by Ian O'Connor
DeOssie wasn’t only a fellow Andover boy and the son of a linebacker who had helped Belichick win a title; he was also a good friend of the coach’s daughter, Amanda, his former schoolmate at Phillips. During training camp, Belichick allowed DeOssie, a quarterback at Phillips, to use the weight room and run the conditioning test with the team. Belichick had him learn how to be a long snapper. He even used the kid as an extra arm in seven-on-seven drills, worked on his form, and told him he wanted to send him back to Andover a much better player.
Now they were together again at the Super Bowl, with kickoff approaching, and Belichick was talking to the kid about the Andover team, about his classes, about campus life. They chatted for 25 minutes, and not once did Belichick mention the Rams or the Super Bowl he was about to play.
“It was just a father talking to his daughter’s friend,” DeOssie said. “That’s all it was. He was totally prepared for the game, and he wanted a little normalcy.
“I think he knew he had done everything he possibly could.”
The New England Patriots had the ball on their own 17-yard line with no timeouts and 81 seconds to play in Super Bowl XXXVI. The St. Louis Rams had just scored two fourth-quarter touchdowns to erase a stunning 14-point deficit and make it a 17–17 game, and Bill Belichick was now facing a question that would shape the rest of his career.
Should he go for the win and trust that his young quarterback wouldn’t commit a fatal turnover, or should he run out the clock and take his chances in overtime? Up in the Fox television booth, the sport’s most prominent analyst, John Madden—a Super Bowl–winning coach with the Oakland Raiders who was influential enough to create his own video-game dynasty, Madden NFL—had the answer for Belichick. He said the Patriots had to play for overtime. “I don’t think you want to force anything here,” Madden said. “You don’t want to do anything stupid, because you have no timeouts and you’re backed up.”
Just about everything had gone right for Belichick and his 14-point underdogs, who started meeting the Rams’ star power with a unified front in the pregame, when the Patriots insisted (against league resistance) that they be introduced as a team rather than as individuals. Damien Woody said the energy in the tunnel before that team introduction was unlike anything he’d ever felt. “We were like a bunch of crazed dogs,” he said.
Another good omen: One of Belichick’s childhood heroes at the Naval Academy, Roger Staubach, was joining former President Bush for the opening coin toss.
Belichick had been most concerned about St. Louis establishing its superiority in the first five minutes, but New England’s defense immediately rattled the Rams on the first possession with some meaningful hits. On the second play, following a Warner incompletion, Tebucky Jones drilled Holt on his leaping 18-yard catch. For the Patriots, the pain was worth the gain.
The hits kept piling up across the first half. Chased from the pocket, Warner overthrew Holt on the sideline, and the receiver took another big shot from Jones. The quarterback completed a three-yard pass to Bruce, who was popped by Ty Law. Warner’s lip was bloodied, and his team’s belief in itself was bruised. The first play of the second quarter said everything about the Patriots’ strategy and the way this game was unfolding.
Willie McGinest, an athletic marvel at 6´5˝ and 270 pounds, lined up to Warner’s left and, after the snap, delivered a shot to receiver Az-Zahir Hakim, nearly knocking him over and disrupting his route. McGinest then continued to rush the quarterback, who ultimately threw high to Hakim over the middle, where it seemed half the Patriots’ roster was waiting for him. Though Roman Phifer hit teammate Terrance Shaw hard in the head as they converged on Hakim, the ferocity of New England’s approach was becoming more evident with every play. A minute later, Lawyer Milloy put a convincing hit on Rams tight end Ernie Conwell, who didn’t hold on to the ball.
Belichick said he’d learned from his father and Bill Parcells that “the most important thing on defense is to get 11 guys out there that can tackle.” The Rams were starting to believe there were 15 Patriots out there ready to put them on the ground. In the middle of the second quarter, Mike Vrabel blitzed from Warner’s right, raced untouched to the quarterback’s spot, and clubbed Warner in the head (no flag was thrown) as he followed through on his pass toward the right sideline. The ball was picked off by Law, who ran 47 yards for the first touchdown of the game.
