Love in the Time of Deflategate
The supposedly soulless Patriots swear a pastor's embrace has
powered their success
Originally Published: January
30, 2015
Patriots' Chaplain Building Character
ON THE NIGHT of Dec. 1, 2012, a
man named Jack Easterby -- a lanky and balding former college basketball player
and golfer with a thick Southern accent and a demeanor so relentlessly positive
that it approaches goofy -- stood before the Kansas City Chiefs and tried to
make sense of death. Not just death: a murder-suicide.
That morning, shortly after killing his girlfriend with 10
shots, Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher arrived at the team parking lot with a
handgun. He was distraught, crazed, panicked. A few team officials surrounded
him, pleading with him to surrender his weapon and to not do any more damage.
From down the road a police siren grew louder. Belcher decided it was over.
"You know that I've been having some major problems at home and with my
girlfriend," he said. "I have hurt my girl already, and I can't go
back now." Belcher knelt behind his car, made the sign of a cross on his
chest and shot himself in the head.
Easterby, the Chiefs' chaplain, was in the team building
preparing a Saturday service when the gun went off. Just hours later, players
and coaches were waiting for consoling words from a man who, if the team hadn't
drafted punter Ryan Succop out of South Carolina with the very last pick in
2009, they never would have known. Easterby had been the chaplain at South
Carolina. Early in his second season, Succop asked Easterby to lead Bible study
for the Chiefs, and Easterby demonstrated such an innate ability to connect
with players -- listening rather than talking, investing more in their lives
than their games, assigning homework rather than uttering empty maxims -- that
Chiefs GM Scott Pioli came to personally pay for his flights from Columbia,
South Carolina, to Kansas City.
That night, while players wondered what they could have done to
prevent tragedy, Easterby felt prepared for his talk as if he had been born for
it. "There is hope beyond these moments," he began. "There's
something bigger going on." He told them that if they prepared for death
and for the life that continued after it, today's devastation would linger
less. He hugged a lot of guys. He gave everyone in the room a list of notes
from his speech. He told them they could call him at any time. He combated
crisis with love, plain and simple. "Men left encouraged," former
Chiefs linebacker Andy Studebaker remembers. "And they left in
tears."
Eight months later, in July 2013, the Patriots opened training
camp with many wondering whether they had lost their way. The arrest of Aaron
Hernandez on murder charges rattled many on the team. The post-Spygate years
had seen them lose two Super Bowls, which gave license for some to question the
validity of the three they had won. Some players privately struggled with the
ruthless reality of life in the NFL, where the machine and the pressure can
become too much. Something bigger than football seemed to be at stake. The team
needed someone. Strange as it sounds, special-teams star Matt Slater says, they
needed someone who would "offer love with no strings attached."
They hired Jack Easterby.
"TONIGHT, MY GOAL is
that you'll never be the same."
Easterby says that often in his devotionals, with the swagger of
a hitter calling his shot. It's an invitation, and dozens of athletes and
coaches -- from Tom Brady to Brady Quinn, from Bill Belichick to South Carolina
women's basketball coach Dawn Staley -- have accepted it. They don't always buy
into Easterby's gospel, but they buy into Easterby himself. His job is to be
trustworthy, and it doesn't help him earn trust if he's out there talking about
it, which is why he politely declined to speak for this story. "He's just
a great person and friend," Brady says. "You feel a special
connection with him and with his genuine caring for all the people in his
life."
The Patriots, since his hire, say they are not the same, no
matter what happens in Super Bowl XLIX and no matter the result of Ted Wells'
investigation into whether the team illegally deflated footballs in the AFC
championship game. Owner Robert Kraft calls Easterby a "wonderful
individual," and Brady has told friends Easterby is one of the main
reasons for the Patriots' success this past year. Safety Devin McCourty calls
him "a godsend to this team" who has "helped create better
men."
Easterby's presence in New England has been as welcome as it is
strange. A man known for being a "big hugger, a loud hugger," as
Pioli says, now roams the halls of a building where men are so lost in thought
they often neglect to say hello as they beeline to their offices. An
organization that proudly suffers wins as hard as it does losses -- once, after
the Pats missed a fourth-and-inches in a blowout win, Belichick griped to the
players, "Fourth and the size of my d--- and we can't get the first
down?" -- now relies on an eternal optimist who, rather than referring to
the Ten Commandments as "Thou Shalt Nots" calls them "the list
of God's dos."
