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Authors: Michael Holley

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Phifer grabbed Warner and the ball was sprung from his hands.
There it was, lying on the 3, there for safety Tebucky Jones to pick up and run
with the other way. Upset? This was on its way to being a blowout. Jones ran
down the field, and some of the Patriots on the sideline instinctively ran with
him. Antwan Harris was one of those sideline players, and in the excitement he
didn’t notice that there was an eighty-three-year-old man standing behind him.
It was Steve Belichick, who had been attending practices all week. The elder
Belichick wound up on the ground as Jones ran by with what
appeared to be a 97-yard fumble return for a touchdown.

As
Belichick was helped to his feet, he didn’t want to talk about himself. He was
asked if he was all right and he replied, “Hell, yeah. I’m fine.” He was more
concerned about the flag lying in the opposite end zone. “Sonofabitch,” he
sighed. Robert Kraft saw the flag as well. He briefly thought of Bill Buckner
and the baseball championship that slipped through the legs of New England
in1986.

Faulk hadn’t been open because Willie McGinest had him in
a bear hug. It was an easy call to make. Holding, New England. Two plays later,
Warner ran 2 yards up the middle for the first St. Louis touchdown of the
day.

It had taken fifty minutes for the Rams to solve the
Patriots’ riddle. They were officially hackers now, having finally decoded the
system.
We are playing our asses off,
Belichick thought.
But we’re starting to wear down
. And that was just the
defensive story. The Patriots weren’t doing much on offense. Brady could recite
all the variations of the Rams’ “Cover 2” defense, but he couldn’t find a way
to get much movement against it. After the Warner touchdown, the Patriots
answered with three plays and 8 yards. They held the ball for about a minute
and a half before punting it away.

The game was turning. The
Krafts, sitting in a seventh- level box, weren’t interested in the news at
their door: someone from the NFL wanted to escort them to the field to watch
the final few minutes of the game. They didn’t move. They were reminded again,
and Robert Kraft made it simple. “If we win, they’re not going to start the
postgame without us. So we’re going to wait to see what happens.” The owner waited. There were casual fans in the box,
and there was a professional—Saints coach Jim Haslett—in there too. Everyone
knew the Rams were capable of tying the game late. There was also the chance
that they’d win it.

The league’s MVP now had the ball with seven
minutes and forty-four seconds to play. The Patriots were winning, but Warner
had leverage. He knew that their defense, which had just been on the field
ninety seconds earlier, was in retreat. He started from his 7. Eighty seconds
later he had the team at midfield. Plenty of time. Six minutes and seventeen
seconds to play. He drove the team to the New England 38, but here were those
conceptualists rising again. They had thrown off his timing just so, and he was
holding the ball with no place to go. McGinest was approaching one second and
on him the next. Sack. Second- and-9 had become third-and-25.

This
time Belichick wanted the timeout. It was his last one. He saw how worn down
his team was, and he obviously saw the stakes. He consulted with “RAC,” which
was what Crennel’s colleagues called him.

“RAC, we can’t give up
this play. We can’t give up a first down on third-and-25. I mean, that will
kill us.”

Having known Belichick since 1981, when both were Giants
coaches, Crennel knew that “We can’t give up this play” was a lot more layered
and accusatory than it sounded. It really meant that there was no excuse for
anyone—player or coordinator—to make a mistake at this moment in the game. It
really meant that champions make these plays and that a bad, poorly coached
defense is one that has no hope of getting off the field on third down.

Back on the field Warner attempted to pick up the first by finding Holt near the sideline. The pass was incomplete.
There were four minutes to play. If the Patriots could squeeze out a couple of
first downs, this game was theirs. With no timeouts, the Rams weren’t going to
be able to stop the clock.

But there would be no firsts for the
Patriots. They gave the ball to Antowain Smith, the running back who had done a
good job all day. He lost 2 yards. Brady threw a safe pass to Smith on the next
play—“0 Flood 130 D Pivot X In.” It was a 4-yard gain to the Patriots’ own 22.
Thinking about the clock at this point, Weis told Brady to go with Smith again.
They got 3 yards out of that run and were forced to punt.

Now the
brilliance of the Rams shone: they got the ball at their 45 with 1 minute and
51 seconds to play. Twenty- one seconds later the game was tied. The Patriots
were blitzing and in man-to-man coverage. Proehl got open, took an 11-yard pass
from Warner, and ran 15 yards after the catch for a score.

