Drew!

TALES FROM THE TAILGATE
Pats 26, Dolphins 23 (11/23/'98): Everyone, me included, has been raving about Tom Brady's 517 yards passing in the opener against Miami last Monday. Was it the greatest game ever by a Pats quarterback? Statistically, yes. But there have been so many great games by Pats QBs. Of course many of them by #12 in the last decade. But before there was Brady there was Jim Plunkett. And one of my all-time favorites, Steve Grogan. Even pretty-boy Tony Eason had some great games. (No. Not Scott Zolak).

But the Pats quarterback who may have the longest list of great games? Drew Bledsoe.

He was the embodiment of the "franchise quarterback." Big. Strong. Gun for an arm. Great college quarterback. I'll be heading to Gillette with some of my tailgating group this afternoon for Bledsoe's induction into the Pats Hall of Fame. A great start to a great weekend of football. I can't wait to hear all the fans shouting "Dreeeeewwwwww!" He sure deserves the honor. I hope they have a video highlight package of his best moments as a Patriot. There were some great ones.

The great shootout game against Warren Moon and the Vikes. The Fog Bowl against the Steelers. And of course when he replaced an injured Brady in the AFC title game against the Steelers.  So many great games for #11. But my favorite Bledsoe moment is also one of my favorite Tales from the Tailgate.

The Pats #1 draft pick in 1993 is one of the players most instrumental in turning the franchise around. Like Tom Brady. Ty Law. Tedy Bruschi. Bledsoe deserves as much credit as anyone. He didn't win a Super Bowl as a starter but he jump-started a franchise with some of the most amazing passing performances of the past two decades. He was that good. And he was that tough. I was a Brady guy early on. Mostly because you could tell he had that undefinable quality that all great players have. His abilities have improved each year, but from the beginning you could see he was hard to rattle and had the knack for making the big play. Just like the quarterback who came before him. Bledsoe hard to rattle? Tough? As tough as they come. It may be hard to remember now after the way his Pats career ended, but on back-to-back weekends in November '98 he led the team to two miraculous victories. In the second of those games (against the Bills) he did it while playing with a broken finger on his passing hand.

The first of those games was a Monday nighter against Miami at Foxboro Stadium. Pete Carroll was in his second (and thankfully next-to-last) season as head coach. The Pats started off 4-1 but limped into the game against the Dolphins at 5-5. We could see the foundation that Bill Parcells had built slowly being eroded like a beach cliff under a Cape home. But for two nights Bledsoe almost single-handedly put the team back on solid ground.

We tailgated on a crisp winter night, eating, drinking, and mocking Carroll's "pumped and jacked" mentality to coaching. All rah-rah. Perfect for college. But it very rarely works in the NFL. You either have a dour tactician (Landry, Noll, Belichick) or an in-your-face motivator (Lombardi, Parcells, Cowher) at the helm of the best teams. Cheerleaders as coaches don't usually work out. And when a cheerleader replaces a motivator it usually spells disaster because the players are so glad the guy yelling at them is gone that they ease up and lose their edge. That was the '98 Patriots.

Besides our coach, the other topic of conversation that night was the announcement earlier that month that Robert Kraft had a tentative deal to move the team to Hartford. Hartford! In Connecticut! There was even talk they would change their team colors to match that of the NHL's Hartford Whalers. Green and white. Uh, those are Jets colors. Our team was sliding back into irrelevance and our franchise was moving to Connecticut. We were not in a very good mood as Brendan grilled up some tuna steaks in honor of the Dolphins. (You can't legally buy dolphin.)