Easterby has a gift for making others feel better about
themselves. Players say it's hard to overstate how precious that is, working
for a fiercely bottom-line team and in a league they believe targets them
unfairly. When Easterby talks to players or coaches, he pulls them in for an
embrace, raising their handshake to his heart. He fixes his eyes to theirs so
long without blinking that it's both awkward and somehow liberating. He is 31
years old, young enough to relate but old enough to have some scars. He tells
them football is temporary, to never forget how blessed they are and to focus
on their gifts -- their beautiful wives or girlfriends or children, their
ability to earn a living playing sports. He always closes by reminding them
he's a quick judge of character, and he can tell by the look in their eyes they
are men of integrity. It's not something Patriots players and coaches have
heard much since 2007, and certainly not a term used to describe them during
the deflated footballs controversy in the run-up to Super Bowl XLIX.
THE TYPICAL TEAM chaplain
is a pastor at a local church who volunteers to host Saturday chapel for 10 or
so players who attend and is compensated with cash in a collection plate. In
New England, Easterby has an office -- and it's near Belichick's. He is a
classic Belichick hire: The more he can do, the more he does. He
hosts Bible study, works coaches' hours in his office counseling
players and their wives, throws passes in practice to Darrelle Revis and
sometimes even jumps in on scout-team drills. When he's not listening, he's
texting. When he's not texting, he's writing players and coaches individual
notes, recapping their personal goals and reminding them of how thankful he is
to know them. He prefers to be called a character coach, not a chaplain,
because he doesn't push religion on anyone. "He just wants to love
you," Slater says. "He just wants to be your friend. How can you not
love a guy like that?"
Love doesn't come up often in football, but when guys speak of
Easterby they use the word all the time. His first job after graduating with a
degree in sports management from Newberry College in South Carolina, his home
state, was in the ticket office of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Easterby later
told friends it felt empty. After he had devoted his life to Christ as a
freshman in college, he envisioned a career in helping people: part father,
part brother, part friend. In 2005, he got a job as the academic adviser for
the Gamecocks men's basketball team. He began hosting Bible study for all of
USC's athletes and coaches, and he learned how to bond with all kinds of young
men -- fatherless, fathers themselves, black, white, rich, poor -- by focusing
like a laser on what they needed, not what he wanted. "Jack cut across all
religious beliefs," says then-coach Dave Odom.
Like Belichick and Brady, Easterby is obsessed with process --
only his process is self-actualization. He challenges those he counsels to be
better people the way coaches challenge them to be better players. He speaks to
them in language they're familiar with, with occasional cuss words and the
drive of a former athlete. He's written a devotion called the Competitor's
Creed. I am a Competitor now and forever. I am made to strive, to strain,
to stretch and to succeed in the arena of competition. ... My attitude on and
off the field is above reproach, my conduct beyond criticism. Whether I am
preparing, practicing or playing, I submit to God's authority and those He has
put over me. I respect my coaches, officials, teammates and competitors out of
respect for the Lord.
Once in a note to a coach, Easterby quoted Teddy Roosevelt's
speech about being the "man in the arena" who was daring to be great,
and he signed it:
Aiming to be the man in the arena,
Jack
Professional football players are drawn to type-A personalities
like Easterby, who years ago as the officiant of Brady Quinn's wedding wrestled
the schedule away from the wedding planner and streamlined the process to make
it easier for the bride and groom. Players can relate to a deep-seated desire
to be great. Easterby is not the only character coach in the NFL, but he might
be the most ambitious one. He leaves his wife, Holly, and two young daughters
in South Carolina and spends Thursday to Monday in Foxborough, arriving at 5
a.m. most mornings. "He makes personal sacrifices, and guys recognize
that," Pioli says. And when your ambition is to give, it tends to bring
out the best in those around you. Says Odom, "He is so good at helping players
understand the opportunity
they
have to give to others; 'I care and give -- now you go care and give.'"
After one loss during the disastrous 2012 season in Kansas City,
Easterby searched the building for Pioli. Easterby's three years with the
Chiefs, he later told people, stretched him. He saw a playoff team and he saw a
2-14 season. He saw a murder-suicide. And he learned -- right before he got a
call from the Patriots saying, "We heard you're the best in the league at
what you do and we want to bring you up here" -- how important simple acts
of devotion are in the silent turmoil of an NFL facility. That day, Pioli
avoided Easterby because he knew what Jack wanted. He wanted to give him a hug.
