Last weekend, Tom Brady joined the most elite of NFL quarterback groups, the QBs who won four Super Bowls in their careers. Brady was the third to achieve that feat.
The other two are Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana.
There were plenty of times in the last decade when Brady must have wondered if he would ever win his fourth Super Bowl ring. In fact, he did get a couple of opportunities in the last 10 years, but the Patriots lost both to the New York Giants.
Brady has now played in six Super Bowls, more than any other quarterback. But the gap between his most recent victory and his triumph last Sunday was almost exactly 10 years.
Ten years ago today, the Patriots took on the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX in Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida. It was New England's third appearance in four years.
The Eagles were playing in a Super Bowl for the first time in a quarter of a century. The Patriots were back after being absent from the big game the year before.
Brady had a good game, completing 23 of 33 passes for 236 yards and two touchdowns, but he wasn't named the MVP. That went to receiver Deion Branch, who caught 11 of those passes for 133 yards.
It may have been the most consistently close Super Bowl ever played. Neither team scored in the first quarter, and both teams managed to score a touchdown in the second and third quarters. Heading into the fourth quarter, it was 14–14.
The fourth quarter began with the Patriots marching downfield. The drive began at their own 34 with 3:35 left in the third quarter and concluded at the 13:49 mark of the fourth quarter with Corey Dillon scoring a touchdown from two yards out. Dillon was in his first season with the Patriots after seven fruitless years in Cincinnati, and he led all rushers in this, his only Super Bowl appearance, on this day 10 years ago.
New England padded the lead a few minutes later with Adam Vinatieri's 22–yard field goal. Nearly midway through the final period, one of the teams finally had a two–score lead, but it wouldn't last. Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb led Philadelphia downfield for a touchdown with just under two minutes to play, and the Eagles were within a field goal of tying the game and sending it to overtime.
But New England recovered the onside kick and went on to claim its third Super Bowl title.
Dillon was on the winning side, and that is almost always where you'll find the Super Bowl MVPs. (Chuck Howley of the Dallas Cowboys took home the MVP in spite of losing Super Bowl V to the Baltimore Colts, but he is the only exception to the rule.)
That being the case, it is only natural to wonder who would have been the MVP if the Eagles had won.
McNabb is as likely a candidate as any. He completed almost as many passes as Brady did (30 of 51) for 357 yards and three touchdowns. But he also threw three interceptions, two of which came on New England's side of the field.
Try as he might, McNabb just couldn't lift the Eagles past the Patriots. They lost by three points — just as the Rams and Panthers did before them. By comparison, last Sunday's four–point win over the Seahawks was a breeze.
Actually, in the Tom Brady era, the Patriots have played in six Super Bowls, and each was decided by less than a touchdown. New England's two losses to the New York Giants were by four points or less.
Later today, the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens will meet in Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans.
As you have no doubt heard, there are many dramatic storylines in this year's Super Bowl — the first time brothers will be coaching against one another, the final NFL game for Baltimore's Ray Lewis, etc.
And CSNCalifornia.com's Lee Siegel writes that, if they win today, the 49ers will be 6–0 in the Super Bowl, matching Michael Jordan and the Bulls in the NBA.
As dynasties go, I guess Jordan's Bulls have become the gold standard.
But the comparison of the Bulls and the 49ers is a bit of a stretch. Jordan really did participate in six championship–winning efforts in Chicago. The 49ers won their first four Super Bowls in truly Jordanesque style — behind the leadership of Joe Montana. But the fifth was won behind Montana's successor, Steve Young, and today's squad will be led by a fellow who was in elementary school the last time San Francisco hoisted the Lombardi Trophy. He hadn't been born when Montana won his first two Super Bowls.
And Siegel acknowledges that fact — albeit somewhat grudgingly — when he writes that, even though it will have taken three quarterbacks to accomplish it, a victory today still will be "yet another feather in the cap of this area and this franchise."
The game's final outcome will determine which storyline is the most relevant and the most intriguing, I suppose.
But today's Super Bowl will have to go some to match the drama of the Super Bowl that was played five years ago today.
On that day, the New England Patriots were the first team in 35 years to enter the Super Bowl with a perfect record — and, if they won the game, they would be only the second team to win every regular season and every postseason game — the first since the 1972 Miami Dolphins.
