Was it destiny? Were the New England Patriots destined to win the Super Bowl? It seems only fitting that they did given the atmosphere of Super Bowl XXXVI and the atmosphere of the United States since Sept. 11. We as Americans believe—know—that the red, white and blue will prevail in the war against terrorism. On Sunday, the red, white and blue of the Patriots, a 14-point underdog, prevailed in the war against the St. Louis Rams. David beat Goliath. The clock didn’t strike midnight on Cinderella.
The Rams know all about being Cinderella. They played that very role in 1999 when a quarterback just a couple of years removed from a minimum wage job as a shelf-stocker in an Iowa grocery store came in to replace their highly paid, injured starting quarterback and won the regular season and Super Bowl MVP en route to a championship. Since replacing Trent Green, Kurt Warner has become one of the best quarterbacks in the National Football League. On Sunday, on pro football’s grandest stage, he was anything but. And while Warner certainly did not play one of his better games—in fact, it was one of his worst—do not make the excuse that it was simply a bad day on his part. The Patriots had everything to do with it being a bad day for him.
New England head coach Bill Belichick, the defensive whiz who masterminded the defense of the 1990 Giants that slowed down the high-powered 49ers in the NFC championship game and the high-powered Bills in Super Bowl XXV, combined with defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel to create a game plan that threw Warner off his game, threw his receivers off their game and threw his coach, Mike Martz, off his game. The Patriots came with blitzes, were physical with the receivers and filled the secondary, often using six and seven defensive backs. Martz, for whatever reason, seemed puzzled by this, even admitting that he had no idea what to expect from the Patriots. It took him and Warner until the fourth quarter to get the offense moving and converting.
“They did a great job of challenging us,” Rams’ wide receiver Torry Holt said of the New England defense. “They did a great job of dropping guys in a zone…They were allowing us to catch the ball and then coming up to stick us.”
Genius? Forget it. Sunday proved that there is no question that Martz is not anywhere near being one of the elite coaches in the NFL. Elite coaches do not get so badly out coached in such a big game. From the outset, it seemed almost as if Martz’s goal was not just to win but to win by passing. Marshall Faulk, the best skill player in football, had eleven carries among the 13 rushing plays the Rams used in the first half, not including a kneel down right before the half, compared to 23 passing plays, despite the Rams not being down by more than four points at any point prior to their last passing play, an interception returned for a touchdown by Ty Law. For the game, he had just 17 carries and 21 total touches. Why not ride Faulk to victory like he had in the NFC championship game victory over the Eagles? Was Martz saving him for the Pro Bowl? Was he more concerned about the NFC winning the Pro Bowl than the Rams winning the Super Bowl? The great coaches do not forget how to coach, do not get flustered, in a championship atmosphere. The great coaches leave their ego at the door, looking to win, fanciness be damned. Martz seemed so concerned with winning with his fancy passing game and making sure that Warner was the MVP that he neglected the game in the process. Martz is no Bill Walsh, Vince Lombardi or Jimmy Johnson, and has a long way to go in order to be mentioned in the same light as them. The Rams did not seem prepared to play and did not seem to make any positive mid-game adjustments and that is a reflection of the coach. Law agreed.
“I don’t think they knew the kind of fight they were in for,” he said.
Furthermore, one has to wonder about how great the Rams’ offense really is. They have set numerous records over the past three seasons including scoring over 500 points in each of them, a feat never before accomplished. However, in championship atmospheres, the “Greatest Show on Earth” has become rather pedestrian, only scoring 80 points in four such games. The Rams do not have the excuse that those games were played in bad weather or on grass. All four were played on Astroturf under domes, the Rams preferred climate. In fact, all three of the Rams’ losses this season came indoors. The great offenses step up at championship time and so while this offense is still the best in the NFL, is it fair to say they are better than the 49ers of the 1980s and early 1990s, which put up a lot of points in championship situations? It is a fair question.
