Five Rings

by Jerry Thornton

  My favorite was an old article that was dredged up about Brad Johnson, the quarterback of the 2002 champion Tampa Bay Bucs, where he admitted at the Super Bowl he paid $7,500 to the ball boys to prep the game balls to his specifications, which is a direct Super Bowl rules violation. Johnson’s teammate Warren Sapp of ESPN was an especially harsh critic of the “Cheatriots.” I met him at Media Day and asked him about the story of his own quarterback’s cheating, but he said he didn’t know what I was talking about. A few days later, he was charged with assaulting a Phoenix prostitute in his hotel room. Because karma.

  Somehow, everyone survived the week. And through the miracle of time and the blessings of a merciful God, the Super Bowl finally arrived.

  31

  Malcolm GO!

  There was a lot more riding on this one than just the season title. The Seahawks were arguably the best team the Patriots had ever faced in a Super Bowl. Their defense was one of the best of the modern era, loaded with tough and athletic players who flew to the ball and hit hard. They were stacked with Pro Bowlers at all levels, from defensive end Michael Bennett to linebacker Bobby Wagner to corner Richard Sherman all the way back to safety Kam Chancellor. Offensively, they were led by Marshawn Lynch, a tank-like bruiser and the best inside power runner in the game, but who was also quick enough to beat you in the open field. Quarterback Russell Wilson had proven he possessed the Clutch Gene, taking care of the football in the playoffs as he had during the Super Bowl run the year before.

  For Pete Carroll’s team, winning this one would make them just the ninth team ever to win back-to-back Super Bowls and the first since the Patriots did it 10 years earlier. At the very least it would establish Seattle as the new football dynasty. They’d be to the 2010s what New England was to the 2000s. And since they’d blown out a record-breaking Denver team in Super Bowl XLVIII 43–8, a convincing win would get them consideration for the best team of all time.

  The Patriots had more to play for than just shutting up the “Cheatriots” crowd, although that was a huge part of this. More importantly, a win here would reboot their own dynasty. It would end the yapping about how they hadn’t won since Spygate. It would bring vindication on too many different levels to quantify. Plus the game was being played in the University of Phoenix stadium, the site of that first Super Bowl against the Giants, so it had the added bonus of the chance to exorcise a few demons.

  To a neutral observer, it promised to be one of the great Super Bowl matchups of all time. Two teams that were dominant in all three phases of the game. And the oddsmakers agreed, making the game a Pick ’Em.

  In the pregame, a fired-up Tom Brady gave his team his version of the St. Crispin’s Day Speech. “It’s about honor!” he screamed. “It’s about respect! We win this game, your families will be honored! Your kids will be honored!”

  On the other side of the field, ’Hawks receiver Ricardo Lockette delivered his version. “They don’t belong out here with us,” he said. “Let’s embarrass they ass!”

  The Patriots opened the game with their signature Super Bowl move: short, crisp, high-percentage completions, a good run/pass mix, spreading the ball around, and nothing to show for it. For the sixth time in the Belichick Era, they scored zero points in the first quarter of a Super Bowl.

  Their first drive ended with a punt. Their second was a monster, with four first-down conversions that ate up well over 7 minutes, until it ended with Brady throwing an unforgivable interception to corner Jeremy Lane in easy field goal range.

  Fortunately for New England, their defense was the best unit on the field in that early going. They held Lynch in check, stuffing him for no gain on a third and 2. They kept Russell Wilson contained, with Belichick telling his rushers to stay at Wilson’s level rather than get caught upfield and allow him to escape the pocket.

  Seattle caught a tough break when Lane went out with an injury. His replacement, Tharold Simon, might as well have come into the game wearing a “Throw at Me” sign stuck to his back. Brady’s number one option became whomever Simon was covering, and it got the offense moving again. A third and 9 crossing route to Danny Amendola against Simon put the ball into the red zone. A few plays later, Simon was on Brandon LaFell at the goal line, who caught a backside slant to make it a 7–0 game.

