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  Once again, they’d be going in as massive underdogs against a dominant team, while bringing controversy with them. Only this time, it would be the kind of controversy that isn’t a nightmare.

  6

  That Calm Inner Plumbing

  To the surprise of no one, the heavily favored St. Louis Rams beat the Philadelphia Eagles to win the NFC championship game. To the surprise of practically everyone, Philly made a game of it. Led by head coach Andy Reid and quarterback Donovan McNabb (commit those names to memory), the Eagles actually led at the half, holding league MVP Kurt Warner to some pretty pedestrian numbers. That is, if the guy in the crosswalk in front of you could manage 212 yards and a touchdown against Philadelphia.

  The key to the Rams’ win was running back Marshall Faulk, who had been the AP Offensive Player of the Year each of the last three seasons and the MVP of the league the year before. Against Philly he amassed 172 yards total offense and two touchdowns. It was a lesson not lost on Bill Belichick. To him and his advance scouts, as much as the talk was all about how you stop Warner, with all the amateurish conventional wisdom about how you gotta pressure him and not let him get comfortable in the pocket and hit him in the mouth, blabbity blah, blah, the Patriots staff watched the tape and decided the key, in fact, wasn’t stopping Warner. It was stopping Faulk.

  They felt Marshall Faulk was the key to everything the Rams’ offense did. He was the vital organ through which all of their bodily functions flowed. The cheat code to defeating their offense in this real-life Madden game involved stopping him, which would freeze the screen on their whole passing attack.

  Note that those are my analogies, not theirs. The Patriots coaches put it in much simpler terms, both to their defense and to NFL Films, saying the key was to “hit Marshall Faulk when he has the ball, and hit him when he doesn’t.” It was a plan they would execute to near perfection.

  In addition, they’d still have to slow down an offense that had scored 500-plus points each of the last three seasons, with a receiver tandem of Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt, who had 1,100 and 1,300 yards, respectively, as well as third option Ricky Proehl, who added almost 600 more. Not to mention a defense that gave up the third fewest total yards in the league.

  Once again, as they had been back in November when Bledsoe was put back on the active roster, the public was split down ideological lines. There was no middle ground. You either belonged to the faction who remembered the drama of Bledsoe coming off the bench and his pass to David Patten—the only offensive touchdown of the game for New England—or you were one of the Brady loyalists who couldn’t stop talking about Bledsoe’s mediocre 10-for-20 numbers and the near-disaster that Joey Porter dropped.

  With a short week to prepare, Belichick got out ahead of the story and said in no uncertain terms that if Brady’s ankle was OK’ed by the medical staff, he would be the starter. No other factors, determinants, considerations, or other synonym I could find on thesaurus.com would enter into it. By the team’s first practice, Brady felt plenty good enough, and he passed all the medical tests. He’d be starting in New Orleans. The controversy was defused faster than it took Kraft and Parcells to write their comedy sketch in New Orleans five years earlier.

  To the country, for the third time in a decade and a half, New England backed into a Super Bowl in which they had no shot. And for the second week in a row, they were the pretenders who lucked into a game they had no right to be in. This not only cost America a chance to see the matchup they really wanted, but it would also be yet another Super Bowl Sunday ruined by a blowout win by the heavy favorite.

  Which brings us to the game itself. Before the ball was even kicked off, the Patriots managed to steal the show. From the pregame and the Rams.

  St. Louis came out first for introductions, the starters from their “Greatest Show on Turf” offense introduced one at a time. Then the cameras panned to the New England tunnel as CBS’s Pat Summerall announced, “Choosing to be introduced as a team . . .” If you spent your life psychically attached to this franchise and happened to be an emotional type (I slowly raise my hand), it made your heart soar.

  We later found out it was Bill Belichick’s idea. When league officials asked him if he wanted his offense or his defense introduced, he insisted it be the whole team. The league pushed back, but he and his team dug in their heels, even knowing they might be fined for it. The officials relented. It was a great show of unity, but also had the added benefit of being a psychological dope slap at the Rams, who, through no fault of their own, looked like they were a collection of petty, self-absorbed individuals and not a team. It was not who they were, but the perception stuck.

