by Jeffrey Marx
In the third quarter, the game looked a lot like the opening minutes again—not much offense and a whole lot of defense. The Patriots punted twice in the quarter, and Brian was very pleased to throw two good snaps. He was also able to hustle downfield and get involved at the end of both plays. The first punt hit the ground without the Panthers fielding it, and it took a bad bounce for the Patriots, back toward the line of scrimmage, after which Brian downed the ball at the Carolina forty-two-yard line. It was not too often that the same guy who started a play by snapping the ball also ended up collecting it downfield, an oddity that Brian enjoyed. The second punt actually gave him an opportunity to reverse the usual direction of punishment for a long snapper. Instead of the normal routine of being clobbered by very large men, he was finally able to make a hit, lowering his right shoulder and assisting teammate Je’Rod Cherry on the tackle of return man Steve Smith at the Carolina twenty-yard line. It was the first time since joining the Patriots that Brian had gotten in on a tackle, and it felt good. Perhaps the tide had turned for him.
The third quarter ended with Brian having made a total of nine snaps. He was never going to make a highlight film out of them. But he had at least survived three-fourths of the game without doing anything that ended up hurting his team. Now all he needed was more points for the Patriots. At 14–10 with only a quarter left to play, the score was still too close for comfort. The absolute worst scenario Brian ever could have imagined—an undecided game with time running down and the Patriots needing a field goal—still remained a very real possibility. One thought kept flooding his mind: Come on, guys, let’s put this thing away.
On the second play of the fourth quarter, New England running back Antowain Smith scored on a two-yard touchdown run—and Brian’s snap and the extra point were good—to give the Patriots the biggest lead of the game at 21–10. But the Panthers stormed right back with a touchdown on a thirty-three-yard run by DeShaun Foster. Trailing by five points, they went for a two-point conversion that would have put them within a field goal of the Patriots. The attempt failed, and the score remained the same, 21–16. Not for long, though. The next time the Panthers got the ball, deep in their own territory, wide receiver Muhsin Muhammad got behind the New England secondary, and Jake Delhomme unleashed what turned into an eighty-five-yard bomb for both a touchdown and the first Carolina lead of the day. The Panthers again went for two points, and again failed to convert, so the score was 22–21 with 6:53 left to play.
It was the first time since November 23, ten weeks earlier, that the Patriots had fallen behind in a game. Brian had absolute confidence that Tom Brady and the offense would move the ball down the field again. He was also terribly nervous about the potential ramification of that scenario. Would the Patriots only make it far enough to try a field goal, meaning Brian would be required to throw the most pressure-packed and scrutinized snap of his life? Or would they be able to score a touchdown and thereby allow Brian to stay away from the drama he so desperately wanted to avoid? Brian prayed: Please, God, let us score a touchdown so we don’t have to kick a field goal. And then we can go for two so we don’t even have to kick an extra point.
Brian would never know whether it was actually God or just a bunch of teammates who answered his prayer. Either way, he was tremendously relieved when the offense completed an eleven-play, sixty-eight-yard drive by scoring a go-ahead touchdown (on a one-yard Brady pass to Mike Vrabel) with only 2:51 left on the clock. Ahead by five points, the Patriots indeed elected to go for a two-point conversion, and they were successful, on a Kevin Faulk run, which gave them a lead of 29–22. Thank you, Lord. With so little time remaining, Brian did not think it possible that the Panthers would again come back against the best defense in the NFL.
But he was wrong. What had started as a defensive slugfest had somehow escalated into a full-scale offensive shootout, and Carolina was by no means out of ammunition. The Panthers started on their own twenty. As they moved down the field, Brian kept telling himself: This cannot be happening. After seven plays, though, the Panthers were right where they wanted to be, back in the end zone, on a twelve-yard touchdown pass from Delhomme to wide receiver Ricky Proehl. The extra point was good, tying the score at 29–29. So much for all the predictions of a low-scoring and perhaps even dull game. This was already one of the most exciting Super Bowls in history—and it could very well be the first to stretch into overtime.
