The Patriot

He doesn't get the headlines of Brady or the props of Vinatieri, but the New England Patriots would not be the defending Super Bowl champions if not for Mike Vrabel, the quintessential team player and family man on the quintessential team that's all about being a family.

He knew things were working behind him. He knew that the safety had closed down, and that the cornerback had locked up, and that his fellow linebackers had rotated into the proper position. He knew that he was doing his job and that teammates he couldn't even see were doing their jobs. He knew it clearly, despite all the distractions, all the bands and the piped-in music, and despite the fact that the elements of what would become a halftime show of legendary decolletage had suddenly begun creeping into the stadium on all sides. He knew it clearly, despite the fact that it was a Super Bowl going on all around him, and inside him as well. He knew it clearly, and he knew it quickly. He knew things were working behind him because of what the quarterback was doing in front of him.

Until this moment, until there were five minutes and 22 seconds left in the first half, and until the Carolina Panthers had set up shop for a third-down play on their own 25-yard line, Super Bowl XXXVIII had been an anesthetic affair. The favored New England Patriots had bungled two supreme chances when Adam Vinatieri, their ultra-reliable place-kicker, first missed a makeable field goal and then had a second one blocked. At the same time, Carolina was completely stuck in the mud. Its total offense was in negative numbers, and the Panthers' only first down had been the result of a New England penalty. The game needed some shaking to turn it into a Super Bowl. Mike Vrabel came off the corner of the line of scrimmage, rolled by a blocker, and liked what he saw.

The Carolina quarterback, a hell-for-leather Cajun youngster named Jake Delhomme, hesitated. He went to throw the ball and then brought it down. Somewhere, Vrabel knew, one of his teammates had made Delhomme change his mind. In all those drills, from the mind-numbing heat of training camp to the days when football in the upper latitudes forces the Patriots to practice indoors, this is what Vrabel and his teammates train themselves to do -- to sow confusion in the quarterback's mind.

This is how plays in football get made -- through instinct, through the hard-wired intellect of the reflexes. It's how, as a rookie with Pittsburgh in 1997, Vrabel had forced a crucial fumble out of Drew Bledsoe that helped cost the New England Patriots a playoff game. Five years later, Vrabel had come to play for New England, and the same thing sent him sailing untouched into the face of then St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner, forcing Warner to toss a soft balloon out to the right side that Ty Law had picked off and run in for the touchdown that first turned Super Bowl XXXVI in the direction of what became an epochal upset. And it is what brought him toward Delhomme, who was now reloading his passing arm and thinking, thinking so slowly, and who did not know, or even sense, that someone was about to smack down from behind on his passing arm.

Vrabel brought his right arm down across Delhomme's at an acute angle. The ball popped briefly upward and then bounced away across the turf of Reliant Stadium. There was a brief, ungainly piling of players, a thicket of arms and legs, and a rich, deep chorus of grunts and profanity. Finally, New England defensive end Richard Seymour fell on the ball at the Carolina 20-yard line. Four plays later, Tom Brady threw a touchdown pass to Deion Branch, and it was as if a great sheet of ice over the game had broken up. Over the final 74 seconds of the first half, the teams would combine for 17 points, after having rung up exactly 7 in the first half-hour of play. And the game would end, wildly, in its final seconds, 32-29, on a more accurate kick from Vinatieri.

Vrabel finished with six tackles, that one forced fumble, and two sacks. Most conspicuously, in the heat of the fourth quarter, Vrabel lined up at tight end and caught the second touchdown pass he'd caught since his days at Walsh Jesuit High School in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, outside of Akron. After the Super Bowl, with his son Tyler holding his hand in a giddy and exhausted Patriot locker room, Vrabel actually got impatient talking about his touchdown, and it wasn't the biggest play he'd made, truth be told. He then told his son to touch his shoulder pads.

"Can you feel it?" he asked the boy. "Can you still feel the vibrations? Can you still?"

"When you buy into something," he says six months later, not long before the start of another season, "and you believe in something that somebody's teaching you and coaching you, and it works, then you have no reason to second-guess or question what the people are telling you.

"It's silly to say that we don't have the players that everybody else has, but this team does understand what each other can do better than any other team I've been around."

If you want a play that shows you how Mike Vrabel got to be standing in that locker room in February, remember him coming around the corner where Jake Delhomme couldn't see him and knowing through a half-dozen instant calculations that everything behind him was under control. If you want to know how all of the Patriots got to be standing there, you could do worse than looking at Mike Vrabel.

All right, so now, even with two Super Bowl trophies atop the company chifforobe and the team odds-on to add another one this season, the devotees of the New England Patriots don't have the entire hang yet of this professional football business.

