If These Walls Could Talk: New England Patriots: Stories from the New England Patriots Sideline, Locker Room, and Press Box
288
If These Walls Could Talk: New England Patriots: Stories from the New England Patriots Sideline, Locker Room, and Press Box
288Paperback
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781629374420 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Triumph Books |
| Publication date: | 10/02/2018 |
| Series: | If These Walls Could Talk |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 1,080,629 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Welcome to the Jungle
Scott Zolak had arrived, or at least that's what he had believed.
His initiation with the New England Patriots was during a darker time, three years before the dawn of Robert Kraft's reign as owner and nearly a full decade before Bill Belichick's arrival. And when the Patriots selected Zolak with the No. 84 overall pick in the 1991 draft, quarterback Tom Brady was a few months shy of his 14 birthday. The Patriots, to put it bluntly, were an embarrassment, and visions of a dynastic era that would push two decades and be led by a castoff coach and sixth-round pick would have been delusional. But that was the state of the organization in the early 1990s, and Zolak was thrilled to fulfill a lifelong dream of reaching the NFL.
Zolak was the first pick of the fourth round and the fifth quarterback off the board, following first-rounders Dan McGwire and Todd Marinovich and second-rounders Brett Favre and Browning Nagle. And head coach Dick MacPherson, who tried to recruit Zolak to Syracuse before he committed to Maryland, excitedly called his new quarterback to bring him to Foxboro, Massachusetts.
MacPherson couldn't snag Zolak the first time around. After all, Zolak was ranked as one of the top two high school quarterback recruits in Pennsylvania along with Major Harris, and he needed three feet of snow in upstate New York like he needed a hole in the head. Plus, Syracuse was running an option-style offense at the time, and Zolak wanted to sling it.
"I'm like, 'Holy shit, I'm not going to Syracuse,'" Zolak recalled.
But when MacPherson shared his admiration the second time around, Zolak was ecstatic. He didn't know a lot about the Patriots, although he had immense respect for former quarterback Steve Grogan, and he was a big-time Larry Bird fan. He loved the tight shorts, the Celtics' aura, everything about them, and he couldn't wait to see some games at the old Boston Garden. And since Zolak wore short shorts and sported a mullet, he figured he'd fit right in with that crowd.
Aside from all that, Zolak was in the show. This was the NFL. This was big time, the dream, the arrival. So when he got the draft call from MacPherson, chief executive officer Sam Jankovich, and vice president of player operations Joe Mendes, Zolak was ready to make the short trip up north.
"Mac was like, 'Jesus Christ, you've got to come play for me now. I'm drafting you, so you've got no choice,'" Zolak said.
The excitement tempered when Zolak soon learned why the Patriots of the early 1990s were among the worst organizations in professional sports, and why the weather in New England can drive a man crazy, and why the traffic in Boston could transform Mother Teresa into Charlie Sheen. The Patriots had one intern, Aaron Salkin, who greeted Zolak a day after the draft with a sign with his name on it before they retreated to a white Ford van at Logan Airport.
But Zolak landed during rush hour and it was sleeting, so the traffic was borderline apocalyptic. At the start of the ride toward Foxboro, which in theory should only take half an hour, Zolak remained amped up over his first trip through Boston, particularly when they passed the Garden. Then they slowly crawled south down I-93 through Quincy and the remaining towns that acted as a buffer between the state capital and Foxboro Stadium, and the excitement turned into natural frustration throughout a ride that spanned two and a half hours.
"I was like, 'Where the hell are we going?'" Zolak said. "I'm miserable at this point. You have no idea where you're going, so it feels like five hours. We pull up past the stadium, and he's like, 'There's the stadium.' You can't really see it because it's dark at that time of night."
Alas, the Foxboro Stadium sign rubbed right up against Route 1, so that was all the proof Zolak needed. Salkin then informed Zolak that offensive line coach Rod Humenuik was waiting for him at the Endzone Motor Inn a few miles south of the stadium. Nowadays, the hotel is merely the butt of a joke of how to stay near the stadium for a game without spending more than your lunch money. But that's where Zolak and his fellow draft picks would be holed up for the week during the Patriots' rookie camp.