Seventeen apiece, with 1:21 to play.

The Rams’ sideline was
energized, and the Superdome itself was pulsating with murmurs and
anticipation. In the Fox TV booth, analyst John Madden was saying that the
Patriots—at their own 17 with no timeouts—should play for overtime.

In the huddle Brady was unaware of any extraneous sound. He was never one
to wander while he was working. He was at work now. He grew up loving sports
and competition so much that he would ask his parents if he could wear his team
uniforms to church. He went to the University of Michigan, where he wouldn’t
sleep on nights that he threw interceptions inside of two minutes—and those
were two-minute drills in practice. If he hadn’t been good
at football, he would have become a businessman. Winning was his business these
days, and he didn’t want to be congratulated for thinking that way. Winning—and
winning late—is what good quarterbacks are supposed to do.

So
while the drama of the game may have excited many, he was calm when he heard
Weis’s voice in his helmet: “Okay, Tommy. ‘Gun F Left 51 Go/OPEQ.’ Look for
Patten versus man. If not, Troy or J. R. Be careful with the ball.”

He was careful. “J. R.” was third-down back J. R. Redmond. He was Brady’s
man on the first two plays, good for 13 yards.

“Clock it, Tommy,”
Weis said.

He spiked the ball into the turf. There were forty-one
seconds left, and his team was positioned at its 30. This was going to happen.
All I have to do is recognize the coverage, make sure guys are lined up
right, read my progressions, and make the throw.

“ ‘Gun
Trips RT 64 Under X Go.’ ”

He found Redmond again. This time it
was an 11-yard gain, and Redmond stepped out of bounds to save time.

They were at their 41. They had thirty-three seconds left. They had the
best kicker in the game simulating kicks on the sideline. This was going to be
easy. He missed on “G Patriot RT 64 MAX ALL IN XQ”—for Brown—so the same play
was called again.

Brown caught the ball over the middle, ran 23
yards, and stepped out of bounds at the Rams’ 36. Brady knew Vinatieri could
make it from here. But there was time to get him closer.

“ ‘Gun
Trips RT 68 Return.’ Tommy, throw it to Wiggins and then clock it.”

He located Jermaine Wiggins, the tight end from East
Boston, for 6 yards. He clocked it with seven seconds remaining. The ball fell
to the turf and then bounced up again into his waiting hands. He held it as if
he were posing for a picture. Bringing style to the mundane, the sixth- round
pick suddenly looked cool.

Vinatieri would step out soon to
attempt a 48-yard field goal. Who wouldn’t want a good kicker now? What coach
wouldn’t want his kicker to be his most consistent player in a situation like
this? Perceptions and legacies were going to be affected with this
attempt.

Patriots and patriots alike wanted this kick to be good.
Just to say I told you so. Just to prove that substance and grit and unity were
not outdated terms. Everyone could relate to not being tall enough, slim
enough, fast enough, rich enough, young or old enough. That was the Patriots’
appeal. Their roster and their staff were filled with people who were holding
on to some previous slight that they couldn’t or wouldn’t forget.

Lots of people were on their feet now, holding hands or hoping for a
miss. Veteran defensive end Anthony Pleasant was on the sideline, thinking of
his friend Rob Burnett, who had won a ring the previous year with the Baltimore
Ravens. Pleasant also thought of Scott Norwood. “Make it,” he whispered. “I
hope we don’t do like Buffalo.” Gil Santos was setting the scene for his
listeners in New England. Santos, the radio voice of the Patriots, was
concerned with the details first. Down, distance, placement. He liked to let
people know the snapper (Lonie Paxton) and the holder (Ken Walter). “If it gets
screwed up—if the snap is high or low— you want the people to have a sense of
what happened,” he once explained.

Vinatieri,
man of routine, was walking toward the field. He was trying to concentrate, but
he heard chatter from his own team. It was tight end Rod Rutledge, taunting one
of the Rams.

“Yeah, motherfucker. We about to win the
Bowl.”

Walter knew Vinatieri wanted to say something, and he knew
that this wasn’t the time for the kicker to be talking. “I’ll handle this,” he
told Vinatieri. “Hey, Rod. Can you shut up?”

