Five Rings

by Jerry Thornton

  For sure, that image was going to be the next Internet meme, if we as a culture weren’t completely done with goofy crap like Planking and Tebowing and were ready for yet another type of Bradying. The Boston Globe certainly thought so. Shortly thereafter, they sent out their early edition, and the front page was a huge photo of a dejected Tom Brady on his hands and knees while Alford was running in the distance under the banner headline “A Bitter End.”

  It was now 21–0. Six trips to the Super Bowl in 16 years had all produced games that were played on a razor’s edge, decided by critical plays in the final seconds. Finally we had the benefit of the laugher I’d always hoped for, and the Patriots were on the wrong end of it. A quick check of WebMD confirmed I was now experiencing something called “stroke-like symptoms.”

  On their sidelines, the Falcons were confident, but not necessarily overly so. At least as far as we know, this wasn’t some Greek tragedy that turns into a moral lesson about the dangers of hubris or whatever it is my high school mythology teacher was trying to say. NFL Films cameras caught this exchange between Mohamed Sanu and Taylor Gabriel as Brady walked off the field:

  SANU: “He’s shaking his head. He ain’t never seen anything like this.”

  GABRIEL: “It’s Tom Brady, though.”

  SANU: “I know! I’m never comfortable. We could put 40-something on their ass. I’m just saying they’ve never seen anything like this.”

  Disaster almost struck again immediately as Brady got hit attempting to pass, the ball popped up in the air, and somehow fell to Bennett surrounded by red Falcons jerseys. He then misfired badly twice, once with Edelman coming free on a crossing route in a full sprint and no one upfield in front of him. A completion there would have flipped the field. Then he overthrew Chris Hogan stopped at the sidelines with the defender playing 5 yards off. Another pass went behind Edelman, who had a step on his man, and it was broken up. The most accurate, mistake-free passer in the league was missing everything. As that embarrassment to American journalism put it back in 2015, the question we were asking ourselves is, “What’s up with our hero?”

  Eventually, he did get the ball to James White, who went out at the Atlanta 2. It looked like the Pats could get a touchdown to give them some momentum going into halftime. But the play came back due to a holding call on Bennett and they settled for the field goal that made it a 21–3 game at the half.

  Again, I had not had one moment of enjoyment. My default setting when it comes to dealing with major negativity is total denial, to stuff all nasty emotions deep down inside my subconscious so that they can come out at random sometime later—like at a traffic accident or on the phone arguing with Customer Support. I don’t recommend it, but it works for me. In this case, I left the guests and went into the kitchen by myself to stress-eat nacho chips and contemplate my future. So while I was vaguely aware Lady Gaga had jumped off the open roof of the dome and onto the stage, I didn’t actually experience it until watching the DVR of her performance the next morning. She was wonderful, once you saw her when your world wasn’t crumbling.

  I snapped out of it long enough to take a call from a Marine corporal. He was every bit as inconsolable as I was, with the added misery of being surrounded by a barracks full of his buddies who despise the Patriots. He was low on battery power and said he’d call back so we could commiserate after the game. Agreed.

  Fortunately, the sense of doom didn’t extend to the Patriots’ locker room. By all accounts, there was no speechifying. No grand moments of inspiration. No Rudy standing up on a chair doing the “We’re gonna get ’em on the run and we’re gonna keep ’em on the run” thing. Just focus on what they needed to do to crawl out of the hole they’d dug.

  The players and coaches managed to hold back the flood of despair behind sandbags labeled “Do,” “Your,” and “Job.” As they hit the sidelines for the second half, Josh McDaniels gathered his running backs and asked, “Do you think we’re gonna win?” The answer was yes. “I do, too. Let’s just have our best half, all right? Don’t try to do anything you can’t do.” Edelman wandered the sideline repeating to anyone who was listening, “It’s gonna be a hell of a story.”

  But the second half didn’t get better any time soon. The defense made a stop and Edelman returned the punt almost to midfield, but then dropped a perfect third-down pass. Their first possession of the comeback lost 2 yards in three plays and ended with a punt.