But pinning the loss on Martz’s poor game management or Warner’s poor game or the Rams’ offense perhaps being a bit overrated is unfair to a Patriot team that was clearly the better team on Super Sunday. Belichick masterminded an unbelievably solid game plan, one that worked even though the Patriots lost the time of possession battle. The Rams out gained the Patriots by a wide margin, 427-267 yards, but lost the most important statistical battle: the turnover battle. Getting a lot of yards is fancy and exciting but in the post-season it is an extremely overrated statistic. There is no statistic more indicative of winning and losing than turnovers. The Patriots made three outstanding plays that resulted in three turnovers. Truth be told, if not for a borderline defensive holding penalty on Willie McGinest, the Patriots would have had four takeaways, a 24-3 lead midway through the fourth quarter and no need for Adam Vinatieri’s dramatic field goal. The Rams can give the same old tired excuse that they beat themselves but that is unfair to the Patriots.
The first turnover was caused by the pass rush of linebacker Mike Vrabel. With Vrabel breathing down his neck, Warner flung a ball up for grabs that was intercepted and returned for a touchdown by Law. The second came late in the first half with the Rams down 7-3. Warner hit Ricky Proehl on a cross over the middle and as Proehl went down the way the Rams’ receivers do, Antwan Harris flew in at full speed and got his helmet right on the football, ultimately leading to Tom Brady’s touchdown pass to David Patten and a 14-3 halftime lead for New England.
“He made a good play,” Proehl said. “And I can’t afford to do that. He just got his helmet on the ball.”
The third Rams’ turnover resulted in Vinatieri’s first field goal and a 17-3 New England lead with 1:18 remaining in the third quarter. Physical with receivers Holt and Isaac Bruce all game long, the Patriot cornerbacks threw them off their game as the duo combined for just 105 yards on nine catches. Otis Smith got a soft bump on Holt, disrupting the timing of the route, causing the receiver to fall down right as Warner threw a pass right into the hands of Smith. The Rams didn’t beat themselves with turnovers; the Patriots beat the Rams with takeaways.
It was a fitting end to a crazy, magical season in New England, a team projected to finish fourth or fifth in the AFC east prior to the season. It began in the pre-season when quarterbacks coach Dick Rehbein tragically passed away as the result of a heart attack. That was followed by a season of discontent from former first-round draft choice Terry Glenn, the talented receiver who spent much of the season injured, suspended by the league or suspended by the team.
On Sept. 11, one of the New York City firefighters in Tower One of the World Trade Center when Tower Two came down was Jimmy Andruzzi, brother of guard Joe Andruzzi. After some extremely tense hours, an extremely relieved family—to put it mildly—learned that Jimmy had lived through the ordeal, had escaped Tower One before it came down.
This was followed by the hit put on $100 million franchise quarterback Drew Bledsoe by Mo Lewis of the Jets. With the resulting internal injuries, the status of Bledsoe was in doubt for several weeks. Meanwhile, the Patriots were 0-2 including a loss to the lowly Cincinnati Bengals and were forced to turn to a 24-year-old second year quarterback named Tom Brady, a sixth-round draft choice in 2000. From there, it seemed that the season was over for New England.
But something amazing happened when Brady took over: the Patriots started winning, going 5-3 in the eight games before Bledsoe was ready to return, including a home loss to the Rams. Belichick was impressed and declared Brady the starting quarterback despite Bledsoe’s track record and contract. The Patriots have not lost since.
Bledsoe was a key contributor to that success. While most players with his track record would sulk and complain, Bledsoe, though obviously unhappy with the decision, kept his mouth shut and did not allow it to become a distraction that could fracture the team. For this, New England’s Mr. Everything, Troy Brown, said Bledsoe was the team’s most valuable player.
Brady, meanwhile, became a Pro Bowl quarterback, compiling a 14-3 record as a starter, including a victory in the “Snow Bowl” over Oakland in the divisional round. Whether or not it was a legitimate victory will always be debated, especially by Raiders’ fans in “The Black Hole,” but the Patriots took advantage of the now very well known “tuck” rule to send the game to overtime and win it there.
