by Jeffrey Marx
Oh, yes, the principal’s performance was definitely good enough. No question, Brian would be hitting the rewind and play buttons more than once.
Alone with his thoughts in Massachusetts, Brian was keenly aware that he was in the midst of something both unique and magical. He certainly could not cite any other example of a Bible teacher being called out of class to play for the hottest team in the NFL. After three years away from the league, it was shocking enough that a thirty-eight-year-old former journeyman would be called out of retirement by any team, no matter what he was doing at the time. But that was only the beginning. There was also the bonus—enhanced by Lori being his substitute teacher—of his ability to stay so connected with the kids back at Parkview while this seemingly made-for-Hollywood tale continued to unfold. Clearly, the excitement at school was building with the Patriots about to host their first playoff game against the Tennessee Titans. And then there was even the remarkable timing of what the LSU Tigers had just done—the team Brian had been helping for two years going on to win the national championship while he was away getting ready for the NFL playoffs.
In his wildest dreams, Brian never could have conjured up such a far-fetched confluence of events. And so he finally started doing something he had been thinking about for a while. Sitting at the desk in his hotel room the evening of Thursday, January 8, two days before the game against the Titans, he pulled out a tape recorder—a small handheld recorder made for microcassettes—that he had recently purchased specifically for this. And he hit the record button. How else could he possibly document this incredible journey he was living? How else could he possibly freeze this time with the Patriots and store it away so that he could later pass it down through his family? A friend had suggested that he start writing a diary, but Brian knew he would never keep up with that, and he figured that an “audio journal” would serve the same purpose. So he started talking into his little recorder. The first words he spoke, so simple and straightforward, had nonetheless been utterly unimaginable only twenty-four days earlier: “I am in Foxborough, Massachusetts. I have joined the New England Patriots…”
Brian gave brief summaries of some key events he had already experienced: the initial call from Pioli during class; the trip to Boston and the tryout; signing with his new team and playing in those last two games of the regular season. He said he was “very pleased” with his performance so far, especially considering that so much time had passed during which he hadn’t taken any snaps—during which he hadn’t even thought about throwing any footballs between his legs. Brian talked about the way everyone with the Patriots had been so welcoming. And he mentioned the Bible-study sessions he’d been attending with teammates. Brian had quickly developed a good friendship with the leader of the sessions, Don Davis, a linebacker in his first year with the Patriots and eighth in the NFL. The friendship started because of their shared spirituality, but it grew because Brian and Davis really enjoyed each other. Their conversations were open and genuine—and Brian saw his new friend as yet another reason to be grateful for his temporary place in New England. “Life here has been good,” he said. “I am just so thankful the Lord has put me here.”
Nine
When Lori went back to Foxborough for the Patriots’ divisional playoff game against the Tennessee Titans, she traveled not only as a wife and mother—taking Austin and Hunter and a friend of each with her—but also as a delivery service. She had the students’ video to give Brian, and they had also created an impressive collection of cards and letters for him. They were variously addressed with quite a trio of honorifics for a professional football player: “Mister,” “Coach,” and “Professor.” Some of the cards and letters were adorned with football drawings that were both colorful and primitive. All the missives included Bible verses and personal messages.
The juxtaposition of the two sometimes made for especially rich reading. Sean O’Neal began with his own take on Psalm 16:3: “The godly people in our land are my true heroes! I take pleasure in them!” Then, right below that, he wrote: “I hope you do great! Kick some booty in the playoffs.” Brian was all for that. First, though, sitting in his hotel room on Friday, January 9, the night before the game, he wanted to read the rest of his “mail” and see what else he might find.
Each message brought its own joy. One thing was quickly apparent: the seventh graders of Parkview Baptist were big on exclamation points.
“You’re the BOMB!!”
“Don’t come back till you win!”
“I have been watching you on T.V. but all I manage to see is youre Butt!”
The spelling and punctuation were not always perfect. But the tone and energy were.
From Matt Nicols: “you can do all things through christ who strengthens me. as in get to the super bowl.”
From Kristi: “you are the best teacher! I hope yall make it to the bowls or whatever they are.”
From Robert Vaughn: “When you snap the ball wave when the play is over.”
From Clay: “I think that you need to get fatter. Only 5 more Big Macs and a few more workouts.”
From Wesley Perkins, the boy who had done such a good job catching snaps for Brian the day he took that one class outside before heading to Boston for his tryout: “My first pick was the chiefs but how can you pull against your own Bible teacher…Go Pats”
Of course, a few of the girls could not help but include the obligatory Tom Brady references.