  And it got worse. Two completions to Taylor Gabriel moved the ball to the New England 30. Mohamed Sanu laid out to make a grab, followed by a pass interference by Malcolm Butler, and Tevin Coleman finished the drive with a swing pass out of the backfield and outraced Rob Ninkovich easily for the score.

  It was 28–3 as all my guests left. And I did not blame them. Everyone had to work in the morning because America is a backwards country where our greatest hangover day is somehow not also a federal holiday. (As it will be someday in the Kingdom of Thorntopia. All Hail King Jerry I.) Plus, by this point I was in a catatonic state, completely nonresponsive, and none of us needed to see each other at a time like this.

  Besides, what reason was there to be optimistic? What would you pin your hopes on? Yes, they were the best come-from-behind team with the best come-from-behind quarterback any living person had ever seen. And they had overcome the biggest deficit of any winner in 50 Super Bowls just two years earlier. But that was 10 points. This was 25. I wasn’t going anywhere, but I for sure wasn’t thinking about a win. I just wanted a respectable score as I braced myself for the tsunami of online hatred that was coming.

  The path to making the score respectable took a bad first step when McDaniels broke the glass on the emergency plays, calling for the Edelman double pass. But this one fooled no one and he threw it back across the field to a covered Dion Lewis. But it was still the time to gamble, and Brady converted a fourth and 3 to Amendola. He later found the middle of the field wide open and scrambled for first down to the Atlanta 20. Then in a whacked, billion-to-one moment that broke the tension at least for a moment, Bennett’s face mask locked up with defensive end Dwight Freeney’s, and the two of them were stuck head-to-head like their antlers had become entangled in a fight for control of the moose herd. The game stopped while the official had to yank the helmets apart.

  That business out of the way, a couple of power runs by Blount got it close. Then Brady found James White near the goal line. White came back on the ball, made the catch, wheeled around the defender, and dove across the goal line. There were barely 2 minutes to go in the third quarter, and the Patriots were in the end zone for the first time all game.

  And just when you were starting to feel better about things, Stephen Gostkowski’s extra point clanged off the upright. Anyone with a memory capable of stretching back 54 weeks thought immediately of the championship game in Denver, where that one missed point might’ve cost them a fifth ring. Now any touchdown they scored would probably require a conversion try, and we learned the hard way how small the margin of error is on those. It didn’t help any that on the subsequent kickoff, they tried for the onsides kick, which hit Gostkowski in the leg before it traveled the required 10 yards and it was Atlanta’s ball with good field position.

  But the defense held. On third and 11, Kyle Van Noy and Trey Flowers, who was the last player off the field at the last practice of the season, beat the pass protection and brought down Ryan to force a punt.

  It was here that the Patriots’ offense finally found a rhythm, but it was an odd choice. More like a slow jam than the up-tempo EDM beat the situation seemed to call for. Brady kept targeting Malcolm Mitchell, and the rookie responded with three catches. Bennett got a half step on his coverage up the seam and Brady hit him with a perfect touch pass, but they were standing around and letting the clock run down between plays. It felt like watching the Eagles toward the end of that Super Bowl in Jacksonville. Finally, a sack resulted in a fourth and long, so they elected to kick the field goal. “It’s a two-score game anyway,�
� Belichick said.

  At the Patriots’ bench, Dont’a Hightower was admonishing his defense that they’d used up their margin for error. “No more mistakes! No more ‘My bad,’” he said. “Everything’s got to be perfect!”

  Then they caught a break when Atlanta’s best pass blocking back, Tevin Coleman, left the game with an injury. Matt Patricia spotted Freeman, who to that point might have been the best player on the field for either team, in the backfield next to Ryan and made an adjustment. He put Hightower up on the line but split him out wide, like he was in zone coverage. On third and 2, Ryan inexplicably took a seven-step drop as Hightower blitzed from his right side and Chris Long beat his man from Ryan’s left.