That alone probably rendered that game more dramatic than the one that will be played today.
But then the Giants, who were 12–point underdogs, snatched history away from the shocked Patriots, who had become the Dolphins (well, perhaps, more like the Steelers — or even the 49ers) of their generation with three Super Bowl appearances in the previous six years.
The Patriots had won all three of those Super Bowls, including a last–second triumph over the St. Louis Rams, widely regarded at the time as the NFL's greatest franchise.
Considering how Tom Brady and the Patriots had ruled the NFL in the first decade of the 21st century (not to mention the AFC's Eastern Division), it was logical to assume that an unbeaten New England team, with all that postseason experience on its roster, would crush the Giants, a mere wild–card entry.
Wild cards, of course, weren't part of the NFL's postseason landscape in the 1960s, but ever since 1970, there has been at least one in every playoff picture. In those 37 seasons, only eight wild cards had ever made it as far as the Super Bowl — only four had won it all.
It's safe to say that nearly everyone (with the noteworthy exception of Giants fans) assumed New England would win — and most probably assumed Brady would win his third Super Bowl MVP as well.
Not only had wild cards rarely prevailed in the Super Bowl, but there had been relatively few Super Bowls that were truly competitive — at least in the first 30 or 35 years of its existence — regardless of whether a wild card played in them.
Football fans in the 21st century have grown accustomed to close scores in Super Bowls — thanks largely (but not exclusively) to the Patriots, who may have dominated their conference but won each of those three Super Bowls by three–point margins. Perhaps, in hindsight, that was something of a warning of what to expect.
For decades, the Super Bowl was frequently seen as a rather anticlimactic championship game in which one team dominated the other. There were some competitive games — but they were considered the exceptions to the rule.
The first decade of the 21st century produced more single–score margins than any decade since the Super Bowl era began yet, when the game began five years ago today, the two most recent Super Bowls had been won by more than a single score.
Those scores hadn't been nearly as lopsided as many Super Bowls that were played in the 20th century, but they were sufficient to make some people (especially football people, not just casual fans) wonder if the NFL was returning to a time when wide margins were the norm.
What happened on this day five years ago drove such thoughts far from observers' minds. What happened five years ago today was probably one of the most astonishing upsets in football history — more astonishing than when Broadway Joe led the Jets past the Colts in Super Bowl III.
I guess it took a team from Broadway to do it.
It was dramatic from the start. The Giants opened the game with the longest drive in Super Bowl history (including a record four third–down conversions). The drive consumed nearly 10 minutes, but the Giants ultimately had to settle for a field goal.
After taking a 3–0 lead in the first quarter, the Giants fell behind at halftime, 7–3. That was still the score when the fourth quarter began. It's safe to say that few who were watching that day, either at University of Phoenix Stadium or on TV, anticipated what happened in the fourth quarter.
There were three lead changes in that fourth quarter — first, Eli Manning led the Giants down the field for a touchdown, giving New York a 10–7 advantage. Then Brady retaliated with a touchdown pass to Randy Moss (who will participate in the Super Bowl later today), giving New England a 14–10 lead with less than three minutes to play.
But then came the kind of moment that can define a football player's professional career, for good or ill.
And, in the case of Eli Manning, it was for good. He drove the Giants more than 80 yards and threw the winning touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress with about 30 seconds to play.
But he might not have been in the position to throw that pass if he had not completed an improbable third down pass to David Tyree, who caught the first go–ahead TD pass earlier in the quarter.
In a catch that really defied description, Tyree outleaped the defender and made a one–handed grab in which the ball appeared to be stuck between his hand and his helmet.
The catch gained more than 30 yards for the Giants, who scored the go–ahead touchdown a few plays later. Manning, who completed 19 of 34 passes for 255 yards and two touchdowns, was named the game's MVP.
When Manning and the Giants beat the Patriots again four years later, he eclipsed his older brother Peyton, who, to date, has one Super Bowl title.
But even if Peyton matches his brother in Super Bowl victories, he will probably never match what his brother did five years ago today ... when Eli denied the Patriots their bid for perfection.
Such a thing is frequently said of a championship game, but Super Bowl XXXVI, which was played 10 years ago today, really was one for the books.
It was the first Super Bowl ever played in February.