When the Rams tried to regain control before the end of the first half, New England met their finesse with more force. Receiver Ricky Proehl, a 12-year veteran, made a 15-yard catch and started to drop to the turf just as safety Antwan Harris flew in helmet first to pop the ball out and into the hands of teammate Terrell Buckley. Five plays later, from the St. Louis eight-yard line, Brady attacked a vulnerability that Belichick had noticed in practice two days earlier at Tulane University. The coach realized that the Rams played tight and tough defense near the goal line, and he figured they could be beaten on a quick out-and-up pattern. So Brady pump-faked to his right toward Patten, who then snuck behind the suckered cornerback, Dexter McCleon, and made a tumbling catch in the back of the end zone that mirrored the catch he made against Pittsburgh in the AFC Championship Game.
Much to the surprise of almost everyone watching, the Patriots were holding a 14–3 lead over the Greatest Show on Turf. New England players later said they saw shock on their opponents’ faces. “You know how they say every boxer has a plan until they get punched?” Redmond said. “That’s what the Rams looked like. It looked like they got punched and said, ‘Uh-oh.’”
The Rams were so desperate for a big play with 31 seconds left in the half, they sent out Faulk—with one career kickoff return to his name—to field the kick from Vinatieri. On the broadcast, Madden said he’d seen Faulk practice kick returns the day before, during the Rams’ walk-through at the Superdome. The analyst wasn’t alone. Also present for that dress rehearsal were some Patriots staffers who were setting up video equipment. One of the videographers, Matt Walsh, told the defensive coaching assistant, Brian Daboll, that he’d seen Faulk being used in this unconventional way. So Belichick was sitting on this Mike Martz curveball, too. Vinatieri sent his high kickoff away from Faulk, to the running back’s left, and Faulk raced over to catch it on the fly just before his momentum carried him out of bounds at the six-yard line. Faulk’s first and last kickoff return of the game netted the Rams one lousy yard.
Belichick was calm during the extended halftime as he assured his team that St. Louis would play the rest of the game with a renewed purpose. On the Rams’ first series of the second half, the Patriots again hit Warner in the head—Phifer caught him after knocking down the pass attempt off a delayed blitz. A Super Bowl MVP two years earlier, when he threw for 414 yards and two scores against Tennessee, Warner wore a mask of confusion and despair. With more than six minutes to play in the third quarter, the Patriots had used five defensive backs on 10 plays, six defensive backs on 15 plays, and seven defensive backs on three plays. Half the time, Warner didn’t know what he was looking at. He unnecessarily burned two of his three timeouts in the third quarter before throwing his second interception, this one right to Otis Smith, who had used his hands to help Holt trip and nearly fall flat, with the ball in the air. Vinatieri nailed a 37-yard field goal to give New England a 17–3 lead.
The crowd was alive with the anticipation of an historic upset, the biggest since Joe Namath and the Jets from the old AFL beat the NFL’s Baltimore Colts, who were 18-point favorites, in Super Bowl III. Despite the fact that Belichick kept putting extra defensive backs into play, Martz insisted on throwing the ball and keeping it out of his best player’s hands. Faulk would end up with only 17 carries and four receptions, or 21 touches. Over the Rams’ eight-game winning streak leading up to the Super Bowl, he had averaged 28 touches and had four games with at least 25 carries and three with at least 30.
St. Louis also helped New England’s cause by declining to use the no-huddle offense to speed up the tempo of a game clearly being
played at the Patriots’ preferred pace. Not that the Rams believed their wounds were all self-inflicted. Many of them thought referee Bernie Kukar and his crew allowed New England far too much latitude in how it defended a faster team. Faulk described the Patriots’ strategy against him this way: “So pretty much it was like, wherever the fuck he was, hold him, grab him, tackle him. That was the plan. Other teams did it, but there was something about the Super Bowl. In the Super Bowl, they stopped throwing flags.”
The Patriots were penalized five times for 31 yards, the Rams six times for 39. As he had with the fast-breaking Buffalo Bills in the Gulf War Super Bowl, Belichick wanted to drag the fast-breaking Rams into a half-court game. One way of accomplishing that, of course, was to constantly foul them. As Warner would recall:
I really believe going into that game, that Bill told his guys, “Hey, we’re going to do whatever we can early in this game. We’re going to hold them. We’re going to grab them. We’re going to be physical with them. And we’re going to force the officials to throw a bunch of flags on us in the first half.” Because what we know is, the NFL does not want the Super Bowl dictated by a bunch of flags thrown in the first half and the game stopping. They want the flow of the game to go. And so I believe they went with that approach. And then finally, in the second half, there were some flags starting to be thrown and they had to loosen up a little bit and we were able to have a little bit of success.
