FOXBOROUGH - Third quarter. Patriots first preseason game against Washington. Mike Vrabel’s team is up 27-3.
It’s early in the quarter and the Commanders have a first-down play in Patriots territory on the 35-yard line. They’re driving with hopes of closing the gap.
Quarterback Josh Johnson drops back and fires a pass to a diving Cole Turner for a 15-yard gain.
Or was it?
This used to be Ernie Adams’ domain. The legendary coach was the voice in Bill Belichick’s ear, advising whether or not to challenge a play.
And Adams was great at making those snap decisions, quickly relaying a verdict to Belichick.
“The replay has to show that the call on the field is flat-out wrong. So the burden of proof is totally on the team challenging the call,” Adams said, speaking with MassLive recently. “I always said the harder I have to look, the less likely I’m going to win the challenge.
“And nobody’s trying to make it easy. A lot of people think we have these special cameras. No. What you get is exactly what someone has sitting in their living room at home.”
With Mike Vrabel now in charge, this has become John Streicher’s sphere of operation. The man better known as “Stretch” is Vrabel’s eye-in-the-sky and closest confidant.
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Sitting in the team’s upper-level skybox inside Gillette Stadium, piped into Vrabel’s headset during games, it’s Stretch who makes those key split-second decisions. He’s the one saying yay or nay.
The above play against Washington?
Stretch gave the green light and Vrabel threw the red flag.
After review, replay officials agreed with Stretch - Turner didn’t have full control. The ball had bounced on the ground.
Call reversed.
Vrabel’s top gun was quickly batting a thousand in his dress rehearsal for the regular season. The curtain officially drops Sunday when the Patriots host the Las Vegas Raiders in their Week 1 matchup.
In the big picture, these are the decisions that can make or break a team, especially one that’s trying to work its way back into contention. Vrabel’s reliance on Stretch is that important.
When describing Stretch’s job with the Patriots, it’s been popular to say he is Vrabel’s version of Adams.
Of course, the mysterious Adams became a mythical, if not revered figure working in the shadows alongside Belichick. His behind-the-scenes contributions have become the stuff of legend.
Malcolm Butler saving the day with a goal-line interception in Super Bowl XLIX against Seattle?
Look no further than Adams.
Belichick deciding to roll the dice with first-year starter Tom Brady and not take a knee in Super Bowl XXXVI?
That was Adams, too.
His take on whether to challenge a play, or offer Belichick advice on certain in-game situations, was so pivotal to the former Patriots coach, they had a hard-wired, old-fashioned telephone set up behind the bench on game days so Belichick could consult Adams - and Adams alone - if the need arose.
Of course, Belichick had the final say, but Adams’ opinion held great weight.
The two men shared a friendship and bond that dated back to high school. They met at Phillips Academy in Andover and the relationship grew throughout their travels in football.
The trust Belichick had in Adams as a strategic thinker was vital on game days and beyond.
Vrabel and Stretch have a similar bond.
They met when Vrabel was an assistant coach at Ohio State and Streicher, a fellow Buckeyes grad, was an unpaid coaching intern.
The two hit it off and Vrabel eventually brought Stretch to Tennessee, where he started as an assistant to the head coach in 2018, before being named director of football administration in 2023.
Even though the Patriots coach doesn’t like making comparisons, he’s drawn the obvious parallels between Adams and Streicher.
The Patriots coach had been a player when Adams served as Belichick’s right-hand man. He believes that role was critical to the team’s success.
Speaking with Vrabel Monday, he jokingly referred to Stretch, whose office sits right outside Vrabel’s inside Patriots headquarters, as his “work wife.”
Vrabel believes Stretch is unique in all that he does and trusts him with practically every facet of the team.
“I trust him because he’s shown me repeatedly over the course of 15 years that he does the right thing,” Vrabel told MassLive. “He’s high character. He’s smart. That’s why I trust him. I just think he’s got a very good demeanor, a good grasp, a good holistic understanding of what we’re trying to do.
“And he also tells me when I’m wrong. He’s a very good guardrail for me when I need to be reminded, ‘Hey, that’s probably not the right thing.’”