There was no more
talking. The ball was snapped, the hold was impeccable, and the kick gave
Vinatieri exactly what he had been seeking on Saturday night: perfection. The
kick was worthy of its own frame, powerful and high and unmistakable. It was a
poll with immediate returns, a dramatic moment that eliminated all dramatic
excess. There was no wait to see if it would sneak inside a post or barely
clear one. It was a center cut. Santos had been trained to look at the
officials before commenting on a field goal, so there was some hesitation in
his call: “The kick is up and it is… good. It’s good….” He was
informing, smiling, crying, and embracing—his wife and son were in the booth—at
the same time.

The Krafts were still in their box, with a
panoramic view at the 50. They had a family hug for this kick, and they had a
family hug for themselves. They remembered how the Patriots were almost moved
to St. Louis in 1993 and how their family bought the team in ’94. They
remembered the financial and public relations messes—from bankruptcy to bombast
to Bill Parcells—that forever trailed the Patriots through most of the 1980s
and the 1990s. They remembered 1971, when they were the Krafts of Graylynn Road
in Newton. Just a family of season-ticket holders who were
hoping Jim Plunkett could help deliver a championship.

In the
coaches’ box, Scott Pioli had been standing on the stairs between the first and
second levels. He had been standing for the entire game, hoping that the team
he helped build could find a way to win. When the kick went through, Pioli fell
down the stairs and into tight ends coach Jeff Davidson. The box, tense and
serious most of the time, erupted. Pioli hugged Davidson, Brian Daboll, Berj
Najarian, everybody. They all lost themselves for a moment until someone
mentioned that they had to leave the box and head to the field.

There was red, white, and blue confetti on the carpet as the organization
celebrated. Belichick, now finally and rightly clear of Parcells’s shadow, was
hugged by his daughter Amanda and lifted in the air by safety Lawyer Milloy.
McGinest was in tears. A group of Patriots scouts, in seats twenty rows from
the field, congratulated each other and fans they had just met. Guard Mike
Compton fell to his knees as if he were worshiping. Another lineman, Joe
Andruzzi, carried the American flag. His brother, Jimmy Andruzzi, was a New
York City firefighter who had barely escaped the Twin Towers on September
11.

Patriots 20, Rams 17. Everyone with any connection to the team
began to move toward a roped-off area reserved for the champions. And, really,
that meant all of them.

 

A
n hour after the game, Pioli and
his wife, Dallas, walked from the Dome to the Fairmont. They had already cried, sharing the moment with Pioli’s parents and all his buddies
from back home in Washingtonville, New York—Matt, Tom, Paul, and John the Worm.
Three friends from college were there as well. Pioli then received a call from
his friend Mark Shapiro. Pioli and Shapiro had met when they both worked in
Cleveland. They had talked of their championship dreams for years. Now Pioli
was the director of player personnel for the Patriots, and Shapiro was the
general manager of the Cleveland Indians.

“Scooter,”
Shapiro said, calling Pioli by his nickname, “great job, man. I just got two
words for you: collar stays, dude!”

Shapiro had watched Pioli
interviewed on TV. The collars on Pioli’s shirt were pointing in the air. He
had raced from the box—but not before taking a Super Bowl banner as a
souvenir—to be on the field. Shapiro knew he could tease Pioli for looking
frazzled on the night that he became a champion. He knew how hard it was to
help build a team that was both successful and dignified. They both laughed,
and not just because Pioli didn’t have plastic collar stays. He wasn’t even
sure what they were.

Now it was time for Pioli and everyone else
to exhale and wait until tomorrow before thinking about the ’02 season. He
tried to go to the team party, but it turned out that the selfless, anonymous
team he put together was a little too anonymous for his own good. He wasn’t
recognized at the door and was told he couldn’t get into the VIP section. He
and Dallas decided they would hang out instead with their friends from home.
Brady got into the party, where he relaxed with rapper Snoop Dogg.

“Look at this,” Snoop said, standing in the Imperial Ballroom. “It’s the MVP of rap here with the MVP of the Super
Bowl.”

Belichick was also at the Fairmont, in the hotel bar. He
had wanted to stop in at Pat O’Brien’s in the French Quarter, but security had
advised against it. There were thousands of people outside. They had just
watched or heard about one of the best Super Bowls ever played. Belichick would
be mobbed out there. So he sat with his wife, Debby, and a half-dozen friends.
He drank Hurricanes, laughed, and talked football until 4:30 Monday morning. He
slept for ninety minutes and then got ready for the day-after press conference
with Brady and NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

BOOK: Patriot Reign
4.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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