  It was total gamesmanship. It was like a candidates debate where Belichick came out wearing a ribbon supporting motherhood and demanding to know why his opponent didn’t have one and to explain why he’s so anti-motherhood, even though he invented the ribbon an hour earlier. And for what it’s worth, it won over the crowd watching at home. For the only time in their existence, the Patriots were the lovable underdogs with a feel-good story neutral fans could get behind, wrapped in a soft, warm blanket of team spirit.

  The Rams got the ball first in good field position, and despite three incompletions by Warner on the drive, managed to move the ball before the Patriots got a stop. The subsequent punt went out at the 3, meaning Tom Brady was taking the first Super Bowl snap of his career with his heels on the goal line, danger all around, monsters in the closet, and the end zone a pool of lava. It was the best chance yet to see what he was made of.

  What he immediately did would have been less surprising if we knew then what we found out after the game. In the locker room during the pregame ceremony, he lay down and took a nap. As in, fell asleep. He didn’t just shut his eyes like your wife in the passenger seat saying she’s just resting them but still listening to your story so keep talking. He went into full R.E.M. sleep at his locker. Minutes before the biggest thing of his life, he went nappy time. It was the first indication Brady had that rare Rudyard Kipling “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs” gene. The internal plumbing where a stressful situation pumps a calming solution into his brain instead of fight-or-flight.

  The second indication was that first play. He hit Troy Brown (another guy with the right plumbing) on a crossing route for a 21-yard hookup. Eventually, Brady, along with a couple of Antowain Smith runs, got it across midfield before being forced to punt. But disaster was avoided.

  At that point, it looked like Warner was starting to get into the flow. He completed six of seven on the next possession, mostly on short, underneath throws. And the Patriots were executing their plan to make the receivers pay. Otis Smith gave a shot to Torry Holt on his way out of bounds. Lawyer Milloy buried a shoulder pad into Isaac Bruce. And the Front 7 was getting to Warner. Anthony Pleasant wrapped him up and, in doing so, Warner’s shirt came untucked from his pants. It isn’t the most devastating thing to have happen, but it gave the quarterback the look of a guy who was all banged up. Which, it turns out, was not untrue. He’d reaggravated an injury to the thumb on his throwing hand, but was playing through it well enough to stake the Rams to a 3–0 lead at the end of the first quarter.

  Then the part of the plan that involved winning the turnover battle went into effect. Following a missed field goal by Rams kicker Jeff Wilkins, the Patriots netted only 5 yards, and St. Louis had the ball at their own 39. That’s when Mike Vrabel, the free agent Belichick had signed who couldn’t crack the lineup in Pittsburgh, made a pivotal adjustment. From his left defensive end spot, he put his hand down into a three-point stance for the first time all game. Right guard Adam Timmerman and right tackle Rod Jones failed to account for this new down lineman in the complex calculus of pass protection scheme, giving Vrabel a clear path to Warner. He took it.

  With Vrabel bearing down on him, Warner rushed a throw intended for Bruce. Ty Law, reading the play all the way, cut inside, jumped the route, and went the distance with his hand i
n the air, untouched. The Patriots had created one of the many breaks they knew they were going to need, and led 7–3.

  The next came with under 2 minutes in the half and neither team able to generate anything on offense. Kurt Warner hit Ricky Proehl in stride at midfield, when Antwan Harris stepped up once again to make a pivotal play. He lowered his pads for a perfect form tackle on Proehl, then got his head on the ball to knock it free as Terrell Buckley recovered for New England at their 45. I’ve read about this guy who saw the first shots of the Civil War fired on his farm, so he moved his family to a safer town hundreds of miles away. And four years later, they used his new house as the site of the Confederate surrender. That’s Antwan Harris. The anonymous everyman directly involved in two separate historical moments.

  Completions to Brown and tight end Jermaine Wiggins put the ball at the St. Louis 8 with a half minute to go. And as if to reestablish the fact that Charlie Weis gave zero shits about conventional football, he for all intents and purposes drew up a play with a stick in the dirt. “F Right 50 Out Z-slant.” It was essentially a variation of the play Drew Bledsoe had hit David Patten with for the Pats’ only offensive touchdown in Pittsburgh the week before, except it called for Patten to cut out like he was looking to catch the ball at the pylon, get the defender to jump the route, then break to the back corner.