If you're under 20, you might not have a clear memory of a time when Super Bowls were always played in January, but in the decade since Super Bowl XXXVI was played, only one Super Bowl has been played in January. The rest — including the one that will be played this Sunday — have been in February — and it certainly has the look of a permanent change.
The fact that the Super Bowl was played in February 10 years ago was completely unintentional. It was a consequence of the Sept. 11 attacks and the fact that the NFL postponed all the games that were scheduled for the weekend after the attacks.
Those games eventually were made up the weekend after the regular season was scheduled to end, pushing the start of the playoffs back by a week. The Super Bowl originally had been scheduled for Jan. 27, but it was moved instead to Feb. 3.
Super Bowl host cities are chosen years in advance, and other events are often planned for the week leading up to the game. Local businesses plan to cash in on all that Super Bowl windfall — which is never limited to game day alone.
(Here in Dallas, for example, where last year's Super Bowl was played, there were stories of private citizens who were renting out personal property for up to two weeks — for thousands of dollars per day. And, in spite of an ice storm that virtually crippled the area in the week leading up to the big game, hotels, restaurants and transportation providers still did a thriving business. Some reportedly raised their fees just for the occasion.)
There wasn't any wiggle room for adjusting the schedule to allow for something like a terrorist attack a decade ago.
In the past, there had been a bye week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. If a bye week had been scheduled 10 years ago, it could have been sacrificed to make up the lost regular–season games, and the Super Bowl still could have been played on Jan. 27.
But the bye week had been temporarily dropped during a transition period in which the start of the NFL season had been moved to the weekend after Labor Day. That meant there was no bye week to drop in order to accommodate the lost games and keep the Super Bowl on its original schedule.
It was the first time that the lead changed on the final play of the Super Bowl.
There have been a few Super Bowls in which the outcome was unknown until sometime in the final minute, and sometimes it went down to the last seconds. But Super Bowl XXXVI was the first — and, so far, only — one that had a lead change on the final play.
In fact, there was no leader when the teams lined up for that final play. The score was tied, and just about everyone must have assumed we were about to witness the first Super Bowl to go into overtime.
But the New England Patriots engineered a remarkable drive, capped by an even more remarkable field goal by Adam Vinatieri to beat the heavily favored St. Louis Rams as time ran out.
Even though he was on the losing side, Rams quarterback Kurt Warner had the second–most productive passing day in Super Bowl history — second only to the day he had two years earlier when the Rams beat the Tennessee Titans.
Warner's numbers (365 yards in February 2002, more than 400 yards in January 2000) seemed appropriate for a team that had been dubbed "The Greatest Show on Turf." The Rams of those years piled up big yardage and incredible scores almost every time they played and are remembered by many as one of the greatest offensive units in pro football history.
But, for some reason, they seemed to encounter immovable objects when they got to the Super Bowl.
The reputation of the Patriots' Tom Brady had not yet been established 10 years ago.
When the 2001 regular season began, Brady was the team's #2 quarterback behind Drew Bledsoe, but he was pressed into full–time service when Bledsoe went down with an injury in the second game of the season.
It's safe to say Patriots fans never missed him.
New England was 0–2 following the game in which Bledsoe was injured. The Patriots were 11–3 the rest of the way with Brady at the helm, even though he was only in his second year and had thrown just three passes on the pro level before Bledsoe was hurt.
Warner finished the game with gaudier numbers, but Brady won a ring.
He's added two more to his personal collection since then, but this Sunday he will be seeking to avenge the one time when it got away.
And, when he takes the field against New York, he will be starting in his fifth Super Bowl. That's as many as John Elway — and more than Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw or Roger Staubach.
It's hard to remember when Brady was a relatively unknown quarterback who had never even played in a Super Bowl, much less won one.
A "tomato can" is a fighter who is believed to be past his prime and an "easy" or "guaranteed" win for an up-and-coming fighter who wants to pad his record.
Sometimes, though, the "tomato can" doesn't cooperate. For example, in 1990, undefeated heavyweight champion Mike Tyson lost the title to a 42-to-1 underdog named Buster Douglas.
Another heavyweight champion, Muhammad Ali, almost lost his title to lightly regarded Chuck Wepner in 1975. Wepner nearly went the distance against Ali and inspired the original "Rocky" movie.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
