The clarity of a final score is one reason we love sports. The finality.
For 53 players, Super Bowl Sunday will be the culmination of a lifelong dream. The other team will experience a pain that is worse than any other possible result in pro football.
Coaches say it all the time. The brutal losses, especially in the Super Bowl, linger forever. The emotion of losing in many ways is greater than of joy of coming out on top. That’s especially true for the 2007 Patriots.
Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald does a great job tracking down many of the members of that team, and finding out how the game haunts them. Most striking: the account of defensive lineman Jarvis Green.
He couldn’t sleep for weeks after failing to bring down Eli Manning on the play that ultimately made David Tyree famous.
“When I think about that play sometimes, I think if I could have made that play, I could have been going to Disney World,” Green said. “I had four or five tackles and a sack already, and that would have put me over the top. That would have ended the game. I just know after that play, about three or four weeks after that, I was still really shaken.
“I can remember getting up in cold sweats. I can remember just tossing and turning. And my wife telling me I was talking in my sleep. I said, ‘What are you talking about? I don’t talk in my sleep.’ She said I was saying stuff like, calling out plays, the defensive plays. I told her to put it on a tape recorder. She never did. But it was a tough time after that.”
Revenge is probably an overstated factor for the 2011 Patriots. Only seven active players participated in the last Super Bowl against the Giants. It’s not like the Patriots need more motivation.
Their primary goal: Avoid ever feeling like Jarvis Green did after the loss to the Giants.