They show up, Lord knows, and not just in the stadium for games, where they've shown up and sold out the stadium for 104 consecutive games. But they show up here, too, in the shadows of the stadium and in the height of high summer, more than 52,000 of them in the first week of training camp, to watch football practice, which, on its most exciting day, can fairly be said to make the main reading room at the Boston Public Library look like the first day of Mardi Gras.

They show up, and the young girls scream for quarterback Tom Brady the same way that everybody else does, except at a higher pitch. On the field, the Patriots move through their drills, position by position, and then all together again. Whenever a player or a group of players make a mistake, they are told to run a lap around the entire field. When the assorted miscreants pass a small hill that rises behind one end zone, the fans sprawled thickly there do a strange thing.

They give the passing screw-ups a standing ovation.

Nothing the New England Patriots do these days is greeted with anything but applause. Nothing the New England Patriots do these days is wrong, not even the things that they do that are, well, wrong.

The great arc of what the team has accomplished over the past five years is measured pretty precisely by the fact that 52,000-odd folks showed up that week to watch the team practice. As recently as 11 years ago, the Patriots failed to draw that many fans to five of the team's eight home games. Go back further, go back to the franchise's truly psychedelic days in which a home game was played in Alabama, and in which a coach stepped up to the microphone for his inaugural press conference and was nearly electrocuted, and the distance traveled is almost surreal.

It isn't just the two Super Bowls, although they surely help. It isn't even the fact that elements of the notoriously tough Boston sports media -- and, in particular, its electronic side -- have gone so deeply into the tank for this team that some of them may not dry off for decades. It's more the fact that the New England Patriots -- who spent most of their first three decades as the preeminent Klown Kollege of the National Football League -- are now the beau ideal of NFL franchises, in the image of which every one of the league's other franchises is desperate to re-create itself.

"What [coach] Bill Belichick and that team do better than anyone is to go out and identify the talent that will work best within their system," explains Chris Mortensen, an NFL analyst for ESPN. "They don't find people and then adjust the system to them."

Mike Vrabel is at midfield with the other linebackers. At 6 feet 4 and 261 pounds, he's bigger than most of the others, his size the best remaining vestige of the defensive lineman that he was throughout his career at Ohio State University. He's quick and startlingly athletic for someone his size. (People who saw him in high school still talk about the time Vrabel forced a fumble, picked the ball out of midair 10 yards downfield, and ran it in for a score.) He's sharp-featured with an easy smile; put him in a tricorn, and in profile, Vrabel might be the model for the wind-swept Continental soldier he wears on the side of his helmet.

He's also bristling with intelligence. The son of two high school principals, Vrabel began at Ohio State as a pre-med major, "probably aiming toward sports medicine," as his father, Chuck, explains. He finally finished his degree (in exercise science) this spring at the age of 28, holding off a tough biochemistry class until last. A lot of his answers begin with a twangy, extended "Waaaaaaalllll," as though he's sizing up every facet of the answer. In this case, he's talking about native intelligence, and football intelligence, and what distance there may or may not be in between.

"There's no question that you have to understand concepts," he says. "The whole key to [this] defense is whether or not you can get everybody to understand what everybody else is doing, and should be doing, on every play. Do that, and you can be very good."

Ultimately, what has been created in Foxborough is an opportunity society. Players are invited there because the team has seen something in them that it can use, and it is the player's responsibility to seize that opportunity. And there has been a strong element of redemption in it, as well. The team has reclaimed itself from its lost idiot years, and Belichick has reclaimed himself not only from a disastrous stint in Cleveland, but also from a brief and bizarre flirtation at following Bill Parcells as the coach of the New York Jets. And Mike Vrabel joined the team just as his career looked as though it might die on the vine.

Now, the Patriots are the NFL's signature franchise, and Belichick is universally acclaimed a genius, and Vrabel came within an ace of being the Most Outstanding Player in the last Super Bowl. It takes a depth of insight to see where opportunity might lead. In fact, it takes no little intelligence to see opportunity there at all. "I've coached players who were intelligent, brilliant guys, and it never came together for them on the football field," Belichick explains. "Then, there's other guys who, off the field, would have a hard time intellectually but, on the field, knew instinctively how things were supposed to work together.

"Mike's an intelligent guy and, at the football level, things come extremely easily to him in that he understands things quickly. Plenty of guys were great players, intelligent football players, but you wouldn't want them doing your taxes. Mike's not one of those."

THE HOUSE WAS IN THOSE SUBURBS that sprang up around the old Rust Belt near Akron, and education was the family industry. Chuck and Elaine Vrabel met when they were both students at the University of Akron -- "fellow Zips," says Chuck wih a laugh, referring to the unfortunate nickname hung upon the school's athletic teams. Chuck has spent three decades in the local public schools, most recently as principal of Nordonia High School in nearby Macedonia, while Elaine worked mostly in curriculum development until she got a job as principal of Brush High School in Lyndhurst.

