I have spent more hours than I could ever keep track of watching men run around on a field or a court tossing a ball around. There are times when I ask myself if this is really time well spent. I may love the Patriots, but the Patriots don’t love me. Tom Brady has no idea who I am, so why am I so desperate to see him get a fourth championship ring, and why do I care if people think that Peyton Manning is a better quarterback than he is? It’s a dilemma that any honest sports fan will come face to face with many times over the course of his life. Why do we do this to ourselves?
The answer is nights like Saturday night.
Every so often, you get one of those magical games where some thing so special, so improbable happens right before your very eyes. Where you get to ride a rollercoaster with millions of other people, holding your collective breath and feeling your hearts sink and rise as one. Twenty years from now, I probably won’t remember 99% of the things that happened to me during 2015. I will remember Saturday night.
So will my son. My boy Luke is four years old. After much effort brainwashing him, this was the first year that he really “got” what football was all about. He learned the players names, watched every afternoon game that started before his bed time, and generally understands what football is all about. He knows the Jets are the stinkiest team in the league. He knows that Peyton Manning is the Broncos quarterback, and that he is not as good as Tom Brady. He knew that heading into last night’s game that one team would win and the other would go home. This was, in essence, his first playoff game, and thus the biggest game of his short life. He watched the whole thing from start to finish and cheered his heart out with his dad. He learned to trash talk as well, coming up with some great lines like “Big Vince is going to eat the Ravens like a sandwich, and then throw the leftovers in the trash”, and “The Patriots are going to pull the Ravens pants down and spank them in the bottom” (I swear, I have never hit my child). When I mentioned that Flacco’s game is based on heaving the ball down field and hoping for a penalty flag, he said the very clever line, “They should call him Joe Flaggo.” He even came out with a classic, “The Ravens are bad guys. They hit girls.” (He may have been helped out a little with that one.) With about five minutes left in the game, my wife was making a strong argument to put the boy to bed. He had already exceeded his bedtime by over an hour, and this was shaping up to be a long finish. I implored her to allows him to stay up, saying “This is a pivotal moment in his fanhood.” It was. He was either about to experience his first true moment of sports elation, or his first heart break. At that moment, I didn’t know which it would be, but I knew that I couldn’t have him miss it. In the end, there were high fives all around, a victory hug, and a confident boy smirking at me saying “See Dad, I knew the Patriots were going to win.” This is why we watch.
We watch because sometimes we get to see the heart of a champion. Tom Brady has not had an overly successful run in the playoffs this 2010 decade. If you remove the complete drubbing of Tim Tebow and the Broncos in 2011 from the equation, his performances have not been overly pretty. Some of his losses have been downright dismal. With his team down by 14 points early and staring at 3rd and goal, Tom Brady refused to give in to the ghosts of his past. The Patriots needed a touchdown. And so when he dropped back to pass and saw all of his options covered, he tucked the ball and ran eleven very slow and very long yards to the promised land. On that play, Brady made a statement that he was not going to roll over and die, and neither was this Patriots team.
We watch because we can learn how to overcome. I have seen some horribly officiated games in my life. I’ll spare the immediate hyperbole of saying that this game was the worst and just say that this one was certainly up there amongst the most egregious. The Patriots had three drives stopped by the officials. One the first drive of the game, Danny Amendola made a spectacular diving catch. The play was ruled a catch on the field, and thus irrefutable evidence of a non-catch needed to be seen on the replay in order to overturn the call. The play was viewed from every angle imaginable in the slowest of slow motion and there was no evidence to the contrary. Amendola secured that football and there wasn’t the slightest indication that the ball was moving. Incredulously, the call was overturned and the Patriots were forced to punt. On the third drive of the game, the Tom Brady was sacked and a Baltimore defender proceeded to kick Brady in the head right in front of the official. No 15-yard penalty was called. Of course on the very next play, the refs had no problem tossing out the yellow flag on a 15-yard unsportsmanlike taunting call following the punt. Later in the game, when things were knotted up at 28-28, Rob Gronkowski failed to haul in a drive-extending third down catch. Of course, maybe the Baltimore defender who was clutching onto both of Gronk’s arms had something to do with it. Of course there was no call. If only that were it. After the game was tied up, Flacco was stripped sacked and the Patriots recovered the ball at the 2-yard line. The play was negated by a holding penalty on Darrelle Revis, which was minor at best. Nevermind the myriad of holding that was going on by Baltimore’s offensive line during that exchange. But we’re not done, yet. On Baltimore “real” final drive, Flacco was strip sacked yet again, which would have set up a 4th and at least 15. Thanks to some deranged version of the tuck rule (which isn’t a rule anymore) Flacco’s “throwing” motion of bringing the ball forward, stopping, pulling it back into him, and then having it slip forward out of his hand without extending his arm again was considered a “pass”. The strip sack was negated and Baltimore converted a much easier 4th and 3rd. And that’s just the cliff’s notes version. The Patriots couldn’t catch a break in this game, thanks to the officials, and yet they still overcame.
