Posted by Os Davis in alternate history, fiction by Os Davis, football, Sports | 2 Comments
Dispatch from Alternate Universe: Remembering Super Bowl XXXVI (St. Louis Rams 23, New England Patriots 17, OT)
For those Americans missing NFL football right about now (and with professional basketball, hockey and soccer mostly at a complete standstill, who could blame you?), BuckBokai supplies a “what if” piece on one of the greatest Super Bowls ever.
No. 36 featured perhaps the biggest upset recorded in the big game, though 12 years, one 16-0 season and “Spygate” later, the collective consciousness has forgotten that the now EEEvil New England Patriots were 17-point underdogs against Kurt Warner and the St. Louis Rams’ offensive machine.
Yours truly originally wrote this piece for a once-fantastic website called Real Football 365, currently reduced to the occasional contribution on the Buffalo Bills. (Ah well, at least Os Davis’ three-year-old posts on the Pats and Detroit Lions are still up there.) BuckBokai figures that, since Bleacher Report can run this story freely, so will we…
You can still hear them mutter about it in New England every year in early February, as the ghosts of that Super Bowl past visits again: If only they’d set it up for Adam Vinatieri…
Now anyone who has had the misfortune to experience me in a mood to discuss Super Bowl XXV – which is to say, anyone – knows by rote my take on The Greatest Game I’ve Ever Seen. Besides, the New York Giants’ victory over the Buffalo Bills in XXV may have been an upset, but it was hardly one of the might-have-been proportions of a New England Patriots upset over the mighty St. Louis Rams. And most fans hold to the conventional wisdom: Overtime game, close game.
To be sure, XXXVI was a dandy. Despite taking on the last dynasty in the game thus far in the second of their three titles, the plucky Patriots and Cinderella second-string quarterback Tom Brady stayed with the Rams. Who can forget how the 17-point underdogs held a lead for three quarters, the continually changing coverage leaving Kurt Warner looking for receivers to no avail? And if the low-watt offense wasn’t producing any great gains, it wasn’t making any mistakes, either.
But then everything collapsed like it had – as any Beantown fan will still willingly inform – for so many New England teams of the 20th century. The St. Louis offense found the way, Ricky Proehl notched his first touchdown, Warner capped another drive with a rare QB-snuck TD of his own and, at a later point than on any Super Sunday, the game was tied.
The rest, as they say, was traumatic up there in the northeast. Bill Belichick called a few conservative plays, Brady threw a single incomplete, and “heads” chose the Patriots’ fate. One long first-down strike to Proehl later and it was over. (Not merely for the game and the assurance of domination by the soon-to-repeat champion Rams, but the medium-term New England future turned on that coin flip.)
To think everything might have been different if Adam Vinatieri, now a faded memory in most places save New England, had gotten out there. This guy who went from obscurity to a reputation for clutch kicking iced (so to speak) with a few key boots in the Tuck Rule Game, working his way into Patriot fans’ hearts.
If New England had somehow found another miracle, as they had time and again in the second half of that 2001 season straight through to the Snow Bowl against Oakland, Bostoners would all remember Ty Law’s game-changing pick in the first half rather than the seminal image the Boston Herald (and every newspaper with a wire photo service) ran the Monday after: A downtrodden Vinatieri standing helpless on the sideline. Made into a symbol, he was never the same kicker and was out of the NFL before the preseason games started.
It’s tough to feel sorry for Boston fans these days, what with the defending champion Red Sox defeating the Yankee “curse” time and again, the resurgent rebuilt Celtics … Heck, some of those losing underdog Patriots even went on to attain their rings: There were Belichick and Law winning one with Indianapolis three years ago, and Brady too got a bit of glory – albeit as a backup – with Jon Gruden’s champion Buccaneer team.
You can’t help but have sympathy for Vinatieri, though. Much is made of the psychology failure of athletes performing under pressure or, in technical terms, “choking.” But the worst thing about the Vinatieri story is that the man wasn’t even given the chance not to succeed and for that he’ll never know if he might have put his team over the top and make the greatest Super Bowl upset ever.
To think everything might have been unimaginably different…
