Fourth and Long: Indelible Moments in Time
Back in 2007 and 2008, I wrote a weekly online pro football column dubbed “Fourth and Long” for the late Football for Breakfast website. One hopes the gentle reader will enjoy this blast from 2/04/08…
Stunning upsets in sports history.
42-1 underdog James Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson. The United States hockey team shocking the mighty Soviets at the 1980 Winter Olympics. The New York Jets of the fledgling AFL stunning the NFL champion Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.
Indelible moments etched in time.
And Sunday added another chapter to the chronicles of impossible sports upsets as the wild card and little-regarded New York Giants beat the unbeatable, blemished the perfect and derailed the destiny of the undefeated New England Patriots.
An upset for the ages with a quarterback who has been blasted in the New York press for four years as a non-achiever. With a coach one loss away from the unemployment line. With the outspoken Plaxico Burress playing on a sprained MCL (the same injury that so famously put LaDainian Tomlinson on the bench). With five rookies forced into action with critical games on the line.
A team of misfits. A team that hadn’t won a playoff game since 2000. A team that hasn’t seen their home field since December.
This motley crew did what no one believed was possible. Even after beating Tony Romo in Dallas. Even after beating Brett Favre in Green Bay.
This was supposed to be a coronation for the perfect Patriots. The crowning glory for inarguably the greatest team in NFL history with the No. 1 offense, the best quarterback, the best receiver and the best coach of all-time.
But something funny happened on the way to the ceremony. The inferior team in the divisional playoffs according to Wade Phillips, the less-talented team in the conference championship according to a Green Bay columnist, and the sacrificial lambs in the Super Bowl according to everybody proved to the world that you play the game for a reason.
And have no doubts, the Giants earned this victory. They outplayed the Patriots. They out-coached the Patriots. They out-muscled the Patriots.
Not convinced? How about holding the No. 1 offensive of all-time to just 14 points and 274 total yards? How about sacking All-World quarterback Tom Brady 5 times and knocking him to the turf too many times to count? How about Eli Manning’s fourth quarter stats, completing 9 of 14 passes for 152 yards, 2 touchdowns and a passer rating of 140.5?
And for those who still believe the Giants were lucky to win, just look at how many opportunities the Giants failed to capitalize on in this game. That quirky interception by the Patriots at the 10-yard line to snuff out a red-zone drive in the second quarter. Steve Smith dropping a Hail Mary touchdown at the end of the first half. Corey Webster slipping on the Randy Moss touchdown. Eli Manning failing to connect with a wide-open Plaxico Burress with 8:32 left to go in the game.
Every game has its moments. Its quirks. Its weird bounces.
How do you think the Patriots beat the Baltimore Ravens that Monday night not so long ago?
Those acrobatic catches, those near-certain sacks that quarterbacks inexplicably avoid, those plays are what make football what it is. That is why they play the game.
Eli Manning marched the New York Giants 83 yards in the final 2:42 to win the game. And then the defense stepped up to stop the greatest offense of all-time on four consecutive plays to seal the victory.
You can’t take that away from them. And you can’t take away their world championship.
The New York Giants may not be better than the Patriots. But they were better than the Patriots on Sunday. And that’s all the matters.
‘Larry King’ Ramblings
Don Larsen. The 1972 Miami Dolphins. Nadia Comaneci.
The Mount Rushmore of sports perfection.
And for the past couple of weeks, Boston has been busily erecting the scaffolding, preparing to add the New England Patriots to this monument of historic sports achievement.
For after all the scandals and all the controversies, the 18-0 Patriots took the lead in the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl, only 2 minutes and 42 seconds away from attaining what no one believed possible in this era of salary caps and parity.
The perfect season.
And not just any perfect season. 19-0. Two more wins than the noisy Miami Dolphins of 1972. Four more wins than the forgotten Cleveland Browns of 1948.
