When Aaron Hernandez got to Foxborough, the team that Belichick had built was at the top of the NFL. Tom Brady, who had taken over for Aaron’s old hero, Drew Bledsoe, was still one of the NFL’s dominant quarterbacks—even though, at thirty-three, he was already old by NFL standards. (By way of contrast, Hernandez had just become the youngest active player in the league.) Belichick pushed his players, who were among the best who had ever played the game, to their limits. He pushed himself just as hard, working twenty-two hour days on occasion. The coach controlled every aspect of his players’ performance, right down to the exits they used to leave at the end of their workouts. All of them had to pass by his door, which was always open.
But even a coach as controlling as Belichick was could not control everything. And, as Belichick would learn, Aaron Hernandez presented a special set of challenges. Aaron was mercurial, immature, full of himself, but also fragile in ways that made his actions impossible to predict.
“In the locker room, he was sweet and charming,” Rapoport says. “Sweet is a weird way to describe a man, but that’s what he was—a sweet, endearing guy when he wanted to be. But the other part of it was that, emotionally, he was a wreck. It was not abnormal for him to burst into tears when he made a bad mistake. If he got humiliated in the meeting room, sometimes, he would cry. That’s not really normal behavior.”
Over time, Rapoport and Hernandez developed a connection. “In the locker room, I would hang out by his locker a lot,” the reporter recalls. “He was always accessible. Never a great interview, because he was careful about what he said, but he and I got along. At one point, I shot a video for him—something his cousin was doing. He told me some stuff. We exchanged information, and he said, ‘Look, you’re my guy in the locker room. If I’m ever going to talk to anyone it’s going to be you.’ I said, ‘Cool, man. I respect you, too.’ And he said, ‘But I just want to tell you, because I’m big on trust, if you ever fuck me over I’ll kill you.’
“I kind of laughed, but he was not joking. I looked at a reporter buddy of mine who was standing there, eavesdropping. He gave me this weird look.
“I said, ‘All right, all right. I’ll see you later, man.’ But later on, when Aaron got picked up, I got a text from that other reporter: ‘Remember that day in the locker room? I guess he was serious.’
“I was like, ‘Yep. Yes, he was.’”
Chapter 30
Aaron was not as massive as the Patriots’ other rookie tight end, Rob Gronkowski. Gronk was 6′6″ and weighed twenty pounds more than Hernandez. At first, the big men eyed each other warily. Were they supposed to be competing against each other? Were they supposed to be friends?
Aaron and Gronk “were both humble,” Aaron would tell the New York Times. They were both “very outgoing,” and “a little bit immature.”
The tight ends wound up getting along.
Aaron was physical, fast on his feet, and versatile in ways that allowed Coach Belichick to use him as a combination tight end, running back, and wide receiver. And if Gronk’s size—his brawn and his arm span—made him tremendously hard to defend, Hernandez’s explosive speed made him fiendishly difficult to tackle. Opposing teams could cover one tight end or the other. But seldom were they able to cover both, and double-teaming either was almost impossible.
“Rob takes a lot off me,” Aaron told the Boston Globe. “He’s so dynamic that a lot of people have to worry about him and forget about me. Sometimes they forget about him and have to worry about me, so it’s a great combination.”
“He’s a beast,” Gronkowski said. “Great teammate to have, a great tight end. Dude gets out there and gets open. He helps in the running game and everything. It’s great to have each other and push each other.”
By the end of the 2011 season, Gronkowski had racked up incredible numbers, setting the NFL records for receiving yards and touchdown receptions for a tight end. Playing in his shadow, Hernandez nevertheless made it into the league’s top five for tight ends in receptions, yards, and touchdown receptions. Combined, the two tight ends had 169 receptions—shattering a record the Chargers had set in 1984—and an unprecedented 2,237 receiving yards.
With Hernandez as the joker in his deck, Belichick turned the duo into the most effective tight-end pairing in NFL history.
But, like Urban Meyer before him, Belichick was discovering that Aaron Hernandez required careful supervision both on and off of the field. In fact, Meyer had warned Belichick to “keep an eye” on Hernandez.
“What Urban told Bill, as far as I know, was ‘You’ll have to stay on top of him,’” Albert Breer, the NFL reporter, explains. “Cryptic as it was, that bit of advice was right on: The minute you let him out of your sight, you’re in trouble.”
Chapter 31
On January 14, 2012, the Patriots hosted the Broncos in a divisional playoff game.
The Patriots had won thirteen games in the regular season. The Broncos had won eight. Their quarterback was Aaron’s old teammate, Tim Tebow.
In their last game, six days earlier, on January 8, the Broncos had beaten the Steelers—after losing their last three regular-season games by an average of sixteen points. On January 8, Tebow wrote “John 3:16” in his eye black. He ended up throwing for 316 yards, averaging 31.6 yards per completion.
In the first three quarters, he threw 16 passes.
The game’s only interception, by the Steelers quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, had been thrown on 3rd down and 16.
Ratings for CBS’s telecast of the game had peaked at 31.6.
It had been exactly three years since Tebow had written “John 3:16” under his eyes for the BCS National Championship Game. Within a few hours, “John 3:16” became the most searched-for term on Google, followed by “Tebow” and “Tim Tebow.”
It was a miraculous string of coincidences. But Tebow would need more than a miracle to beat the Patriots.
It was below freezing in Foxborough. The air was dry and clear but the field was rock hard. As the teams faced off, their breath shot toward the ground in billowing puffs of silver smoke. But Aaron Hernandez burst out on the fourth play of the game, running the ball forty-three yards downfield—his longest run of the season. The Patriots scored a touchdown with the next play, then scored four more in the first half.
Hernandez carried the ball five times in the game, giving the best rushing performance a tight end had ever shown in the NFL playoffs. Rob Gronkowski proved his mettle again by making ten catches for a total 145 yards. Early in the fourth quarter, Hernandez was taken out of the game with a head injury—one of several sustained in the course of his football career. But the Patriots’ victory was decisive: a 45-10 rout.
“I wish I had [Aaron’s] moves,” Gronkowski told the New York Times after the game. “He can really juke it.”
A few weeks later, the boy from Bristol found himself in Indianapolis, playing in his first—and only—Super Bowl.
American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson sang the national anthem, accompanied by a children’s choir.
As she came to the “broad stripes and bright stars,” NBC’s cameras zoomed in on Aaron.
Hernandez looked lost in thought. With his mouth slightly open, he swayed side to side as he took in the moment.
Four years earlier, in Super Bowl XLII, the Patriots had gone into the game with a perfect season under their belts. Beating their opponents, the Giants, in Arizona would have given them the first 19–0 record in NFL history. And the Patriots did hold the Giants at bay—until the very end of the fourth quarter. With 2:37 left on the clock and the ball on their 17-yard line, the Giants began a spectacular eighty-three-yard drive, culminating in David Tyree’s astonishing, one-armed catch and Plaxico Burress’s game-winning touchdown.
It was a stunning upset, and the game had been thrilling. The Fox telecast broke all previous Super Bowl records. And now, the same teams, same coaches, and same quarterbacks were facing each other again in Indiana.
The Patriots won their coin toss and deferred, giving the Giants first possession. The Giants moved the ball at first. But the Patriots pushed the Giants back for three plays in a row, sacked Eli Manning twice, got the Giants out of field goal range, and forced a punt.