The Long Snapper

by Jeffrey Marx

  On the Patriots’ sideline, linebacker Don Davis went to his right knee, with his right hand leaning on his helmet, which rested on the ground beside him, and he did what came naturally for him. He put his head down and prayed. His words were directly related to everything he and Brian had talked about—and prayed about—earlier in the week after Brian had talked to Scott Pioli about wanting to leave the team. “Okay, God, this is the moment,” Davis began. “This is why Brian went through all that. He’s covered in prayer. Again, devil, you’re a liar. Get away from him. God, let your glory be shown.”

  Walter took advantage of the time-out to let Brian know that he and Vinatieri had been in a bad spot the first time they had lined up. There was a depression in the ground right where they had set up behind Brian. “See if you can move the ball a little to the right,” Walter said. “About six inches to the right and we’ll be good.”

  On CBS, Greg Gumbel and Phil Simms spoke about Vinatieri and the extremely difficult job of a kicker at a time like this. “There just cannot be any more pressure on a football player,” Simms said. Of course, he had no idea what was going on inside the helmet of the long snapper—that anonymous number forty-six of the Patriots.

  When the second time-out finally came to an end and Brian got back over the ball, he made the slight adjustment to the right and once again gave himself final instructions: Don’t be tentative. Just throw it hard. Other than his own words, Brian could not hear a thing.

  All over Baton Rouge, Parkview students and their families were glued to televisions, waiting to see what would happen. No matter what the outcome, Brian’s seventh graders would certainly have something out of the ordinary to talk about in school the next day.

  Lori Kinchen was sitting in the lower deck of the stadium, section 104, row EE, seat 8. Actually, she was not really sitting so much as she was just all scrunched up in one big bundle of terribly frayed nerves. Lori felt ill, literally sick to her stomach. She knew that if Brian threw a bad snap and cost the Patriots the game, he would never be able to live it down, and the recurring thought of that actually made her feel like she was about to throw up. What will Brian be like if something bad happens? To Lori, this was no longer about winning or losing the Super Bowl. It was about the rest of her husband’s life. It was about the whole future of her family. Austin, Hunter, and McKane had never seen their mom so distraught over a football game. (Logan was sitting elsewhere with other family members.) Tears rolled down Lori’s cheeks. She leaned forward and buried her head in her hands. “I can’t watch,” she said. “I can’t watch.”

  Walter and Vinatieri had a much better spot in the turf this time. Vinatieri kept his eyes on it as Walter put his right hand up in a fist toward the line of scrimmage. When Walter was ready for the ball, he would open his fist, flashing his hand to indicate that the release of the snap would then be up to Brian. Walter wanted so badly to feel the pebbled leather of that ball in his hands. He was convinced that no matter where Brian threw that thing, he was going to make the play and get the ball down for Vinatieri.

  After only a slight pause, Walter flashed his hand. At long last, the moment of truth had arrived. Brian sent his arms back through his legs and unleashed the ball. He followed through with his hands all the way to his target. And Walter could tell from the instant he saw the ball coming: the snap was perfect! It was a tight spiral and directly in line with Walter’s right shoulder—precisely how he wanted it thrown and where he liked to receive it. Walter snatched the ball out of the air as fast as he could, and even the laces were right where he wanted them, facing up, meaning that he could immediately make his placement without first having to turn the ball. Walter had plenty of time to place the ball exactly the way Vinatieri liked it, tilting slightly forward and to the right.

  Vinatieri ripped through the ball with his right foot. And this time the ball went over the Carolina line with plenty of room to spare…appearing to be right on target as it continued climbing and advancing through the air.

  “Looks good!” Greg Gumbel exclaimed on CBS.

  Having done an excellent job of holding his position in the middle of the line, and of staying on his feet throughout the brief but hard-fought battle up front, Brian lifted his eyes and saw the ball going straight between the uprights with plenty of distance and without a moment of doubt. The kick was indeed good! For New England—both the team and the entire geographic region—the celebration was on.