We watch because sometimes when you climb a mountain, you see the next one to climb. No Patriots team had ever come back from a 14-point hole in the playoffs. This Patriots team overcame a 14-point deficit twice. When the Patriots tied the game at 14-14 after Danny Amendola’s electric diving touchdown run, it appeared that momentum had swung wildly in New England’s favor. It didn’t take long for the tide to turn yet again. For most of his career, Tom Brady has been one of the most clutch performers in the final two minutes of a half. It seems like the Patriots were always sneaking in an extra touchdown or field goal in the final seconds of the second quarter. This season, however, Brady has been an uncharacteristic turnover machine in cruch time. That bad habit reared it’s ugly head as Brady threw an ugly interception with about a minute to go in the half. Thanks to a pass-interference call against Revis (another great call, refs) the Ravens were the team sneaking in an extra touchdown. They would go on to score first in the third quarter to regain their fourteen point advantage. And at this point, I saw the Patriots season begin to slip away. There was no way they were scaling this mountain yet again, right?
We watch because we get to see genius at its best. For me, the quintessential Bill Belichick game has always been the 2003 contest in Denver when he took the intentional safety to improve his team’s field position following the upcoming defensive stop. It brought the Patriots within striking distance of a touchdown, which Tom Brady eventually threw to win the game. Saturday night’s game, is the new signature Belichick victory. With Bryan Stork out for the game, and only four dependable linemen on the roster, Belichick decided to use some trickery, rather than send out a fifth lineman to play the role of a revolving door against the Baltimore pass rush. He sent out the four linemen he had to work with, and then used Shane Vereen and Hooman as alternating ineligible receivers to keep the Baltimore defense guessing on who to guard. It resulted in some wide-open plays to help extend the Patriots drive as they attempted to ignite their second huge comeback. This series, along with the upcoming Edelman throw, were some of the finest work he has ever conjured up.
We watch because we can marvel at an unstoppable, fun-loving ogre dominate grown men like something out of a comic book. The biggest difference on the field on Saturday night compared to all of the other recent playoff defeats was that New England finally had Rob Gronkowski, healthy, and ready to smash. When the going got tough, Brady got Gronk. Gronkowski was on the receiving end of a huge number of drive-extending plays for the Patriots, blowing by defenders or shrugging them off. He was simply unstoppable, and never more so than on the quick throw that Brady hit him with in the end zone to bring the Patriots within a score.
We watch because sometimes, that college quarterback turned wide receiver will get his opportunity to throw a perfect spiral at just the right moment in time. Nobody saw that play coming. Even the most season Patriots fan who knows Bill Belichick’s tricks like the back of his hand would have never expected that play in that moment. Brady throws a routine screen to Julian Edelman who appears to hold up waiting for his blocker to get in position. Suddenly he fires the ball down field and before anyone can fathom what they’re seeing, the ball hits a streaking Danny Amendola to tie the game at 28-all. It was at that very moment, that I finally felt like the Patriots were going to win the game, even though we still had a long way to go.
We watch because every so often, an outcast who seemed to have no supporters and no friends, can rise to the occasion and make big play, after big play, after big play. Danny Amendola’s name has been synonymous with disappointment since he joined the New England Patriots. Saturday night, he made a handful of plays bigger than anything Wes Welker ever did during his time in New England. Amendola caught two huge touchdown passes, and most importantly, came up with a gutty 3rd down play to secure the final inches needed to keep the Patriots’ eventual game-winning drive alive. He is an outcast no more.
We watch because a season can come down to one moment. As the Patriots were making their final march, I saw the future. I didn’t like what I saw. With roughly five minutes remaining, I knew a Patriots touchdown would mean one thing – a four point lead and a very desperate Baltimore team. A field goal would not suffice and so the Ravens would go into four-down mode for the game’s last drive. I looked at my wife and said “The Patriots are going to get a touchdown here, and then the game is going to end on a play in the Baltimore end zone.” Sure enough, Brady hit LaFell with a perfect pass to set up a 35-31 lead. Like clockwork, Baltimore made it’s way down the field, needing a 4th down conversion along the way. When the Ravens passed mid-field, I knew they were in striking distance for Flacco’s patented “chuck and pray for some yellow strategy”. Given the way the prior 58 minutes of this game had played out, I was simply waiting for disaster to strike. I had called it. This game was going to end on a play in the Baltimore end zone. And so as Flacco heaved, I held my breath and waited for the inevitable, only the inevitable was a Patriots safety named Duron Harmon, who will be forever cemented in New England lore as the man who picked off Joe Flacco to end the Ravens and win Game 7 for the Patriots.
We watch because when you think it’s all over, it’s not over. I thought it was over when the Patriots were down 14 points early in the game. I really thought it was over when they were down 14 points again in the 3rd quarter. I really, really, thought it was over when the Patriots went into victory formation and started kneeling out the clock. But just like a horror movie villain, the Ravens came back to life for one more scare. John Harbaugh astutely used his final time out in the knick of time. At first when they stopped the clock with five seconds left, I wasn’t worried. The Patriots could snap the ball and race around for five seconds before giving themselves up. When the refs wound the clock back to fourteen seconds, my stomach sank. I had already done my victory celebration, lifting my son into the air and cheering, and now the Patriots were going to have to execute a punt backed up against their own end zone, pray that the Ravens don’t pull off a miraculous return, and give Joe Flaggo one last chance to get a PI call? As every one of those nightmares flashed before my eyes, the Ravens made their final hail Mary and for a second time, the game came down to a play in the Baltimore end zone. Devin McCoutry soared in the air and on to the Foxboro turf. Now, it was finally over.
This is why we watch.
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