No. 54

Full Tilt

Full Time

If you had been to a Patriots game at Foxboro or Gillette Stadium the last half-dozen or so years, you probably saw this hand-drawn sign hanging over a wall somewhere around the field.

It was a fan’s tribute to Patriots middle linebacker Tedy Bruschi, and it was spot on.

The Patriots announced this week that Bruschi won’t be playing this season. It was the news Pats fans have been bracing for ever since he suffered his mild stroke back in February, yet it still knocked the wind right out of us.

Players come and go from the Patriots all the time, but this one really hits home.

I dare say that this hits even closer to home than it would if it had happened to any other Patriot, even Tom Brady. It’s easier for most fans to identify with Bruschi. Brady’s on a pedestal. He dates movie stars. Women want Tom Brady and men want to be like him.

As for Tedy, he’s the kind of guy you want for your next door neighbor. A guy to share a six-pack with and have your kids play with his kids. A guy who’s very intense at work, but still knows when to have fun and still puts his family first.

Fans lament the greed of today’s athletes (hello, T.O.) and claim they’d play for free. Well, Tedy Bruschi came about as close as any athlete ever has to doing just that, in spirit, if not in dollar signs.

He doesn’t have an agent. He represents himself in contract negotiations, and in the most recent round, during the 2004 off-season, he took the hometown discount to stay with the Patriots.

Bruschi’s deal was worth a reported $2 million a year. Hardly chump change, mind you, but, as a middle linebacker still in the prime of his career and with two Super Bowl rings on his resume at that time, he could have commanded a lot more on the open market. He didn’t.

“This is the team that drafted me,” he told me during last year’s training camp, ” and this is the only team I want to play for. I’ve been here eight years. To uproot my family and leave… some things are more important to me, like staying around and trying to establish even more of a winning tradition here.”

Those are the words every fan longs to hear, but it’s not just sweet talk coming from No. 54. He’s backed it up both on and off the field.

And, he’s a good guy to boot.

Which is why it’s easy to stomp your foot and lament how unfair it was that his career has been cut short, or at the very least interrupted, in its prime. Cut off, just as he was getting Pro Bowl recognition, just as the media and other alleged experts around the country were beginning to understand how good a player he’s been, and how important he’s been to the Patriots.

I’ve been on the verge of a few fits myself since the terrible news of his stroke came out. But a couple of things have stopped me from getting angry every time.

The first thing is that I got to see what I consider the greatest game Tedy Bruschi ever played, last year’s AFC playoff game against Indianapolis, in person.

And believe me, you had to see it in person to truly appreciate what Bruschi did that day. Sure, if you were home watching it on television, you witnessed the play where he pounced Dominic Rhodes on a screen pass, then just ripped the ball away from him. You saw him recover another Reggie Wayne fumble. You even saw him return the opening squib kick of the second half for 15 yards.

What you couldn’t see on the tube was how he basically took the first 10 yards from scrimmage away from the Colts. He plugged what few holes the defensive line had against the run and jumped anything underneath against the pass. Sideline to sideline, he was the fastest man on the field that day. It was Jack Lambert, circa 1976, reincarnated.

The other thing that keeps me from being bitter, and will continue to if we have indeed seen the last of Tedy Bruschi in uniform, is the image of him on the field with his two sons hours before Super Bowl XXXIX.

That those two boys get to have their dad around after such a frightening illness makes anything he can do on a football field insignificant.

So, if this is really it, if the next time we see the No. 54, it’s a retired number, I think I can speak on behalf of all Patriots fans.

Thanks, Tedy.

Do what’s right for those boys, and your wife, and yourself.

And do it full tilt, full time.

Randy Whitehouse is a staff writer. He can be reached a [email protected]