  Brian let loose with a primal scream that was unlike anything else that had ever come out of him. He jumped into the arms of offensive lineman Tom Ashworth, and they held each other in the glorious grip of victory. But wait! An alarming thought crossed Brian’s mind: Is it really over? Any flags on the ground? He quickly surveyed the field. No penalty flags. It’s over! We did it! With one perfect snap of a football, the snap of his life, Brian had gone from total anxiety and fear to absolute joy and jubilation. “Yes!” he shouted straight through the retractable but closed roof of that stadium and into the heavens. “Yes!”

  As CBS showed a slow-motion replay of the game-winning field goal, Gumbel said, “Perfect spot by Walter. The perfect kick by Vinatieri.” There was no mention whatsoever of Brian—just the way any self-respecting long snapper would have wanted the game to finish.

  There was still the minor matter of four seconds remaining in the fourth quarter. But those final ticks of the clock only delayed the inevitable. New England easily shut down the ensuing kickoff return—with reserve linebacker Matt Chatham tackling ball carrier Rod Smart at the Carolina twenty-two-yard line—and Super Bowl XXXVIII was officially over. With a remarkable fifteenth victory in a row (only the 1972 Miami Dolphins had compiled a longer winning streak in a single season), the Patriots were 2003 champions of the National Football League. Players, coaches, and staff stormed the field, jumping, hugging, and shouting with both relief and euphoria. Huge confetti-blowing machines filled the air with the red, white, blue, and silver of the Patriots. Brian had never before been so thrilled—and so thankful—on a field of play. “Just purely elated,” he would later recall, “like a young child getting a dream gift or something.”

  Nineteen

  A portable stage was positioned at the center of the field for the presentation of the Vince Lombardi Trophy that goes to the winner of the Super Bowl. Team owner Robert Kraft, together with Bill Belichick, Scott Pioli, and a few players who starred in the game, would climb onto the platform for the presentation by NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue and brief interviews by Jim Nantz of CBS. The rest of the New England staff and players would watch from the field.

  Brian wanted his wife and children with him to share in the celebration, so he turned away to find them. He walked toward the stands on the Patriots’ side of the field, targeting the general vicinity where Lori and the boys had been sitting, and he looked up through the still-falling confetti. Peering through the face mask of his helmet, which he had not yet bothered to remove from his head, Brian was at first unable to pick his family out of the crowd. He threw up his arms in frustration, but then he found them, and he hurried over to the wall that separated the stands from the area behind the New England bench. A friendly fan helped the Kinchen boys over the wall and passed them down to Brian, one at a time, from youngest to oldest. As Brian gathered in fourteen-year-old Austin, he saw tears of joy rolling down the cheeks of his first child, glistening, as were the braces in his mouth. Austin was at once crying and smiling. He was old enough to know how long and hard his father had worked at the game of football, he was fully aware how much that last snap had to mean to his dad, and he was clearly overwhelmed by the sheer drama of it all. He was so happy and excited that he was simply incapable of controlling his emotions. It was one of the sweetest things Brian had ever seen. Right then, as if on cue, the Queen song “We Are the Champions” started playing over the stadium sound system:

  I’ve paid my dues.

  Time after time.

  Once all the boys were settled on the field
, Lori was the last Kinchen over the wall and into Brian’s arms, literally hanging on him, arms draped over his shoulders—actually over his shoulder pads and jersey—and she, too, was crying. Brian held her in a tight embrace, his face mask banging against the right side of her face and bruising it, but what was a little physical discomfort at a time when she was practically numb with emotional overload?

  “I can’t believe it,” Brian said.

  “I know,” Lori said. “Neither can I. I can’t believe it.”

  Freddie Mercury of Queen was in full throat now:

  No time for losers.

  ‘Cause we are the champions…of the world!