One such flag saved the Rams from utter disaster. On fourth-and-goal at the 3 with more than ten minutes to play, Warner fumbled as he tried running for the end zone, and the loose ball was scooped up by Jones, who ran 97 yards down an exploding Patriots sideline for a touchdown that would’ve made it 24–3. Only McGinest had put a bear hug on Faulk as he tried to release into a pattern on the left side, and the officials nailed him on it. The linebacker was clearly emotional after a score that would’ve sealed a championship was taken off the board. “I was upset,” McGinest said, “but I made a play that was in the game plan. I was out there to harass him. That was my job.”
Warner called the Belichick strategy “a genius approach,” because the officials had responded exactly as the coach suspected. They didn’t want to be the central figures in the Super Bowl, so they called only the penalties on the Patriots that they had to call. Two plays after they called the foul they had to call on McGinest, Warner scored on a two-yard run to make it a ball game.
New England went three and out and gave the ball right back to St. Louis, and suddenly it appeared as if Belichick and Crennel were running low on ideas. The Rams drove into Patriots territory, helped by Warner’s 30-yard pass to Proehl, and Belichick felt the need to intercede. Even after McGinest sacked Warner and left the Rams facing the long odds of third-and-25, Belichick called his final timeout. His defensive players were exhausted, and they needed his help. Those players thanked him by forcing St. Louis to punt.
Only another three-and-out from Brady broke the New England defense, and probably for good. The Rams needed just 21 seconds to cover 55 yards in three plays. Warner hit Proehl on a soft throw to his left, and the receiver stopped on a dime, cut to the inside, and blew past a lunging Jones on his way into the end zone. The score was 17–17 with 90 seconds to play. The Greatest Show on Turf had finally arrived, and it had the Superdome rocking like it had for U2 at halftime.
And now Belichick confronted a momentous decision after Troy Brown returned the kick only to New England’s 17. He knew his defense was done stopping the Rams for the night. He turned to Weis and asked him what he thought. “I think they’ve got all the momentum,” the coordinator said. “I think we should go down and try to score.”
“OK,” Belichick responded. “Call something safe. If we get a first down here, we’ll go ahead and be more aggressive. Let’s make sure we don’t start off with a sack.”
Sitting with Ernie Adams in the press box, Ned Burke, the offensive coaching assistant, heard the exchange between Belichick and Weis. They all believed that Brady wouldn’t make the big mistake. The quarterback was so calm, cool, and collected, he had fallen asleep on the locker room floor after arriving at the Superdome early.
“As far as what I could hear on the headset,” Burke said, “it was total confidence between Bill and Charlie that Tom would get it done, and that doesn’t always happen in NFL games. You could hear their confidence. Bill is a skeptic, and he generally at that time was a more conservative play caller than Charlie was. Charlie would always tell him, ‘Hey, we’re going to start out the series with this,’ and Bill would hem and haw and say, ‘Nah, let’s just get some positive yards.’ That’s just Bill’s personality. That trait didn’t come out. It wasn’t typical of Bill’s doom and gloom. It was like he sensed, This is our chance to do it.”
On the first play, out of the shotgun, Brady barely avoided the Rams’ Leonard Little and the sack by stepping up and finding Redmond for five yards. “I don’t agree with what the Patriots are doing right here,” Madden said on the broadcast. “I would play for overtime.” Actually, Belichick was playing to avoid overtime. Brady found Redmond again, this time for eight yards. After spiking the ball with 41 seconds left, he threw yet another pass to his running back, who did a brilliant job navigating would-be Rams tacklers and getting out of bounds at the New England 41 to stop the clock with 33 seconds left. “And now I kind of like what the Patriots are doing,” Madden said.
