Five Rings Page 5

  Those on the Patriots sideline insist that they took one look at the replay and immediately thought it had a chance of being overturned, the way Vinny Testaverde’s play had been back in September. The Oakland sideline saw it and said it was a fumble, plain and simple. But as time wore on, the Raiders got the suspicion that they were being screwed.

  What’s not in dispute is that Coleman reversed the call, saying, “After reviewing the play, the quarterback’s arm was going forward . . .” as screams from the crowd drowned out the rest of the sentence. It was an incomplete pass and the Patriots still retained possession.

  The Tuck Rule.

  There were really only two possible emotional responses available on this one: Furiously Shocked or Elatedly Shocked. There was no middle ground.

  Jon Gruden’s head exploded like it was a David Cronenberg film. He swore he’d never heard of the Tuck Rule and thought Coleman was making it up on the spot—which is a tough claim to make, given the fact it’s his job to know such things. Al Davis just ran around the sideline screaming that this was the NFL sticking it to him because they’d always had it in for him—which is not so tough a claim to make, because he’d always taken pride in being a rebellious son of a bitch whose only known hobby outside of football was suing his own league.

  But any argument Al Davis or any Raiders fan wants to make that there was a conspiracy to screw them over is not going to fly with me. First of all, there’s the little matter of all the other times this call had been made in exactly the same way, including the Jets game earlier in the year. Secondly, I’ve got a long memory. Ask any Patriots fan old enough to remember the 1976 Wild Card playoff in Oakland, where the Patriots were on the business end of the worst bag job anyone has ever witnessed, where there were several terrible calls, all of which went against New England, the worst one being a bogus roughing the passer call against Ray Hamilton that kept the Raiders’ game-winning drive alive. If I were Batman, that game would be my parents getting killed in an alley. I wish Walt Coleman had blown the Tuck Rule call, just to even that old score. But he got it right. And as far as I’m concerned, the cosmos still owes us one.

  That said, I’ll take it. Even in the moment, this felt like something the Patriots had never gotten before in their existence. In fact, it was something no Boston team had gotten since the great Celtics 15-plus years earlier: a break. Whether you consider it a bad call, the officials getting it right, or just stupid luck, there’s no question it was the kind of good fortune that had always gone to the other guys. It was the hand of Fate reaching into life’s great rotating drum and putting its thumb and forefinger around their raffle ticket for once.

  Regardless, order was restored, and the Patriots got the ball back, second and 10. The Raiders just needed one, unreversed stop to seal the win.

  They wouldn’t get it.

  Brady hit David Patten for a first down to the Oakland 29. Three plays later, Vinatieri was sent out into the ankle-deep snow to attempt the 45-yard, game-tying field goal through a night sky that made it look like the game was being played in a snow globe.

  It was good. 13–13. Thanks to, all things considered, the most difficult, clutch, and improbable kick since God invented football.

  From there, the game seemed almost fated. The Raiders decided a tie game with so little time left was not worth trying to win in regulation, so they took a knee and played for overtime.

  Make note of that.

  The Patriots won the coin toss and elected to receive. Taking over at their own 24, they totaled exactly one negative play, a 1-yard loss on a run by J. R. Redmond. Beyond that, they ate up chunks of yardage against a demoralized Raiders defense. Brady was 8 for 8 in sudden death, including a nut-shriveling fourth-down conversion from Oakland’s 28.

  Antowain Smith carried the ball four straight times to get the ball down to the 9-yard line. Only this time, the Patriots’ field goal unit had all the time they needed to clear the snow with their cleats so Vinatieri could get the footing he needed to kick the chip shot and win the game.

  The Patriots were moving on to the AFC championship game.

  It was the final play in the history of the stadium. And the last game ever played there was unquestionably the best, as well as the most controversial. And to this day, still the most talked about.