Zolak was delighted when the hotel clerk informed him that he had a deluxe suite waiting upstairs, although that was mostly because Zolak was surprised the place even had a deluxe suite. Zolak was overcome by the smell of chlorine on the way to his room, so he excitedly asked the clerk where the pool was located. As it turned out, the pool didn't exist, but the hotel staff was certainly diligent with their efforts to maintain a clean hot tub. Lo and behold, Zolak opened his door and found an outdoor hot tub smack dab in the middle of the room.
"So I called my dad and said, 'I think I've made it.'"
Started from the Top, Now We're Here
A hotshot athlete in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, Scott Zolak was the son of a high school athletic director and the grandson of steelworkers, so he was practically starring in the real-life version of All the Right Moves. The blue-collar town was rife with tradition, too, as Joe Montana, Ken Griffey Sr., Stan Musial, Freddie Cox, and Deacon Dan Towler all hailed from the area. The residents worked in the mills during the days and lived through the high school teams at night, particularly under the Friday night lights.
Zolak was like every Pennsylvania kid who desperately wanted to play football for Penn State, and the Nittany Lions began recruiting Zolak by the time he was a freshman at Belle Vernon High School. Zolak's father, Paul, was the athletic director at Ringgold High School and had sent a handful of players to Penn State. During his own recruiting process, Scott Zolak ate spaghetti and meatballs at Joe Paterno's small, nondescript State College house that had a red and white checkered tablecloth in the former coach's kitchen.
But in typical Penn State fashion, they wanted to turn Scott Zolak into a linebacker, which they also tried to pull on Jim Kelly and Jeff Hostetler. Zolak had never played defense in his life and wasn't sold on the idea of bulking up his 6'5", 222-pound frame to head to Linebacker U. Zolak passed on the offer to flip sides, and Penn State wound up with quarterback Tom Bill in the 1986 recruiting class.
Along the way, Zolak reveled in the high school scene. He started as a sophomore and junior at Belle Vernon and transferred to Ringgold to play for a better program during his senior year, which was a major deal for a local star to uproot for a rival program. To do that, his parents put their house on the market for an exorbitant price — about double its value — that they knew wouldn't draw any offers and moved into a "shit box" down by the river to get him into the district to qualify for Ringgold.
"My family sacrificed a lot to watch me play," Zolak said. "We ended up winning a lot and going to the playoffs, so it was cool."
They played every Friday night in front of at least 10,000 fans at Ringgold. The stadium had a press box due to all of the attention that had been heaped upon the team, and the field was encircled by lights because the idea of playing Saturday afternoon football was absurd. The loyal, passionate town shut down and engulfed the stadium. Paul Zolak pioneered the use of Astroturf at the facility and his wife, Daryl, was a popular teacher in the area, so Scott Zolak was a household name, even a celebrity, in the district.
"It was steel town versus steel town, and everybody knew everybody," Zolak said. "It was about pride, man. You didn't want to lose for your hometown. You didn't want to lose for your neighbors."
After games, high school kids got to act like high school kids. Zolak played a starring role then, too, especially after he cashed in on a bet with his father. They had a deal: if Scott earned a college scholarship, which was as sure of a thing as the sun rising every morning over their Pennsylvania town, Paul Zolak would buy him any car he wanted. So the star quarterback with the mullet who wore tight shirts and listened to Def Leppard, REO Speedwagon, and Styx made the obvious choice. He scored a silver IROC-Z with the T-tops. Zolak and his teammates would pack it after games and head to McDonald's to eat French fries and drink sodas.
"That's what kids did back then," Zolak said. "We'd drive around, crank tunes, and cruise the mall, what any other high school kid would do."
Prior to his senior year, Zolak played in the Big 33 Football Classic, a recruiting bonanza for the best high school players in Pennsylvania at Hersheypark Stadium. His offensive teammates included future Broncos Super Bowl champion wide receiver Ed McCaffrey, and Zolak recalled seeing Michigan coach Bo Schembechler and Louisville coach Howard Schnellenberger among the 30,000 in the stands.