  Wilson still wasn’t getting anything done—until he escaped the pocket and hurled a high, arcing pass down the sidelines and Chris Matthews hauled it in over Kyle Arrington for 44 yards. That catch brought Matthews’s career total to . . . one. It was the six-foot-five rookie’s first reception ever, and it got the ball down to the New England 11. Three plays later, the Seahawks did what they did best on the goal line: handed it to Lynch and let him pound it in for the score that tied the game.

  The Patriots got the ball back and went into their 2-minute drill, with Josh McDaniels serving up the Russell Stover assortment pack of play calls. A bubble screen to Amendola for 11. LeGarrette Blount up the middle for nine. An Edelman jet sweep. Shane Vereen out of the backfield, catching the ball nearly off his shins on a shallow cross to get it into the red zone.

  Then Brady spread out the offense and saw what everyone saw. Unless you were grabbing a beer or had passed out and face-planted into the queso dip, you couldn’t help but notice Rob Gronkowski being guarded by run-stuffing linebacker K. J. Wright. From an athletic standpoint, this was a mismatch of epic proportions. No disrespect to Wright intended, but if Pete Carroll had put a Galapagos tortoise out there instead, Gronk would at least have had to run around it. This was easier. NFL Films camera caught Carroll on the sidelines as the play began, basically acknowledging the blown coverage by saying, “Oh, there it is.” Brady immediately went to Gronk, still isolated on Wright for the pitch and catch that made it 14–7.

  To Carroll’s credit, though, he was at his best at the end of the half. The Seahawks put together a lightning-fast drive to get the ball to the Patriots’ 11 with only 6 seconds left. And taking a huge gamble, he decided to give Wilson one crack at the end zone, with orders to get the throw off quick enough to salvage a field goal if he missed. He didn’t. He delivered a perfect dart to Matthews, the second catch of his career and his first touchdown to tie it at 14 going into halftime.

  Brady had set a Super Bowl record with 20 first-half completions, which, while remarkable against such a fast, swarming defense, was still not good enough. He walked off the field telling an assistant, “We just stopped ourselves.”

  I was watching from home with some friends and family, with everyone except my older son, who had watched the previous five Super Bowls on the sofa next to me. But he was in Marine Corps camo somewhere in the swamps outside of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Those of us who were there were in a mild state of panic thanks to the shock of that final Seattle drive, pointing to Chris Matthews and doing the Butch and Sundance “Who are these guys?” thing.

  I have a vague recollection of watching Katy Perry’s halftime show, but the state of the game and the fact that those Puritans from the NFL were probably on high alert for nipple slips definitely killed the buzz. To the point that I missed the immediate viral sensation that was the dancer in the shark costume who was out of sync with all the other dancers in shark costumes, which is what the world was talking about the next day. Because life in the 21st century is unfathomably weird.

  And nothing that happened after the half brightened the mood any. Once again, Matthews caught a ball over Kyle Arrington, the key play in a 72-yard drive that set up a field goal and gave Seattle their first lead.

  It got worse when Brady forced a ball into Gronk sitting underneath the Seahawks’ deep zone. Bobby Wagner stepped in front of it for the interception that gave his team the ball at the 50.

  And it got worse still a few plays later when a wide-open Doug Baldwin made the easiest catch of his career in the end zone, and Seattle led 24–14. Replays showed he’d gotten so open even with Darrelle Revis in coverage because he ran his route right past an official, who got in Revis’s wa
y. It was your classic pick play, only using one of the officiating crew instead of a teammate, which makes it legal.

  What NBC never showed us was why Baldwin was flagged for an unsportsmanlike penalty after the play. Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth never mentioned what he did. It took cellphone video from the stands for us to find out that Baldwin squatted down, put the ball between his butt cheeks, and pretended to poop it out. Now when I was a kid, the Patriots had a 300-pound linebacker named Sam Hunt who did the exact same thing and it was one of the funniest moments of my childhood. Yet NBC made the editorial decision that somehow the nation needed to be spared that horror, even though it impacted the game because it meant 15 yards on the ensuing kickoff. But thank you, corporate America, for thinking of the children.