  Much of the world is still convinced the Patriots were handed the game. To this day, you can tell someone’s allegiances by how they even refer to that game. Pats fans call it “the Snow Bowl,” while all the haters call it “the Tuck Rule Game,” in that way some Southerners still call the Civil War “the War of Northern Aggression.” But even conceding that the Patriots caught a break that the universe had denied them for four decades prior, they still made the plays they needed to: The third down stops. The fourth-down conversion in overtime. And the most difficult kick since the invention of the goalpost.

  Yes, these 2001 Patriots were catching breaks. But they were also capitalizing on them. They were proving to be tough, resilient, and able to take advantage of opportunities. They were going to need all of those things, plus luck, if they were going to advance any further.

  5

  Quarterback-Shaped Balloon Animal

  The AFC championship game was at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. The Steelers team that would be waiting for them was loaded on both sides of the ball. They had the best rushing attack in football, and their league-leading defense had given up so few yards that there was a wider margin between them and the second-best defense than there was between the second and the seventh. They also led the league in sacks.

  The Steelers were 13–3 on the season, including 6–2 at home. Outside of New England, the Patriots were the consensus luckiest/cheatingest team in the world, denying everyone the Oakland-Pittsburgh game they really wanted. Change one thing in that game or play it anywhere other than in a blizzard and the AFC title game would at least be interesting, instead of the inevitable blowout to come. Again, the oddsmakers got to weigh in first, and they had the Steelers as 10-point favorites. It was pretty much unanimous.

  Which was perfect for this Patriots team. Most of New England was still getting a handle on what the personality of the team was, so we were slow to pick up on the giant sheet-of-plywood-sized chip they had on their shoulder at all times. Led by ferocious, iron-willed rageaholics like safety Lawyer Milloy, they went out of their way to listen to doubters and feed on the negativity the way distance runners load up on carbs.

  As they entered Heinz and made their way toward the locker room, Milloy looked into an open storeroom and saw a massive pile of luggage. It belonged to the Steelers players, staff, and families all packed to leave directly for the Super Bowl in New Orleans right after the game. For all I know, that was standard operating procedure for every team in football. And it made sense, because the 9/11 rescheduling wiped out the Super Bowl bye week (they couldn’t push it back a week because the Superdome was previously booked with a frigging car show), so the game was the following Sunday. But sense or logistics don’t count for much when you’re looking for some extra motivation to go all medieval on someone’s ass. This was just the thing. “You don’t do that to the Patriots,” Milloy said later.

  If there was one clear advantage the Patriots brought to this game, it was special teams. Vinatieri had proved that he was capable, whereas Steelers kicker Kris Brown had struggled, particularly on field goal tries facing the open end of the stadium. Pittsburgh also had reason to worry about the Patriots’ return game. They went in with one major coaching point above all others: do not let Troy Brown up the middle of the field, where he is deadly. Force him to go laterally, outside the numbers, at all costs.

  If Patriots fans were pinning their hopes on anything, it was that with a big advantage at place kicker, a special-teams play or two, and perhaps catching a break like they did against Oakland, maybe they could steal a victory.

  About that . . .

  With the game scoreless in the first quarter, Pittsburgh’s
Josh Miller punted from the left hash mark inside his own 20 and flipped the field with a booming kick that bounced past Brown all the way to the New England 23. But there was a penalty on the Steelers’ Troy Edwards for running out of bounds in coverage without being forced out. They’d have to re-kick. Break No. 1.

  Break No. 2 came shortly thereafter, when the officials, in some inexplicable act of God, spotted the ball on the right hash mark. No one said anything. The Steelers seemed solid with the idea, because they didn’t complain or correct it. And this time, Brown fielded it cleanly—right in the middle of the field. The Steelers’ coverage unit, disobeying their prime directive to force Brown outside, let him sprint right through them between the hash marks for the touchdown. Break No. 3. And it was not merely between the hash marks, either. I’ve walked lines in field sobriety tests wider than the lane Brown ran into the end zone. (Note: Don’t drink and drive, kids.)

