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One Play For The Ages Says It All Think about the winning TD pass in Super Bowl XLII. (You should all know how to count these Roman numbers by now.) It was a simple “fade” route run near the goal line, where the receiver runs a few yards downfield and then fades toward the outside corner of the end zone. The Giants’ Eli Manning threw it to receiver Plexico Burress over Patriots’ cornerback Ellis Hobbs for the winning score. From the off-season, through springtime “mini-camp,” through the heat of training camp, through sixteen regular season games and their endless team meetings and practices, and the earlier playoff games, it came to this moment. The final Giants drive of the Super Bowl, where the Giants, and especially Manning and coach Tom Coughlin, were striving to get a huge monkey off their collective backs, while the Patriots were looking to become the first 19-0 team in NFL history. Even though the ball was dangerously deep in Patriots territory—the New England fourteen-yard line, to be exact—Hobbs gave Burress lots of room, playing almost seven full yards away from him at the start of the play. Hobbs was playing Burress “inside”; he was lined up closer to the middle of the field than Burress, allowing Burress to go toward the near sideline (away from most of the rest of the players) if he wanted to, because Hobbs thought he could pin Burress against the sideline, to prevent him from coming back to the ball. At the snap of the ball, Burress burst forward, and Hobbs backpedaled, as they each had done hundreds of times before in this one season alone. But after only a couple of yards, with Hobbs at the five-yard line and Burress at the ten, Hobbs planted his feet and forced Burress to make a choice: Where did Burress want to run? Years of instinct, film study, and training allowed Burress to realize that by planting the way he did, Hobbs was giving away the edge. Burress put on a burst of speed at almost the instant that Hobbs was applying the brakes. Burress was three yards ahead of Hobbs at the moment he reached the goal line. Because the Patriots ran a blitz (sending extra guys to chase, and try to tackle, the QB in addition to the normal, onrushing defensive linemen—more on this later), Manning had to hurry the throw and tossed it a bit higher than he might have liked to get it over the extended arms of the approaching Patriots defenders. Ordinarily, because of the short distances the offense works with in the red zone (inside the other team’s twenty-yard line), you don’t want to toss the ball up too high—“put air under it” in football lingo—you want to zip it in there quick, so the defenders don’t have time to get to it. Even though Manning took a bit too much off his pass and underthrew it, by the time Hobbs could make up any ground, Burress slowed up, came back to the ball, made the catch, and the Giants were on their way to being fitted for Super Bowl rings. All three of these players—Manning, Burress, and Hobbs—had likely run this play in practice a thousand times. Manning and Burress from off-season workouts to whatever private sessions they had to perfect their game, to training camp, to the regular season, and through the playoffs. (They even came out before warm-ups officially began for the Super Bowl and ran it several times in the stadium in full view of the Fox TV cameras.) It was not a secret play. It’s a standard pattern in every offensive playbook. It was a simple route for the receiver to run and a simple pass for the QB to throw, and the two of them could probably pull it off in their sleep. Hobbs, meanwhile, probably spent Super Bowl week lying in bed at night telling himself, “Don’t give up the fade…Don’t give up the fade.” One play, perfectly executed, in what may well have been the most exciting game in NFL history. (Of course, I picked the Giants to win, which is why I feel that way!) And though it only took some seven seconds to execute, it was the culmination of years of training among men who, when the training began, may not have even known the others existed. It was a play that worked the way it did because of what those three men did, because of what the other nineteen players on the field did, because of what the coaches did, because of what the game officials didn’t do, and on and on. It’s a brief illustration of the fascinating, chess-like aspect of NFL football. How you may know what’s coming, and still be powerless to stop it. How you can make your opponent think one thing, and then do another. How sometimes it’s about the brilliance of a coach who thinks of everything from every angle, and sometimes how the odd shape of the ball leads to the funniest bounces and craziest outcomes. |