  Patriots scouts had picked up on defensive back Dexter McCleon’s tendency to aggressively squat on those out routes, so Weis adjusted with the “out-go.” The result was almost identical to Patten’s touchdown in the championship game, diving backward, reaching up over his head, and coming down with the ball in his hands. It was the sequel that was a total reenactment of the original, the way The Hangover Part II completely rips off The Hangover. Both were big hits for Patten, giving his team a 14–3 lead at the half that was really hard to mentally process when you’d spent your whole life in a one-sided relationship with a team that didn’t lead Super Bowls at the half.

  As for the halftime, all the good moments mixed with well-intentioned goofiness during the pregame would be forgotten. It was more than just a good halftime by the low-set bar of halftimes (with my apologies, Sheryl Crow). U2 came out and put on a show that was nothing less than mesmerizing. They opened with “A Beautiful Day,” and then segued into “MLK.” As they began “Where the Streets Have No Name,” huge screens went up and projected onto them in a scroll the names of all the dead in the 9/11 attacks.

  Was it appropriate under the circumstances? I mean, is the entertainment break that allows people to go to the potty while football players are getting their ankles taped really the place to memorialize the fallen of a terror attack? I’m not sure. I just know it was haunting and effective. I was also the father of a kindergartner who was sitting next to me. Back in September the Irish Rose and I had shielded him from the awful truth of the real world for as long as we could, sticking strictly to kids’ TV channels when he was around and going into the other room to watch the news coverage and weep real tears. Watching that seemingly endless list of names scrolling on the screens and what they meant to the world was an important moment for all of us.

  Interestingly enough, because this entire 2001 season was an anomaly in the time-space continuum where everything tied into everything else, it turns out that the first choice to do the halftime show was Janet Jackson. She backed out over travel concerns in the post–9/11 world, thus producing an even more famous Patriots Super Bowl halftime show. But that’s for later.

  The third quarter was largely uneventful, save for Romeo Crennel’s triple emphases of hitting Marshall Faulk, pressuring Kurt Warner, and forcing turnovers continuing to work. A St. Louis drive across midfield was slowed by a Mike Vrabel/Richard Seymour sack and led to a punt. A bad overthrow by Warner intended for Ricky Proehl was picked off by Otis Smith to set up an Adam Vinatieri field goal.

  It was 17–3 New England entering the fourth quarter. And while we were loving life, the Boston fan in me who once saw the Red Sox be one out away from winning a World Series with a two-run lead and nobody on base and still find a way to lose refused to celebrate. This Rams’ offense could rain down green laser hellfire out of nowhere like the Death Star and vaporize you in an instant.

  Which is exactly what they proceeded to do.

  Although for one brief moment, it did appear like Luke had successfully dropped a precise proton torpedo hit through the two-meter-wide exhaust port to set off the chain reaction that destroyed the ship.

  The Rams put together a drive that got them down inside the Patriots’ red zone. Going for it on fourth and goal, Warner was looking to the end zone when he got hit by Roman Phifer at the 3 and fumbled. Tebucky Jones picked it up and outraced everybody for the 97-yard scoop-and-score that, barring a total disaster, put the game away for good.

  But a disaster is just what happened. The buzz of a 24–3 lead was killed in an instant by a defensive holding penalty. And before any of us could complain that life is unfair and everyone is against us, the replay clearly showed that Willie McGinest had taken the whole order to hit Marshall Faulk a little too literally. If when you get home at night your wife takes you into the kind of long and deep embrace that McGinest held Faulk with, consider yourself a lucky man. It was the right call. A no-brainer. With a new set of downs and the ball closer to the goal line, Warner easily ran in a quarterback keeper, and it was a one-score game.

  Though not for long. The Patriots’ offense picked a bad time to disappear, sandwiching two 3 & outs around a Rams’ drive that would have been a lot worse were it not for McGinest making amends with a huge sack of Warner that forced a punt.

