by Jeffrey Marx
Seventeen
Brian had long ago learned not to get too hyped up the day of a game until it was actually time to run out on the field. Why burn precious energy on mental stress when he would soon need all the fuel he could possibly summon for physical combat? Granted, a certain amount of what he termed “nervous expectation” could never be altogether avoided in the hours leading up to kickoff. But he always tried to conserve his energy by not dwelling on such thoughts. In that respect, Brian began the morning of February 1, 2004, Super Bowl Sunday, the same way he had approached the start of any other game day: locked in what he called “conservation mode.” Given the level of anxiety he had experienced throughout the week leading up to this, he was both surprised and pleased by how well he had slept the night before the biggest one-day sporting event in the world. Seeking a more controlled and isolated setting, the Patriots had moved into a different hotel—the Houston Hobby Airport Marriott—for Saturday night. Now Brian was doing the best he could to keep his thoughts and emotions in check.
Alone in his room, Brian prayed, and his big-picture requests were pretty much the same as always. He asked for the strength to give his best in every situation to glorify God. And he asked for faith that would be strong enough to endure whatever events and outcomes God might set before him. Brian also had a specific request that would be quite strange for just about any other professional athlete—other than another long snapper—preparing to play in a game of such magnitude. He prayed that God would allow him to get through it “unnoticed and unmentioned.”
Late in the morning, Brian still felt fairly relaxed when he entered a hotel meeting room for the Patriots’ pre-game meal. The players had been told to get plenty of food from the buffet because the gap between eating and playing would be considerably longer than usual. Kickoff would not be until 5:25 P.M., but with all the special festivities and pre-game entertainment that are part of a Super Bowl, both teams had to allow for extra time at the stadium. With that in mind, Brian filled his plate and joined a few other players at a round banquet table. All he wanted to do was eat and pass the time.
Yet sometimes the simplest of choices can dramatically alter the course of events.
Brian wanted to cut open and butter a dinner roll. But the crust was rock hard. The dull blade of a butter knife had no chance. Clutching the roll in his right hand—his lead hand for gripping and snapping a football—Brian secured a steak knife in his left hand and went to work. Not a good idea. In the first stroke of what was intended to be a measured sawing motion, the knife cut clear through the roll and sliced deep into Brian’s right index finger.
“Gosh dang it,” he exclaimed.
Brian threw down the knife, and his eyes went straight to the damage. A flap of skin was left exposed on the inside of his finger at the middle knuckle. Blood spilled, and the pain was palpable. More than anything, though, he felt waves of panic and disbelief. How in the world could this happen at a time like this? How would it affect him for the game? “Crap,” Brian said. He was fuming. He covered his hand with a napkin and applied pressure to the wound.
The other guys at the table had no idea why he was so agitated.
“What’s the problem?” said Larry Izzo, captain of special teams for the Patriots, sitting just to the right of Brian.
“Dude, I just cut my finger really bad.”
“You serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s see what it looks like.”
Brian grimaced as he offered his bloody digit for viewing and explained what had happened. Izzo and Mike Vrabel—another linebacker sitting at the table—could not help themselves. They started cracking up. They laughed because they thought it was so ridiculous that a big, strong football player—that anyone—would hurt himself trying to butter a roll. What a goofball!
Brian was not amused. “What’s so funny?” he demanded.
“Well, I mean, come on,” Izzo said. “Hours from the start of the Super Bowl and our only snapper slices open his finger? Got to admit, that’s kind of funny.”
“Yeah, for you, maybe.”
Izzo and Vrabel chose not to dwell on how this might affect Brian if he had to use that hand to grip and snap a football at a critical moment with the whole season weighing in the balance. Brian could not help but imagine the worst.
A trainer covered the wound with a small bandage—that would suffice for the time being—and instructed Brian to see a team doctor once he got to the stadium. So much for conservation mode. In addition to the lack of confidence that had already afflicted him for weeks, Brian now had a new source of stress to take with him into the biggest game of his life.
