With a franchise as troubled as the Patriots, I was never at a loss for problems - like the time shortly after I came onboard when we almost lost the entire team.
The first major event of my tenure was the league meeting held in Palm Beach in March 1971. Before I left, I instructed my staff to send out option letters, an automatic procedure by which every team renews the options of each player under contract. Back from Florida a week later, I got a call from the attorney for Phil Olsen, a former first-round-pick defensive lineman who had previously told me he wanted to leave the team.
“Thanks, Upton,” said the attorney. “It's wonderful that Phil's a free agent.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “He's under contract.”
“No. He never got his option letter, so I'm declaring him a free agent.”
Turned out it wasn't only Olsen's letter that had not been sent. None of them had. And with the deadline past, every player was technically a free agent. The whole team. I had been in Boston for barely a month, and my entire team was gone. The saving grace was that, as far as I could tell, the only player who recognized this was Olsen.
Bucko Kilroy was hired from the Cowboys to run my scouting, and when I told him the situation, he was speechless. “If we send them an option letter now,” I said, thinking aloud, “it will call it to their attention. Why don't we just send them all new contracts?” So we did, even giving some players a little bonus, which shocked more than a few since the Patriots franchise wasn't exactly known for its generosity. The whole thing took three months. Ninety days of getting up each morning wondering if this was the day the gaffe would blow up. But it never did.