  St. Louis got the ball back at their 45 with 1:51 left and the Patriots keeping a white-knuckle grip on a 17–10 lead. Then, I don’t know what happened. Either I blacked out for a minute or got anally probed by aliens and suffered lost time or what. I just know I looked down to sip a beer and looked up a second later to see Ricky Proehl catching a ball on the sidelines, cutting inside on Tebucky Jones, and reaching across the goal line to tie the game. The box score says there were three plays on that drive in all. But that’s just what the government wants you to believe. The truth is out there.

  It was a nightmare. But I’d be lying if I said I was ready to lump this in with all those heartbreaking Red Sox losses over the years or even the Larry Bird Celtics losing to the Magic Johnson Lakers in 1987. I was still hopeful. But the whole game felt like the Patriots’ defense was building a sandbag wall to keep the ocean out and the tide was still coming in. A loss would be crushing, no doubt, because they were so close. But I was prepared to be academic about how lucky they were to be so close.

  In all likelihood, this was going to overtime for the first time in Super Bowl history. Just considering how atrociously, noncompetitively gawdawful most Super Bowls were, that alone would be good for the sport, and for millions of drunks from coast to coast. (Again, honk off, Alaska and Hawaii. Not good enough for the logo, not good enough for the party.) Legendary coach, broadcaster, video game mogul, and turducken enthusiast John Madden certainly thought so, saying that with less than a minute and a half left, no time-outs, and deep in their own end of the field, the Patriots would be nuts to do anything but run out the clock and play for overtime. In other words, to do what Jon Gruden did at the end of the Snow Bowl/Tuck Rule game. Because that went so swimmingly for him.

  The Patriots respectfully disagreed. They would go for the win. Though even on the New England sidelines, there was disagreement on how exactly they’d approach it. Charlie Weis told Brady in no uncertain terms that they would look for nothing but short, careful, low-risk throws, and that under no circumstances was he to do anything that could result in giving the Rams the ball back with a turnover. Got it? Good.

  Bledsoe was standing there throughout Weis’s pep talk and, as soon as the coordinator was out of earshot, told Brady, “Fuck that. Just go out there and sling it.”

  Brady took both their advice. His first three passes were safe
completions to running back J. R. Redmond, one of the last guys anyone guessed would be the Super Bowl hero. On the first, a Rams defender got a solid slap at the ball, but Brady held on with both hands to finish the play. On the third, Redmond caught the ball in the middle of the field, then managed to weave his way through the Rams defense like Mario avoiding obstacles in Donkey Kong, finally reaching the boundary and stretching to get the ball out of bounds and stop the clock. It was second and 10 at the Patriots’ 41 when Brady found Troy Brown on a play called “64 Max All In.” Brown’s catch and run was good for 23 yards. The Patriots scrambled to the line, but were still composed enough in the controlled chaos to get off another throw, this one good to Jermaine Wiggins to get the ball 6 yards closer to a game-winning field goal try. But the clock needed to be stopped.

  Here’s where Tom Brady convinced me once and for all that he’s built with that calm inner plumbing I mentioned when he took his pregame sleepy. As he got his team to the line of scrimmage, checked to make sure they were all aligned properly and set so as to avoid a penalty, and spiked the ball to stop the clock with 0:07 left, the ball bounced off the Superdome turf and right back up to his eye level, wherein he casually reached out and let it rest on his fingertips, like a man catching a balloon dropped from the ceiling at a kid’s birthday party. This was the most intense, heart-pounding finish maybe ever in pro football, certainly in the pro career of this kid who started the year as a backup with a limited college résumé. This was a similar situation to the one Joe Montana, the greatest quarterback of all time, faced in Super Bowl XXIII in the 1988 season. In that moment, driving for the game-winning touchdown, Montana was hyperventilating so badly he had to throw the ball out of bounds to stop the clock and compose himself.

  Yet here was Brady, making his 18th pro start and not even old enough to rent a car and his body language was that of a guy flipping through the channel guide to see what’s on. If there was still any lingering doubt there was something different about this still newish guy, something meta-human, this one moment should have erased it all.