This was an actual exchange between my father-in-law and I only a few days before the Super Bowl:
Me: Tom, come Sunday, are you going to be a Patriots fan or a Giants fan?
Tom: Duh! I'm still hoping somebody beats those cheaters.
Me: Well, time's running out.
Tom: Yeah, but this one will hurt the most.
Damn, was he right!
Does it hurt more than the Aaron Boone game? Yes. Does it hurt more than last year's AFC Championship game
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| Move over, Aaron Boone. There's a new leader on Boston's Pantheon of Painful Losses. |
What makes the loss hurt even more, I think, is that it was the Giants who won. The Giants weren't even the best team in the NFC let alone in the entire NFL. They had no business winning a Super Bowl this season. Eli Manning, widely regarded as incompetent and inconsistent, was the MVP. The winning coach was not Bill Belichick, who may be the reincarnation of Vince Lombardi, but rather it was Tom Coughlin, a guy who nearly lost his job in the third week of the season. Plaxico Burress, who graduated from the University of Dumb with Anthony Smith and Igor Olshansky, actually proved to be right with his prediction of a Giants win.
Even more frustrating is how and when the "1" in the Patriots now 18-1 record occurred. Because the "1" did not appear until after the Super Bowl, the loss completely negates the significance of 18-0. I am not understating the difficulty in achieving something like 18-0; nor am I understating the sheer importance of 18-0 from a historical perspective. But what is the point of 18-0 if you can't get to 19-0?
As for the game itself, I had not been nervous or uneasy prior to any game all season with the exception of the Colts game. The Super Bowl was no exception. There was no way the Patriots were going to lose. No way! In fact, there had only been two points all season when I felt even a sliver of doubt. One was prior to the Colts game. The other occurred at the end of the Ravens game after the failed fourth-and-one quarterback sneak that was saved by the sideline timeout.
It didn't take long for that feeling to creep back into me on Sunday. The Patriots were playing uninspired and unprepared football. They could find no rhythm. The offensive line was breaking down more than protein. It didn't appear that they possessed the killer instinct or the "no mercy" attitude that they displayed in their previous 18 games. Their aura of confidence was not apparent.
It was on the Pats first drive of the second half when I started to feel a bit more hopeful. Belichick challenged a 12-men-on-the-field ruling which overturned a punt and gave the Patriots a first down inside the Giants 40. It was the first time all game that the Patriots did something Patriots-like.
But just as quickly as my confidence returned did it leave again. On the same drive, Belichick decided to go for the first down on a 4th and 13 from the Giants 31 rather than attempt a 48-yard field goal. I have vowed to never question Bill Belichick, but this was one decision that puzzled me. You have to figure that the chances of Gostkowski making a 48-yard field goal in a climate-controlled indoor stadium with no wind was at least as good, and probably far better, than the Patriots converting that 4th and 13 and continuing down the field to score. In hindsight, this is easy to say since the Patriots lost by a field goal. But, in that situation, shouldn't you take the points to make it a seven-point lead rather than risk falling behind by allowing a touchdown?
Fast forward to late in the 4th quarter: Brady and Moss just hooked up for the 24th time this season to give the Pats a four point lead, 14-10. That glimmer of hope was back. It was a classic Brady drive. It was the dagger. It was the notorious game-winning touchdown drive that Brady once again engineered.
There was 2:45 left in the game, and there was no way that Tedy Bruschi, Mike Vrabel, or Rodney Harrison was going to let this game slip away. There was no way that Junior Seau, who I thought was a lock to make a huge play, would let this game slip away. Well, the Giants converted a 4th-and-1 with a minute and a half to go. No big deal, though; the Giants still had 60 yards to go.
Then, three plays later...
Eli Manning somehow Houdinis his way out of approximately five different sacks and throws up an absolute prayer - a prayer
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| Here's the new face of Boston sports agony. |
From here, we all know how the story ends. Manning hits Burress wide open for six. The Giants take a three point lead with 0:35 left, not enough time for even Tom Brady to come back.
The thing about that final Giants drive was how dominant the Patriots defense had been on the drive prior to that miracle. Manning had a case of happy feet that could have rivaled his brother's. He should have been sacked about three times in addition to the sack that Adalius Thomas, who was an absolute animal on that drive, had already recorded. There were two passes that should have been intercepted including the one which would have iced the game that "franchise player," Asante Samuel, let slip through his fingers.