He had to scrap his standard routine. Instead of waiting for the last team bus to the stadium, Brian had to take the first, so that he could have a doctor look at his finger. By 12:15, Brian was at his stall in a far back corner of the locker room. Soon thereafter, it was determined that his cut would require stitches, but Brian was concerned that being sewn up might hinder his ability to grip the ball, and the doctor agreed to wait until after the game. For now, he would just tightly bandage the finger to protect it and to keep it from bleeding. Brian was fine with that. He had other things on his mind.
Stuck in the locker room with more time than usual to kill, and really nothing to do but sit and think, Brian did the best he could to focus on a basic set of reminders: Relax and release. Hands to the target. All the way through to the target. You cannot be tentative. Just fire it back there. Simple enough. But other thoughts crept in as well. Brian began to torment himself with a whole array of painful possibilities. Among the worst: lining up for a field goal, sailing the ball over Ken Walter’s head, and watching the Panthers scoop it up and take it in for a score of their own. This was not exactly an advertisement for the power of positive thinking. But Brian had already been through so much in such a short period of time, and Norman Vincent Peale he was not.
Brian came to two conclusions: One, this was the most nervous he had ever been before a game. Two, he had to prepare himself for the reality that something bad might happen. It was a very real possibility, and he felt that he had to come to peace with that. In the silence of his mind, Brian said, “God, whatever it is you have planned for me, it’s going to be okay. I’m just asking you to give me the strength to do my job the best I can. And if you see what I envision, that snap over the holder’s head and the Panthers scoring, then I’ll just have to be okay with that. I am totally committed to whatever you see.”
When Brian finally took the field to warm up with Ken Walter and Adam Vinatieri, he experienced what he would later call the “worst pre-game” of his life. The bandaged finger—further protected by a glove—was not a problem. It was Brian’s wounded psyche that was doing the damage. “I’ve never been more nervous in a football uniform,” he would later say into his tape recorder. “I was so nervous, I could barely snap the football. A lot of my short snaps were on the ground, and even my punt snaps were that way, too. I just had no confidence going into the game.”
The relentless anxiety kept a firm grip on Brian, and it eventually caused him to do something he had never done. His entire career, he had never prayed about touchdowns, or about victories, or about anything else so directly related to performance and outcome. But now he was ready to cut a deal. “Give me this one victory by about three touchdowns,” Brian said. “Give me a blowout like that, and I’ll never again ask for anything else.”
The excitement of the day was building for the 71,525 people who had been fortunate enough to secure a ticket into the stadium. Broadcast crews from all over the world were readying themselves for a game that would be televised in 229 countries. And Brian was such a wreck that he was trying to cut a deal with his Maker. He had been dreaming for so many years about going to a Super Bowl, about getting to play in one, but the vision had never looked or felt anything like this. Simply put, the oldest guy in the game had no idea whatsoever how to handle the daunting reality with which he was
now being confronted.
As the game was about to begin—the Patriots were lining up for the opening kickoff to the Panthers—Brian stood on the sideline and tried to convince himself that everything would be okay if he could somehow just relax and allow his thoughts to stay in the moment. I’ve got to stop thinking about everything that’s already happened, he told himself. Got to stop imagining what might be coming next.
Las Vegas oddsmakers had the Patriots beating the Panthers by seven points. Pundits had predicted a low-scoring game dominated by the defenses of both teams—with many of the experts even suggesting that the matchup would make for a relatively dull Super Bowl. The early going did nothing to dispute that. In fact, the Patriots and Panthers opened the game without scoring on eleven straight possessions. It was the longest stretch of scoreless football—twenty-six minutes, fifty-five seconds—in Super Bowl history. What might have been somewhat boring for fans, though, could only be described as deeply frustrating and even alarming for Brian and his fellow New England special teamers.
