I remember passing the day doing school work, I was a grad student at UConn, and watching the Celtics-Clippers game. At half time of the C's game I went to pick up my girlfriend (now wife) and we took off to a party where everyone was a Pats fan, at least for that evening. However, I cannot say anyone expected the Patriots to win.
There were a lot of nerves from the start. Every time the Rams shifted formations, I got anxious. I felt a moral victory on holding the Rams to an early field goal.
When Ty Law took the pick6 to the house, the apartment we were in exploded.
When Patten caught the touchdown just before halftime we were euphoric, yet no one was comfortable.
We all just sort of waited for "the moment". Two of us were born and raised in Massachusetts and had seen it all too often with all of our teams from Reggie Lewis collapsing on the court to signify the end of the Celtics, to Buckner, to Desmond Howard...It always happened. We just waited for it.
Then Tebucky Jones happened. He took the fumble back 99 yards or whatever it was, and the apartment shook. Then, the flag...there was silence. I broke it with, "Well, there it is." There was silence right up until Ricky Prohel danced into the end zone.
You would have thought it would have been silent after that, too. However, my buddy Jim, the other Mass native, said, "Time to shock the world" just as he did when we watched UConn beat Duke (the unbeatable team) for the National Basketball Championship three seasons before. That got us all fired up.
Then we got quiet again as the drive started. There was a calm, quiet, unspoken understanding that all would be ok.
In my mind, the final drive went like this:
Brady to Redmond---Ok. Easy does it.
Brady to Redmond again--Easy does it but hurry the heck up!
Brady to Brown--Holy $#!& Is this really happening?
Brady to Wiggins--This IS really happening!
Spike--Oh...my...God...
As AV walked onto the field I thought, "he's been perfect indoors...After the snow and Heinz Field, this is nothing." But I did let my mind wander over to a game against Miami about four years earlier where he missed a critical late fg and a game against KC where he missed in the closing seconds...and the games early in his career where he seemingly had to throw the ball to get it through the uprights.
As the camera panned out, and the room went silent, I waited for Summeral to give us the perfect description. He too, was silent when the ball went through the uprights...so I gave the only description I could...a primal scream. We were jumping, laughing, crying, yelling but then I recognized that there HAD to be time left on the clock. No way did that take 7 seconds. My girlfriend grabbed me and said, "No stupid, the clock says 0:00". I grabbed a beer and waited for the trophy presentation.
The worst part of the night was there was no radio broadcast available in CT where we were. The drive back to my place was so frustrating. However, I got home and just sat at my computer all night, reading messageboards, online articles, watching ESPN, NESN, whatever I could. I didn't sleep. I showered at like 5:00AM and went to my internship nearly two hours early. I was still floating. I only worked half days on Monday's and had class at 3:30. People both in my classes and at my internship knew how much I love this team and just kept congratulating me and smiling when they saw me. I wore my Patriots sweatshirt and hat everywhere all week and the smile never left my face...kind of like the one I have now as I type this.
(As an aside, everyone who was there married their date from that night...coincidence?)