  Brown’s runback gave the Steelers a change of heart about that whole right hash mark thing. For the second straight week, an opposing coach was directing a tirade at the officials. Bill Cowher was in a red-faced rage, spitting fire mixed with quarts of his actual spit. “You were WRONG!” he screamed. “How could you screw that up?!?” Once again, the Patriots had gotten breaks and made the most of them.

  Then came the bad kind of break. Or near break. Of Tom Brady’s ankle.

  With the score 7–3 and just under 2 minutes to go in the half, Brady completed a deep pass to Troy Brown to put the ball at Pittsburgh’s 40, and all seemed right with the world. Until after the whistle, when Brady was slow to get up. Really slow. Agonizingly slow. To the point the world stopped spinning and he had to come out of the game.

  Replays showed defensive back Lee Flowers on his belly, getting Brady in a grasp around the legs and twisting him down to the ground like a scary clown making a quarterback-shaped balloon animal. It was the third time Flowers had gotten a hit on Brady. And while it wasn’t dirty or against the rules of the era, it did make Patriots fans throw up in their mouths a bit. And by “a bit,” I mean “a ton.”

  Brady’s ankle was sprained and he was taken out. But for everyone across the country, including Patriots fans, it meant something else. Something all sports need at all times or else there is no point in caring.

  It meant drama.

  Puddles, streams, tributaries, rivers, lakes, oceans of frigging drama. Off the bench to take over after the 2-minute warning in a close conference championship game was the man the world had moved on from. The franchise quarterback who had been drawing the NFL’s biggest paycheck to stand on the sidelines wearing a hat and say encouraging things to the guy who stole his professional life from him.

  Drew Bledsoe.

  Put that in a movie screenplay and your first draft will involve the head coach turning to the grizzled old veteran and asking, “Say, Drew? You ready to go out there and save the day?” And him saying, “I’m getting too old for this shit,” while he straps his helmet on. Cue the string instruments and horns. And then you’d highlight the whole passage and backspace because it’s too stupid.

  But this, minus the hacky dialogue, is what happened.

  For the first time since that Sunday after 9/11, Bledsoe would have the ball in his hands. And what happened played out less like a bad screenplay than like a myth. A preposterous story that’s supposed to teach you some human truth about courage or perseverance or some such shit.

  Bledsoe’s first play from scrimmage in four and a half months was a laser-guided sniper shot right between David Patten’s numbers for 15 yards down to the Steelers’ 25. The next one was even more something out of a fable. He rolled out, looking for someone to throw to, and, finding no one open, did what he did against the Jets on September 23: he tried to run for the first down, and got clobbered out of bounds, this time by Chad Scott, but in the identical way he’d been hit by Mo Lewis.

  It was Bizarro World. Like we were living in some kind of space-time anomaly where Drew Bledsoe would be cursed with getting killed on rollouts on the right sideline for all eternity.

  With one major difference. This time, he wasn’t hurt. On the contrary, he was loving it.

  Immediately, Bledsoe popped to his feet, crowhopped a little, and then pounded his hands together as he ran back to the huddle with the joy that can only come from a man who lost the job he loved to a hit but now has it back. Imagine George Bailey getting his life back from Clarence the Angel and running up the street in downtown Bedford Falls and that’s a good enough visual. That is, if George immediately started hitting his receivers with perfect dimes instead of running back to Mary and Zuzu.

  A 10-yard completion to Patten put the ball at the 11. And then, a looping touch pass toward the back corner of the end zone was caught by Patten, behind the defenders and laid out horizontally, falling on his back.

  It was 14–3, New England. The Pittsburgh crowd was stunned and silent. This was not only great for Pats fans and bad for Pittsburgh, but it was also awful for the one person with the misfortune of being hired to entertain the crowd at halftime.

