GLENDALE, Ariz. — Players win games. Coaches lose them.
Malcolm Butler, who one moment earlier seemed to have become the Patriots’ latest victim of The Curse of University of Phoenix Stadium, intercepted perhaps the most ill-advised pass in Super Bowl history at the goal line late last night and the Patriots had won their fourth Super Bowl of the century, defeating the Seattle Seahawks, 28-24, in Super Bowl XLIX.
Players make plays. Coaches make mistakes.
The Patriots had caught football’s stingiest defense from behind, overcoming a 10-point deficit to take the lead with 122 seconds to go, then boom, boom and Seattle was at the Pats 5-yard line, first-and-goal with 66 seconds to play after a miraculous catch by Jermaine Kearse when a pass bounced off Butler’s hand and then Kearse’s legs, lap and fingers before he pulled it in on his back.
The haunting memory of David Tyree catching a football against his helmet in this same stadium eight years ago to save the Giants and ultimately help beat an undefeated Patriots team trying to make history crept into the minds of every fan who ever wore red, white and blue face paint in New England.
Tom Brady was seen saying “Oh, no,” as he stared incredulously at the scoreboard video screen, that ball rattling around between Kearse’s legs before he finally corralled it 33 yards from the line of scrimmage and 5 yards from the goal line.
Then cantankerous Marshawn Lynch nearly bulled his way in and everyone in the stadium knew what was coming. With the clock winding down to 26 seconds it would be Lynch again thrusting himself like a battering ram at the tiring Patriots defense with the ball sitting inside the 1-yard line. Who could stop him?
Only one man.
Players play. Coaches overthink.
Seahawks offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell decided at that point to turn a fifth-grade science project into the Manhattan Project.
Everyone knew the ball would be slammed into Lynch’s belly and he would slam into the Patriots defense trying to gain his 103rd yard of the game. But a coach decided to take the ball out of the hands of the players and prove how fertile his mind could be.
Bevell incredibly called a pick play, asking Russell Wilson to complete a pass in the tightness of the goal line when all that had to be done was to plunge forward with football’s most powerful running back. Butler read the play perfectly.
“At this time it seems like overthinking, but they have goal line guys on, we have three wide receivers, a tight end and one back,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll said. “They’ve got extra guys at the line of scrimmage, so we don’t want to waste a run play at that.
“It was a clear thought, but it didn’t work out right. We happened to throw them the ball.”
Maybe it wasn’t a clear thought, after all? Why not call timeout and settle down? And why were three wide receivers in with the ball inside the 1 when you’re a power team?
Whatever the reasons, Butler saw the pick coming, got inside it and intercepted the ball as well as the Seahawks’ dream of becoming the first team to repeat as Super Bowl champions since the Patriots did it 10 years ago.
“I just had a vision I was going to make a big play and it came true,” said Butler. “I can’t explain it now.”
Surely neither can Bevell, who made the most boneheaded call in Super Bowl history, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory as Lynch stood staring in bewilderment, the disgusted look he usually reserves for a reporter’s questions painted across his face.
The Butler did it, but so did a coach who refused to let his players decide the game. Bonehead, thy name is Bevell.
At halftime, Bill Belichick, a coach who would have known better, told NBC’s Michele Tafoya: “This is a players’ game. Whichever players play best in the second half will win.”
He was right, as he so often is when coaching instincts are involved. Belichick let his players play the entire game. Carroll did not and so, just as Belichick had predicted, a player decided it — his.
Had Bevell thought to do the same and handed the ball to Lynch once or twice more, it is difficult to imagine he would have been stopped by the exhausted Pats defense. But Bevell did not trust his best player enough. He tried instead to prove games like this are won by coaches.
Those players had slugged it out all night, each taking crushing blows only to recover and deliver ones of their own.
They were the best two teams in football and they proved it. Each had the opportunity to take the other out, but could not do it, not through any fault of their own but because their opponent was as resilient as they were.
Stubborn refusal to relent is a powerful weapon in the hands of skilled and gifted athletes. Last night, it was more important than the mind of Brady or the legs of Lynch. It was more valuable than the quickness of Michael Bennett or the strength of Vince Wilfork.
Super Bowl XLIX was decided by many things, but none more so than stubborn refusal to give in. That applied to both teams as they tore at each other play after play, quarter after quarter, the lead drifting back and forth, no one quite able to secure it until Butler did.
There were big plays from those you’d expect, like Brady and Wilson, like Lynch and Rob Gronkowski. And there were plays from an unknown Chris Matthews, who had been working in a sporting goods store until the Seahawks called and he ended up making his first NFL catches in the Super Bowl, four of them for 109 yards and a touchdown.
And of course there was Butler, as well as a coach who is far better known this morning than he would like. A coach who forgot the game belongs to the players.
Julian Edelman had just torched a fourth-string defensive back named Tharold Simon with an in-and-out move with 2:02 to play and the ball at the Seattle 3. He beat this tortured backup with the same move he’d beaten him with on a critical third-down play earlier, faking inside and then turning out and hauling in a rifle shot from Brady to take a 28-24 lead with only 122 seconds separating the Patriots from their fourth Super Bowl title since the turn of the century.
And then, in the final moments, the Seattle players made two big plays to counter that one and the ball sat inside the 1-yard line when a coach took the game away from those players and Malcolm Butler took the Lombardi Trophy away from the Seahawks and brought it home to New England.
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