A fond memory, but a year later, empty seconds for the Patriots
COMMENTARY
I don’t really remember what the crowd — if any — was like surrounding New England Patriots cornerback Malcolm Butler at last year’s Super Bowl Media Day in Phoenix, if for the mere fact that I didn’t really know the slightest thing about Malcolm Butler.
Butler wouldn’t have had the cache to earn a podium like teammates Tom Brady, Darrelle Revis, and Danny Amendola managed at American Airlines Arena. He would have been hanging out somewhere on the oppressively-crowded floor of the building, perhaps in the vicinity of former Patriots running back Jonas Gray, who turned his short-lived notoriety in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl XLIX into a handful of curious parties walking past.
I don’t recall Butler’s presence at the Patriots’ media availabilities at their Chandler, Ariz. team hotel later in the week, though I’m certain he was mixed in at a table somewhere among the linemen and special teamers. He likely shared one of the ballroom tables with a teammate, probably one of the handful of overlooked guys who read USA Today while either waiting for someone to notice, or itching for the mandatory hour to expire.
It was only a few days later, of course, that Butler would become a household name when his end zone interception of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson sealed the Patriots’ fourth Super Bowl title, a championship won behind another fourth-quarter comeback campaign by the game’s MVP, Brady, in the face of a swirling controversy that would only intensify over the coming months.
It’s been one year since the Patriots’ pulsating, 28-24 win over the Seahawks last Feb. 1 in Glendale, Ariz., a factor that will bring both glee and chagrin to football fans throughout New England.
It’s a fond memory, one that will remain on list of the “Greatest Moments in Super Bowl History’’ from here until NFL commissioner Roger Goodell figures out a way to have it stricken from the docket. But it also comes with the growing tinge of aggravation that the follow-up edition of those champion Patriots are currently scattered across the country instead of preparing for Super Bowl 50 in the Bay Area of Northern California.
A week removed from their ouster in the AFC Championship game in Denver, the sour taste of a sudden end to the Patriots’ 2015 campaign doesn’t only linger, but intensifies, perhaps even to reach a feverish peak should Peyton Manning manage to lead the Broncos to the win Sunday over the Carolina Panthers.
This was supposed to be Brady’s Super Bowl, to be played in his boyhood hometown’s backyard. It was to be a chance to surpass the idol of his youth, Joe Montana, with his fifth Super Bowl ring, and do it in the face of all that transpired last summer with the NFL’s ridiculous and endless pursuit of the quarterback’s role in Deflategate. In Super Bowl 50, nonetheless, a landmark game so important to the NFL it did away with its traditional Roman numerals.
None of them would ever admit it, but NFL suits have to be celebrating the fact that they got an All-American pitchman quarterbacking the AFC entrant rather than another week of Brady vs. Goodell swirling around Haight-Ashbury, managing to infiltrate even that notable San Francisco neighborhood with a sobering boredom.
If the NFL could have scripted a matchup in its premier event, in its celebratory anniversary, Peyton Manning, playing, perhaps, his final game, would be at the top of the preferred list of talking points.
But that’s not the reason why the Patriots aren’t there, unless you do indeed subscribe to any number of the conspiracy theories that suggest the league wasn’t going to allow New England to escape Sports Authority Field last weekend with a victory. As it turned out, the sequel to Butler’s heroics became a team featuring no dependability over the second half of the regular season. Despite the party line, injuries didn’t play the biggest role in the Patriots’ inability to secure home-field advantage in the playoffs. It was the goofy crap that head coach Bill Belichick and friends promoted down the stretch.
The refusal to run out the clock during the first meeting against the Broncos in Denver.
The special team breakdowns against the Philadelphia Eagles.
The decision to kick in overtime against the New York Jets.
The Miami game in its entirety.
The Patriots and Broncos play in Foxborough, and New England is surely en route to its ninth Super Bowl appearance.
Instead, it’s the Peyton and Cam Newton show.
Meh.
A year ago, such a matchup didn’t seem possible. We in New England just assumed that Brady and the Patriots would take their Middle Finger, anti-NFL mission all the way to another Lombardi Trophy this month, one that would re-write the quarterback record books to boot. We figured the Seahawks would be back for a rematch of one the most compelling Super Bowls ever played, but we’d take the Green Bay Packers for a certain level of revenge for what occurred 19 years ago in New Orleans.
Either way, though, New England’s appearance this week in San Francisco was a no-brainer.
Except, nobody told the Patriots’ offensive line. Nobody told Wade Phillips and the Denver Broncos defense.
Three hundred and sixty-five days after Butler’s interception, the Patriots are even more of a daily obsession among New Englanders, despite the fact that they’ve actually only played 22 days over that timeframe. Brady’s offseason soap opera with Goodell overshadowed much everything else last summer, what with the Red Sox bound for another last place finish. Revise tucked his tail between his legs and rushed back to New York for his money, while Butler has become the cornerback that Patriots’ coaches hoped that they could rely on. There’s no magic slipper in this instance.
Malcolm Butler would have a podium this time.
Malcolm Butler should have had a podium this time.
Contact Eric Wilbur at: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @GlobeEricWilbur and Facebook www.facebook.com/GlobeEricWilbur
The 2015 Patriots season, game-by-game
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