 New
England's Otis Smith, right, celebrates an interception with
Antwan Harris on Sunday. (AFP) |
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 3 -- A kick that will be remembered as long as football is played gave the New England Patriots the most startling Super Bowl upset in more than three decades. Quarterback Tom Brady played the role of Joe Namath, minus the victory guarantee. The defense did most of the heavy lifting, and Adam Vinatieri's 48-yard field goal as time expired beat the St. Louis Rams, 20-17, tonight before 72,922 at the Louisiana Superdome.
"We shocked the world today," Patriots cornerback Otis Smith said, and no one was arguing with him.
Super Bowl XXXVI was football theater at its best. The Rams wiped out a 17-3, fourth-quarter deficit and tied it on a 26-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Kurt Warner to wide receiver Ricky Proehl with 1 1/2 minutes left.
But Brady directed the Patriots down the field, getting them in position with a 23-yard completion to wide receiver Troy Brown and a six-yard throw to tight end Jermaine Wiggins. Brady spiked the ball to stop the clock with seven seconds left, and Vinatieri's kick sailed between the uprights -- just about dead center -- to avert the first overtime in Super Bowl history.
"I didn't have a lot of time to think about it," Vinatieri said. "I was just trying to get it up in the air and hope it goes through."
Vinatieri won three games for the Patriots this season with overtime field goals, including their dramatic comeback victory over the Oakland Raiders in the snow in Foxboro, Mass., in the second round of the AFC playoffs -- the game in which Brady's would-be losing fumble was overturned by an instant-replay review. This was the first Super Bowl in which the winning score came on the final play.
"He's been a clutch player for us," Coach Bill Belichick said. "When Adam hit it, it was so true. It was high. It was long. It was right down the middle. . . . I know we'll probably be underdogs next week, but that's okay."
Said New England running back Antowain Smith: "Nobody gave us a chance in hell to win this game, but we believed in ourselves and went out and executed the game plan our coaches made for us."
The Patriots entered as two-touchdown underdogs but had said all week that, while they respected the Rams, they knew they could compete. They said nothing would be more appropriate than a team named the Patriots winning this Super Bowl, played amid locked-down security and patriotic zeal. They also figured they would have to score a touchdown on defense or special teams to win.
They were right on all counts. They took the lead on a touchdown by cornerback Ty Law on a 47-yard return of a second-quarter interception. They converted a fumble by Ricky Proehl into another first-half touchdown, this one on an eight-yard pass from Brady to wide receiver David Patten in the final moments of the half. Otis Smith set up a third-quarter field goal by Vinatieri with another interception and long return.
The Patriots kept the high-powered Rams offense, led by Kurt Warner and running back Marshall Faulk, bottled up for most of the evening. The Rams had 427 total yards, including 365 passing yards by Warner, but hurt themselves with turnovers and didn't get things going until the late stages.
"Any time you don't win your last game, it hurts," said Warner, who completed 28 of his 44 passes. "It's going to take a while to get over it, but we'll be back. . . . I don't think we were overconfident. I think we played hard and well most of the game. It was just those mistakes that we made that ended up in points for them."
It marked the second time in three seasons that the Rams were involved in a Super Bowl decided on the final play. The last time, they won when the Tennessee Titans came up a yard shy of a tying touchdown. This time they lost, and Warner was left answering questions about whether his ailing right thumb had been the difference.
"I hit it three or four times," he said. "I didn't really worry about it. I knew it was something I had to fight through. I felt good enough to win the football game, and I just didn't do it. I don't think they did anything we weren't prepared for. We just didn't get it done."
St. Louis's only first-half points came on a 50-yard field goal by Jeff Wilkins, opening the scoring late in the first quarter. The Rams got to 17-10 on Warner's two-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter, just after a defensive holding penalty on the Patriots negated another defensive touchdown on a length-of-the-field return of a Warner fumble.
