From undrafted to two-time champ, New England’s David Andrews celebrated Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta.
Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAYGeorgia is where David Andrews experienced his first love, for football, a game at the center of his life since the age of six. It’s where his great uncle and boyhood idol Dan Reeves showed him that being rugged enough to play and coach in nine Super Bowls doesn’t preclude one from being humble and kind enough to be best remembered as a gentleman.
It’s also where Andrews became a Bulldog and a “Bear,” living his dream of playing for UGA and answering to a nickname befitting his brawn and seasonally shaggy beard. And it’s where he met his true love, Mackenzie Dempsey, to whom he eventually proposed at midfield of Sanford Stadium.
Between the hedges, on their home turf.
David popped the question a month into his professional life as a New England Patriot after returning to Athens over a bye weekend in October 2015. Wearing cowboy boots, dark blue jeans and a check button-down Oxford shirt, he dropped to his left knee to ask for Mackenzie’s hand.
Blissful as the moment was, as Andrews tearily acknowledged in announcing his football retirement on Monday afternoon, there was no possible way the young couple could imagine what the next decade would entail.
That David, who had gone uninvited to the NFL Combine before going undrafted, would earn Tom Brady’s full trust and later amount to his equal as a team captain; appear in a dozen playoff contests, including two Super Bowl wins; return from a season lost to life-endangering blood clots; and fight through untold injuries to snap the football more than 7,800 times in 124 regular season games.
Or that he would win public favor as a bare-chested, beer-chugging celebrant in a championship parade and as a spoked-B-sweater-wearing Banner Captain at a Stanley Cup playoff game; yet have a far more pronounced and profound impact on area kids, paying visits to hospital bedsides and school assemblies.
And that, despite their deep Southern lineage, he and Mackenzie would root their family right here, raising boys Ford and Worth in New England. Year-round. Snowfall and all. On their adopted home turf.
This wasn’t their original plan. But in the summer of 2017, before the kids came along, the young couple took stock of their situation in the midst of a coastal U-turn between an end-of-season trip to Georgia and return to Massachusetts.
In reality, there is little offseason for NFL players. Some might undergo postseason surgery and rehab. Most will partake in strength and conditioning periods and on-field OTA’s. All must attend June mini-camp and then report in late July to training camp.
For the Andrewses, the distance traveled, the packing and unpacking, the care their dogs required and the quick turnaround were a bit much.
“It’s like, alright, (in) three weeks we’ve got to turn around and do it all again. So we were like, ‘Let's just stay, ‘“ Andrews said. “We loved it. We enjoyed it not being 110 degrees, it felt like, every day.
“We just had such a great summer and it kind of turned into, ‘Let's just do that.’ And then it kind of turned into, ‘Let's just stay in the off season.’ Those months are a little tougher. February, March, April, they’re a little tough.”
As any of us, from native to newcomer, can appreciate.
“We grew to love Boston, just grew to love going to all the little restaurants around, the little towns, the breweries, whatever it may be,” Andrews continued inside Gillette Stadium’s G-P Atrium. “It became our home and it is our home now. We have both our boys here and it's home. We go back to Georgia and go to our farm. But this is home now and wherever we've made our life, and it's been pretty special.”
Andrews had taken in a nine-minute video of congratulatory messages from former teammates. He had listened to Patriots owner Robert Kraft introduce him as someone of “great character, compassion and spirituality.” He had spoken from the heart, stressing gratitude between his frequent pauses to wipe his eyes. And he had answered close to a quarter-hour’s worth of reporters’ questions, the last one seeking what living in New England has meant to him.
It was the perfect place to stop. Andrews had said his goodbye to the game, while letting us know that he isn’t going anywhere.
Concluding with a “Thank you,” he stepped off the short stage to stand by Mackenzie and the boys, his parents and Kraft for some group photos. David's hair and beard, like his midsection, looked a little trimmer than in his not-so-long-ago playing days. Again he wore boots, jeans and a button-down.
Andrews, who still retains the Georgia drawl that followed him north, neither dresses nor sounds like someone out of central casting for a Dunks or Sam Adams commercial. Yet, in most other ways, starting with authenticity and accountability, he’s fit this region as well as any local pro athlete of the past decade.
Ours isn’t an easy place to play. Name the sport, and there are lofty expectations from fans who’ve cheered on 13 championship teams this century alone. It can be tiresome responding to the large media hordes vying to satisfy the region’s insatiable hunger for news and opinion. And it can be hard to ignore the scrutiny from the radio hosts who whet that appetite all day, every day.
