Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times. Mark Leibovich
like it is some secret organizational sauce. When successful institutions rise to the level of having a “way” attached to them (IBM, Goldman Sachs), they are often too good to be true and invite comeuppance: I remember thinking this after baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals—they of the “Cardinal Way”—were busted in 2015 for hacking into the computer database of the Houston Astros.
Players who might have previously had “issues” on other teams, or in college, come to New England as damaged goods, often on the cheap. They then, as the story goes, get a taste of the Patriot Way. They adopt the ethic and get contorted into the mold. Upon signing a $40 million contract extension in 2012, Aaron Hernandez talked about how buying into the Patriot Way had changed him. He went from being a talented but troubled young man at the University of Florida—considered a “character risk” and thus lasting until the fourth round of the 2010 draft—to being a Pro Bowl–caliber tight end. “You get changed by the Patriot Way,” Hernandez said in an emotional press conference after signing the new deal. He talked about how touched he was that Mr. Kraft would make such a long-term commitment to him. He pledged $50,000 to a charity named for Kraft’s late wife, Myra. “I said, ‘Aaron, you don’t have to do this, you’ve already got your contract,’ ” Kraft said at the press conference. “He said, ‘No, it makes me feel good and I want to do it.’ And that made me feel good.”
Even given how Hernandez wound up, Kraft continues to invoke “the Patriot Way,” especially the idea that the Patriots are like a family, at least to him (if not to the “family members” that Belichick will jettison for cheaper parts). Kraft, who is now seventy-six, cuts a more rumpled figure in his office than the magnate we see on TV. During games, Kraft will sit in his private box watching the action through binoculars from a raised seat, giving an impression of a king on a highchair. He wears bright suits with expert pocket squares. He is always accompanied by his son Jonathan, and often some celebrity arm candy, like Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Elton John, or Jon Bon Jovi (as with many fans of the Patriots, they seemed to all peak in the seventies and eighties). Announcers narrate these money shots by praising, in Kraft’s case, his stewardship of the dynasty and contributions to the league and, of course, to so many charities.
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