“Now the only question is have the Carolina Panthers left too much time on the clock for the New England Patriots?” analyst Daryl “Moose” Johnston said on the primary international telecast. “We’re sitting here with 1:08 left to go in regulation time. Does Adam Vinatieri have a chance to redeem himself with a game-winning field goal in regulation?” Brian did not hear any of that on the sideline, of course, but he would have been hard-pressed to formulate a more terrifying collection of syllables. A field goal to win it in the final seconds? Lord, no. Please, no. Anything but that. With his friend and former teammate John Kasay preparing to kick off for Carolina, Brian would have given just about anything in the world to see a return all the way for a touchdown. If that were not to occur, he would be equally thrilled to see Brady make a heroic touchdown pass to win the game. Once they had the ball on offense, though, the Patriots probably would not be aggressive enough for that to happen, Brian thought. Much to his dismay, they would probably just try to get in position to win the game on a last-second field goal, meaning he would be mercilessly thrown into harm’s way.
The chance of a game-winning kickoff return—slim as it was—quickly disappeared altogether due to a stunning mistake by Kasay. Trying to kick the ball into the right corner of the field, he instead hooked it out of bounds at about the eighteen-yard line. He would later say that when he ripped through the ball with his left foot, he caught it a little high and outside. It was only a matter of inches…but a monumental error. Although the bad kick eliminated any opportunity for the Patriots to score on a return, it also meant that they would start on offense with excellent field position, all the way out at their forty-yard line.
Field goal, Brian thought. It’s all coming down to a field goal. There’s no way out of it. Both his heart and mind were racing. He threw some practice snaps into a net on the sideline—pretending that each snap was the real thing and repeatedly reminding himself to relax and release to the target. If he had to go on the field, that was the one prevailing thought he wanted to have in his head: just relax and release to the target.
He paced. He prayed. Please, Lord, if this is happening, please give me the strength I’m going to need. He looked up and watched as Brady started moving the team forward. Two completions to Troy Brown put the Patriots at the Carolina forty-four-yard line. Still a shot at a touchdown? Any chance at all?
Only twenty seconds remained. Brady picked up four more yards on a pass to tight end Daniel Graham, then called for a time-out. With fourteen seconds left and the ball on the forty, the end zone was pretty much out of the question. The Patriots were definitely thinking field goal, and they had time for one more play to get within range for Vinatieri. Offensive coordinator Charlie Weis called for a play known in Patriots lingo as “Gun Trips Right 80 Rock OPEQ.” In basic English, it meant that wide receivers Troy Brown and Deion Branch would run a combination route on the right side of the field, with Brown shallow and Branch running a deep out pattern toward the sideline. Depending on the defense, Brady could go to either guy. Taking the snap in shotgun formation, he quickly surveyed the defense and saw the Panthers go hard after the shallow route, meaning that Branch would probably break open farther down the field…and that was exactly the way it played out. Branch made his cut toward the sideline, Brady put the ball right where it needed to be, and the Patriots had a seventeen-yard gain to the Carolina twenty-three. With nine seconds left, they immediately called their final time-out.
It was time for the field-goal unit.
Brian was standing on the left side of the bench, opposite the end of t
he field into which the Patriots would be kicking. Ken Walter, already up by the sideline, turned and called to him, “Kinch, Kinch, we’re on the field.” And out they went—along with Adam Vinatieri.
Forty-eight days earlier, Brian had been minding his own business with a collection of seventh graders in the comfortable seclusion of a small classroom in Louisiana. The next day, after his tryout with the Patriots, he had stood in the team cafeteria at Gillette Stadium and told Bill Belichick: “…whoever you choose will probably have the team’s entire season in his hands at some point.” Sure enough, that moment was about to come.
