As if anybody in the room doesn’t know that. It’s like Paul McCartney saying he used to sing with the Beatles.

“And you considered yourself a competitive athlete?”

“Definitely. I played for three seasons. You don’t survive in the NFL without being competitive. If you’re not competitive, you don’t win.”

“Mr. Wright, were you an aggressive player?”

“Again, in football, you don’t succeed without being aggressive. It’s part of the culture. It’s part of the game. You hit people. You knock them down. You run over them. They do the same to you. It’s a contact sport.”

“A brutal sport.”

“It can be.”

I see a couple of the men on the jury nodding.

“So much so that you tore your quadriceps tendon and patellar tendon playing it, correct?”

“Among other injuries, yes.”

The stoic wounded warrior. It’s a good image for Cole, and Hardy knows it.

“Mr. Wright, you sat here in court a day ago when Mr. Bastinelli showed a photograph of you at the Patriots facility in Foxborough, correct?”

“Oh, yes, I remember.”

Perfect delivery. Sincere. Regretful.

“And you heard testimony from Mr. Donovan, the photographer, that the person in the photograph you appear to be choking was an assistant equipment manager named Timmy Gervin.”

“Yes, that was Timmy. And no, I wasn’t choking him.”

“Thank you for the clarification. Now, Mr. Wright, I’m going to put up that picture again. And I’d like you to explain to the jury in your own words what everybody in this courtroom is probably asking themselves: What in heaven’s name was going on?”

She clicks the controller and the photo appears on the screen.

Bold move. Instead of working to erase that image from the jury’s mind, she’s emphasizing it.

Cole doesn’t need to look at the screen. He turns directly to the jury box. Hardy must have told him to make direct eye contact. Act like you have nothing to hide.

“That picture was taken at night after a practice,” says Cole. “We were leaving the next day for a Sunday game against the Atlanta Falcons. They’d beaten us badly the last time we played them, and it was getting close to the playoffs, so we were fired up—the whole team. We wanted revenge, payback. That was our mood.”

“And what would a cheerleader have to do with that?”

Cole looks at Hardy, then turns right back to the jury. “Well, the head cheerleader of the Falcons at the time was a young woman named Lucy Carson. She was also the niece of the owner of the Falcons. A couple days earlier, she had appeared on a morning sports show talking smack about the Pats and how she expected us to choke—”

Hardy interrupts. “Can you explain what choke in this context would mean?”

“To an athlete, choking means getting nervous, making mistakes, blowing opportunities, and so forth.”