Mistake-free football

Belichick doesn't take kindly to Patriot slipups on, off field

January 27, 2004|Globe Staff

HOUSTON -- Bill Belichick walked into the conference room at the team hotel here wearing a suit and tie, leather lace-ups, and carrying a briefcase. If his players needed any further reminder of why they're in town this week, they only had to glance at him.

"It's a business trip," the Patriots' buttoned-down coach declared, when his team arrived Sunday afternoon to prepare for Super Bowl XXXVIII against the Carolina Panthers. "We have a lot of work to do."

Left undeclared was the obvious: seek pleasure on your own time and at your own risk. Unlike New Orleans, where Belichick's charges won their first NFL title two years ago, Houston is a sprawling megalopolis embracing eight counties and five million people. It has an endless number of bars, dance halls, and "gentlemen's clubs" where 53 football players with fat money clips can find diversion.

So Belichick's do's-and-don'ts list is one item long: "Try not to get arrested," he says. If you do, you'd better call Jailbusters, the local bail bonds people. Because the Patriots won't be springing you. And when you're free, you'll be on the street for good. The players know that without having to ask.

"They know what's expected of them," says offensive lineman Matt Light. "They know what they shouldn't do. They're all grown adults."

Almost all of them were around during Belichick's first season in Foxborough when cornerback J'Juan Cherry was waived on the first day of minicamp after being involved in a bar brawl in Boston's financial district. None of them needed to ask why. "If you're not doing it [Belichick's] way," then-safety Larry Whigham observed, "you're on the plane leaving for somewhere else."

The Patriots didn't make it to two Super Bowls in three years by tripping over their own feet. They kept their names off the police blotter in New Orleans and they're determined to do the same here.

"This is a hell of an experience," says Light, who's making the return trip. "It's something you'll have with you the rest of your life. Everyone knows that."

The players also know that the mistakes they make off the field at the Super Bowl likely will be remembered longer than those they make on it.

In 1999 in Miami, Atlanta's Eugene Robinson, now a Panthers radio analyst, was arrested the night before the game and charged with soliciting an undercover policewoman for oral sex just hours after accepting the league's Bart Starr Award for high moral character.