Nothing else mattered now. Not the thirteen years of professional football Brian had played before this whole remarkable odyssey with the Patriots. Not the hundreds of snaps he had thrown into pillows back at the hotel or the long I-want-out conversation with Scott Pioli. Not even his weak start in the first half or the invisible blanket of dread in which he had remained tightly wrapped—suffocatingly so—as the final minutes of the fourth quarter had ticked away. None of that mattered now because his entire career in athletics was about to be forever defined and branded, for good or for bad, by one upside-down, backward toss of a football. And no matter what the outcome, it would walk this world with Brian—more indelible than any tattoo—for the rest of his days.
Eighteen
Eight hundred miles away, Harper LeBel was at his home in Suwanee, Georgia, watching the game on television in his bedroom. He had never liked to attend Super Bowl parties because he preferred to concentrate on the game without the distractions of a social gathering. And this was exactly the kind of situation where he wanted to be totally locked in. After all, that guy running out on the field with Adam Vinatieri and Ken Walter could very well have been him. Seven weeks earlier, LeBel had been extremely disappointed when the Patriots did not select him to be their new long snapper after the tryout at which he had auditioned along with Brian and two others. Ever since then, he had been watching the Patriots to see how they would finish the season.
Now he had such mixed feelings: Man, I wish that was me out there…so easily could have been. But what a great situation for Brian. Part of a last-second field goal to win the Super Bowl? What better scenario could you possibly make up? This is awesome. Perfect! It’s what you dream about.
Of course, LeBel had no way of knowing that while he was thinking of it as an ideally fashioned dream, Brian was just trying to survive what for him felt much more like a no-way-out nightmare.
Jogging onto the field, clinging to whatever hint of composure he had left, Brian told himself: Just eliminate everything else—just block out everything else—and get it done.
Walter and Vinatieri gave each other a fist bump.
“Let’s do this,” Walter said.
Mark Bavaro was watching with his wife, Susan, at their home in Boxford, Massachusetts. Having had that lunch with Brian two days before the Patriots left Boston for the Super Bowl, Bavaro knew better than almost anyone that the ball was about to be in the wrong guy’s hands. Earlier in the game, after seeing Brian bounce snaps on both a punt and an extra point, Bavaro had concluded: “He’s lost it. If this game comes down to a field goal, the Patriots are screwed. I cannot believe fate has taken this turn for this poor guy.” And now? If Bavaro were forced to make a bet, his money would have to be on Brian blowing the snap. Bavaro could not bring himself to say the words out loud, but his overriding thought was: Boy, you know, sometimes God is just cruel. That was how bad he felt for Brian. Bavaro was still hoping that everything would somehow turn out okay for his friend. He was praying for Brian. But he also feared that the circumstances were simply overwhelming.
One thing was certain: the Panthers would be charging hard to try to get their second field-goal block of the day. Carolina special-teams coach Scott O’Brien had not changed his plan of attack since that block in the second quarter. The Panthers would again be loading up inside and trying to use the “A” gap between Brian and the left guard to create a point of entry and get a hand on the ball. Obviously, this was a must-rush situation for Carolina, with all eleven guys coming, and everyone knew that. The way O’Brien saw it, the outcome would be determined by the most basic element of football: execution. Our execution versus theirs.
Larry Izzo suddenly thought about the knife incident at breakfast. Standing on the sideline with fellow linebacker Ted Johnson, Izzo no longer thought it was so funny that the long snapper had done such a silly thing just hours before the game.
“Oh, no, Kinchen’s hand!” Izzo said.
“Oh, geez,” Johnson said.
And they left it at that.
The stadium sound system blared KC and the Sunshine Band’s 1976 hit “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty” during the time-out. As terrified as Brian was, it could have been playing Beethoven and he never would have known the difference. How rattled was he? When the Patriots’ field-goal unit huddled up to prepare for action, Brian was supposed to stand directly across from Ken Walter, but he instead planted himself immediately to the left of the holder. “Kinch, get in the huddle,” Walter told his friend.
