I’m watching the Patriots flounder against Baltimore and I’m thinking that we might be watching the end of an era. It’s an era that I saw born. Hey, I was right there in the delivery room.
Over the past two weeks, there’s been a lot of talk about the recently ended sports decade and what was the most important story. You could make a case that the most seminal sports moment happened on a snowy night in Foxboro on Jan. 19, 2002. I won’t actually make that case because I’m more interested in global moments or big-issue moments, like the Olympics, the World Cup, the Tour de France or the Bonds steroid record.
But the NFL is the most powerful sports league in the world. The richest league in America. So you could argue that the birth of the Patriots dynasty was the biggest moment of the decade. At least in the U.S.
It was a strange night all the way around. I drove to the game with my former colleague Skip Bayless and had the longest conversation I ever had with him, by virtue of the fact that heavy snow and traffic turned a one-hour drive into a three-hour drive. The night ended with a bunch of my colleagues discovering they had locked their keys in their snow-covered van – way to go Neil!
Despite the snow, many of us went down to the sideline at the customary time: about five minutes left in the game. That was a mistake. Because the NFL was about to change. And it was freezing outside.
I watched Brady drop back to pass, I watched Charles Woodson hit him, I saw Greg Biekert recover the ball. And then – with my teeth chattering – I stood and watched the referees huddle and change the NFL forever. The tuck rule was enforced. The Patriots scored. The game went into overtime. The Patriots won. Lonie Paxton fell in the snow and made a snow angle. Jon Gruden walked off the field for the last time as the Raiders coach. I was about to miss deadline, while still trying to make sense of what had happened.
The fallout changed the rest of the decade in the NFL. The Patriots went on to win the Super Bowl, one that the Raiders very well might have won. Gruden, a few weeks later, was “traded” away from the Raiders to Tampa Bay, where he would win the next Super Bowl against his old team. After that the Raiders collapsed for the remainder of the decade. The Patriots went on to three more Super Bowls, winning two and losing one – after going undefeated, the first team to go 16-0. There was Spy Gate. There was Sexy Tom Brady, boy toy of supermodels. The Patriots became the decade’s glamor team. The Raiders became a laughing stock. Bill Belichick became a surly, slovenly genius – who set the bar for every other coach.
But now Brady and Belichick haven’t won a playoff game since they beat San Diego in January of 2008 in the AFC Championship game. Randy Moss is quitting. Brady doesn’t look the same. Belichick is a little less of a genius. Could be that the era born that snow-covered night of the fortunate “tuck” call is over.
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