McGinest sprinted down the field in wild celebration—an enduring image that would long live with Patriot fans as one of the most enjoyable memories of the season. The heart-stopping finish marked the fourth time in six weeks that the Patriots had gone until either the final minute of regulation or into overtime before locking down victory. Their winning streak was now at eight. And the Boston Globe had a new name for them: the Palpitation Pats.

  Unbeknownst to Brian, the Patriots’ next game was significant not only for them—clinching first place in their division with a 12–0 win over the Miami Dolphins in snow-covered Gillette Stadium—but also for him. With five and a half minutes left in the game, Patriots long snapper Lonie Paxton went down with a knee injury while blocking on a punt. He limped to the sideline but was sent back on the field because a holding penalty meant that the Patriots had to punt again. The do-over was a less-than-pleasant experience for a guy who had just torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. But the twenty-five-year-old Paxton did what he had to do. Since joining the team as a rookie free agent in the spring of 2000, he had snapped for every punt, every extra point, and every field-goal attempt—more than five hundred snaps in all. Paxton had also achieved an absolute rarity for a snapper: he had become known for something other than botching a snap. It happened at the conclusion of another snow game, a nail-biter against the Oakland Raiders in the 2001 playoffs, right after the Patriots’ Adam Vinatieri kicked the winning field goal in overtime. Paxton celebrated by lying on his back and making snow angels in the end zone. The video was played over and over on television, and Paxton became something of a folk hero in New England. Two weeks later, Vinatieri kicked the Patriots to their Super Bowl victory with a dramatic forty-eight-yard field goal that defeated the highly favored St. Louis Rams on the last play of the game. And Paxton went right back to his signature move—this time pretending to make snow angels on the indoor turf of the Superdome in New Orleans. Of course, neither his ability to snap under pressure nor the notoriety that came from his childlike playfulness could do anything for Paxton now. He was done for the season. The Patriots needed a new snapper. “Not the type of thing you want to go through in December,” Belichick told reporters covering the team. “But we don’t really have any choice.”

  Following a tryout to which Brian was not invited, the Patriots signed a guy named Sean McDermott, who had spent one season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and another with the Houston Texans. He had also snapped for the Miami Dolphins earlier in 2003 but was released after struggling with his aim. In his first outing with the Patriots, a December 14 home game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, McDermott snapped nine times (four punts, three extra points, and two field goals) without causing any problems. But he also suffered a shoulder injury. The victorious Patriots—now winners of a franchise-record ten games in a row—needed to find yet another replacement snapper.

  Worlds away in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Brian had no idea what had happened to Paxton. He had never even heard of McDermott. And he certainly was not paying any attention to the Sunday football games. His television was on only for updates on the big news of the weekend: American soldiers had finally captured former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. More than anything else, though, this was a family day for the Kinchens. Brian and Lori’s oldest son, Austin, was celebrating his fourteenth birthday. It was a day for cake and candles, and for being wrapped in the lazy comforts of home. Sharing the afternoon with his wife and all four of his sons—eleven-year-old Hunter, seven-year-old Logan, and four-year-old McKane, in addition to the birthday boy—Brian could not have been more content with his surroundings. Of course, all of that was about to be dramatically altered by a phone call. It was the next morning—Monday, December 15, 2003—that Brian would interrupt his class to take a call from his old friend Scott Pioli.

  Next thing Brian knew, he was trying on a new helmet and shoulder pads, and the Patriots equipment manager was grabbing jersey number forty-six for him.

  Once that first team meeting was done and Brian was back in the locker room, he immediately returned to the same pre-practice routine that had served him well for thirteen seasons in the NFL. So what if he had been out of the league for three years? Why change anything now? Brian always liked to preserve as much free time as he could before practice—waiting until the last possible minute to get into his gear and join his teammates on the field—but he was also quite particular about his preparation. Efficient was the word he would use for it. He checked his laundry bag to make sure it contained everything he would need: jock, socks, and a T-shirt to go under his shoulder pads. He went to the training room, loaded up on rolls of pre-wrap, stretch tape, and standard white athletic tape, and he neatly stacked the rolls in his locker. (Brian almost never used a trainer to tape his ankles. Why waste time and energy waiting in line for that? He would just do it himself.) He checked his new cleats to make sure they fit and then worked over the rear uppers to break them in as best he could. (They were always too stiff when new.) Brian also tried on a new pair of gloves and flexed his fingers to make sure he had just the right feel. (For years he’d been wearing skin-tight synthetic-leather gloves to protect his hands while blocking and to help with his grip while snapping.) As uncomfortable as Brian had been walking into the meeting room, there was something about being back in the locker room, something about being back in his ritualistic preparation mode, that relaxed him and made everything feel normal again.

  He was also comforted by reconnecting with the half dozen guys—both staff members and players—whom he knew from when they were all in Cleveland with Belichi
ck and Pioli. One of Belichick’s closest confidants, Ernie Adams, now carried the title “football research director,” a position that often left players and others wondering who he was and what exactly he did. Eric Mangini, first a public-relations intern and then a coaches’ assistant with the Browns, now coached the Patriots’ defensive backs. Pepper Johnson, a teammate of Brian’s in Cleveland, had also become a coach, working with the inside linebackers. Then there were two defensive linemen from the Browns who were again playing for Belichick: Rick Lyle and Anthony Pleasant. Practicing in Cleveland back when Brian played tight end on offense, he and Pleasant often engaged in direct battle at the line of scrimmage. No matter how rough things got on the field, though, they always remained good friends. Finally, there was the most unlikely longtime acquaintance of all, punter Ken Walter, who had rescued Brian by sitting with him in his first team meeting with the Patriots. When Brian played for the Browns, Walter was a college student who worked as a ball boy in their summer training camps. By 1999, when Brian joined the Carolina Panthers, Walter had become a punter in the NFL…for the Panthers! Walter was also the holder for field goals and extra points. For two years, Brian threw snaps to someone he first knew as a kid responsible for hauling ball bags and handing out towels. And now they would again be working together. Man, you just never know, Brian thought as he scanned a team roster he was using as a reference tool.