Pioli didn't want a hug. Well, that wasn't quite true. He did want a hug, but
he didn't want to admit he wanted one. For years, he had heard Bill Parcells
and Belichick grouse about the lonely life at the top, and now Pioli felt it.
Easterby, undeterred, seemed to sense it. When he finally cornered Pioli, the
two of them stared at each other like it was a gunfight.
"Jack," Pioli said sternly, "don't do it."
Jack did it, all right. And held it a few seconds long too.
FOR A MOMENT, put
aside the report that 11 of 12 Patriots footballs in the AFC championship game
were found to be underinflated. Stop wondering what might have happened in the
90 seconds a Patriots ball boy is reported to have spent in the men's room. Now
imagine life with no benefit of the doubt. With guilt by association. With
people dismissing your life's work as a byproduct of a culture of cheating. And
with the presumption that you're shady because your organization's past
indiscretion is hanging over your every move as you prepare to play in the
biggest game of the year.
It's exhausting. It's dispiriting. And blind anger -- the
clichéd us-against-them mentality -- only goes so far. Belichick always tells
his players nobody is going to feel sorry for them.
But Jack Easterby does.
"As macho as we are in this locker room, we all want to be
loved," Slater says. "As men, sometimes we don't know how to deal
with different emotions or ups and downs. We don't grieve the way we should,
experience sadness the way we should or express joy the way we should, because
we're so focused on the job. Jack has been there to say, 'It's OK to be down.
It's OK to have heartache.'"
In 2013, Slater broke his wrist and missed four games. He felt
something worse than the dull panic common to injured athletes. He felt
self-pity. Easterby indulged the feeling rather than burying it, saw it through
rather than trivializing it and softened Slater's anger rather than inflating
it. One of Easterby's aims is to help players unearth an inner joy that is more
sustaining than having a chip on their shoulder. "If proving yourself
becomes your identity," he tells guys, "it's a dangerous way to
live." Slater emerged liberated and somehow thinking clearer. "The
game of football can be taken away at any time," Easterby said.
"Never forget what Jesus has done for you. Don't forget what's
important." That, Slater says now, "was freeing to me. I said, 'You
know what? The sadness and disappointment is temporary.'" Slater ended the
season at the Pro Bowl.
Throughout the Deflategate investigation, Easterby has become
something more than a character coach. Like a defense attorney, he serves his
clients come what may. If the Pats are exonerated, he'll have helped them
weather the storm. If not, he will embrace the chance to help them learn from
it. You could see traces of Easterby's language in the language of the Patriots
during Super Bowl week. Brady first admitted he "personalized"
attacks on his character, a pristine reputation that some seemed so eager to
trash. But he soon refocused. "Everyone will say, 'God, it's been a tough
week for you,'" he said. "But it's been a great week for me, to
really be able to recalibrate the things that are important in my life and
understand the people that support me, and love me, and care about me."
It seemed too earnest to be true, but it also seemed to help.
And as the team spent
Super Bowl week
deflecting questions about its character, the character coach texted guys to
say he was grateful for "another opportunity to serve" and
"blessed to have a chance to impact."
IN THE THIRD quarter of the AFC
championship game, Easterby stood on the sideline in the rain. That quarter was
the decisive moment of the game. The Patriots scored 21 unanswered points, all
with legal footballs. The players and the crowd began to smell a Super Bowl
trip. At the time, nobody knew that an investigation was looming. Players
started to shout, to celebrate and dance.
Team chaplains often say they don't feel part of the team. They
are expected to be on call, with little reward beyond the work itself. Sensing
this, Slater approached Easterby, jumping and yelling, all but imploring him to
join in. But for once, Easterby didn't offer hugs. For once, he seemed
overwhelmed by the moment.
"I'm so humbled to be a part of this," he said, and
turned back to the game, ready to serve.
ESPN
The Magazine senior writer
·
Seth
Wickersham joined ESPN The Magazine after graduating from the University of
Missouri. Although he primarily covers the NFL, his assignments also have taken
him to the Athens Olympics, the World Series, the NCAA tournament and the NHL
and NBA playoffs