The conversation is a familiar and often uncomfortable one. Nearly identical versions can be recounted by star linebackers and backup offensive linemen alike; high-round draft picks and free agents who made a fleeting stopover in Foxboro; those who won a ring somewhere else and those who never would.
Anyone who had even the proverbial cup of coffee—Dunkin’ Donuts, to be sure—with the Patriots during Bill Belichick and Tom Brady’s 20-year NFL marriage is almost certain to encounter the assumption that they, too, won one of the dynasty’s six Super Bowl titles. But for those who were there during the often-forgotten nine-year championship drought, responding to a well-meaning conversation starter about rings can be awkward …
“I was to have one.” Or, “I was one of those teams who got there but didn't get there.” Or, “Oh, no, I was on the ’07 team … Then, all of the sudden, it gets real remorseful.”
The Patriots’ championship “drought” was shorter than others clubs’ droughts, but it was long enough to constitute the tenures of countless stalwarts—like, for instance, Wes Welker, still the franchise’s all-time leader in receptions, or linebacker Adalius Thomas, who signed one of the richest free-agent deals of the Belichick era. Or Logan Mankins, an All-Pro in New England who Bill Belichick once called the best guard he’d ever coached, but whose Patriots tenure spanned, precisely, the nine-year gap: 2005–13.
“It actually bothers me,” says Ross Tucker, Mankins’s Patriots teammate from 2005 to ’06 (Mankins declined an interview request). “Think about the guys that were on injured reserve or practice squad on some of these other six [Patriots] teams who have Super Bowl rings, and Logan Mankins doesn’t. He started well over 100 games for them!”
There are 168 players who played in Foxboro only during the championship drought. We asked a dozen of them about the Patriot Way, postseason disappointment (David Tyree!), the Brady-Belichick ratio and, simply, life in the gap years.