But as a football player, hard was what Andrews knew. And what he thrived on. As a kid running hills or, as he told us Monday, “spitting in a cup” trying to make weight. As a pro hopeful seemingly unwanted in the NFL except by Bill Belichick. As a rookie free agent initially behind a second-year incumbent, Bryan Stork, a Super Bowl XLIX-winning starter, and constantly getting tested by veterans Ryan Wendell and Sebastian Vollmer in meetings and practices.
He took what they dished out as tough love, then used what they taught him to succeed after Stork suffered a preseason concussion. Andrews started the first 10 games, 11 overall, in 2015. All wins. By opening day of 2016, Stork was traded to Washington and Andrews was on his way to starting all 19 games, playoffs included, for the Super Bowl LI champs.
The next two seasons culminated in two more Super Bowls and one more title. Andrews’ leadership and poised communication in raucous Kansas City were instrumental in capturing the 2018 AFC Championship in overtime.
After helping to lead Rex Burkhead into the end zone for the game-winning score, Andrews waved ‘bye-bye' to Chiefs fans. Two weeks later, after beating the Rams in Super Bowl LIII, he rode shirtless through Boston atop a duck boat, waving to Patriots fans, at times while gripping 12-ounce cans of Bud Light.
But Andrews didn't just party hard; he was hard on himself.
His first playoff start, a 34-16 victory over Houston in the 2016 Divisional round, he allowed a couple of sacks. His play, he harshly assessed, was “trash.” His head wasn’t in a good place.
Offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia helped Andrews get over it. “Never be sad about winning in this league,” Scar told him. “It’s hard to win.”
Scarnecchia’s words stuck with him, especially as times got harder.
Hospitalized with blood clots in his lungs in August 2019, Andrews missed the ensuing season, making the final play of Super Bowl LIII, from victory formation, his last official snap to Brady. Following Brady’s departure for Tampa Bay in free agency, the Patriots lost more than they won, finishing sub-.500 in four of the next five seasons. The exception ended in a lopsided Wild Card loss in Buffalo in January 2022.
Offensive line coaches came and went after Scarnecchia’s retirement, head coaches changed after one 4-13 campaign and, again, following another 4-13 finish. Andrews snapped to seven different quarterbacks in those five seasons, the fifth one cut short for him by a shoulder injury in Week 4. His only snaps to Drake Maye in a game occurred in garbage time of Week 3.
Still, from one disappointing season to the next, as one of the handful of champions left on the roster in recent years, Andrews never shied away from giving honest answers to hard questions. At his locker, Monday thru Friday. And at the podium, on game days - almost always as the first player to speak, still in his sweat-soaked, game-worn gear. Such accessibility made him an obvious candidate for the Ron Hobson Media “Good Guy” Award, which he received in 2023.
Andrews was also an undisputed choice for the team’s Ron Burton Community Service Award, which he earned in 2020. He’s continually given his time to varied causes, from ones that support young kids to those that help combat veterans. And he’s shown up regularly to support the causes other Patriots – current and former – care about.
There were opportunities for Andrews to take his game and goodwill elsewhere. Back to Georgia, even. Instead, he never left.
In 2017, Andrews signed a contract extension that led ex-NFL executive Joe Banner to publicly rip him and his agents for agreeing to, in his view, a one-sided, team-favorable deal.
“This is an absolutely horrible contract for this player,” Banner wrote in a Tweet, before rapping out another: “To those of you somehow confused, awful for player good for team.”
In 2021, while Andrews explored free agency, the Patriots re-acquired Ted Karras, who spent a season in Miami, to, presumably, replace him. Nonetheless, Andrews returned, reportedly after turning down an offer from Atlanta.
“We knew we wanted to be back here if it all made sense,” he said in a May 2021 video call with local reporters. “This is home.”
In mid-March of this year, Andrews faced a similar choice, which he eventually resolved with the same reasoning.
Amid his effort to rehab his shoulder in anticipation of his 10th NFL season, he was released. The Patriots' decision, David told co-host and ex-teammate Brian Hoyer on the “Quick Snap Podcast,” left him “a little shocked.” He briefly entertained a notion, only to come to the same realization as the one he had in the summer of 2017 and the spring of 2021.
“I wasn't healthy and once I got away from the game, I obviously still wanted to play,” Andrews confessed on Monday. “But I didn't want to go do it for another organization. That wasn't really what I had in mind to finish my career. I wanted to finish it here and I did.”
A short time later, after the tears had stopped, group photos had been taken and Andrews had thanked dozens of attendees with handshakes and hugs, he headed up the steps toward the G-P Atrium restrooms, carrying young Ford in his left arm.
Dad’s duty had called. He had at least one more stop to make before it was time to go home.