Miami was 7-3 and led by Dan Marino nearing the end of his career and coached by Jimmy Johnson who spent most of the game pleading with the refs for penalties. It was a back-and-forth affair. Bledsoe connected with tight end Ben Coates for a touchdown early in the game. In my book, the Bledsoe-to-Coates connection is still the all-time best passing tandem in the team's history. Coates would pull in nine passes for nearly 80 yards. But it was Bledsoe that was the story of this game. Hell, he was the story of that whole year. In the midst of a season where the team was disintegrating, Bledsoe held things together by throwing for more than 3,600 yards, 20 TDs, and an 80.0 passer rating. Of course he threw many killer picks, but that was Drew. I've wondered how Tom Brady would do playing on a team like the '98 Pats. Someday I might find out. If he plays like Bledsoe did that year then that's a hell of an effort.

Miami took a 23-19 lead with just over three minutes to go in the game. Bledsoe led the Pats from deep in their own end to almost midfield at the two minute warning. On a second-down play Bledsoe dropped back to throw and on his follow through hit his passing hand on a defender's helmet. The Pats took a timeout and he came over to the sideline holding his hand and started to make some practice tosses to test it out. At the same time backup QB Scott Zolak (yes, that one) started warming up. "Zolak's coming in," Mark said. "We're moving to Hartford and Zolak's coming in. The Parcells magic is officially gone."

But Zolak did not come in. Bledsoe, even though he would later be diagnosed with a broken finger, came back onto the field. And then took another timeout. He burned two timeouts without ever taking a snap with 1:42 to go in the game. He came over to the sideline and took some more practice tosses. He returned to the field, with only one more timeout to waste, and on 2nd-and-10 airmailed a pass over Terry Glenn's head. He shook his hand some more and started to walk off the field as if he was coming out of the game. But again he stayed in and threw a pass to Coates for a short gain. Fourth-and-six and the Pats have to go for it. Carroll started signalling vehemently for a timeout. The players clearly saw him but ignored him and lined up to run a play. (Yes, Carroll was toast as the coach right then and there.) Bledsoe hit Shawn Jefferson on a curl for a first down with 34 seconds to play. On the next play, in the face of a corner blitz, Bledsoe let one rip into the left corner of the end zone that landed right in Jefferson's hands for a touchdown with 30 seconds left for the amazing victory. The crowd went nuts. Moving to Hartford? Not tonight!

Bledsoe, broken finger and all, led the Pats on an amazing 26-play, 84-yard game winning drive. He finished with 423 yards passing. And as the game ended he ran around the field, responding to the roar of the crowd, pumping his fists and soaking in the moment. The next week, also at home, he played the entire game against the Bills with his broken finger taped to his other fingers, and again led the team to a last-second come from behind win, this time hitting Coates for a touchdown with no time left on the clock. He had many, many great moments as the Pats QB. But those two games in '98 were the two most amazing back-to-back victories that old Foxboro Stadium ever saw.

Bledsoe's career, and the team's fortunes, began to slide from that point as the Pats finished 9-7 that year and then 8-8 the next. Among all the sins of Carroll's years here, the biggest one is his ruining of Bledsoe. Parcells was tough on Bledsoe and that's what he needed. It motivated him. Carroll coddled him and his skills eroded. He was never Baryshnikov, but his footwork just got worse and worse until he become the most stationary target in the game. And then he took a hit by Mo Lewis that changed his -- and once again the team's -- fortunes. He left the field and Brady came on ... and hasn't left since.

That's the other thing that Drew Bledsoe had. Class. When he was getting the crap kicked out of him playing for a mediocre team he took his lumps, kept his mouth shut, and kept coming out every Sunday battling his hardest. When he lost his job to a young QB who would soon prove to be among the best, Bledsoe kept his mouth shut, helped Brady get better, and by not stirring up a controversy played a key role in the first Super Bowl run.

I have a bulletin board in the basement with lots of ticket stubs, pins, stickers, etc. from all the Pats games. In the middle is the cover of the 1994 Globe's NFL preview with a photo of Bledsoe under the headline "A new era is dawning." A lot of things have come and gone from that bulletin board, but the faded picture of No. 11 still hangs right where I put it almost 20 years ago.