Won for All : The Inside Story of the New England Patriots' Improbable Run to The Super Bowl - Hardcover

When Adam Vinatieri booted the ball through the uprights from forty-eight yards out in the final, stirring seconds of Super Bowl XXXVI, he had done much more than give the New England Patriots a heart-stopping 20-17 victory over the heavily favored St. Louis Rams. Vinatieri's last-second, clutch field goal not only enabled the Patriots to win their first-ever Super Bowl but also allowed this group of hard-working, never-say-die players to complete one of the most amazing turnarounds in NFL history. Won for All gives you the complete inside story of a team that went from last place to first in a single, incredible season.

Pepper Johnson, former All-Pro linebacker and thirteen-year NFL veteran, takes you behind the scenes of one of football's great Cinderella stories for a riveting look at the Patriots' rags-to-riches saga. As the team's inside linebackers coach, Johnson lived the entire story, beginning with the 5-11 season of 2000 (the first for head coach Bill Belichick), a season that ended with veteran safety Lawyer Milloy telling his teammates they were losers and promising it wouldn't happen again. Yet despite an upgrading of personnel through the draft and the signing of several key free agents prior to 2001, the fans, media, and even one of the team's top scouts didn't see the Patriots winning more than eight games. Given this scenario, no one predicted that the team would even make the playoffs, let alone contend for pro football's biggest prize.

In this fully illustrated chronicle of all of the 2001 season's memorable moments, Pepper Johnson takes you on a complete journey, beginning in training camp, continuing through the winter snows of Foxboro, and improbably ending at the Super Dome in New Orleans. He not only recounts the many exciting games and individual plays that ultimately brought the team its greatest victory but also relates how a hard-working coach and his dedicated staff went about molding and motivating a championship team, taking a group of diverse individual talents and bringing them together with a single goal--to win. With his insider's eye, Johnson explains the qualities that made players like Tom Brady, Troy Brown, Lawyer Milloy, Tedy Bruschi, Bryan Cox, and Adam Vinatieri take up the gauntlet thrown down by their coaches and shock the football world. In a year when patriotic fervor swept the country, the Patriots overcame a 1{-}3 start, a number of key injuries, and other distractions to eventually become the unlikely heroes of the Super Bowl.

"Paxton's snap was perfect. Walter set it down, spun the laces, and Adam stepped up and swung his leg through the ball. As soon as it left his foot, he began jumping up and down. He knew. We all watched, and in a few seconds, we all knew. . . . We had done it. We had beaten the Rams and, as Lawyer Milloy would say, we shocked the world. The New England Patriots had won the Super Bowl."

--Pepper Johnson

They began the season as losers in the eyes of the football world. When they started out at 1-3 and lost their starting quarterback to a devastating injury, the outlook for the New England Patriots was decidedly bleak. Not once since the team began as the Boston Patriots in the old American Football League in 1960 had they brought their fans a championship. It would take a miracle, but nobody expected one--not the fans, not the press, and perhaps not even the Patriots themselves--and certainly no one could have predicted the incredible saga that was about to unfold.

In this in-depth chronicle of the Patriots' mind-boggling Super Bowl season, Pepper Johnson, the Patriots' inside linebackers coach and thirteen-year NFL veteran, takes you from the meeting rooms to the locker room and out onto the field as he brings you the inside story: the disheartening early defeats, the gradual coming together of an entire team, and the final heart-stopping victories that led an often-maligned franchise to overcome adversity and eventually win it all.

Thomas "Pepper" Johnson joined the New England Patriots' coaching staff in 2000, where he soon became the inside linebackers coach. During his career as a player, he was twice named to the Pro Bowl and earned two Super Bowl titles as a member of the New York Giants. He currently resides in Providence, Rhode Island.

Bill Gutman has been a freelance writer of sports biography and history for three decades. He is most recently the author of Parcells, a Biography. He makes his home in Dover Plains, New York.