It seemed that the Patriots were destined to make a big play on that drive. They always had before. Sunday was different. With history in their hands (literally), they couldn't get the job done.
As the game ended, I retired to my bedroom - refusing to talk to anyone - to release my latent aggression by watching a violent movie (other than the one I had just witnessed). I narrowed it down to Boondock Saints and, coincidentally, Kill Bill, Vol. 2. I went with Boondock Saints because, unlike Super Bowl XLII, the guys from Boston prevail in the end.
6 comments:
Having been 16 when the Buckner game happened, that was a lot worse, as was the one game playoff at Fenway park in 1978. And I'm a football first guy.
I always feel bad for Buckner myself for a couple of reasons - first, Bob Stanley had already coughed up the lead, second, even if he comes up with that ball, he had no play on Wilson (Wilson was almost at first base when the ball trickled through Buck's legs), third, in every other game that season where the Sox were in a close one, Buck had been lifted for a defensive replacement.
That game was an implosion all around.
Kevin,
I can understand your argument. My reasoning for the Patriots loss is that it was just so out-of-character. They didn't look like the same team that had gone 18-0. They didn't play good football, and they lost to a far inferior team as a result. That's why the Pats game was so frustrating.
I have to say, as someone who cut their fan teeth on the '78 Red Sox, and who was (ahem) over 20 when the ball went through Buckner's legs, and had said excitedly to herself in October of '03 as the
7th inning closed and the Sox were up 5-2, "We're going to the World Series!"...this really doesn't begin to compare, especially now that the shock has worn off. Having been a winner for several years now helps, and really in the long run won't do anything to the reputation of the Patriots as a front-running organization. Does anyone have less respect for Derek Jeter because he was on the team which had the greatest collapse in baseball history?
We've been spoiled and we got greedy. You really can't win 'em all. Come next September, this will be just a bad memory, the Pats will be the favorites to go all the way and we'll be ready to go at it again.
Go back - they didn't play good football against the Ravens or Eagles, and really played incomplete games against the Giants (regular season) and the game against the Chargers wasn't exactly flawless.
To be realistic about all this, the Pats got lucky that Baltimore shot themselves in the foot.
The Eagles would have won if they stayed to the middle of the field that was open, once again, when Samuel made the interception that sealed the Pats win.
Against the Giants special teams gave up a touchdown, and the defense gave up some big yardage. For all those that claim the D didn't hold up in the Super Bowl - they need to remember that the D averaged giving up just under 17 points per game - they did their job as well as they ever did in the regular season.
As for the Chargers game - the passing game wasn't working before Brady got injured.
To be honest with you, the way they played in most of those games (except for the season finale), I think the Patriots would have lost playing to better/smarter (than the Eagles or Ravens), or healthier (Chargers) teams. Maybe not, but they were considerably less than impressive in the games against the Eagles and Ravens.
What I saw when I watched the game was a defense that played well enough to both win and lose the game. They gave up enough points to lose the game, failing to make two key plays - the missed sack and the missed int by Samuel - on the Giants' final drive. Still in any other game this season that 17 points would have not been enough for the Giants to win. Time and again the offense looked tired, out of gas and out of attitude.
And even when the offense had time and openings, there were enough times that they failed to make positive yardage plays. I don't think they had more than one or two positive gains on first down.
The bottom line is that I think that the Patriots played as well as they could have after the season they had. That's all I could ask for...well, not completely - I would have liked to see the Pats seal the deal at 19-0, however, I can't complain about a team losing while leaving it on the field.
I certainly respect both of your opinions. To Maine's point, I guess we have to wait and see how the remainder of the decade plays out for the Patriots to truly assess how damaging this loss was.
As for Kevin's point, the difference between the Buckner game and the Super Bowl is that the Red Sox still had a Game 7 to make up for Buckner's error. The Red Sox had that second chance that the Patriots didn't get. That's frustrating in itself because we all know that if the Patriots had gotten a second chance against the Giants, they win that game decidedly.
Trust me, as a baseball-first guy, the 86 series cut a lot deeper than this. I'd even put the 2003 ALCS above this.
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