On the Carolina sideline, thirteen-year NFL veteran John Kasay, one of the most reliable and admired players in Panthers history, stood with his arms folded across his chest, slowly shaking his head. He felt so responsible for the fact that the Patriots were about to line up for what might be the winning kick. It made no difference to him that the 2003 season would always be remembered as one of his best or that the Panthers might not even be in the Super Bowl without all that he had done with his left foot. So what if he had established a team record by making twenty-two consecutive field goals without a miss and had converted four game-winning kicks of his own? All he could think about was the out-of-bounds kickoff that had allowed the Patriots to start this drive on the forty-yard line and had greatly contributed to the position they were now in.
I cannot believe this, Kasay thought.
He had long followed a self-imposed rule for moments like this. Kasay would never allow himself to wish a bad kick on an opposing kicker because he knew exactly how it felt to miss one, and he certainly understood the consequences. He had seen a lot of people lose their jobs. No, he could never bring himself to wish ill on the opposing kicker, not even in the Super Bowl, not even when he wanted so desperately to somehow get back on the field and do something to atone for his costly kickoff. Arms crossed and head shaking, Kasay was entirely helpless. All he could do was watch and wait.
Brian did not bother moving to his assigned spot in the huddle, but it really made no difference. How could such a formality possibly matter now? With Brian by his side, Walter spoke in his usual role as play-caller for the field-goal team. “Guys, this is for the world championship,” he said. “We’ve already had one blocked today. Do whatever you got to do. World champs! Field goal on Kinch.” Instead of relying on the snap count of a quarterback, the way an offense would, the field-goal team would simply jump into action whenever Brian made his first movement, and those last words were to remind everyone of that. “Field goal on Kinch. Ready. Break!”
Approaching the line of scrimmage, Brian told himself: I’ll remember this moment for the rest of my life. This will define my career. So much for being able to block out everything but his mantra of relaxing and releasing. Making things even worse, his mind then took an abrupt dive to a terribly negative pairing of images: He thought of Trey Junkin throwing the bad snap that cost the New York Giants a playoff game the year before. And he briefly contemplated the ugly, painful concept of throwing the ball over Walter’s head. With so much at stake, such a blunder would be dramatically worse even than the Junkin fiasco that had generated so much media attention and had caused so much anguish for the man and his family.
Junkin and his wife, Sarah, were home in Winnfield, Louisiana, watching every moment of the Super Bowl coverage on CBS. Trey had heard that Brian was back in the NFL after having been out for a few years, but he had no idea that he’d been
having such a difficult time. Before the game had even started, Trey and Sarah had talked about Brian, and Trey had told her, “He’ll be fine as long as he doesn’t think about what he’s doing. That’s what got me in trouble—too much thinking.” Now that Brian was about to make the biggest snap of his life, Junkin returned to the same thought. In the silence of his mind, Junkin offered his advice to the man who was currently the loneliest long snapper on the planet: Don’t think about what you need to do with the ball. Just get in your stance and fire it back there the same way you have always done it.
All eyes would soon be on the football now resting at the twenty-three-yard line. Before lowering himself over the ball, Brian slightly lifted his right leg and gently flexed it at the knee, then did the same with his left leg. An intentional last-second stretch? Or was it simply a matter of nerves having their way with him? Brian would never really know. He was in quite a fog by this point. Walter and Vinatieri had already picked out their spot in the turf at the thirty-one-yard line—the field-goal attempt would be a forty-one yarder from there—and the fingers of Walter’s left hand were fixed on it so that Vinatieri could lock in on the target. The last thing Brian said to himself was: Don’t be tentative. You cannot be tentative.
Brian positioned himself over the ball. He worked his hands to get a good grip on it. But then one of the game officials, umpire Jeff Rice, suddenly jumped in from behind the Carolina line to stop the whole thing. He was waving his arms over his head to signal a stoppage in play before it even started. The Panthers were taking a time-out of their own. It was nothing unusual for an opponent to try to ice a kicker and force him to think a little more at such a critical moment. What the Panthers could not have known, though, was that they had really been thinking about the wrong guy. The long snapper was the one who most felt like he was being put in a deep freeze.