DAN SHAUGHNESSY

Kraft doesn't need owner's guide now

2/2/2002

EW ORLEANS - There was a time when he seemed to have an insatiable need to be noticed. Patriot owner Bob Kraft was in the middle of every Party Lines photo, did more sound bites than Marty Meehan, and signed autographs as he made his way around the stadium. He offered to have klieg lights built into the owner's box - for those in-game shots of him whispering to son Jonathan and wife, Myra.

But Kraft went underground after the bitter Border War - a conflict that started when Patriots coach Bill Parcells went to the New York Jets a couple of hours after the Patriots lost the 1997 Super Bowl to the Green Bay Packers.

Now New England is back in New Orleans, back in the Super Bowl, and Kraft stands in the shadows.

''I'm happy to let our results and our organization speak for itself,'' he said Wednesday, when he was backed into a corner in a hallway outside his team's mandatory media session.

The contrast could not be more distinct. Six years ago, Kraft became only the second NFL owner (Jerry Jones was first) to have his own interview station on the annual Super Bowl Tuesday ''media day.'' Those were the days when his bio in the team guide boasted of him playing football at Columbia (turns out it was ''lightweight'' football) and inspiring the success of tennis legend, Martina Navratilova. Those were the days when he was ubiquitous and loquacious. He was the NFL's Sally Field, holding the AFC Championship trophy aloft and exclaiming, ''You really like me!''

''The last time we came [to the Super Bowl] I probably was more like an adolescent,'' he admitted. ''I think now I'm more like a young man or mature adult and understand what it takes to get here, how lucky we are to be here, and the fact that we're here for the second time in five years. I'm going to enjoy it and do anything I can to put us in the best position to win.''

He has honored the latter pledge like no Boston owner since Walter Brown. We all know that Kraft is a fan (the original family seats were in section 217, row 23, seats one through six) and that the Patriots are far more than a business. But in the past few years, he has built a sparkling new $325 million stadium (the team begins play at CMGI next fall), spent wisely for players, played hardball with Terry Glenn, and basically stayed out of the way, letting Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli run the football team. There's been no more owner nonsense regarding drafts (remember Kraft going to Syracuse to scout Tebucky Jones, then telling us Tebucky could be a ''press corner''?) and free agents.

He learned his lessons from the Parcells experience. In that instance, he chose personal comfort over winning. Then he got fooled by Pete Carroll and Bobby Grier, before finally landing the right guy in Belichick.

''When we hired Belichick [as an assistant], I knew Bill Parcells was not comfortable with people in the organization talking with people who worked for him,'' said Kraft. ''When we hired Bill Belichick, he made it a point to tell me anytime you want to know anything, I'm comfortable with you talking with me. I had good chemistry with him, right from the beginning.

A good example of the ''new Kraft'' would be his deference on the what-to-do-with-Drew dilemma. Everyone knows Bledsoe is practically Kraft's fifth son. But Kraft likes to win and now knows how to be diplomatic.

''It's Bill Belichick's decision what we do on the quarterback situation,'' said the owner. ''We're lucky to have two men like that. As a fan, I'd like to keep 'em both here or see if there's a blockbuster deal for one, but it's his decision completely.

''For a franchise to be successful, you need the front office and ownership and coaching and personnel all to be on the same page. We're just lucky things happened in a way that worked out for us.''

Kraft acknowledges he thought the season was over when Tom Brady fumbled against Oakland, but said he got a call from a Patriots rules expert, telling him the call would be reversed. There was nothing lucky a week later when New England tucked it to the Steelers in Pittsburgh.

''In Pittsburgh, there was a real confidence in the locker room that was unusual,'' said Kraft. ''And that same confidence I saw in Pittburgh I see here now. It's not an arrogance, but a quiet confidence.

''We want to build something very special in New England. There's a lot of things that can cause distractions. We had it happen with our players and the unfortunate passing of our quarterback coach. You have to learn to put those things in their place.

''If you're ever going to go to the Super Bowl, it's pretty neat to be doing it at a time when you're going into a new stadium. Maybe it was God's handiwork in part, we have a team going to the Super Bowl, the year we're opening a new stadium, and we have a team named Patriots.''

Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is dshaughnessy@globe.com.