While Vrabel might not have a private phone set up behind the bench for a one-way with Stretch, his right-hand man holds the same clout Adams did with Belichick.
In January, Vrabel convinced Streicher, who had been with the Rams, to leave LA and head to Foxborough with the title of vice president of football operations and strategy.
For more than two decades, Adams went under the heading of “Football Research Director.”
In both cases, the titles don’t do the jobs justice.
Whether it’s game management, replay usage, fourth down decisions, timeout strategy, incorporating analytics, scouting opponents, overseeing the roster, Stretch is in Vrabel’s ear like Adams was for Belichick. And like Adams, he has the ultimate trust of his boss.
In contrast, Adams’ actual job description was cloaked in secrecy. He was rarely, if ever, seen and never did interviews.
He was the man behind the curtain.
Streicher, on the other hand, is always front and center, taking part in practices, moving from group to group.
Like Adams, Stretch is not fond of being interviewed for stories, but he doesn’t mind engaging in friendly banter with media types.
These days, Adams, who retired in 2021, has been less reclusive.
During a phone interview with MassLive, Adams talked about his role and time in New England with Belichick. He chuckled at the notion that he was regarded as a man of mystery.
He didn’t consider his job top secret at all.
“I think anybody who really understood football could figure out who did what,” said Adams, who served as Belichick’s resident football savant for 21 seasons in New England and was with him in Cleveland and New York before joining the Patriots. “I never went to media day (at the Super Bowl). That would have been a colossal waste of my time when I could be back at the office, working on stuff to get ready for the game.”
And he was always more than ready.
Adams provided behind-the-scenes details about many of the game-changing calls he made from above, and offered insight about the job he performed for so many years.
His advice for Stretch?
“You have to know the rules cold. And, it’s not, do I think the pass is complete or incomplete?” Adams said. “It’s do I think the people in New York are going to call it complete or incomplete? The harder you gotta look, the less likely you’re going to get the call. You gotta prove ‘em wrong.”
Adams was so determined to get the calls right, he would ring up the powers that be in New York who handled replay to gain intel.
“I spent a fair amount of time … if there was a play that came up, and I wasn’t sure about, I’d talk to the people in New York,” Adams said. “And the good folks at the league office, they’d talk to you. I’d ask: ‘What did you see on that play?’’’
And the various heads of replay would respond to Adams questions.
Did New York ever admit they got a call wrong?
“That’s a good question,” Adams said. “There were a couple they looked at again. Truth is, they can always fall back on - the call is right until it’s proven wrong.’’’
Adams was so determined to win challenges, he’d get tapes of every challenge made by teams throughout the NFL and study away.
“If there were 250 calls challenged in the league last year,” Adams began, “I could get the tape of every one of them so I could see what is the standard of proof that has to be met to get a call overturned.”
Streicher is cut from the same cloth. Serving the eye-in-the-sky role for Vrabel since their days in Tennessee, he is also on the horn to New York constantly.
These days, Mark Butterworth, the league’s VP of Replay Training and Development, runs the officiating replay center. So Stretch deals with him and does his best to be up on trends and what officials are calling.
While he struggled early on in his first year handling replay - Vrabel went 0-for-5 in challenges in 2018 - Stretch has become quite adept at knowing when his friend should toss the flag.
He’s gotten a better handle on how New York rules and what has to be evident to overturn calls. After that first year, Vrabel went 14-for-21 with Stretch on challenges.
Sometimes, as Adams explained, it’s impossible to see the play, and there’s not enough time to catch a replay.
Then, the situation dictates what to do, and it doesn’t always work out.
As an example, Adams brought up the killer Mario Manningham catch in the final minutes of Super Bowl XLVI that pretty much sealed the 21-17 win for the New York Giants in 2011.
“Usually, you’ll get to see something before you throw the flag. Not always,” Adams said. “The classic example was Manningham’s catch on the sideline. I was in the press box behind the Giants bench. There was no chance of me actually seeing the play live with all the players on the sideline ... and they never showed a replay.”
Adams was torn. But the enormity of the situation dictated what he needed to do.