The recruiting element was like a game of dominos for the quarterbacks, as Zolak, Major Harris, and Browning Nagle jockeyed for the right program. Zolak obviously wanted nothing to do with the Syracuse weather or Dick MacPherson's option system, and it was even more unappealing to convert to linebacker to play for Penn State. Schnellenberger, who gained fame at the University of Miami, told Zolak he could start for four years at Louisville, but Zolak admitted "that kind of scares you as an 18-year-old kid." So that's where Nagle wound up.
Zolak was really drawn to the University of Maryland for a host of reasons. As much as anything, he fell in love with head coach Bobby Ross, but Zolak also had a family connection to the area. His uncle, Chuck Zolak, who was the quarterback for Delaware's co-national championship team in 1963, lived near Maryland's campus, and he could serve as Scott's father away from home. Not to mention, it was only a few hours from home, so Zolak's parents could drive to his games. It all made perfect sense to commit to one of the better programs in the country.
Maryland endured a bout of tragedy and turmoil around the time of Zolak's arrival in 1986, however. Zolak, a huge basketball fan after also starting on the hardwood for all four years of high school, joined the rest of America that became infatuated with Maryland star forward Len Bias, and Zolak relished the opportunities to watch Bias play during his recruiting trips and then again in summer league games when he arrived on campus prior to his freshman year. But Bias died of a cocaine overdose two days after the Boston Celtics drafted him with the second pick in June 1986. As part of the fallout, men's basketball coach Lefty Driesell resigned in October, and Bobby Ross bolted after the 1986 football season.
Meanwhile, Zolak had to wade through a stacked quarterback depth chart, and he knew he'd redshirt as a freshman. But his first target was Gary McIntosh, a decorated high school All-American who was viewed by the Terrapins as the eventual starter. Zolak didn't give a damn.
"I remember being on my official visit there after I committed, and a couple defensive backs go, 'Oh man, you aren't coming here, are you?' I'm like, 'Yeah, why?' They're like, 'You're never going to play. We've got this guy Gary McIntosh.' He ended up transferring to Navy because I beat his ass out for the job my first year there. I had no fear of anybody."
Zolak had far greater respect for starter Dan Henning Jr. and fellow backup Neil O'Donnell, who started Super Bowl XXX for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Henning's father, Dan Henning Sr., was a Bill Parcells disciple and a brilliant offensive coach who taught the spread offense to Charlie Weis and served a number of roles in the NFL and college for more than four decades. He also raised a hell of a competitive son.
Henning could relate to Zolak's toughness, too. Perhaps Zolak's most memorable play at Ringgold High occurred against, of all teams, Belle Vernon, when he took a wicked blindside shot on a heavy blitz but still delivered a pass that traveled 60 yards and went for a game-winning touchdown. So Zolak shared an appreciation for players with a similar level of intestinal fortitude.
"I learned a ton from Henning," Zolak said. "This kid was a small, undersized kid, but he had guts and balls, and got the shit kicked out of him, but he stood there and threw it."
O'Donnell beat out Zolak for the backup job and ultimately became the starter until Zolak took over in 1990. Despite being the fulltime starter for one season, Zolak left Maryland ranked fifth in school history with 270 completions and seventh with 3,124 passing yards, and he was a four-time Atlantic Coast Conference Offensive Player of the Week.
Zolak flourished under the tutelage of head coach Joe Krivak, and the quarterback really benefited from his chemistry with tight end and H-back Frank Wycheck, who in 2000 delivered the key lateral in the Tennessee Titans' "Music City Miracle" comeback victory in the playoffs against the Buffalo Bills.
"Frank really carried me my senior year, kind of put me on a national stage and got me noticed," Zolak said.
Zolak orchestrated the spread offense at Maryland, setting a school record with 29 completions against Michigan, and he took that skillset to the Blue-Gray Game on Christmas. Houston coach John Jenkins led Zolak's team, so they operated with the run- and-shoot. Zolak was the MVP of the all-star game to further open eyes of NFL scouts.
