Kraft always has been involved with his players, but they acknowledge that this year he’s gotten closer to many of them through his more frequent visits to the locker room, visits that might linger a little longer as he takes every opportunity to fill his time since the death of his beloved wife, Myra, to ovarian cancer on July 20.
He’s given more of his time to the league and commissioner Roger Goodell. He goes to dinner with friends almost every night - male friends, he’s quick to note, though one recent business dinner was with Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi - and he leans on the young men who have become part of his family.
“Oh, you can tell. You can tell’’ Kraft is seeking solace, running back Kevin Faulk said. “When my mom passed away [in 2004], at that point she was the closest thing to me in my life. And when I left her funeral, I left the day after. And people gave me a lot of stuff about leaving the day after. But the reason why I left the day after was because I knew that if I go back to Massachusetts and put my head into football, I wouldn’t think about everything.
“I wanted to get my mind off of everything that was going on, maybe everything that I needed to think about that I really needed to do, because at that point in time my life became that much more - how you say? - important. Everything that my mom had to take on, I had to take on.
“So [Kraft] just went and tried to get a shield; football was his shield, and the organization, the team. I do see him around here a lot more, interacting with the guys.’’
What they talk about runs the gamut, from football to spirituality to life lessons the 70-year-old businessman imparts on his players. It isn’t always serious, however: On Tuesday, linebacker Brandon Spikes posted a picture of he and Kraft in the locker room before Media Day, arms folded, chins tilted up in a “We bad’’ pose, to his Twitter account.
