Sports Q: What’s your favorite bad-weather Patriots game (excluding the Snow Bowl)?
Bad-weather games are often the most memorable, and the Patriots have had some great ones.
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What is your favorite bad-weather Patriots game (Snow Bowl excluded)?
There are a lot of good ones to choose from, aren’t there?
This crossed my mind in the final minutes of the Patriots’ fulfilling (and surprising, at least to those of us who picked the Ravens in a rout) win Sunday night. The rain was falling so hard on the Ravens’ last possession of the game that NBC’s cameras could barely focus on the action. The Patriots, especially Cam Newton, seemed to love it. The Ravens seemed to want a warm blanket and some soup.
There’s a really easy choice here: The Snow Bowl. It has to be the Snow Bowl, the 2001 AFC Divisional Round matchup with the Raiders, if you want the formal name for the probably the most pivotal game in franchise history. It was the last game played at Foxboro Stadium, and it made that old dump look like the loveliest snow globe. It was the night we discovered the Tuck Rule. And it was the game we realized both Tom Brady and Adam Vinatieri were capable of magic. That has to be the choice.
So let’s leave it out. What’s your favorite bad-weather Patriots game other than perhaps the most satisfying victory they’ve ever had, other than the six Super Bowl wins?
There are some great options.
There was the Snow Plow game in 1982, when a maintenance worker named Mark Henderson cleared a spot with his snow plow for John Smith to kick a winning field goal over the Dolphins and the apoplectic Don Shula.
There was another win over the Dolphins, this one in 2003, when Tedy Bruschi intercepted a Jay Fiedler pass deep in Patriots territory, ran it in for a touchdown, slid on his knees in the snow, and began a stadium-wide celebration in which fans tossed snow into the air. Made for a heck of a visual.
Was it the 2003 defensive stalwarts led by Tedy Bruschi? You have plenty of Patriots teams to choose from.
There was the 59-0 destruction of the Titans on a snowy day in 2009. I’m pretty sure Jeff Fisher’s mustache still hasn’t thawed out from that one.
And if we’re counting cold as weather, I’d suggest the Divisional Round win over the Titans in 2003. It was 4 degrees at kickoff with minus-10 wind chill. Vinatieri booted a 46-yard field goal with just over 4 minutes left to win it, 17-14. Bethel Johnson, considered one of Bill Belichick’s failed wide receiver draft picks, was great on this day, with a touchdown reception and a key first down late in the game.
Since I’m old-school (or just plain old), I’ll go with the snow plow game in ’82. Something like that would lead to a congressional investigation nowadays, and Roger Goodell would dock the Patriots a half-dozen draft picks for having the John Deere warmed up and ready to go. Plus, the Patriots got the upper hand on Shula and the Dolphins, a rare development in those days.
But what does everyone else think? Excluding the Snow Bowl, what’s your favorite bad weather Patriots game? I’ll hear you in the comments.
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