Bruschi articles - the good reads - no comments please so it stays a short thread

Over his 13 years in New England, Tedy Bruschi was a walking football cliché—and I mean that in the most affectionate of ways.

I mean that he really was the ultimate leader, on and off the field; that he really did care more about the team, and his teammates, than he did about himself; that he really would sacrifice any personal goal or achievement in the name of victory.

I mean that guys like Bruschi are the reason those clichés exist.

Click to expand...

If they didn’t feel obliged to wait the mandatory four-year period, the Patriots could have had Tedy Bruschi walk directly from the press conference announcing his retirement over to the Hall at Patriot Place for his enshrinement ceremony.

Because there’s no question that’s where he’ll be, come the summer of 2013.

Bruschi would have been eligible for induction into the team’s Hall of Fame this summer, had not his remarkable resilience, tenacity, talent and love for the game enabled him to return to the Patriots in 2005 after he suffered a stroke that threatened not only his football career, but also his life.

Click to expand...

Yet when he finally accepted what he never had before and walked away from football, neither time nor the game had defeated him. He’d done what he wanted, proved his point and, most of all, played the way he wanted to play - like a man giving a full day’s work for a full day’s pay.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons New England loved him so. Obviously, he evolved from a college pass rusher to a starting NFL linebacker and, finally, into not only a playmaker but the maker, it always seemed, of the biggest plays at the biggest moments. There is much to love in that alone if you are a Patriots fan.

Click to expand...

Whenever you think something is impossible, or can’t happen, there’s always someone out there to make you believe otherwise.

Tedy Bruschi was that someone.

Whether it was being undersized as an inside linebacker but still managing to flourish in the NFL, or sustaining a stroke and miraculously making it back to play four more seasons with the Patriots, Bruschi inspired legions of followers.

Click to expand...

Inside the locker room, his former teammates dressed for practice and spoke in hushed tones, reflecting on the profound impact the player had on their lives.

Outside it, with his wife Heidi by his side, Tedy Bruschi walked down the dimly lit hallways of Gillette Stadium, into the sunset and away from football.

Bruschi, the inspirational linebacker who became a face of the Patriots franchise, decided 13 years was enough. After earning three Super Bowl rings, making one Pro Bowl and becoming an example to a community for returning to football following a stroke, he retired yesterday.

Click to expand...

At the forefront of his lengthy list of accomplishments, obviously, are the three Super Bowl titles and five appearances in the game. Yet his colossal impact on the Patriots organization goes beyond the banners hanging in Gillette Stadium, or the hundreds of tackles and dozens of highlight-reel plays he made, or the immeasurable support he received from fans across New England.

As team owner Robert Kraft said, "Tedy embodies everything we want the Patriot brand to stand for: hard work, perseverance, overachievement, and selfless commitment to team first."

Click to expand...

Then there are those rare few who step off the pedestal. They see no reason to look down on someone when they can look that man, woman, boy or girl in the eye.

And that's why Tedy Bruschi was accepted, admired and adored not only by fans of the game in general and the Patriots in particular, but the non-sporting public as well. He was an uncommonly gifted player who came across as a good and ordinary person.

Click to expand...

Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo said just last week that it would be hard to imagine a Patriots team without Tedy Bruschi.

Indeed, Bruschi has been the heart, soul and face of the Patriots defense for more than a decade, an integral part of the franchise's recent success, an inspiration, a mentor to younger players like Mayo, and a favorite of many New England fans.

Click to expand...

When Belichick praised Bruschi yesterday for his instincts, the linebacker gave an almost imperceptible nod, an appreciation that his coach had noticed the innate ability he did have.

You didn't have to be in the locker room every day to know that Bruschi worked hard and played hard and did everything he could to make his team better every week.

But his work ethic, in some ways, might have overshadowed his talent. You don't finish a career with more than 1,000 tackles and three Super Bowl rings and celebrate your retirement the way Bruschi did yesterday unless you have the type of talent and innate football know-how that Bruschi had.

"He's the perfect player," Belichick said.

He's also a New England legend.

Click to expand...

Bruschi's battle to return to the field midway through the 2005 NFL season is now the stuff of legend. So are the many "big play" moments he contributed to help turn the Patriots into the first NFL dynasty of the 21st century, plays that defined the character and attitude of the Patriots for more than a decade.

Click to expand...

He used it all up, every ounce of passion, every bead of sweat. He leaves behind nothing, no should've and no could've. The book on Tedy Bruschi always was an open one and now that it has reached its fitting, final punctuation, how could any of us — Bruschi included — be anything but content?

"Everything I ever wanted to achieve in this game, I was able to achieve," Bruschi said Monday at Gillette Stadium, where he announced the end of his 13-year Patriots career. "I am fulfilled."

We should all be.

Click to expand...

Considered by many, including this reporter, as the single greatest ex-Patriot to ever play here, Bruschi chose the high road to retirement, with his dignity and legacy in tact.

"I've had the privilege of coaching a lot of great players and leaders in the National Football League, and I'll just put Tedy up there with all of them and above all of them," said Belichick.

Bruschi vaults to the top of the all-time Patriots list — yes ahead of John Hannah, Andre Tippett and Gino Cappelletti, not to mention Adam Vinatieri — mostly because of his historical significance with the franchise. That is, as good as the Hannah, Tippett and Cappelletti played the game, they wore the uniform in an era when the franchise simply didn't stack up to the NFL's elite.

