The Chandler Jones story is a reminder of a time when weird plot twists actually affected the Patriots
New England Patriots defensive lineman Chandler Jones warms up during a practice.
COMMENTARY
The story of Chandler Jones’s apparently hazy Sunday morning has become a hot topic because of the potential for salaciousness. When one of the NFL sack leaders wanders into a police station, well, that’s obvious news ever since Lawrence Taylor set the standard for pass-rusher misbehavior back in the ‘80s.
The Foxborough police chief hardly covered himself in glory or cleared up the situation with his nothing-to-see-here routine to the Boston Herald. The initial paucity of firm facts about why a confused defensive end showed up at a police station opened the door for the peddlers of Antagonism Radio to play Woodward and Bernstein. Rather than address the fact that one of their own, a producer, managed to seemingly botch at least two key details within the 140-character confines of a since-abandoned tweet, there were hours of on-air caterwauling on Wednesday morning about how the Jones story was a very serious matter and other media outlets had been lackadaisical in getting further information.
Amid the headlines and the howling, any speculation that the incident might actually impact Jones’s status for the Patriots’ playoff game against the Chiefs on Saturday seemed to fall somewhere between premature and erroneous, as Sports Illustrated’s legal-matters voice-of-reason Michael McCann pointed out:
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As the day went on, Boston Globe reporter Chris Gasper got new details on the story:
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Chances are there will be more revelations regarding what exactly happened with Jones Saturday night that led him to make the actually lucid decision to seek help from the police. But he’s practiced all week, and synthetic marijuana isn’t covered in the NFL drug policy. It seems this might just be an abnormal sidebar to the Patriots’ normal preparation for Saturday’s playoff game against the Chiefs.
Of course, in another time and place in Patriots history, it would have been a huge deal. Not to rehash every chapter of Michael Felger’s National Book Award-winning Tales From The Patriots Sideline here, but the Jones story was something of a reminder of another time when it was practically commonplace for big dreams and championship hopes to succumb to crazy plot twists at the worst possible times.
Is there any other franchise’s annals that has not one but two stories of head coaches planning to abandon the team when they should have been preparing for what could have been a franchise-defining moment? I don’t think so. Not even the Jets.
In December 1978, word got out that Patriots head coach Chuck Fairbanks, whose deft personnel touch had converted the Patriots’ hapless roster into one of the league’s most promising collections of young talent, was planning to ditch the NFL for the University of Colorado at season’s end. When Patriots owner Billy Sullivan learned of Fairbanks’s plan, he suspended him for the regular-season finale, saying the coach “could not serve two masters 2,000 miles apart.’’
After an uninspired 23-3 loss to the Dolphins, which dropped the Patriots’ record to 11-5, Sullivan relented and reinstated Fairbanks for a playoff matchup with the Houston Oilers, the first home postseason game for the Patriots since the AFL-NFL merger. But the chaos — and Earl Campbell (118 yards) — were too much to overcome. The Patriots lost, 31-14. After a court battle, Fairbanks went to Colorado, and the Patriots began a rapid slink back to irrelevance.
While Fairbanks’s departure was covert and duplicitous, Bill Parcells trumped him 18 years later by going full-on traitor. Parcells was always prone to wanderlust after spending a certain amount of time in one place. By the time the Patriots had reached Super Bowl XXXI in January 1997 against the favored Packers, it was known, in part because of his now-famous metaphor about his desire to “shop for the groceries,’’ that Parcells was frustrated that he didn’t have more clout in personnel decisions. But no one could have expected that he was plotting to bolt for the rival Jets while the franchise that currently employed him was preparing for its second Super Bowl appearance.
But the way it played out confirmed that his focus wasn’t entirely on winning the Super Bowl (or kicking away from Desmond Howard, for that matter). The day after the game, Parcells resigned from the Patriots. Owner Robert Kraft accused the Jets of tampering, and after some strategic maneuvering by both sides — Parcells initially joined the Jets as a “consultant’’ while some guy named Belichick was slated to hold the job of head coach — a settlement was negotiated that sent four draft picks to New England. Parcells became the Jets’ head coach for the next season, and a “border war’’ had begun.
Or how about when the star wide receiver had his hand slashed in a fight with his wife? Four days before the Patriots faced the Dolphins in the AFC Championship Game in January 1986, Fryar turned up with two sliced fingers. The Patriots went with the ol’ he-was-putting-knife-back-in-the-kitchen-drawer excuse, but that proved considerably less foolproof than they expected. It soon was discovered that Fryar, whose previous greatest off-field feat was driving into a tree while leaving the stadium at halftime of a game, had sustained the injury in a fight with his wife, Jacqueline. Fryar missed the Dolphins game, but returned for the Super Bowl. His hand was in decent enough shape to catch the Patriots’ only touchdown in a 46-10 loss to the Bears. That absolutely does not count as a moral victory.
And to think it only got worse the day after the humiliating Super Bowl defeat. Coach Raymond Berry told The Boston Globe that at least five Patriots had serious drug problems and five to seven more were suspected of having a problem. He said he would resign if the players didn’t agree to random drug testing. Amazingly, they did, but backed off when five players — Fryar, Stephen Starring, Roland James, Raymond Clayborn and Kenneth Sims — were identified as having admitted to Berry that they’d used illegal drugs, believed to be cocaine.
“We have a situation that exists here that we feel is intolerable. It has been going on for a year, and I had to weigh the damages of doing something about it immediately by going public,’’ Berry said. “We felt with the season going the way it had, we had to keep our eye on the bull’s-eye. That’s why we didn’t do anything before. But our bull’s-eye looking is over.’’
Man, can you imagine what a manure storm a blockbuster story like this would cause today? Good thing Roger Goodell wasn’t commissioner then. Can you imagine the “integrity’’-based haphazard punishments? He would have lopped off two of Fryar’s fingers and suspended eight-year-old Tom Brady for life.
Despite the irresistible speculation and apparent misinformation in the hours after the Jones story broke — He was at Gronk’s house! He gave Belichick a black eye! It was Brandon Spikes in a Chandler Jones disguise! — the reality is that this story is nothing like the scandals and controversies of previous eras and generations, for one primary reason: These Patriots will not allow it to be.
As currently constituted, this is a franchise that can compartmentalize just about anything in the pursuit of victory. Belichick had to miss prep time for the Super Bowl last year to run his deflated-football experiments. They won the Super Bowl anyway. I mean, Aaron Hernandez is a convicted murderer; yet the Patriots went to the AFC Championship Game the year he was arrested and won the Super Bowl the year he was convicted.
Distractions?
That’s a favorite word for those who aren’t satisfied unless they’re worried about something. The Patriots do not allow our perceptions of distractions to have an effect. Usually it’s by setting them aside and ignoring them. But in this weird week, it’s sometimes seemed as if the Patriots are embracing them.
That mysterious shiner above Belichick’s left eye? No one knows how it got there, and no one will ever know until he writes his memoirs, tentatively titled We’re On To Canton (Snort). Yet there he was, walking through the locker room with a pair of boxing gloves Wednesday, presumably expertly trolling the trolls.
Bill Belichick, prop comic? These are strange days. But not nearly as strange as they used to be.
Chad Finn can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeChadFinn.
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