Tim Tebow, who had defeated the QB every time they had faced off on the field, found himself clapping for Bradford as well. Then, he settled back in his seat and waited, nervously, to see if he would hear his own name.
Twenty-four picks would go by before he did. But when Goodell looked up from his notes and said, “Tim Tebow,” the reaction was joyous: loud cheering, peppered just with a smattering of boos. Dozens of fans leapt to their feet for a standing ovation, and Tebow appeared to be overwhelmed.
He was a Bronco now.
Two Gators had been picked higher than Tebow: center Maurkice Pouncey (#18) had gone to the Steelers, and cornerback Joe Haden (#7) had been drafted by the Browns. On the following day, three more Gators made the second round: linebacker Brandon Spikes, who had recently served a half-game suspension for trying to gouge the eyes of a Georgia player, went to the Patriots (#62), as did outside linebacker Jermaine Cunningham (#53). Carlos Dunlap, a defensive end who had missed that year’s SEC Championship game as a result of a DUI arrest, was drafted by the Bengals (#54).
In the draft’s third round, UF safety Major Wright found a home with the Bears (#75).
Aaron Hernandez had to wait until the last day of the draft—Saturday, April 24—to hear his own name read out loud: the New England Patriots had taken him as the 113th choice of the draft. The Boston Globe said the Pats were “getting what many considered to be a player with first-round talent for a fourth-round price tag.”
For Aaron Hernandez, it was a slap in the face: At the very outset of his professional career, the NFL seemed to be treating him as damaged goods. One failed drug test had already come to light. Some recruiters claimed to have heard that Aaron had failed as many six. (According to Urban Meyer, Aaron had only failed two.) But the overall consensus was that the Patriots knew what they were doing. After all, quarterback Tom Brady had been a sixth-round draft pick—and he had worked out pretty well for the Pats.
“Personally,” Aaron’s high school coach, Doug Pina, told the Hartford Courant, “I’ve always had concerns. He graduated when he was seventeen. He’d just lost his father. He was going away from home. He’s still a young man. He’s leaving college a little early. He’s still finding himself. With the right people around him, he keeps his head straight, he’ll do very well. He’s a good kid.”
For his part, Aaron was gracious. “It’s obviously a dream come true,” Hernandez told reporters via conference call afterward. “I still can’t believe it’s real.”
Six weeks later, on June 8, 2010, Hernandez got a Patriots jersey of his own, along with a check for $200,000. It was a lot less than second-round pick Rob Gronkowski, another tight end, had gotten from the Patriots. But it was more money than Aaron Hernandez had ever seen. It would have taken Aaron’s father, Dennis, years to earn that amount. And $200,000 was just a signing bonus—the tip of the iceberg, if Aaron could manage to keep all his demons at bay.
Part Four
Chapter 28
Aaron’s mother ran, bleeding, out of the cottage on Greystone Avenue.
It was June 29, 2010—one month before Aaron was due to report to his first Patriots training camp. Terri Hernandez’s husband of eighteen months, Jeffrey Cummings, had just slashed her face with a kitchen knife.
Cummings, whose criminal record included arrests for assaulting women and children, had been drinking. He and Terri had argued, and he had shoved her to the floor.
“What did I do?” Terri pleaded as she pulled herself up. “Why did you do that?”
Terri went into the living room to sit down. Cummings disappeared into the kitchen.
When he came back, he was holding a butcher knife—one with an eight-inch blade.
Cummings held the knife to his wife’s throat. “What are you doing?” Terri whispered, afraid for her life.
Dennis Hernandez had never acted like this.
Cummings began to stab at a stand-up fan, putting the knife through one of the fan’s blades.
Then he turned and started to stab the chair Terri was sitting in, nicking her face in the process. Blood flowed down Terri’s cheek and onto her arm as Cummings began to whirl around the room, smashing everything in front of him.
“I don’t care if I go back to prison!” he yelled.
Although he was on probation for assault, Cummings had failed nineteen drug tests that year. He had also failed to complete a court-mandated anger-management course.
Somehow, Terri managed to run to the kitchen, out the side door, and over to a neighbor’s house, where she called 911.
Jeffrey Cummings was in the backyard when the police arrived. The police ordered him to put his hands up—they didn’t know if he still had the knife.
Cummings ignored them, and started to walk away.
The cops screamed at him: “Stop!”
When he finally did, Cummings said, “I didn’t do anything.”
He would not say any more. But after putting him in a police cruiser, cops entered the cottage. There, in the kitchen sink, they found a butcher knife. There was blood on it, and the blade was bent.
Chapter 29
The troubles brewing back home in Bristol had shown up in Aaron’s face almost at the moment of his arrival at Gillette Stadium.
Just a few days after the draft, Hernandez was trying to watch film and growing frustrated as he tried, and failed, to figure out how to use the machinery. When wide receiver Wes Welker walked past the film room, Hernandez asked for his help.
“Figure it out yourself, rookie,” Welker said, jokingly.
That was all that it had taken to set Aaron off. “Fuck you, Welker!” Aaron shouted. “I’ll fuck you up!”
The incident did not do wonders for Aaron’s reputation. “That’s kind of what he was like,” Ian Rapoport, the sports journalist, remembers. “He was pretty edgy. Guys liked him, but he was edgy and liable to snap on the dime just like that. His temper was so incredibly strong.”
But if Aaron had gotten off on the wrong foot, the Patriots’ head coach, Bill Belichick, was not the kind of guy who would hold it against him. Belichick’s friends in Foxborough called him “asshole”—and the coach considered this to be an improvement over other terms of endearment he’d earned: Punk. Jerk. Beli-cheat. When Belichick had worked for Bill Parcells in New York, Parcells had nicknamed him “Doom and Gloom.”
Everyone agreed that Bill Belichick knew how to win football games. But not everyone felt that they had to like him.
The coach had gotten off to a bad start with the Patriots. The only losing season Belichick had as their head coach had been his first leading the team, in 2000. He had ended that season 5–11—a dismal showing that he managed to turn around the next year on his way to winning the Patriots their first Super Bowl.
They won it again two years later, and yet again the year after that, racking up three Super Bowl victories in four years.
But in 2007—a year in which they lost the Super Bowl—the Patriots were given the largest fine in NFL history: $500,000 for ignoring a new rule about where cameras could be placed during games, and filming Jets’ signals from their own sidelines.
“Spygate” was the first black mark on Belichick’s record.
Aaron Hernandez would become the second.