  What we did get to see after the play was a close-up shot of Richard Sherman on the sideline, mugging for the camera by holding up two fingers and then four while mouthing the words “two” and “four,” Revis’s uniform number and a direct taunt of him. Or he was talking about Seattle’s score. Or both. But either way it was a total teabagging of the Patriots, and yet another low point in yet another Super Bowl going horribly wrong.

  Belichick was on the sidelines at this point, reminding them of the pressing need to contain Wilson when he goes back to pass and wrap up Lynch in the running game. And also rehashing his speech during the Baltimore game, like a band playing the hits. “There’s no new plays! No mystery here, fellas! Just trust each other and everybody doing their jobs!”

  In fiction writing, there is probably no greater sin than the plot device known as deus ex machina, literally “God from the machine.” It’s when something happens completely out of the blue to solve a problem or get a character out of danger because the author is too lazy to come up with a reasonable solution. So someone is just about to get eaten by a zombie but BOOM!—a car comes out of nowhere and slams into the undead little bugger. And yet, sometimes it happens in real life exactly like that. It certainly did to the Patriots in the third quarter of Super Bowl XLIX.

  Malcolm Butler was sent in for Kyle Arrington, who was having a miserable game. Butler registered with exactly no one outside of the Patriots’ locker room, an undrafted rookie out of West Alabama who made the roster, rarely dressed for games, and was among the guys standing around on Media Day not getting approached by anyone for interviews. And out of nowhere, he started making impactful plays. Deus ex machina.

  Seattle had the ball near midfield when Butler brought down Marshawn Lynch after a 2-yard gain. Then Wilson hit Jermaine Kearse for six, but Butler brought him down for no yards after the catch. On third down, he was again on Kearse, who ran a crossing route with another receiver that rubbed Butler off the play. Recovering quickly, Butler chased Kearse up the sideline, just getting back into the play in time to rip the ball out of Kearse’s arms as Wilson hit him with a perfect throw. Had Butler not broken up the pass, Seattle would’ve had the ball, first and goal, and it probably would’ve been ball game over. Instead, they punted.

  The Patriots found themselves with The Deficit from Which No Traveler Had Yet Returned, down by 10 in the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl. A couple of minutes into the quarter, they had put together a total of 17 yards of offense in the second half, facing a once-in-a-generation defense that was playing out of its mind.

  And that is when Tom Brady did that thing that special athletes do. That superhero thing where they mighty morph into Power Rangers or hold up a sword and become the Power of Grayskull or whatever. The whole offense did. And I’ll point out that, as they were mounting a furious comeback in one of the objectively most exciting football games ever played, Cris Collinsworth deemed it the appropriate time to bring up Deflategate. How he looked Tom Brady in the eyes and asked him if he did anything and how he wants to believe him but he’s not sure.

  It was at that moment I realized Collinsworth probably sucks to talk to at a party.

  From the New England 28, Edelman caught a pass for 21 yards deep down the middle and got clobbered by Kam Chancellor with a thunderous hit, but appeared to stay up and scrambled for 10 yards more. It turned out his knee was on the ground at the spot of the hit, but he’s lucky his brains weren’t on the ground as well because it looked like no one could’ve survived that without being concussed.

  A swing pass to Vereen picked up 9, with a roughness penalty tacked on. Another throw to Edelman was good for another 21 yards to set up a first and goal. Then for one second, Brady turned back into his human form. Split wide against single coverage, Edelman ran right at the defender on the goal line, then broke back, away from the coverage, wide open. But Brady rushed the throw and it sailed high. On the next down, though, he spotted Amendola along the back line, in the soft spot between the defense’s zones. Touchdown. 24–21, Seattle’s lead.