Click to expand...

There was Bruschi ripping the ball right out of the mitts of an Indianapolis Colts receiver during a playoff game in 2005 ... Bruschi intercepting a pass late in the Super Bowl win over the Eagles ... Bruschi and Ted Johnson combining to stuff Jerome Bettis on a fourth-and-inches in Pittsburgh during the 2005 AFC final -- a play that might have turned the game around.

And there was Bruschi who, less than a month after that game, suffered a stroke and went on to share the whole experience with his fans.

He is as responsible for the remarkable success the Patriots have had this decade as anyone in the organization.

Click to expand...

No Patriot has accomplished more than Bruschi, who is the only player in team history to appear in five Super Bowls. The Patriots were 16-6 in his team-record 22 playoff games, and they had a record of 144-67 in his 211 career games, more than any other linebacker in Patriots history.

After Bruschi suffered a stroke in 2005, he returned to play four more seasons, and he led the Patriots in total tackles twice, a feat he never accomplished before his ordeal.

Click to expand...

MoLewisrocks said:

As he often does, Ryan hits exactly the right note. We are the ones who should be thanking Tedy for being what we wish all pro athletes would be.

Bruschi was still hitting - right notes - in retirement speech - The Boston Globe

Click to expand...

Some 400 volunteers have run for Tedy’s Team, raising $1.25 million in four years for the American Stroke Association.

“Tedy’s commitment is so personal and so intense, it’s the same way he played the game, with such a passion, such a desire,” said Ohio stroke survivor Don McClain, 60, who ran the Boston Marathon on Tedy’s Team this year with his two daughters.

McClain saw Bruschi’s commitment firsthand when he neared the finish line - after six and a half hours. There at the end, long after the crowds had left, was a cheering Bruschi, who put a medal around McClain’s neck.

Click to expand...

While many players speak pretty much the same words, week after week, season after season, Bruschi always had a way of offering up commentary that was specific to the game just played or the next one on the schedule. It was as though he wasn’t just speaking to the reporters or to the fans, but to every player on every team the Pats play. When he did so, he was supplying bulletin-board material that opponents didn’t dare post on the bulletin board, this because they knew Bruschi was speaking fact, not smack.

How valuable was Bruschi to the Patriots? The best way to answer the question is to ponder this question: How often does a non-Hall of Fame-bound player’s retirement announcement rush every media outlet in the region into live, on-the-scene coverage?

Or you can look at it this way: Bill Belichick was reduced to a quivering, voice-cracking, bleary-eyed puddle when he talked with the media yesterday about Tedy Bruschi. Bill Belichick. This is a guy who changes players the way auto mechanics change oil filters, and for the same reason: The only thing that matters is keeping the machine running. Yet there he was, welling up about the news that some linebacker is cleaning out his locker.

Click to expand...

With the exception of Doug Flutie, no NFL player made it easier for the average Joe or Josephine to watch his work from their own very different world, and relate in a very personal way.

Much of the humanity attached to Bruschi, a Patriots' star in the most violent and inhumane of sports, comes from his 2005 stroke and his comeback from it.

His appeal, though, ran much deeper. He was a one-team guy, our team, in a mercenary age.

Click to expand...

While no one is suggesting that Bruschi is responsible for turning the Patriots into a money-making machine and a football dynasty, it’s not a coincidence they’ve enjoyed an almost unparalleled run of success while he’s been here. The undersized defensive lineman-turned-linebacker and his relentless spirit of overachievement rubbed off on everyone with whom he came into contact in his 13 years as a player with New England. As a result, he helped alter the landscape in Foxborough, both figuratively and literally.

Click to expand...

Bruschi's game really took shape when Belichick arrived in 2000. The linebacker's leadership helped serve as a buffer between the hard-nosed coach who was ferociously trying to implement his system and the players who weren't always sure if they wanted to buy what Belichick was selling, especially on a team that won just five games. Coincidentally, it was the only losing season Bruschi endured in his Patriots career.

Click to expand...

"With Tedy, it's either yes or no," Vrabel explained. "There aren't a lot of maybes or I don't knows, so for him to make this decision, he was completely sure of it, and I think he made a great decision for him and his fami. You hear him talk and hear the ideas, and he's looking forward to taking his kids to school and being around his kids... He's going to have a lot of opportunities to do whatever he wants to do."

Click to expand...

Troy wasn’t surprised that Bruschi chose now to retire nor was he surprised at the emotions of Bill Belichick showing through at the press conference.

One of Troy’s favorites memories of Bruschi includes the tossing of the snow in the air after a touchdown in the playoffs as well as Tedy taking the ball away from Dominic Rhodes.

Click to expand...

I've been around Bill Belichick a bunch, and I don't think I've ever seen him well up like he did during this morning's send-off press conference for the retiring Tedy Bruschi.

Belichick was on the Patriots staff -- as assistant head coach and secondary coach -- during Bruschi's rookie year of 1996, and of course was his head coach the last nine years in New England. Belichick marveled at how this kid who he, Al Groh, Bill Parcells and rest of the coaching staff had no idea what to do with, turned himself into such a force at inside linebacker after an All-America career at Arizona as an edge-rushing defensive end.

Click to expand...