He liked it almost as much as Redmond’s Uncle Ben, who predicted the day after Bledsoe’s injury that the substitute quarterback who had impressed him, Tom Brady, would lead the 0-2 Patriots to a championship.
Vinatieri untangled his foot from some television cords and practiced kicking into a net near the New England bench. Wearing his headset and a blue long-sleeve team jacket with a red stripe, Belichick paced slowly back and forth, betraying no emotion. After an incompletion, Brady made the biggest play of the drive when he ran 64-Max, All-In, which called for three receivers to line up to the right and run patterns to the left at varying depths. Brady completed a 23-yard pass over the middle to the receiver running the shallowest route, Brown, who made it to the sideline to stop the clock. Twenty-one seconds to go, ball on the St. Louis 36. Brady wanted to get a tad closer for Vinatieri, so he threw a safe ball to Wiggins for six yards before rushing to the line and spiking the ball with seven seconds left.
“I’ll tell you,” Madden said on the air, “what Tom Brady just did gives me goose bumps.”
The Rams couldn’t stop New England from running down the clock on this drive; they’d wasted their timeouts earlier trying to decipher Belichick’s ever-changing defenses. And now the head coach of the Patriots was one 48-yard field goal away from pulling off the monumental upset. St. Louis had won 16 of 18 regular-season and postseason games, and seemed certain to win a second championship in three years. Before the game, Proehl looked into an NFL Films camera and said, “Tonight, the dynasty is born.”
Belichick got 92 desperately needed rushing yards on 18 carries out of Antowain Smith, a near-flawless execution of the game plan from his defense, and the requisite cautious and dependable performance from Brady. The Patriots didn’t surrender a single turnover, and the Rams surrendered three, including Law’s pick-six. On this night, it was clear that Belichick and his staff had outcoached Martz and his.
The Patriots had bottled up the best of the best in Warner, who was fighting through a thumb injury, and the indomitable Faulk. The Rams’ offensive coordinator, Bobby Jackson, called the quarterback and the running back the two smartest players he’d ever had in four decades of coaching. Faulk, he said, could come off the field after a failed play and explain exactly what went wrong with the blocking up front. “He saw everything,” Jackson said. “It was unbelievable what that guy saw.”
And yet Faulk and the rest of the Rams couldn’t see the best way to attack a defense that was dropping everybody and their brothers into coverage. Belichick and Crennel were initially planning to play more man-to-man coverage,
but they decided in the middle of the week to play more zone and use the two safeties in Cover 2 to provide deep help and allow the corners to be ultra-physical with Rams receivers off the line. St. Louis had averaged 31.4 points in the regular season and four times had scored more than 40 (including in its playoff victory over Green Bay), and yet the team didn’t score a touchdown in the first 50 minutes of the game. Warner didn’t throw a touchdown pass until 58 minutes and 30 seconds had expired.
The ball was on the right hash mark. For this field goal attempt, Belichick sent out an undrafted long snapper from Sacramento State (Lonie Paxton), an undrafted holder from Kent State (Ken Walter), and an undrafted kicker from South Dakota State (Vinatieri). He was standing in the middle of an event witnessed by tens of millions of people, and yet Belichick was all alone with his thoughts. He had started his NFL career as a barely paid gofer. He had been disrespected by players in his early days with the Giants. He had been detested by players, reporters, and fans in Cleveland who called for him to be fired. He had been cast as a loser by league executives and columnists who thought he’d be a sure failure in Foxborough after fleeing the Jets. He had been booked as the next NFL coach to be fired after he lost 13 of his first 18 games with the Patriots, including the first two of this season.
Now he needed perhaps his best player, Vinatieri, to come through one last time. When the kicker walked onto the field, he felt a surge of extreme confidence. “It felt like the movies,” he said, “when you see a pitcher on the mound and everything calms down and gets quiet. I know there’s a million things going on, but for me it was more about just focusing on your job.” He’d been 24 for 24 in domed stadiums, and nothing would ever be the same in New England if he could extend his streak of perfection. From the spot of the expected hold, Vinatieri took three steps backwards, then two side steps to his left before swinging his right foot behind him. He was ready to decide what the great Miami Herald columnist Edwin Pope—who had covered every Super Bowl—would call “the best Super Bowl ever played.”