  Brian lowered Lori and stood her on the ground. He cradled McKane in his left arm. And off went the whole family—off to the middle of the field for an up-close view of the trophy ceremony.

  The Kinchens worked their way through a throng of media types, lots of men and women carrying cameras and notebooks, and settled a few feet from the right side of the presentation platform. While Kraft held the Lombardi Trophy and made his acceptance remarks, Brian failed to maintain even a hint of decorum.

  “Hey, Pioli,” he shouted up at the podium, trying to get the attention of the man who four days earlier had persuaded him to stay with the team. “Scott…Scott…Scott!” Pioli finally located the source of the shouting and looked at his longtime friend. “You were right,” Brian said. “You were right.” Pioli smiled, and he saw tremendous emotion filling Brian’s face, reading his expression as equal parts bliss and disbelief. Pioli figured that Brian was probably still working through something of a reality check: Is all of this actually happening? Was I really part of the winning play in the Super Bowl?

  Belichick was next to take the trophy and speak with Jim Nantz. Then came Tom Brady, MVP of the game and now the youngest quarterback to win two NFL championships; and Adam Vinatieri, the first kicker to make game-winning field goals in the final seconds of two different Super Bowls. Nantz had already declared that what had just taken place was “the greatest Super Bowl game in history.” Other football enthusiasts might debate that. If not the greatest, however, it was indisputably one of the most explosive and most exciting of all Super Bowls. After hearing countless predictions of a defensive struggle, New England and Carolina had produced eye-popping numbers on offense. The teams had combined for the second-most net yards (868) in Super Bowl history and in the final fifteen minutes had lit up the scoreboard with the most points (37) ever posted in any quarter of a Super Bowl.

  While Nantz and Vinatieri talked about the overall drama of the game, though, Brian remained stuck on the singular challenge and personal triumph of that final snap. With Belichick still on the presentation platform, Brian yelled out to him several times before finally getting his attention. “Hey, Bill, did I get it done?” Brian shouted. Belichick responded with a quick thumbs-up before turning back to the onstage festivities.

  Soon thereafter, Brian exchanged congratulations with Larry Izzo, the special-teams captain who had been sitting next to him at breakfast. “With the lacerated finger and everything, you got it done, my man,” Izzo said. “I’m happy for you.” Pointing to Brian’s wounded hand, Izzo smiled and finished by saying, “Yeah, that’s legendary now.”

  The on-field frolicking continued for a good while after the CBS interviews were done, and the Lombardi Trophy remained a primary focal point. Players passed it around, posed with it for pictures, and generally treated it as if it were the Hope diamond. While waiting his turn, Brian removed his jersey and shoulder pads, and he said, “Last time I’m taking these off. Ever. Done. The era’s over.” He happily put on an official championship T-shirt and cap.

  When someone finally passed the trophy to Brian, he did not only hold it and stare at it. He also kissed it. Then he laughed at himself for putting his lips to the hardware. “I always thought that’s so stupid when people do that,” he said. But now it was his turn to act a fool. “Yeah, baby!” Brian shouted. “Whooo!” And then he went right back to laughing.

  Once most of the fans had left the stadium and a majority of the players had cleared the field, Gus and Toni Kinchen were able to talk their way past security and down from the stands to see their son. Brian told his parents he was so exhausted—so emotionally spent—that he could hardly even stand.

  Trying to put the intensity of the struggle against Carolina in perspective, New England linebacker Mike Vrabel would later make a comparison to one of the most celebrated boxing rivalries in history: “It was like Ali–Frazier out there. That’s how it felt. We hit them, they hit us, we hit them, they hit us.” Brian had a much grander scale of fighting on his mind. While embracing his dad, he told him that he had battled his way through the game feeling like Gideon, the Old Testament character who led a dramatically outnumbered army of three hundred men to save Israel from the Midianites. Gideon initially felt powerless against such overwhelming odds, but he ultimately conquered his opponent the same way Brian had just gone from feeling helpless to being victorious: by trusting in the providence of God.