  Freeman never spotted Hightower coming. The wide split made him disregard the linebacker altogether and look inside as Hightower raced in untouched, hit the quarterback as he pulled his arm back, and knocked the ball free. It was New England’s ball at Atlanta’s 25. He’d said, “Everything’s got to be perfect,” and that play was. It caused one of the officials to say to another, “Hey, this could get interesting.”

  It did for sure. Again, Brady looked to Mitchell on third and 11. The ball was already in the air as the wideout slipped on the turf and went down, but he recovered in time to make the catch for 12 yards. Another to Amendola gave them a first and goal. And on the next play, Brady found Amendola on an out route along the goal line for the six points.

  But now it was all about touchdowns followed by two-point conversions. Miss one of them and it would be Denver all over again. To that end, the coaching staff had run out of conversion plays in Denver, so they added more to the playbook. They’d need them all. This time, they used their version of a Classic Rock hit, the direct snap to the halfback that Kevin Faulk had converted in this same stadium in Super Bowl XXXVIII. And it worked exactly the same way. Brady motioned like the snap had gone over his head. White took it and followed the push from his blockers for the score that made it 28–20.

  There were just under 6 minutes to play. Gostkowski redeemed himself somewhat for the missed extra point and the botched onsides kick by booting the ball down to the Atlanta goal line, and returner Justin Hardy decided to take it out rather than take the touchback. He was met almost immediately by Jonathan Jones for the tackle that pinned Atlanta back to their own 10.

  But a fat lot of good it did, as Freeman caught a short pass and took it all the way out to midfield. It was excruciating to watch—but it felt like a foot massage compared to the next play. Ryan was pressured, escaped, left the pocket, and in a full sprint, let loose a throw that was all arm strength. Under normal circumstances, that’s the kind of wild freelancing that will get an average quarterback benched. But Ryan was well above average and delivered a perfect, laser-guided strike to the sidelines, where Julio Jones laid out for it. Barely getting his outstretched hands on the pass but keeping his feet clearly in bounds, Jones cradled the ball as he hit the ground for a clean catch.

  Two plays into the drive and they’d gone from their own 10 to the Patriots’ 22. They were in very makeable field goal range. It was yet another Super Bowl with yet another ridiculously clutch miracle catch by yet another opponent. It was like these things were scripted now. And at this point, I was hovering above the sofa, looking down at my body. But Jones’s catch wasn’t the game-changing play.

  That came next.

  In the 2016 NFL season, teams had gotten a first and 10 from their opponent’s 22 exactly 108 times without ever being forced to punt. This was the 109th time.

  It started well for the Patriots, with Devin McCourty dropping Freeman for a loss. Then, in the worst coaching decision since . . . well since the last time the Patriots were in the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl, Falcons’ head coach Dan Quinn decided to throw the ball.

  Three runs into the line of scrimmage and he’s bleeding the clock, burning the Patriots’ time-outs, and kicking the field goal that would’ve made it an 11-point game. But sticking to their guns, being aggressive, and playing “Falcons football,” Ryan went back to pass. He promptly got leveled by Trey Flowers for a sack all the way back to the 35, just on the edge of field goal range. Sanu got some of that back with a short completion against Logan Ryan, his old Rutgers roommate, but that play came back because tackle Jake Matthews had Chris Long in a choke hold that moved them beyond field goal range. An incompletion on third down forced the first punt of the season from that area of the field. On the most critical set of downs of the season, the Patriots’ defense moved Atlanta back 22 yards. Or, if you prefer, made the Falcons and their coaching staff pee down their legs. I’m good with either interpretation.

  Make no mistake, though, things still looked grim. I barely allowed myself a fist pump during any of it, because the punt put the Patriots back at their own 9, with 3:30 to go and needing a touchdown plus two points just for the tie.

  Oh, and they hadn’t had a touchdown drive this long all season. So there was that.

  Brady was throwing from his own end zone and nearly got brought down for a safety on the first play. On the second, he tried a deep ball up the sideline, but the coverage was too airtight and it went incomplete.

  Third and 10, with 91 yards away from scoring.

  This was when I decided to abandon my corporeal form on the couch and just climb up the tunnel of light. But Brady brought me back.