"We threw the shit out of it," Zolak said. "I think I threw it 45 times in the first three quarters. And we had no plays. We held up signs and that was the name of the play. We'd hold up a rat trap, and that was a trap play. That was cool. Everything at Maryland was so rigid like it is here with the Patriots. It was simple like that, and it works. It shows you that you don't have to complicate things to make it work."
Northward Bound
The 1991 NFL draft was a crapshoot, and Scott Zolak was told he could be taken off the board as early as the second round or as late as the sixth. The New York Giants showed plenty of interest, and Zolak met with general manager George Young on a couple of occasions. Even though Bill Parcells was gone by that point, it was an appealing landing spot given the Giants' recent history with a couple of Super Bowl victories, and Young left a significant impression on Zolak.
But the Giants didn't take a quarterback. The Pittsburgh Steelers and Washington Redskins, who also took a liking to Zolak, also ignored the quarterback position in the draft. And the Atlanta Falcons, who were undoubtedly taking a quarterback, turned to Brett Favre in the second round, so there was no argument there. Patriots vice president of player operations Joe Mendes worked Zolak out at Maryland, but the quarterback thought little of it. Really, Zolak just never envisioned himself in New England until head coach Dick MacPherson summoned him in the draft.
The aura of being in the NFL quickly wore off during those two and a half hours in a white van that methodically worked its way south on the most frustratingly congested highway in the state while also meandering through the sleet that would be out of season if it weren't dousing New Englanders who are used to exchanging shorts for snow boots on a daily basis in April. And for an out-oft-owner who was getting ready for his orientation in a new area of the country? Nightmarish.
"You're in East Bumbfuck," Zolak recalled. "It was the worst first impression. You're like, 'This is the league? This is the NFL?'"
But if the hot tub in Zolak's hotel room felt out of place, it merely prepared him for the glorified high school stadium that housed the Patriots from 1971 to 2001. During his initial tour of Foxboro Stadium, Zolak was taken aback by the locker-room's metal benches and steel-cage lockers. Really, if someone didn't know any better, it'd be easy to convince them the locker room facilitated a junior varsity team. As the tour moved to the equipment room, Zolak remembered asking for the location of the weight room, and he was shocked again when the coach who guided the tour told him they had already walked through it.
That's when it started to click. Maybe this was why the Patriots were basement dwellers, coming off an embarrassing 1–15 season in 1990, because they sucked the winning culture and professional lifestyle out of the players the moment they walked into the building.
"Things only got worse the next day when you saw the facilities," Zolak said. "You walk in to see the locker room and you're like, 'This can't be the NFL.' Sure as heck enough, it was the NFL. But hey, man, it was a paycheck. It was cool. You're in the league."
Zolak was humbled in another way during his first day at Foxboro Stadium. He met linebacker Andre Tippett, who was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2008, and that was an intimidating encounter to say the least. Tippett didn't talk to rookies until they earned his respect, but he was truly a remarkable teammate who eventually became close with Zolak. But that first day? That was a wakeup call.
"You think you're going to get there and these veterans are going to be nice to you," Zolak said. "It wasn't that Tippett was a dick. Tippett was Tippett. He wasn't going to deal with any rookies."
Into July, Zolak briefly held out during the start of training camp due to a technicality with his draft slot. The 84 selection would have typically been the final pick of the third round, but there were only 27 first-round slots in 1991 because the Jets used a first-rounder on Rob Moore in the 1990 supplemental draft. So Zolak's agent, former Patriots linebacker Ralph Cindrich, lobbied to get him money that would have been earned if the 84 pick was still in the third round.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "If These Walls Could Talk: New England Patriots"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Scott Zolak and Jeff Howe.
Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword Drew Bledsoe v
Chapter 1 Welcome to the Jungle 1
Chapter 2 Reeling in the Big Tuna 21
Chapter 3 Just How They Drew It Up 49
Chapter 4 California Pete 75
Chapter 5 Kraft's Risk worth Taking 91
Chapter 6 Bill Belichick under the Hood 107
Chapter 7 Tom Brady the G.O.A.T 173
Chapter 8 Dynasty Part I (2001-04) 197
Chapter 9 Dynasty Part II (2014-?) 223
Chapter 10 History Un-repeated 265
Acknowledgments 273
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