  After posing for one last picture on the field—this one with his mother and father in it—Brian looked around and realized that almost all of his teammates had gone inside to continue celebrating in the locker room. “Hey, I’m like the last one out here,” he said. “I think I need to go.” Brian could not take Lori with him. They would later meet up back at the team hotel. But he was not going anywhere without his boys. Brian rounded up Austin, Hunter, Logan (now wearing his dad’s oversize shoulder pads atop his eight-year-old frame), and McKane, and they all walked off the field together: a profoundly relieved and thankful man in his final exit as a professional athlete, and four boys who were just happy to be hanging out with their dad.

  Walking with his sons through a hallway leading to the main area of the New England locker room, Brian glanced in the open door of a small room to his right, and he saw Bill Belichick’s wife, Debby, visiting with a few other Patriots insiders. When he entered the room to say hello, Debby immediately went to hug him, and she also wasted no time before delivering a friendly jab.

  “I’m barely speaking to you,” Debby said. “But thank God you came through in the end!”

  “I know,” Brian said.

  “Congratulations!”

  “I know I put Bill through hell all week.”

  “That’s all right,” she said.

  There was more celebratory hugging and hollering in the locker room. Then Brian went to the training room to have someone unwrap his finger and take a look. Team physician Bert Zarins put three stitches in it. Brian then showered, dressed, and gathered up his belongings, even pulling down the nameplate from above his locker and handing it to Austin for safe keeping. (It would eventually be added to the already overflowing collection of football memorabilia in Brian’s home office.)

  On his way out of the locker room, Brian happened to cross paths with Bill Belichick. They hugged. Then Brian offered an apology: “Sorry about all I put you through the last couple weeks.”

  “Oh, that’s fine, Brian,” Belichick said. “It doesn’t matter. We won. A win is a win.” Brian chuckled at that last statement—a win is a win—because it was such an overused Belichick classic. But it had never before meant as much to Brian as it did now.

  “Thanks for having me,” he told his coach. “Thanks for letting me be a part of all this.”

  Brian took his sons with him on a team bus from the stadium back to the hotel, and they sat in the back row so they could all stretch out together. After a while, having been distracted on his cell phone for a few minutes, Brian noticed that four-year-old McKane had wandered off, not that he could have gone all that far. “Where’s McKane?” Brian asked the other boys, but none of them knew, so Dad went up the aisle looking for him.

  Brian was surprised, and also somewhat embarrassed, when he discovered where his son had ended up. In an aisle seat on the right side of the bus, McKane was sitting in Tom Brady’s lap, chatting
away as if the two of them, one on a weekend getaway from his pre-kindergarten class, the other freshly crowned as MVP of the Super Bowl, were old buddies. McKane did not even know what his seatmate—looking all GQ in his suit and tie and stubble—did for a living. He was simply a random guy on the bus who was nice enough to spend some time with him. Brian apologized to Brady for McKane’s intrusion. But Brady assured his teammate that he had enjoyed the visit.

  “Your kid is awesome, so cute,” he said. “And now I know your home phone number, street address, city, and state.” McKane’s teacher had required him to learn all of that for class, and now it was apparently some of his best material for conversation with an adult. Brian laughed and shook his head. “Everyman” at the Super Bowl had yet another memory to pack away for the rest of his life: the image of his youngest child doing some serious post-game bonding—well, okay, basically just killing time on a bus—with one of the most famous athletes in all of professional sports.

  After the team party in a hotel ballroom, at which everyone was treated to musical performances by Kid Rock and Aerosmith, Lori was too tired to stay awake. But Brian had caught a second wind and was still too wired from all the drama of the game to even think about sleeping, so he turned on the television. He did not count the number of times he watched the same Super Bowl highlights being replayed on ESPN throughout the wee hours of the morning. But no matter how many times he saw the same clips—including footage of the winning field goal—he never stopped enjoying them.