On their first possession, the Patriots reached the Carolina thirteen-yard line before stalling out and lining up for a thirty-one-yard field-goal attempt. Panthers special-teams coach Scott O’Brien had no idea that Brian had been struggling with his snaps. But having worked with Brian for ten years, a decade of NFL seasons with Cleveland, Baltimore, and Carolina, he certainly knew everything there was to know about his tendencies. O’Brien always tried to give his players an edge by studying film and picking up “keys” that would tip them off to the timing of a snap. Some guys lifted their heels right before snapping, some bowed out their knees, others slightly dropped their rear ends. But O’Brien knew that Brian did nothing of the sort, so he had repeatedly told his players, “Just concentrate on the football. It’s going to be the first thing that moves.” As far as the Panthers’ strategy for blocking a field-goal attempt, the whole idea was to focus on the inside of the line in an area known as the “A” gap between the center (Brian) and the left guard (Wilbert Brown). By breaking down the inside of the line and creating a seam, O’Brien felt that the Panthers could pressure Adam Vinatieri and maybe even get a hand on the ball. Of course, with everything else Brian had on his mind, Carolina’s strategy was not an issue to him. All he cared about was getting the ball back—cleanly—to Ken Walter. Finish with your hands. Straight back to Kenny.
Brian’s snap and Walter’s hold were both good. Brian and his line mates blocked the inside charge of the Panthers without any problem. But Vinatieri did something that was extremely unusual for him to do in a big game. He simply made a bad kick, the ball sailing off wide to the right. Vinatieri would take full responsibility, saying he had probably been a little too excited and too fast for his own good. No matter what caused the miss, the New England field-goal unit was clearly off to a less-than-ideal start.
A few minutes later, after a Carolina possession that quickly went nowhere and a similarly futile New England attempt to move the ball, Brian made his first punt snap of the game. The snap was on target, and Walter got off a forty-four-yard punt with no return. Brian was able to exhale as he returned to safety on the sideline. But trouble soon returned. With 3:12 left in the first quarter and the Patriots again punting, this time with Walter standing on the New England forty-five-yard line, Brian bounced the snap more than a yard in front of him. Walter was able to handle it—“a great recovery,” announcer Dick Stockton told countless millions on the primary international broadcast of the game—and the Patriots escaped from the play unscathed. In fact, after the pickup by Walter, a well-placed punt, and a fair catch by Steve Smith, the Panthers would have to start from back at their eight-yard line. But a fortunate outcome for the Patriots did nothing to ameliorate the fact that Brian had thrown a bad ball. Watching from upstairs in the New England coaches’ booth, Scott Pioli said only two words to himself: Oh, boy. But he still somehow thought that everything was going to work out okay.
Early in the second quarter, with the game still scoreless, Brian had to snap for another punt. He was extremely relieved to throw a good one. But he had never before felt such heightened emotions—first total anxiety, then that rush of relief—right before and after performing his job. How many more snaps would he have to survive? When would the Patriots start building a lead that might allow him to stop stressing so much?
With 6:08 left in the second quarter, the Patriots had another good chance to put the first points on the scoreboard. This time they would try to make a field goal from thirty-six yards out. Again, Brian’s snap and Walter’s hold were good. But this time Scott O’Brien’s plan—loading up the middle and trying to collapse the interior left side of the New England line—worked to perfection for the Panthers. Brian held up fairly well against the surge, but left guard Wilbert Brown and left tackle Russ Hochstein were knocked right on their backs, which allowed two Carolina linemen to freely extend their arms skyward and get a good shot at a block. Sure enough, the trajectory of Vinatieri’s kick was lower than he would have liked, and defensive tackle Shane Burton got a hand on the ball, which bounced harmlessly away and ultimately rolled dead in the end zone.
What a lousy start for the New England special teams. One field goal missed for no good reason. One punt snap bounced on the ground. A second field goal blocked. And there was still more drama to come.
The scoring drought finally ended when Tom Brady connected with wide receiver Deion Branch on a five-yard touchdown pass with 3:05 left in the half. Then Brian threw a low snap on the extra point. Walter was able to trap and control the ball, and Vinatieri still made the kick, giving the Patriots a 7–0 lead. But the tension continued to mount for the kicking unit. After watching the ball split the uprights, Vinatieri immediately turned to Walter, and they slapped hands, both of them thankful that they had just dodged a bullet.
