The Unexpected Victory

NEWSCASTER:

A minute and a half, the Patriots have no timeouts left.

TERENCE SMITH:

Last night, the Super Bowl lived up to its name. It was an instant classic, decided on the final play by a 48-yard field goal by New England Patriots place kicker Adam Vinatieri.

NEWSCASTER:

And it's right down the pipe.

TERENCE SMITH:

In the crucial fourth quarter, the Patriots got the ball with a little over a minute remaining and the score tied at 17-17. Quarterback and game MVP Tom Brady marched his team down the field with short, crisp passes and a crucial 23-yarder that put the pats into field goal territory.

ADAM VINATIERI:

I knew our guys could march down the field and get us in range, and the kick was just the icing on the cake.

TERENCE SMITH:

The Patriots won 20- 17. And from Bourbon Street to Beacon Hill, Patriots fans partied through the night, celebrating Boston's first championship in any professional sport in 16 years.

TERENCE SMITH:

For more about last night's Super Bowl, we hoped to be joined by Peter Richmond, author of two books on sports and a special correspondent for GQ Magazine, and football commentator for National Public Radio's Morning Edition. Peter, can you hear me? All right. We hope to have him shortly to talk about what turned into a simply terrific football game. Peter Richmond, can you hear me?

PETER RICHMOND:

I certainly can.

TERENCE SMITH:

Okay. Welcome.

PETER RICHMOND:

Thanks.

TERENCE SMITH:

Going into this game last night, the Rams were supposed to be a prohibitive favorite.

PETER RICHMOND:

That's true.

TERENCE SMITH:

And everybody expected another lopsided Super Bowl, as we've seen so often in the past. But that was not the case. What happened?

PETER RICHMOND:

Well, one thing that was a key here was that the game was played one week after the previous playoff games. In this case, historical precedent was accurate. Every time there's a Super Bowl that's played after a one-week delay– not the usual two weeks– for whatever reasons, it turns into a terrific game. The three greatest Super Bowls ever all happened after a one- week hiatus between the playoffs and the Super Bowl. And this was no exception.

TERENCE SMITH:

We should explain that in this case, it was because the NFL took a week off after 9/11.

PETER RICHMOND:

9/11 meant a shortened season, and what that gave us was a great football game, because football players, especially professional football players, they're geared on a one-week cycle. They like to play every week. It gives them time to heal the injuries. And when you do a two-week thing, it gives the underdogs too much time to stew and gives them too much time to get distracted, because in the cities the Super Bowl is held in, there are usually lots of distractions. For whatever reason, one week is perfect. Yesterday proved the rule, because they played a football game and they held a Super Bowl, and against all odds they got a great football game.

TERENCE SMITH:

The Patriots, of course, were classic underdogs. I've read that many of their players, of course, are retreads from other teams. They were in the classic underdog position.

PETER RICHMOND:

They were. You know, twenty players on the Patriot roster had played with other teams, and most of them had been discarded. They're kind of a scrap heap team. That, of course, gave them a real thing, a unity. They had a wonderful beginning. The Rams allowed themselves to be introduced by name. The Patriots insisted that they simply be introduced yesterday together as a team. And they played that way. They were too much of an underdog. Sportswriters have looked back and seen that if they had given the Patriot coach, a guy named Bill Belichick, as much credit as the Rams' coach Mike Martz, the line would have been a lot closer. They wouldn't have been serious dogs. But Martz and the Rams were exciting offensive teams. We love big-scoring games.

Bill Belichick is a defensive genius, and he is no less innovative on defense than Martz is on offense. The thing is, defense isn't nearly as sexy. Nobody saw it coming when the Patriots' coach actually out coached the Rams' coach. Therein lay the difference. The underdog Patriots were ready and had a plan to shut down the St. Louis Rams' very exciting offense.

TERENCE SMITH:

They certainly did. And the Patriots had Tom Brady. Explain to me how… Who is only 24 years old. How can someone so young be so good at a game this sophisticated?

PETER RICHMOND:

I'll tell you what. Something happened today, which kind of illuminates what kind of guy young Tom Brady is. He sounds like he's from some Boy's Life magazine article– "young Tom Brady, age 24, off the bench." Well, somebody asked him this morning if he was nervous yesterday. He actually said that after the warm-ups before the game, they went back into the locker room, and he was so cool, he fell asleep in the locker room before the Super Bowl, when everybody else in his position would be nervous beyond belief. He's possessed, they say, of a very cool demeanor.

The other thing is that the team loves to play for him technically because he doesn't take as much time getting rid of the ball as Drew Bledsoe. But on another level, the Patriots have hit a rut. This new kid came in, and football is a game that's very funny in this way. It's very technical. You have to be able to read defenses. You have got to be able to figure out the playbook, which is 250 pages long. How can you memorize it? But on another level, it's a very, very emotional game.

Teams tend to play in a sort of group emotion. Tom Brady was cool enough to get the Patriots relaxed this season and just go back to playing football, and yesterday you could tell they had such confidence in him that even the St. Louis Rams weren't going to scare them. He's sort of a true leader. People are already predicting that he will be one of the greats, which means of course he won't be. Let's lay off young Tom Brady and let him play the game.

TERENCE SMITH:

Very briefly, Peter, at the end here, this Super Bowl seemed to resonate with non- football fans. That's true here with the "NewsHour" and elsewhere. Why, quickly?

PETER RICHMOND:

It really did. Here's why. Over the years, the Super Bowl has become the most overblown sports event of all. It calls itself the Super Bowl, so by definition it probably can't be. We're used to it being top-heavy with entertainment and God knows they tried to have some entertainment yesterday, but because of what happened on the 9/11, we were in a position, I think as a nation, to really, more than ever, want a sports event to give us what a sports event was supposed to always give us, which was just a good contest. And we got one against all odds.

Everybody turned on the Super Bowl because we're looking for answers, we're looking for something to hold on. We got a game. That's why it is going to resonate for a very long time.

TERENCE SMITH:

Peter Richmond, thank you so much.

PETER RICHMOND:

Thanks for having me.