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Sunday, February 3, 2008
Patriots didn’t deserve historical feat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Glendale, Ariz. — They spent nearly every moment of Super Bowl Week talking about history. In fact, Tedy Bruschi, the eternal linebacker and resident historian for the New England Patriots, evolved into the unofficial spokesman for his team by declaring, “I’ve been in a lot of big games, but all of us would agree that this is the biggest game of our lives.”
So, when the confetti didn’t fly for the insufferable Patriots after the final gun on Sunday at University of Phoenix Stadium, where the Giants resembled that New York team of yore known as Joe Namath’s Jets with a chilling upset, Bruschi was proven correct. This was about history, because the Patriots are history for many reasons.
First, the Patriots lost. In case you haven’t heard, they hadn’t done so in 18 previous games this season. As Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress said between tears after scoring the game-winning touchdown during the wackiest final minutes in Super Bowl history, “Can somebody give our defense some credit?”
No problem there. The New York defenders spent their portion of a 17-14 victory knocking the royalty and everything else out of Tom Brady, and he’s usually the Patriots’ unscathed king of comebacks at quarterback. Instead, Eli Manning continued his coming out party this postseason along the way to significance or beyond as an NFL player. He joined his older brother, Peyton, in discovering ways to de-throne Brady when it mattered most.
It took a while, because despite his various bruises, Brady became Brady again late in the fourth quarter. He pushed the Patriots 80 yards to the end zone for a 14-10 lead inside the final three minutes. Then Manning countered with an 83-yard scoring drive that ended on a 13-yard pass to Burress in the corner of the end zone with 35 seconds left to play. Not long before that, there was Manning’s 32-yard prayer to a leaping David Tyree on the drive after Manning somehow dipped and swirled away from a slew of New England defenders who rarely miss in the clutch.
“That escape by Eli and the throw that is caught by David Tyree, that ball was challenged,” said Giants coach Tom Coughlin, enthusiastically, failing to keep an epidemic of smiles from gracing his usually stern face in the aftermath. “That wasn’t like he just jumped up in the air and caught the ball. You had two people, ripping for the ball, and he brings it down. That might be one of the great plays of all time in the Super Bowl.”
It was history. Not like the other way that the Patriots are history. Even beyond what the Giants accomplished with a lot of defense and enough of Manning, the Patriots are history, because the unraveling of their Spygate mess will negate everything they’ve done during the past seven years. The three world championships after four Super Bowl trips. The comparisons of the suddenly tainted Brady to the eternally sainted Joe Montana. The undefeated regular season to match those of the 1934 and 1942 Chicago Bears, the 1948 Cleveland Browns and the 1972 Miami Dolphins.
Suddenly, those things mean nothing, and the Patriots can blame Bill Belichick, their gifted but flawed head coach. He is so obsessed with secrecy that it is impossible to separate fact from fiction regarding the Patriots’ use of a hidden camera to steal signs from the Jets during their season opener at the Meadowlands.
Thus Spygate. Worse, reports keep surfacing about the Patriots dropkicking NFL rules in clandestine ways regarding other games through the years. As a result, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter is threatening to call hearings on Capitol Hill even beyond his expected huddle with Roger Goodell over why the NFL commissioner destroyed tapes and notes from Spygate.
That said, the Patriots still had a Super Bowl to play with that other so-called history in mind.
The fraudulent kind.
Said Jim Kiick, a member of those 72 Dolphins, who remain the only undefeated team ever to capture an NFL world championship, “We never were against the New England Patriots. We have our (own) accomplishments. We’re not comparing ourselves to anyone else from other generations. The Patriots are a great football team. Unfortunately, they didn’t win this Super Bowl.”
With apologies to Kiick, it is fortunate that the Patriots didn’t win.
They didn’t deserve it.
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