Their only child was the neighborhood ball of fire. "What I remember most is Mike and the other kids, always in our backyard, always playing something," says Chuck Vrabel, who coached football and basketball. "Mike was always involved. We swam a lot, too." They also pushed him as hard in school as you might expect a kid to be pushed with both parents working as high school principals.

"Academics was of the highest importance," Mike Vrabel says. "But, as I went along, a lot of other stuff became important, too. Athletics became important."

He blossomed at Walsh, a Jesuit high school, where he became a USA Today high school All-American as well as an Ohio high school football player of the year. Moreover, Vrabel's personality and his insouciant charm made him a notable character at his high school and an attractive recruit for the college coaches who had begun showing up at his games.

Chuck and Elaine supported Mike's burgeoning career, but they did so with a clear-eyed understanding of how individuals can get chewed up in the industry of football that begins on the high school practice fields and often ends well only for the very luckiest of the people involved in it. "I was concerned about it early on, when Mike was getting recruited," Chuck recalls. "When he started being recruited by Ohio State, well, that can be overwhelming. That's really the big time. But Mike, those are the kind of things that don't intimidate him at all. He saw it as a chance to compete."

On his recruiting visit to the campus in Columbus, Vrabel's host was an Ohio State player named Luke Fickell. The two hit it off, and after Vrabel enrolled, he and Fickell eventually became roommates, sharing a campus apartment that was something of a dive even by the standards of undergraduate apartments. "I think it was condemned," laughs Fickell, who is now an assistant coach at Ohio State. "If it wasn't, it should have been."

Vrabel prospered at Ohio State, even on a talent-laden team that would eventually send a clutch of players to the NFL. Playing at defensive end, he set a school record with 36 quarterback sacks and was a first-team All-American in his senior year in 1996. Moreover, he became notable for the high standards he set for both himself and his teammates and for his willingness to be vocal in his attempts to enforce them. It was Vrabel who persuaded most of his teammates to stay in Columbus and train during the summer preceding his senior year.

"Mike just competes," says Fickell. "It's like, if you're playing golf with him, and you're a couple of holes ahead, you can tell how Mike's playing by the noises from a couple holes over. It's like, `Geez, Mike, make a birdie so we can all have some fun.'"

"Well," Vrabel says, "you know that you're going to have to call someone out if you don't think they're necessarily working hard. The guys know I run after practice, and they can see what I need to do to get ready for the season. I think I put a lot of work in."

"Mike would run through a wall for you," explains John Cooper, who coached Vrabel at Ohio State. "He'll help the team any way he can, and that's why we were so good when he was here. The best thing we had was that off-season program, and he helped make sure every kid stayed here."

"He's got such a hard mentality to him," says Dave Kennedy, the strength coach at Nebraska who held the same job at Ohio State during Vrabel's time there. "He was my first real enforcer. He held everybody accountable, every single player." Kennedy recalls one day in which a highly touted Buckeye freshman fell out during a training run. Vrabel finished his own run, slipped away, and took the unwitting laggard down from behind.

"Some of the things he did," says Fickell, "he said things that some people thought shouldn't be said. They helped the team, but they weren't the kind of things that get you elected captain."

DESPITE HIS SUCCESSFUL COLLEGE CAREER, Vrabel was drafted only in the third round of the 1997 draft. He had impressed the scouts, especially a rising young prodigy for the Baltimore Ravens named Scott Pioli, who liked Vrabel's competitive fire and his love for the grunt work of football. However, it was obvious that because of his size, Vrabel was going to have to play line-backer in the NFL, and enough scouts were wary of his ability to make that transition that the Pittsburgh Steelers were able to snag Vrabel in the third round. Pioli filed Vrabel's name away as one to watch.

It could have ended in Pittsburgh. The Steelers were loaded at linebacker, and it took Vrabel the better part of two seasons simply to learn the position. By the time Vrabel had learned enough to be comfortable, the Steelers had brought in two other star linebackers, and suddenly, for Vrabel, the Pittsburgh depth chart began to look like a quagmire.

"Mike was just a very productive player for us, when he played," says Pittsburgh coach Bill Cowher. "He was one of those kids where, if you couldn't find a fit for him, you knew he was going to play somewhere in the NFL. All he wanted, all he needed, was an opportunity."

Vrabel and his wife, Jen, had had their first child, Tyler, and they were living in a smallish apartment, and he was seriously considering leaving football, finishing his undergraduate degree, and entering law school. It was a miserable time for him. Fickell recalls seeing his friend and becoming aware quickly how worn down Vrabel seemed.

"He just wasn't himself," Fickell says. "When he was in Pittsburgh, and he and I talked, when we were done, I remember thinking, `Man, that's not the same guy.'"

"By the end of my fourth year," Vrabel says, "it was pretty difficult. I mean, I knew the system there, and I knew pretty much where things were heading. We had a new baby, a small apartment. It was time to move on, time to start over."