This was a team with the best offense in NFL history. The best season a quarterback has ever had. They beat seven different playoff teams nine times. And with a fourth quarter drive for the ages, the Patriots appeared to have overcome a lackluster Super Bowl performance and a fearsome Giants rush.
But there was only one little problem. Over two minutes remained on the clock and Peyton Manning’s little brother was looking to make them pay.
And pay they did.
Yet even as the seconds slowly and agonizingly ticked away while Eli orchestrated the game-winning drive, the Patriots had their opportunities. A fourth-and-one. A dropped interception. A third-and-eleven with 45 seconds left and no timeouts remaining for the Giants.
But at the end of the day, the Patriots really shouldn’t blame their loss on any one single play. To suggest as Rodney Harrison did that Eli’s miraculous escape from a sack that would have made Archie Manning and Fran Tarkenton proud or the circus catch by David Tyree who momentarily embodied Lester Hayes and Lynn Swann were flukes misses the point.
No, the Patriots need take a hard look at themselves. While they said all the right things after the game, they said all the wrong things before and even during the game.
The Patriots organization brazenly applied for a trademark on the phrases ‘19-0′ and ‘19-0 The Perfect Season’ three days before they played the San Diego Chargers in the AFC championship game. On the Saturday before the Super Bowl, Patriots owner Robert Kraft jokingly told CBS announcer Jim Nantz, “We promised FOX we’d keep it close for a half.” And Patriots players, according to Amani Toomer, were inviting Giants players to their post-game parties during the game.
If there is one thing that athletes, always a superstitious lot, should have learned by now, never tempt the football gods.
And one also wonders if the Patriots, in their quest to annihilate the league, tired themselves out during the season. Certainly through the first 10 games of the season, the 2007 New England Patriots were the greatest team I’d ever seen. But in their myopic crusade to prove themselves the greatest team ever, to undermine any questions about Spygate, I wonder if the Patriots signed their own death warrant and simply ran out of steam.
Anyone who watched the Super Bowl could tell you that this was not the same team that crushed the Buffalo Bills 56-10 on the road in week 11.
So instead of building monuments to their perfection, instead of showing up the league when they are caught cheating, instead of inviting opposing teams to their coronation during the game, perhaps the Patriots should have done what won them three world championships in the past six years.
Shut up and win the game.
‘Heidi’ Chronicles
I’m a bit of a football purist.
I watch the Super Bowl not for the pageantry, but for the game. And while I understand that an extra week is needed to create the spectacle that is the Super Bowl, I’m a little burned out on all the conjecture, analysis and whimsy voiced every day of the week before Super Bowl Sunday arrives.
So when FOX announced that they would be airing 27 1/2 hours of pregame coverage, I decided to delay my Super Bowl viewing until as close to the alleged 6:18 PM kickoff as humanly possible. And when I did finally sit down in front of the television at around 6:00 PM, I quickly realized, with much dismay, that kickoff wouldn’t actually occur until 6:30 PM.
Now as great as the game itself was, I watched with much trepidation as the commercials and another overly long and painful halftime show invaded my inner sanctum of pigskin purity. But I must acknowledge that a few commercials were actually quite clever. The much-praised Bud Light commercials, however, have become a caricature of what they once were, now rearing their heads as one-joke, one-note commercials, consisting of a 20-second setup, a 3-second joke, a ‘Drink Bud Light’ insert, then the obligatory 2-second follow-up. Yawn.
So this year, I am only rewarding commercials that I genuinely enjoyed for more than that brief moment of comedy.
The envelope, please…
Bridgestone: Screaming squirrels, screaming wildlife, screaming woman. Good stuff.
Terminator, Sarah Connor Chronicles: Totally unexpected as a Terminator crushes that annoying FOX football robot. ‘I’ll be back.’
Fedex: Carrier pigeons with high-tech homing devices cleverly segue to giant pigeons dropping packages on an unsuspecting public. Brilliant.
