Humans, in many ways, are difficult — if not impossible — to figure out. In fact, for as long as humans have existed on this planet, the species has dedicated a significant amount of time on trying to better understand itself.
The results? Well, they are varied. But we do know this: There’s just something about a 10-year anniversary that can stop us in our tracks and make us reflect, recall, and recollect.
So, with many football fans in New England looking to think about anything other than this year’s season opener, the time is ripe to recall another Week 1, prime-time, NBC season opener from a decade ago.
That game was a significant one, as it marked the first Patriots game after Tom Brady dropped his years-long fight with the NFL over the regrettable saga that came to be known as Deflategate.
The scandal that centered on the specific air pressure inside footballs was all-consuming. In sports news and real news, among die-hards and casuals alike, the analysis, debate, criticisms, suspicions and accusations flowed nonstop from January 2015 until July 2016, when Brady — perhaps sensing the absurdity of it all — opted to not appeal his case to the Supreme Court of the United States (yes, as in … the one and only Supreme Court of the United States) and simply accept his unprecedented four-game suspension for a more-probable-than-not state of being at least generally aware of an operation devised to slightly decrease the PSI inside of his footballs in one game.
It really was insane.
Yet after Roger Goodell and the NFL owners made it clear that they would not be stopping the hunt without winning, and after NFL-appointed attorney Paul Clement delivered a legal beatdown of Jeffrey Kessler inside the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Brady’s options were limited. And instead of filing that appeal to the Supreme Court (again, yes, the one in Washington, D.C., nine justices, lifetime appointees) and risk getting hit with his suspension later in the season or even in the postseason, Brady laid down his sword and agreed to sit out Weeks 1-4 to start the 2016 season.
That set the stage for an interesting season opener on Sunday Night Football, as it set the stage for the first start for quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, aka The Man Bill Belichick Drafted To Either Replace Tom Brady Or Inspire Brady To Author The Greatest Late-Career Performance In Football History. (Yes, that’s a real nickname. Everyone was calling him that. Some still do.)
Prior to opening night, Garoppolo had thrown 31 passes in his NFL career. He was 19-for-27 for 182 yards and a touchdown in his rookie season, with that TD coming in the famed “They’re not good anymore” blowout loss in Kansas City in Week 4 of the 2014 campaign. But he was just 1-for-4 in very limited action in 2015, when Brady was hell-bent on proving a whole lot of things to a whole lot of people.
On the other side — and this can be something difficult to truly remember a decade later — was a competent Arizona Cardinals team. Arguably, it was an imposing Cardinals team, one that had gone 13-3 and reached the NFC Championship Game a season prior, one that had Carson Palmer at quarterback, Larry Fitzgerald at receiver and David Johnson in the backfield.
That Cardinals team was favored by nine points over Bill Belichick’s team, which was an indication of just how far the Patriots were expected to plummet without the services of Brady.
The Sunday night scheduling of this expected bloodbath was set to serve as a humiliation ritual of sorts for the Patriots, providing some red meat to football fans who spent the better part of the first two decades of the 21st century seething at the sight of Brady, Belichick and the Patriots’ logo.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the that forum: The Patriots actually showed up.
The Patriots forced a Cardinals punt on the opening possession of the game, bringing the inexperienced Garoppolo onto center stage. The 24-year-old threw incomplete on his first play but found Julian Edelman for an 11-yard chain mover on third-and-10. After a holding penalty, Garoppolo went back to Edelman, this time for 19 yards, and then hit No. 11 again two plays later for eight more yards. Following a six-yard run by LeGarrette Blount, the Patriots faced a second-and-4 from the Cardinals’ 37-yard line.
With New England sitting on the edge of field-goal range, the Cardinals likely expected a safe approach, with Blount pounding it up the middle to set up an opportunity on an evening when points figured to be difficult to come by.
They were not, however, expecting a picture-perfect deep ball from Garoppolo to Chris Hogan, who was streaking up the left sideline. Hogan hauled it in and raced into the end zone for the opening points of the game.
Chris Hogan scores a TD against the Cardinals. (Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports)
Garoppolo was 4-for-5 for 75 yards and a touchdown on his first drive as a starter, and the Patriots took an eye-opening 7-0 lead in Arizona.
Another Cardinals punt followed, with the Patriots countering with a field goal to take a 10-0 lead late in the first quarter. A strip-sack of Jimmy G early in the second quarter provided the Cardinals with their first jolt of momentum, and they turned that into a touchdown drive to cut the lead to 10-7.
Garoppolo actually completed a pass to himself to kick off the second half, on a drive that ended with a Blount touchdown to give New England a 17-7 lead. Garoppolo had connected with rookie Malcolm Mitchell on a 28-yard completion on a third-and-7 to set up the Blount TD run.