Then, after the 2000 season ended, Vrabel got a call. It was Pioli, who was now putting together a football team up in New England. He had held onto Vrabel's name, and Vrabel was now a free agent, and maybe, Pioli wondered, he'd like to talk to the coach.

NOW THAT IT'S ALL COME to work so well, the job that Scott Pioli and Bill Belichick have done in creating the New England Patriots occasionally finds itself described in terms that are equal parts high-end management theory and some sort of lost medieval alchemy for which they alone somehow stumbled over the magic scrolls. However, whatever they've managed to do is certainly equal parts science and art -- the modern science of evaluating athletic performance, married to that most ancient art of judging the essential human being who will be asked to give that performance life. The stopwatch only tells you so much.

"It's not guesswork," says Pioli. "It's research, and it's knowing what we're looking for, which are certain dynamics and certain things about a person, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that I know what kind of player Bill wants in his system.

"The word we use is `makeup.' We're very concerned about a player's makeup. My job is to find players who are compatible with our head coach."

In 2000, with Vrabel languishing in Pittsburgh and coming into free agency, the Patriots called him in for a meeting. "The timing was nice," Vrabel recalls. "Bill was pretty straightforward. He told me: `Here's the situation. We've had to make some salary-cap moves, and here's the guys you'll be competing with, and here's what we see you doing. We think you can help us out.'" Vrabel reportedly signed a three-year contract with New England for a relatively inexpensive $5.2 million.

"I thought they did a great job bringing in, you know, character guys. Guys that value family and hard work," Vrabel says. "They put a lot into that."

Vrabel walked into a nearly perfect opportunity. Belichick was developing a defense in which linebackers can be used creatively to maximize their individual abilities, and which also requires great versatility. Vrabel was prized for his speed and for his athletic ability covering receivers coming out of the backfield and for his skill at rushing the passer. But the Patriots also took him because of his ferocity.

"Mike's a football player," Pioli says. "I don't know any other way to describe him. I mean, Bill and I aren't great numbers guys. We don't get hung up on height-weight-speed. We want football players, because, come Sunday at 1 o'clock, football players play football. What they did in the 40-yard dash one day in shorts, or in the vertical jump, is not what the fans pay to see and not what we're asking them to do." For example, Vrabel threw himself into special-teams play. This is something that football coaches adore. Anyone willing to take on enthusiastically the lunatic job of covering punts makes a statement about himself that no coach can ignore.

"The sooner that a young player understands that, if he's good in the kicking game, he'll get more chances on offense and defense, the better off that player will be," Belichick explains. "Attitude's a big part of it -- wanting to do it and having the attitude to do it. I mean, it's organized chaos. Everything's kind of set up, and then the ball's kicked, and all hell breaks loose. It's all organized, but every play is different, and it takes a lot of instincts to play it well.

"That first year Mike was here, we didn't have a tackle inside the other team's 20-yard line on the kickoff team for four or five weeks. We put Mike on the kick-off team, even though he was starting at linebacker. He went down there and just nailed the guy. Pretty soon, he was getting one of those a week, and it really gave our kicking game a significant boost."

Of course, Vrabel is now at the heart of the defense that is at the heart of the Patriots. He chews on the rookies. "Mike's a pretty outspoken guy," says Tully Banta-Cain, who was New England's only rookie linebacker last season. "You make a mistake, and he lets you know right away. And I think that was good for me, because I kind of keep things in, and now I'm a little more vocal with the guys, too." Among the veterans, Vrabel is noted for, among other things, having a great deal of fun using Belichick's signature line, "I've been in this league for 30 years, and I've never seen ..."

"I think Vrabes and I pretty much define what development's all about here," says Tedy Bruschi, a fellow linebacker. "If you give good players, with good heads on their shoulders, a chance, they'll either get better or they're going to get cut. Simple as that."

It's a long way from Pittsburgh to this sun-splashed practice field, on which even the guys getting punished get cheers, and even the things that go wrong are really right. In March, the Patriots prolonged Vrabel's contract with the team, giving him $1.85 million next season.

"I wouldn't do this if I didn't love it," says Mike Vrabel, linebacker, New England Patriot, college graduate, and first-class opportunist in the best way you can be. "I wouldn't go out and make myself feel the way you feel at training camp if I didn't love playing football, and with these guys in particular.

"That was kind of a fine line there [in Pittsburgh] between having the ability to play and being right on the fringe, or kind of fading away and just kind of going on with your life, which is fine. You're not going to play this game forever. You've got to know what you want to do. You have to accept that and just move on."

But not just yet. Not with two Super Bowls in the satchel and another one right there for the taking, if only everybody does what he's supposed to do. You can do great things if only you can count on the people behind you.

Charles P. Pierce is a member of the Globe Magazine staff. He can be reached at CPierce@globe.com.