  Sheryl Crow can relate. Because America’s Grammy Award–winning sweetheart, who just wanted to sing “All I Wanna Do,” “If It Makes You Happy,” and maybe the theme from “Tomorrow Never Dies” at halftime to a happy audience enjoying a huge lead, instead came out before a quietly nervous mob. And failing to read the room she started right off with “How’s everybody doing???” To which everyone at once yelled back, “Be quiet, you awful woman.”

  OK, they didn’t say it literally. But that was the overall message.

  As the game resumed, a lot was proven in the third quarter, having nothing to do with quirky, bittersweet songs by an award-winning pop artist. The first was that Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi had a knack for clutch plays. He ended Pittsburgh’s first possession of the half by recovering a fumble by Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart.

  The next thing we established, or reestablished, was Bill Belichick’s fearless willingness to go all unconventional. On a fourth and 7 from Pittsburgh’s 32, he passed up the chance to let Adam Vinatieri try the 49-yard field goal and instead let Bledsoe try to throw for the first down. Unsuccessfully.

  The ball now belonged to the Steelers and they drove it down to the Patriots’ 16—at the open, troublesome end of the field that had been the monster under kicker Kris Brown’s bed his whole career.

  The kick was low, low enough for Brandon Mitchell to get a hand on it and block it. Troy Brown fielded Mitchell’s block on the bounce and started making his way up that Oscar Night Red Carpet that was the middle of the field to him. But then he started to get hauled down, so he lateraled the ball to Antwan Harris.

  Patriots fans of the day need to be forgiven if they had no idea who Antwan Harris was, because nobody knew, outside the locker room, the coaches’ offices, and Mr. and Mrs. Harris. He was a guy Bill Belichick had drafted the year before in the sixth round just to be a core special-teamer, an idea that seemed insane and a waste of a pick at the time, but now seemed like genius.

  And achieved coveted Verb Status. Forever after when an obscure, bottom-of-the-roster player would make an impact play in a huge moment, I for one will always say, “He Antwan Harrised it.” I’ve gotten plenty of opportunities. But he was the beta test.

  Because through all the cries from New Englanders in unison screaming, “Who the actual eff is Antwan Harris,” he outran the entire Steelers’ kicking unit for the touchdown that made it a 21–3 game, Patriots. They would be the only points Harris would score in his NFL career and he and Brown made them count.

  It would be great to tell you that at this point, Drew Bledsoe’s day was a perfect 80s sports movie montage, with him completing pass after pass to an inspirational theme by Frank Stallone, but it wasn’t. The Steelers’ defense made third-down conversions harder to come by. Two New England punts led to two Pittsburgh touchdowns. Another gave Vinatieri the chance for a 44-yard field goal and he nailed it to make it a 24–17
game.

  Then, once again, Bledsoe got one of those lucky breaks that had always eluded the Patriots in the 40 years before that Tom Brady play in the snow was ruled an incompletion. From his own 20, Bledsoe threw a bad pass intended for David Patten but instead hit Steelers linebacker Joey Porter right in the sternum. The next place it hit was the ground. Porter had muffed it, plain and simple. Had he held on to it, he could have knee-walked into the end zone to tie the game. Instead, it was a harmless incompletion. And two plays later, Bledsoe was converting to Brown for 18 yards as the clock ran.

  As Kordell Stewart tried desperately to get his team back into the game, he took riskier and riskier risks. The next two Pittsburgh drives ended on Patriots interceptions, the first by Tebucky Jones and the next by Lawyer Milloy. The AFC title game was theirs once again.

  Like it had been in the 1985 and 1996 seasons, they were heading to New Orleans for the Super Bowl. Granted, this wasn’t like facing arguably the best team of all time the same season you won your first NFL playoff game. Nor was it playing the league’s powerhouse four seasons after you were the worst team in football. But this was still an improbable run, coming off a 5–11 season, when they’d lost their starting quarterback, TWICE. When a million breaks went their way. The franchise for once proved able to pull the right Jenga pieces without the tower falling down on their collective head.