But the Patriots again found a way to win and the 24-year-old Brady, bad ankle and all, became the youngest quarterback to win a Super Bowl. New England's unlikely triumph took its place next to the 16-7 victory by Namath and the New York Jets over the Baltimore Colts on Jan. 12, 1969, in Super Bowl III.
All that was missing was a Namath-like pregame proclamation by Brady, who said tonight: "I was confident. But you don't have to go out and tell people that. You just have to be confident in yourself."
Brady completed 16 of 27 passes for 145 yards and was named the game's most valuable player to cap a week in which he was not named the starting quarterback until Wednesday, after he showed Belichick in practice that his sprained left ankle was sound.
Belichick had seen the Rams operate in the Patriots' 24-17 loss in November in Foxboro. He made it clear in the early going tonight that his approach would be to blitz only occasionally, more often dropping six or seven defensive backs into pass coverage. That meant the Patriots would have to cash in when they did take chances. Law had pointed out during the week that the Patriots had five interception returns for touchdowns during the season, and they would look to score on defense.
"I don't think they took us for granted," Law said tonight. "But I don't think they knew they were in for the kind of fight they were in for."
Warner got his lip bloodied on the Rams' second drive but led St. Louis to a field goal and a 3-0 edge. Wilkins nailed the third-longest field goal in Super Bowl history.
The Patriots took a chance on defense early in the second quarter and went after Warner, and it paid off handsomely. New England went with five defensive linemen and sent linebacker Mike Vrabel on a blitz. The Rams weren't ready, and Vrabel went unblocked. He hit Warner with a forearm as Warner got off his pass toward wideout Isaac Bruce. The ball sailed off target. Law made the grab and raced down the sideline, and the Patriots had the defensive touchdown they coveted.
Late in the first half, Warner connected with Proehl for a 15-yard catch and run. But safety Antwan Harris jarred the ball free. Cornerback Terrell Buckley made the recovery, and the Patriots were in business at the Rams 40-yard line with 1 minute 20 seconds left in the half.
Brown turned a screen pass into a 16-yard gain. Brady hit Wiggins for eight yards and, after an incompletion toward Patten in the end zone, backup tailback Kevin Faulk went wide left for an eight-yard run and a first down at the Rams 8.
Brady wasted no time. On first down, Patten faked toward the sideline and slipped behind cornerback Dexter McCleon. Brady put his throw on target and Patten made a leaping catch in the back of the end zone 31 seconds before the intermission. An instant-replay review confirmed that Patten had landed in bounds, and New England took a shocking 14-3 lead to the locker room.
On a third-and-five play from the New England 45 in the third quarter, Warner threw another costly interception, although this one wasn't his fault. Wide receiver Torry Holt got tangled with Smith as he tried to run a slant pattern. Holt fell. He got up, but by then the pass was too far in front of him. Smith made the interception and provided a 30-yard return to the Rams 33. The Patriots' offense couldn't get in the end zone, but Vinatieri's kick from 37 yards was true to make it a 17-3 game.
The Rams didn't wilt, moving down the field for a first down at the Patriots 9. A six-yard completion and two near interceptions left the Rams with a fourth-and-goal play at the 3. Warner scrambled for the goal line but didn't get there, and fumbled as he was hit by linebacker Roman Phifer. Safety Tebucky Jones scooped up the ball and raced practically the length of the field for what could have been a clinching touchdown. But linebacker Willie McGinest had tackled Marshall Faulk as the running back tried to run a pass pattern, and the defensive holding penalty gave the Rams another chance. Warner got in from the 2 on a second-down play, and St. Louis was back within a touchdown with 9 1/2 minutes to go.
The Rams got the ball at their 45 with 1:51 remaining and no timeouts. No matter. They needed only three plays and 21 seconds to get even. The tying touchdown came when Proehl got open, hauled in Warner's pass, maneuvered around Jones and dove into the end zone with 1 1/2 minutes to play.