In the AFC championship game, the Patriots were a nine-point underdog at Pittsburgh and lost Brady to an ankle injury late in the first half. Bledsoe got another chance and took full advantage of it, completing the drive started by Brady with a touchdown pass to Patten and effectively managing the second half, allowing New England to prevail, 24-17.
In the Super Bowl, it was back to Brady after a mini non-story of a story regarding which of the two quarterbacks would start. Once Belichick saw that Brady’s ankle was fine, his choice was simple. And Brady took advantage by being selected the game’s most valuable player. Managing the game effectively for the first 58 minutes, he truly proved himself in the final 1:21. Despite not having a timeout and being pinned at their own 17, Belichick and offensive coordinator Charlie Weis decided to go for the win rather than settling for overtime. John Madden, the Fox analyst working the game and a former Super Bowl winning coach, could not believe what he was seeing. After the game, he even admitted that he was wrong for saying it was the incorrect decision. But it was the correct decision only because of Brady.
The Rams went into a prevent defense and Brady found receivers underneath. J.R. Redmond for five yards. Redmond again for eight yards. Redmond for another 11. Brown for 23. Jermaine Wiggins for six. The Patriots were in field goal range and Brady lined up the troops and spiked the ball to kill the clock, bringing on Vinatieri for the game-winning 48-yard kick that pierced the middle of the goal posts. The poise that Brady showed in that situation is rare for a ten-year veteran, much less a 24-year-old in his second season. While he had shown tremendous poise in game situations during his senior season at the University of Michigan, the Super Bowl is a whole different ballgame.
“Absolutely incredible,” Brady said. “It’s what happens when guys believe in each other. And there’s so many reasons why we’re here.”
And let us not forget Vinatieri. He may have had the best post-season of any kicker in the history of the NFL. After the “tuck” rule gave him a chance, he kicked a 45-yard field goal through a snow so heavy that CBS analyst Phil Simms said he could not even see the ball go through the uprights, sending the game to overtime. Some have called it one of the best plays they have ever seen, certainly one of the best field goals ever, if not the very best. In overtime, he sent New England to the AFC championship game with a 23-yarder in the snow. Having made those kicks, the 48-yarder in the climate-controlled Superdome must have been a breeze.
“I was just so happy that the guys moved the ball down and gave me an opportunity,” said Vinatieri. “Once I kicked it, I knew it was good. I looked up and it was just time to celebrate. It was unbelievable.”
“The fans of New England have been waiting 42 years,” said owner Bob Kraft, a lifelong Patriots’ fan who stepped up to save the franchise for the New England area in 1994, upon accepting the Vince Lombardi Trophy. “We are the world champions. At this time in our country, we are all Patriots, and tonight the Patriots are champions.”
Maybe it really was destiny. Maybe a red, white and blue team named the Patriots really was supposed to win the Super Bowl in these most patriotic of times.
As the great John Facenda once said for NFL Films, “Anyone who ever said, ‘one game can’t tarnish a great season,’ never lost the Super Bowl.” Rams’ defensive end Grant Wistrom fully agreed.
“The season’s a waste,” he said. “I don’t care what anybody says. Your goal is to win the Super Bowl. You don’t come out and play for second place.”
Faulk made sure to point out the tired Rams’ motto of, “only the Rams can beat the Rams,” discrediting to some degree the accomplishment of the team that beat them. At this point, however, it is irrelevant. The turnover excuse can be repeated a thousand times but it doesn’t change the fact that turnovers are a part of the game. And because of those turnovers that the Patriots caused, the Rams are likely to be remembered as nothing more than just another footnote in Super Bowl history, one of many teams that won it once but was unable to do so again. What began as a week of discussing not if the Rams would win the Super Bowl but rather how many would they win turned into the city of St. Louis wondering how it all went so wrong so fast. The answer is very simple:
On Sunday the better team won. Not the team with the better players but the better team. And because of it, the New England Patriots are the Super Bowl champions.