“This was too big of a play. Did he catch it or not? I don’t know. But it’s too big a play, so we threw the flag,” Adams said. “Now, as soon as we saw the replay, we knew he caught it. In a lot of ways … that’s one instance that sticks out in my mind we didn’t get right.”
Overseeing replays is just one aspect of the job. Vrabel will seek advice from Stretch on in-game strategy. He’ll want to know when to go on fourth-down. Or when to take a knee to run out the clock, or call a timeout.
Some of Adams’ best work came in those situations, as Belichick’s top lieutenant took a walk down memory lane, going over his thought process for some of the most memorable moments in Patriots lore.
The first Super Bowl against the Rams and the Greatest Show on Turf?
While color commentator John Madden was urging the Patriots to take a knee with the score tied, and 1:21 left to play with young Brady at the helm, Adams was telling Belichick that’s the last thing they should do in the closing moments of the championship game.
“We get the ball. And Bill said, ‘What do you want to do?’ My answer was: ‘If we have to go on defense again, we’re going to lose,’’’ Adams recalled. “The big thing was, they had no timeouts, so we were in total control of the clock. If we wanted to kneel and go to overtime, we could do it. But my exact words were: ‘We need to go get Adam (Vinatieri) a shot to go win it for us in regulation.’'’
Adams thought his advice to Belichick was a no-brainer even if it didn’t seem like it at the time.
“If you go to overtime, it’s a coin toss. It’s 50-50 if you’re going to get the ball,” Adams said. “We had the ball, they had no timeouts, and while I love John Madden, he just didn’t think we had any business winning. So just lose gracefully. But that was not our idea.”
Indeed, it wasn’t.
Starting from his own 17-yard line, Brady calmly moved the team into field goal range to set up a 48-yard field attempt. Vinatieri delivered and the rest is history.
Butler’s play in the Super Bowl?
Adams had diligently studied the Seahawks. He got to know them so well, he had a bead on all of their tendencies in certain situations.
He knew exactly what quarterback Russell Wilson would do if the Seahawks opted to pass down by the goal line.
“We did the play in practice, because it was their favorite pass play when they got on the goal line,” Adams said.
When Pete Carroll and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell sent in three receivers after much debate on the sideline, that was a tell. That tipped off Adams and Belichick.
“We were in goal-line defense,” Adams said. “They had three wide receivers in the game. If they ran the ball, we would have had someone unblocked in the backfield (to tackle the ball carrier).”
In theory, the Patriots believe they would have stopped Marshawn Lynch given the mismatch. They also knew putting in their goal-line defense practically forced the Seahawks to throw the football instead of handing off to their star back.
So just like they drew it up in practice, Butler stepped in front of a Russell Wilson pass - a quick slant intended for Ricardo Lockette - and stole another championship for the Patriots.
“When they put three wide receivers in the game, and we put goal line in, the only thing they could do was pass,” Adams said. “It was the exact same thing that happened against the Colts in 2003. Same type of situation. But they hand the ball off to Edgerrin James. Willie McGinest hits him 3 yards in the backfield. We win. Game’s over.”
McGinest, just as Adams predicted, was untouched going in on that pivotal play. There was no one to block him.
Speaking of the Colts, Adams backed Belichick on the infamous 4th-and-2 call in Indianapolis in 2009 with the Patriots deciding to gamble from their own 28-yard-line with under 2:00 remaining.
Instead of punting, the Patriots, who were up 34-28, went for it - and didn’t make it. The Colts took over, and scored almost immediately. The game had playoff implications.
Indy finished as the top AFC seed that year in part because of that 4th-and-2 call.
“The big thing there was … the way the game was going, we were struggling on defense," Adams said. “Look, all of these decisions, the head coach is the one that’s got to make it. He has the final call. And he had a real strong conviction on that one. We needed to go for it.”
As Adams pointed out, you win some, you lose some, that’s the nature of the beast. Although Adams certainly won more than his fair share.
But now, it’s Streicher’s turn to ride that roller coaster with Vrabel with the hope of getting most of those decisions right.
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