Back on the sideline, Brian approached his old friend Anthony Pleasant, the big defensive lineman who had taunted him all week about the whole Super Bowl coming down to him having to make a good snap with everything on the line. Pleasant was not playing against the Panthers. He had been declared inactive. (Eight of a team’s fifty-three roster players had to be inactive for each NFL game.) But he was nonetheless locked in on everything that was happening with his team…and was keenly aware that Brian needed some support.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Brian said.
“You don’t have a choice,” Pleasant responded. “You can do it. You have to.” And then—amazingly enough for a time like this—he went right back to the same thing he had been telling Brian all week. But this time Pleasant was not teasing. Looking Brian straight in the eye and speaking with all sincerity, he calmly said, “The game is on you.”
“Why are you telling me that?” Brian said.
“Because it is. It’s gonna be on you.”
Pleasant had known Brian long enough to be fully aware that nothing ever got him going more than a direct challenge. He was just attempting to motivate his friend, trying to push the right button so—as Pleasant would later say—the cream would somehow rise to the top.
The Panthers evened the score with an eight-play, ninety-five-yard drive that ended with Jake Delhomme hitting wide receiver Steve Smith on a thirty-nine-yard touchdown pass. Less than a minute after that, with only eighteen seconds remaining in the first half, the Patriots were right back in the end zone on a five-yard Brady touchdown pass to wide receiver David Givens. So much for the early domination by the defenses. And so much for Brian’s hope to stay hidden on the sideline.
Since joining the Patriots, Brian had been called upon to snap no more than nine times in a game. Now, on the one day he most wanted to remain invisible, he was back on the field for the seventh time in the first half alone. And snap number seven was even worse than the previous one. Brian bounced the ball on the ground this time. Walter once again made a nice save for him and managed to put down a good placement for Vinatieri. The kick was good—putting the Patriots back in front by a
score of 14–7—but how many more times could Walter keep covering for Brian? How many more times before an errant snap would result in something really bad for the Patriots?
Returning to the sideline, Brian saw Belichick coming after him, and he turned away to avoid the wrath of his coach, walking off to the right. But Belichick kept coming.
“What are you doing, Brian? We need better than that out of you. This is the Super Bowl!”
“I know that.”
“Well, you got to get the damn ball back there. You got to get it done.”
“I’ll get it done,” Brian said. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll get it done.”
As Belichick walked away, Brian looked at him and thought something he never would have said out loud to his coach: You’re the one who wanted me here. I didn’t ask for any of this.
The half soon ended with one more score, a last-second, fifty-yard field goal by Carolina kicker John Kasay that cut the Patriots’ lead to 14–10. What a turnaround in the overall flow of the game: after almost twenty-seven minutes without anyone scoring, the teams had combined for an outburst of twenty-four points in slightly more than three minutes.
For fans both in the stadium and watching on televisions all over the world, the halftime entertainment would provide one of the most talked-about moments in the history of the much-celebrated Super Bowl halftime show. Pop singers Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake were not exactly restrained in terms of sexual suggestiveness throughout their performance of “Rock Your Body,” which includes the line “Better have you naked by the end of this song.” Then they went for pure shock value. Timberlake tugged at the top of Jackson’s costume, and the next thing millions of viewers knew, they were being flashed by her right breast. “Wardrobe malfunction,” Timberlake would subsequently claim to almost universal ridicule.
While Jackson and Timberlake were gyrating and gesticulating, Brian—oblivious to anything happening outside the Patriots’ locker room—was sitting and stewing. And he was wondering why. Why could he not compose himself out on the field? Why could he no longer perform with any consistency a never-changing physical task that had always come so easily to him? And then there was the biggest why question of all, the same one he had already asked numerous times during the first half: “Father, why are you doing this to me?”