THERE were 35 seconds left when Tom Brady’s knee touched the Giants Stadium turf for the final time, and by then the headsets were off the coaches and the inhibitions had all left the players. The Patriots were 30 seconds away . . . 25 . . . 20 . . . from doing what no team has ever done, winning a 16th regular season game.
Bill Belichick started to take the long walk across the field. On other occasions, after other games on this field, his every step has been scrutinized and monitored and analyzed, because headed the other way was Eric Mangini, once his mentor now his nemesis, once his friend and now a deeply-rooted adversary. Fifteen seconds were left … 10 … 5.
This time, it was Tom Coughlin walking toward him, and so this time there were smiles on either end, and good feeling, and good tidings. Once upon a time, Belichick and Coughlin worked together, on the same Bill Parcells staff, and they won themselves a Super Bowl together.
“Great job,” Coughlin said.
“Good luck,” Belichick said.
Now the time was gone and the game was over, a 38-35 win for the Patriots in which they needed every ounce of their talent and every drop of their guile and their guts to get to 16-0. The Giants hit them with a quick first-quarter punch, got knocked down themselves, kept coming after them, held a 28-16 advantage in the third quarter, still held a lead in the fourth.
“The Giants are a very good team,” Belichick said. “They’re a playoff team, and they showed why tonight.”
But the Patriots are a forever team, a team playing for its place in history, and they showed why last night, too. They elicit so many different emotions in so many different people. The hoodie has become a sinister fashion staple. The asterisk we’ve displayed all year long in this newspaper has been an interesting talking point. It drives Patriots fans insane. It makes fans of other teams cackle.
Caught cheating?
Sure they were. They were caught. They paid their debt. And have spent the first 17 weeks of this football season trying to chisel the asterisk away. They have been dominant a lot of the time. They have been down, and found ways to get back up. The Colts had them beat; the Pats came back. The Eagles kept digging uppercuts into their ribs. They survived. The Ravens were one play away from kneecapping them; that play never happened.
And now, on the final Saturday night before the final Sunday of the season, the Giants got after them hard, got after them good, got after them right from the start. Eli Manning was terrific. Brandon Jacobs was tremendous. The stadium, which from the sound of things this week was supposed to become a cross between Faneuil Hall and Fenway Park, was a Giants stadium the whole way, the whole night.
“This,” said Plaxico Burress, recipient of two touchdown passes, “was what I expected the New York Giants to be like all year.”
This, however, is what the New England Patriots have been like all year. They wait you out. They smoke you out. Then they pounce. With 11:25 to play in the game, trailing 28-23, Tom Brady finally aired one out, to where Randy Moss was standing wide open, alone, after Giants safety Gibril Wilson had fallen down. Brady, for one of about six times all year, underthrew the ball.
“I needed some redemption,” he would say.
It wasn’t the same play. It wasn’t the same route. But it was damn close enough. The very next play, there was Brady crow-hopping in the pocket, unleashing another perfect parabola. And there was Moss, who was even more open this time even though nobody had fallen down, same part of the field, running under Brady’s bomb like Willie Mays at the Polo Grounds.
The Giants lead was gone. The Meadowlands was silent, save for those vibrant cells of Stub-Hub customers wearing Pats gear. There was still plenty of football game left. But the Patriots weren’t going to lose now, not against these 2007 Giants, not if the ’86 Giants had come out of the tunnel to help, backed up by the ’72 Dolphins.
“We were challenged,” Belichick said, “and we responded.”
The Patriots’ season isn’t over, their script is incomplete, but for a few days they won’t worry about that. For now, and forever, they will be 16-0 across this regular season, and their swagger off the field said it all: Everyone else can kiss their asterisk.