Jermaine Wiggins, a tenement kid from East Boston who gained a glimmer of fame by helping the Patriots win their first Super Bowl and launch one of football’s greatest dynasties, went broke within two years of his last NFL game.
But Wiggins was never alone in hardship among alumni of New England’s historic 2001 team.
Twenty years after those underdog Patriots shocked the football world and triggered the transformation of Boston into a City of Champions, life has been extraordinarily kind to many in their ranks. Tom Brady, Richard Seymour, and Willie McGinest, among others, have basked in wealth and glory.