From Ashley Thornton: “Oh Mr. Tom Brady your so fine! Im the girl on the video with blonde hair! By the way any single NFL players you can give me a call! (hint hint Tom Brady)”
As much as Brian was amused by such silliness, it was the sincerity of one letter, one of the longest and most heartfelt in the whole pile, that really made him pause to think about and cherish his relationships with his students. “We miss you so much!” Jennie Garland began, “but that’s not the point.” No, with the semester winding down, meaning that she would no longer be in class with “Mr. Brian” (as she called him), Jennie wanted him to know how important he was to her. “You are a blessing,” she wrote. “You know just what to say and when & how to say it. No teacher…can top that.” Using her own form of punctuation, Jennie spelled out the greatest lesson she had learned in class: “*If you believe something with all your heart, you can make it happen*” Then she wrote: “you really made me appreciate something I learned in school…that’s a first, seriously. I just wanted to let you know how much you mean to me. I’m really glad that you came to teach! I will miss you so much next semester! I’m going to say hey in the halls! LOL! I U so much…thanks for bein you! You are an angel in a football body, whether you believe it, or not, I do. Thank you so very, very, very much for making such an impact on my life!”
When he was done reading, Brian was still sitting at the foot of his hotel bed. Yet he was also floating off somewhere he had never before been—reflecting on a profound and unexpected payoff from his first semester at Parkview. When he became a teacher, Brian was doing it because he wanted to influence the lives of young people. Now he was the one who felt like the true beneficiary of that process. He had certainly never experienced any such feeling of fulfillment from anything he had ever done—from anything he had ever accomplished—in the world of sports.
The warmth Brian felt from reading those cards and letters was soon replaced by the bone-chilling harshness of a frigid day, Saturday, January 10, in New England. Playing at night only made it more uncomfortable at Gillette Stadium, where the temperature would be four degrees with a wind chill of minus ten at the start of the Patriots–Titans game (the coldest game in the history of either team). Jim Nantz of CBS opened the national television broadcast by telling viewers they were looking live at “the frozen tundra of Foxborough.” Fans had been given special permission to bring blankets and sleeping bags into the stadium, and players had been “outfitted with a whole host of arctic weather gear,” Nantz noted. Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher said that handling the ball would be
an issue. “What you got to look for is the snappers, and the holders, and the kicking game, and protecting the football,” he told sideline reporter Armen Keteyian. “But…I don’t think any team’s got an advantage over the other.”
The Patriots and the Titans—led by NFL co-MVP Steve McNair at quarterback, four-time Pro Bowl selection Eddie George at running back, and sack specialist Jevon “The Freak” Kearse at defensive end—had already shown that they were pretty evenly matched. In the fifth game of the season, on October 5, New England had outlasted Tennessee, 38–30, in a back-and-forth game that was not decided until the Patriots scored two touchdowns late in the fourth quarter. It was the victory that started the Patriots’ winning streak. More than three months later, McNair (strained right calf and sprained left ankle) and George (dislocated left shoulder) were now dinged up after a physical opening-round playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens. But this was no time to worry about aches and pains. The Patriots were 14–2, the Titans 13–4. The winner of this game would be only one more victory away from the Super Bowl. The loser would be done for the year.
On their first possession, the Patriots opened the scoring with a forty-one-yard touchdown pass from Brady to rookie wide receiver Bethel Johnson. The Titans answered quickly by driving sixty-one yards and evening the score, 7–7, on a five-yard touchdown run by Chris Brown. Then, early in the second quarter, the Patriots regained the lead, 14–7, when Antowain Smith capped an eleven-play drive with a one-yard touchdown run through the left side of the line.
For the Patriots’ Bible-teacher-turned-long-snapper, all of that was merely preamble for the personal drama that was soon to unfold. After stalled drives by both Tennessee and New England, 5:35 remained in the second quarter when the Patriots lined up on their own thirty-seven-yard line for their first punt of the game. Brian had already thrown three perfectly good snaps—two on extra points after the touchdowns and one on a forty-four-yard field-goal attempt that Adam Vinatieri had missed wide to the left. The primary thought now on Brian’s mind was something technical he’d been working on in practice: keeping his hips locked down throughout his punt snaps so that the ball would not sail too high. He had thrown a few high balls in practice that week, but he believed he had solved the problem by slightly adjusting his mechanics. Now, on fourth-and-five against the Titans, Brian positioned himself over the football with the same ease and comfort that had always served him so well through the years. Hips down, he reminded himself one last time. He gripped the ball with his gloved hands and peered back through his legs—same as always—to lock in on his target. Punter Ken Walter was ready, his upper torso leaning slightly toward the line of scrimmage, his arms swinging forward and back at his sides, eagerly anticipating the arrival of the ball. When Brian snapped it, he immediately knew that something did not feel right. Uh-oh. By compensating to avoid a high ball, Brian had gone too far and thrown a low one. The ball bounced in front of Walter. Thanks to his concentration and good hands—Walter had been a catcher when he played high school baseball—he was able to handle it. But the bad snap clearly forced him out of rhythm and the punt was not pretty, a wobbly twenty-seven yarder that hit the ground with a thud and rolled to a stop at the Tennessee thirty-six-yard line.
Returning to the sideline, Brian knew he was going to be verbally assaulted by his coaches. Sure enough, he was greeted by Belichick and special-teams coach Brad Seely, standing side by side, yelling at him. “Like two hungry wolves, just gouging me—not that I didn’t deserve it,” Brian would later say.
“What are you doing?” Belichick bellowed. “You have one damn job to do!”