Another fumble — this one by Blount — set up another touchdown drive for the Cardinals, who eventually took a 21-20 lead in the fourth quarter when Fitzgerald displayed otherworldly body control to haul in a 1-yard touchdown pass from Palmer.
Larry Fitzgerald catches a TD against the Patriots. (Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports)
Through 50-plus minutes, the Patriots had put up a good fight. Better than most anyone expected. Eventually, though, the Cardinals regained control, shook off that initial shocking blow, and were in position to win a game they were supposed to win.
Yet on the ensuing drive, facing a third-and-15, Garoppolo looked like an NFL veteran, buying time in the pocket while keeping his eyes downfield before delivering a 32-yard strike to Danny Amendola to get the ball to midfield. A loss of six from Blount followed, but Garoppolo again found Amendola, this time for 13 yards. He then converted a third-and-3 on a well-thrown ball to James White on a slant for seven yards.
A 13-yard run by Blount on a third-and-11 got the Patriots into comfortable field-goal range, and Stephen Gostkowski booted a 32-yarder to give New England a 23-21 lead.
The Larry Fitzgerald Show followed, with the Hall of Famer making a 21-yard reception, a 15-yard reception and a 10-yard reception as the Cardinals drove into New England territory for a game-winning field goal opportunity. Yet after getting to the New England 33-yard line, the Cardinals started to go backward. A holding penalty on the O-line pushed them back 10 yards, and a four-yard loss from running back Andre Ellington pushed them all the way back to the 47. (In a more memorable moment, an opponent moving backward to fall out of field-goal range would also come into play for the Patriots’ final game of 2016, too.)
On a third-and-23, though, Palmer fired a nice pass to Jaron Brown for 18 yards, getting the Cardinals back in position for the game-winning kick.
With 41 seconds on the clock, everyone was surely wondering if Garoppolo had a magical game-winning drive in him. But it wouldn’t be needed, as the snap was bobbled by holder Drew Butler, and Chandler Catanzaro’s kick missed wide left.
Garoppolo came on for the victory-sealing kneeldown, and the Patriots walked out of Glendale with one of the most unexpected victories of Belichick’s entire tenure.
From there, Garoppolo would get hurt early in Week 2, but the Patriots would improve to 3-0 with rookie Jacoby Brissett at QB, before falling to Rex Ryan’s Bills in Week 4. But the Patriots were able to give Brady a 3-1 head start when he returned in Cleveland in Week 5, and what followed was one of the finest stretches of his entire career: 28 touchdowns and just two interceptions while leading the team to an 11-1 record in the regular season, three playoff wins and the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history in the postseason.
The roots of that championship season, though, were planted on opening night. And Jimmy G’s first victory was significant because it negated the entire purpose of the heavy-handed Deflategate punishment.
Goodell would never admit this, but that penalty was about one thing and one thing only: Parity. The league loves nothing more than seeing three non-playoff teams enter the postseason a year later. A non-playoff team making the Super Bowl a year later is the ultimate dream. Every year at his annual “press conference,” Goodell would tout the number of non-playoff teams that entered the tournament a year later, the ultimate sign of success for a league that values parity above all else.
Stripping the Patriots of their first-round pick in 2016 and fourth-round pick in 2017 was an extreme punishment on its own, particularly in the case of an incident where the league was objectively at fault as much or more than the Patriots were. Yet keeping Brady off the field for a quarter of a season was the ultimate way to ensure that the Patriots would get out of everyone’s way and let someone else have a turn. (The Patriots had played in five consecutive conference championships and two Super Bowls in the five years prior to 2016, and that was after they played in four out of seven Super Bowls to begin the 2000s.)
But the Brady punishment did not work.
If anything, it helped the Patriots. Garoppolo played well enough in a short time to net the Patriots a second-round pick a year later. The 39-year-old starting QB was able to rest for a quarter of the season. And Brady, the king of keeping a chip on his shoulder, was delivered a fresh reason to unleash hell on the entire league for the weeks, months and seasons that followed.
After winning his fifth Super Bowl in 2016, Brady won the MVP unanimously as a 40-year-old in 2017, getting the Patriots back to a Super Bowl, where he set passing records in a loss. A year after that, the Patriots became the rare Super Bowl loser to return to the NFL’s center stage, with Brady winning his sixth Super Bowl.
And, just as had been the case for the century prior to the “scandal,” nobody ever gave a single speckle of scat about the PSI measurements inside of footballs ever again.
Just like with many memories, the end of the Deflategate saga simultaneously feels like it just happened but also like it took place many lifetimes ago. In those moments, the controversy was all-encompassing and impossible to avoid. Now a decade later, the details have faded significantly, and the whole experience feels like a largely forgotten fever dream.
Ultimately, though, it can all be remembered as a multi-year, multi-million-dollar effort from the league to suppress the run of dominance being put forth by the Patriots. And in the end, thanks in large part to a memorable performance from Jimmy G in Arizona, it was all for nothing.