Tide: Another surprising commercial. Usually detergent advertisements leave much to be desired, but this one was funny and held my attention the whole time.
Wall-E: I try to ignore movie trailers since they aren’t really your traditional Super Bowl commercial, but Woody and Buzz grabbed me and the rest of the trailer absolutely rocked.
Coke: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloons fighting for a Coke made for the best non-speaking commercial in a long time.
NFL Super Ad: Chester Pitts. What a terrific ad.
And finally, what was Danica Patrick thinking signing up with GoDaddy? How can you do a racy, raunchy commercial when you are trying to be taken seriously in a male-dominated sport? And the banned commercial is so bad, I won’t even show it to you. I mean it’s really, really bad. So whatever you do, don’t click here to watch it. (Turns out the commercial was so bad, it’s not on the Internet anymore.)
You clicked, didn’t you. (No, you didn’t. But if you found it online, please add it in comments below!)
I told you it was bad.
‘John Madden’ Wayback Machine
We learned something important as the final seconds ticked off at Super Bowl XLII.
No matter how good you are, no matter how great you are, a perfect season is nearly impossible to pull off.
The 2007 New England Patriots had the most prolific offense the game has ever seen. The greatest season a quarterback or wide receiver has ever had. And arguably, the best X-and-Os coach to oversee a game plan. And still, they couldn’t get it done.
Look at the 1934 and 1942 Chicago Bears. These were the teams that created the ‘Monsters of Midway’ moniker by annihilating opponents on their way to two separate perfect regular seasons. A truly awe-inspiring dynasty. And both times they fell short in the NFL championship game, first in the immortal ’sneaker’ game, then to a rival they had beaten 73-0 only two seasons earlier.
So maybe the 1972 Miami Dolphins, as annoying as they have been this year, deserve another look because in the past few months despite their perfect record, they’ve been disparaged for only beating two teams with winning records during the regular season. Going undefeated apparently wasn’t good enough. Completing the only perfect season in NFL history wasn’t good enough either.
But now that the ‘greatest team in NFL history’ has fallen short in their final game, maybe, just maybe, the Dolphins have earned a little more of our respect.
Did you know, for instance, that the 1972 Miami Dolphins had the #1 offense AND #1 defense in the league?
This was a genuine dynasty. Over four seasons, the Dolphins compiled a 47-8-1 regular season record and boasted an 8-2 mark in the playoffs. Three straight years in the Super Bowl. Two world championships.
So this was not a team that merely got lucky. They even lost starting quarterback Bob Griese to a broken leg and dislocated ankle in week 5 of their perfect season. Can you imagine the Patriots trying to run the table with Matt Cassell behind center? And despite 38-year-old Earl Morrall at quarterback, the Dolphins still led the league in points scored, total yards and rushing yards.
Especially rushing yards.
Behind Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris who both broke 1,000 yards, the Dolphins gained 2960 yards during the regular season, the most yards ever gained on the ground up to that point. That’s an average of 211 yards per game.
And that doesn’t even touch upon the legendary ‘No-Name Defense’ that allowed the fewest points (12.2 per game) and fewest yards (235.5 per game) in the league, forcing 46 turnovers in only 14 games.
Despite their fortune in regular season opponents, the Dolphins had to prove themselves on the road against the 11-3 Pittsburgh Steelers (only two years away from their Super Bowl-winning dynasty) in the AFC championship and prove themselves to Las Vegas as underdogs against the 11-3 Washington Redskins in the Super Bowl.
But prove themselves they did by beating the #2 and #3 teams in the league in games that weren’t nearly as close as the scores (21-17 over the Steelers and 14-7 over the Redskins) might suggest.
So while Mercury Morris and Don Shula may grate on our nerves, while Nick Buoniconti and Bob Kuechenberg may set our teeth on edge, we need to acknowledge that the 1972 Miami Dolphins accomplished what no other team in NFL history has ever done and what the 2007 New England Patriots could not do.
Perfection.