Clearly, the honeymoon was over. Up until this point, Brian had felt that Belichick was treating him almost like a long-lost friend rather than a current player. Not anymore. Brian was now reminded of the way Belichick used to get on him in Cleveland when he did something wrong—as if I had done it on purpose because I didn’t like him or something.
Brian asked a ball boy to catch some practice snaps for him on the sideline, and he concentrated on getting the ball up higher again. Determined to avoid throwing another low one in the game, he worked on the position of his hips and the follow-through of his hands. But nothing would be solved by technique alone. Brian also needed to regain control of his emotions. Stewing on the sideline, he kept replaying the bad snap in his mind, and he felt tremendous pressure not to let it happen again. Another one on the ground, and my head is on a platter, Brian figured. Not since his first game snapping as a rookie with the Miami Dolphins, back in 1988, had he ever been so scared during a football game. Brian remained confident about snapping for an extra point or field goal. The shorter snaps did not concern him. But the thought of another punt snap was eating him up, so he made a decision. Next time out, he would take something off the snap and throw the ball to the punter with a slight arc, thereby allowing himself a greater margin of error and decreasing the chance of a costly mistake. Brian could hardly believe that he was resorting to such a cautious tactic. But he had to do it. Stuck in emotional free fall, he felt that he needed to build in some sort of a safety net.
With twenty seconds left in the second quarter, Brian was back on the field for one more test before halftime: another punt snap, from the New England forty-one-yard line. As long as the Patriots’ punt team could execute cleanly, the Titans would probably let the final seconds of the half expire without trying to do anything on offense. But if Brian were to make another mistake, the Titans could very well get a shot at a last-second field goal to cut the Patriots’ lead to four. Just do what you do, Brian told himself.
As planned, he took a little something off the snap. Walter was so focused on doing his own job that he did not even notice. But Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis would later tease Brian that a sundial could have been used to time his delivery. Regardless of what anyone else thought, Brian was satisfied with the snap, and the outcome was perfect. Walter gathered in the ball without incident, punted it away, and Derrick Mason of the Titans made a fair catch at the Tennessee thirty-four-yard line. Mission accomplished. Quarterback Steve McNair took a knee to run out the clock, and Brian was able to exhale as he headed into the locker room with the Patriots still leading by a touchdown.
That did not mean that he would now be free of anxiety for the rest of the night. The next time Brian was called upon to snap, when the Patriots were forced to punt on their first possession of the second half, he threw another bad one, high and to the right of the punter this time. Walter was still able to pick the football out of the air, but he was again forced out of his regular routine, and he managed only twenty-four yards on the punt. Brian felt as if he were dying a thousand deaths as he sought refuge on the sideline and began to wonder why he had ever even thought about returning to the NFL. There was nothing fun about this. He was working in a pressure-packed house of horrors, and now there was only one thing that mattered to him: survival.
Late in the third quarter, McNair hit Mason with an eleven-yard touchdown pass to tie the score at 14–14. The predictions of a close, hard-hitting contest were proving to be correct. This game was going down to the final minutes.
Brian was called on for another punt snap in the fourth quarter, and he threw another “sundial” ball, but right on target this time, and Walter’s punt pinned the Titans deep in their own territory. Made it through another one, Brian thought. This has got to be the longest frickin’ game of my life.
The Tennessee offense was unable to gain much ground on the ensuing possession, and New England soon got the ball back at the Tennessee forty-yard line. Seven plays later, with 4:11 left in the game and the score still knotted, Brian and Walter once again made their way onto the field, but this time they had Adam Vinatieri with them. Brian would snap, Walter would hold, and Vinatieri would try to make a forty-six-yard field goal to claim the lead and possibly the game. Quite naturally, all eyes were fixed on Vinatieri, one of the most accomplished clutch kickers in the league. On the CBS broadcast,
analyst Phil Simms cited Vinatieri’s eight-year career mark—fourteen of nineteen—on game-winning or game-tying field-goal attempts. What Simms did not mention, though, was that Vinatieri was in the midst of his most inconsistent year as a professional. From thirty yards and beyond, he had connected on only nine of eighteen attempts, including his miss earlier in this game. Simms also failed to say anything about the way Brian had been struggling. Why would he? Brian was only a long snapper, invisible, by definition, unless disaster were to strike. How would a television announcer—or anyone else—possibly be aware of the personal hell Brian had been battling since that bounced snap back in the second quarter?
Fortunately for the Patriots, punt snapping was not the issue now. All Brian had to do was deliver the ball from a much shorter distance so that Walter could properly place it for Vinatieri. Brian leaned over the ball on the right hash mark. Walter flashed his right hand to signal that he was ready for the snap. And Brian fired away. The snap was good. The hold was good. And the kick was…ball spinning wildly through the air and falling to the left…good! Not by much. The ball curled just inside the left upright and barely cleared the crossbar. But the Patriots had the lead, 17–14, and now their defense would be called upon to do the same thing it had been doing so well for months. With the clock running down and the game on the line, it was time to dig in and shut down the opponent.