  After the defense forced a 3 & out, the Patriots began moving the ball, once again with short passes, mostly to Vereen, including a remarkable one-handed grab. Then Brady found Gronkowski in the middle of the field over double coverage as Gronk reached out to make the hands catch. Then he found Gronk again for 13 to put the ball on the 32 of Seattle. A Brandon LaFell catch at the sidelines set up a first and goal at the 5.

  Edelman ran the same exact route he had on the last drive, running directly at Tharold Simon, then breaking outside. This time the quarterback didn’t rush and didn’t miss. The ball was perfect. Edelman came off the field, bumping face masks with guys and telling him he loved them and generally bro-ing out like bros do. It was beautiful. And it gave the Patriots the 28–24 lead.

  There was one tiny issue, though, as anyone old enough to have lived through those unmentionable Super Bowls (which is to say, everyone) noticed right away. They’d taken the lead all right, but with 2:02 left. Meaning the Seahawks not only had all three of their time-outs, but they had the 2-minute warning to stop the clock for them as well. And after seeing what they did with only 30 seconds to work with at the end of the half, nobody felt safe.

  With good reason. On the very first play, Wilson hit Marshawn Lynch with a 31-yard catch over the head of the most gifted athlete on the field, linebacker Jamie Collins. It was cold sweat time. Now at midfield, he took a deep shot at Jermaine Kearse, but Butler knocked the ball away with a perfectly timed leap. A pass to Matthews at the goal line was defensed by Brandon Browner. So there was hope.

  Next came the play that made you question your existence. Again Wilson went deep to Kearse. And again, Butler knocked it away as Kearse hit the ground. But the ball didn’t. As safety Duron Harmon jumped over him, Kearse kicked it, slapped it, kneed it, juggled it, grabbed it, got up, jumped on a cartoon mushroom, rescued Princess Peach, and snatched a bunch of gold coins out of the air; the pass was complete. It’s only because Butler didn’t give up on the play that he didn’t score, because the rookie had the presence of mind to shove him out of bounds.

  It was unbelievable. Which is to say, all too believable. This was the same end of the same field where David Tyree made the Helmet Catch. And this one was even harder. But Kearse made it. History wasn’t just repeating itself, it was set to constant Shuffle mode. You apply your own metaphysics to it. My brother Jack expressed mine perfectly: “God HATES us!!!”

  The ball was at the 5. Brady was on the sidelines, dejectedly telling Josh McDaniels, “D has got to make a play. Gotta intercept one.” Which was less a hope than a prayer, given that they had the best short yardage back in football in their backfield. And they used him.

  On the next play, Marshawn Lynch got the ball and, with Vince Wilfork pushing center Max Unger into the backfield, made a cut, had his leg grabbed by a falling Pat Chung, and was stopped just shy of the goal line by Dont’a Hightower.

  Then, not to exaggerate, the fate of the universe changed.

  The Patriots were in almost the exact situation they had found themselves in at the end of the Super Bowl That Shall Not Be Named Part II in Indianapolis, where it made more sense to just let the Giants score to give themselv
es some time on the clock. But Belichick was watching the Seahawks’ sideline and sensed something wrong. Some indecision. Matt Patricia was asking if he wanted to use a time-out and got no response. The head coach just kept staring as the clock bled seconds.

  Patricia had his goal line defense in, big bodies with four defensive backs loaded up to stop Lynch. So Pete Carroll sent in an extra receiver. The Patriots responded, coaches yelling, “Three corners! Malcolm, GO!” as Butler ran in. And a million times since, I’ve contemplated the idea of having my vasectomy reversed just so I can have another son and name him Malcolm Go Thornton.

  It’s one of the most replayed highlights in sports history, so there’s not a lot of reason to go into the details, other than to mention that in all of 2014, no interceptions were thrown from the 1-yard line. And that historically, teams throw interceptions there about 3.1 percent of the time. And that the Patriots faced six rushing plays on their own goal line six times all season, and surrendered touchdowns on five of them.