  He delivered a heat-seeking missile to Hogan on a deep out between Jalen Collins and Keanu Neal for 16 and a first down, then an 11-yarder to Mitchell.

  Then karma stepped in. By way of full disclosure, I’m not a big capital-P “Philosophy” guy. I studied it in college to the extent they make you study it. But to me it was mostly smart people inventing really long explanations to make simple concepts sound complicated. And most of them have the same basic premise: All of existence is balanced. Good and Evil. Man and Nature. Life and Death. I don’t care if you’re studying Kant, Descartes, Buddha, or Yoda. It’s all Ying vs. Yang. The Good Side vs. the Dark Side. It’s all the same.

  And on that issue, I’ve always considered myself a believer in the Seinfeld philosophy of Even Steven. Everything always evens itself out. Something bad happens, and eventually something good happens to cancel it out. A comedy gig gets canceled; another gig takes its place. George lands a job; Elaine loses her job. I get let go on the Patriots pregame show; WEEI hires me. The Patriots have an impossible, physics-defying catch go against them in a Super Bowl; the Patriots get the benefit of an impossible, physics-defying catch going for them in a Super Bowl. Even Steven.

  On first down from their own 36, Tom Brady took a deep shot toward Julian Edelman running into coverage in the middle. The ball was slightly underthrown and tipped up in the air by Robert Alford, whose momentum carried him back into a pile of bodies that included Edelman, Ricardo Allen, and Keanu Neal. On the way to the ground, the ball landed on Alford’s shin and the only one with eyes on the ball was Edelman. He reached out, got his hands on it, lost his grip, got both hands under it, and secured it before it hit the ground. As with the David Tyree catch in the 2007 season, if you tried it a thousand times you’d still not duplicate it. But it worked this time, and it’s the only one that counted.

  Dan Quinn challenged the ruling of a completed catch, but it was out of desperation; there wasn’t a single replay angle that left any doubt Edelman had made the grab. There couldn’t be. Jones’s catch earlier was a prime example of two great athletes making a great play. This was something else. Again, philosophy isn’t my thing, but this was metaphysical. A great cosmic Even Steven.

  After that, that young Falcons’ defense was shook. A 20-yard crossing route to Amendola led to two completions to White over the middle that also gained 20 and put the ball at the 1. White, as the lone back, took the handoff and snuck his way into the end zone like a jewelry thief working his way down a hallway crisscrossed with security lasers. It was now a two-point game. It came down to one more conversion attempt.

  My ancestors were with my mom a
nd dad and Myra Kraft all waiting at the end of the tunnel of light now, welcoming me to come join them and end my pain. But I decided to spirit back into my body for one last play.

  Brady threw a quick wide receiver screen to Amendola behind two blockers. He caught it, ducked behind them, bulled forward, and fought his way across the goal line while the officials signaled he was in. Just to increase the dramatic tension—like it needed it—there was a flag on the play. But it was on the defense, a blatant offsides by Freeney.

  It was tied up. Or I was dead. But it felt pretty tied up. Another great kickoff by Gostkowski put Atlanta at their 11 and a few half-assed attempts to put on a Patriots’ Super Bowl XXXVI–like game-winning field goal drive later and we were in overtime.

  Since falling behind 28–3, the Patriots’ drives had gone: touchdown, field goal, touchdown, touchdown. The Tom Brady that had struggled against the Falcons’ defense early and missed throws in the middle was as unstoppable as any signal caller could ever be. Through four quarters, the Patriots had run 90 offensive plays to Atlanta’s 49. They held an edge on first downs of 32–17. Brady was already up over 400 passing yards. And in an oddly ironic twist, this was Brady’s seventh Super Bowl appearance and the first in which he hadn’t led his team to a scoring drive to take the lead in the fourth quarter.

  He didn’t need to. Anyone who still had his mental faculties (count me out) knew what they were witnessing. Atlanta’s defense was out of answers. They were mentally and physically exhausted. If the Patriots won the coin flip, it was going to be over. And that’s how it happened. (Thanks, heads!)