It was a prime-time battle with the winner earning a trip to Super Bowl XLVI. It was as much a slugfest in the trenches as it was a war of player attrition and missed opportunities. In the end, it was the home team that emerged victorious by what can only be called the strangest of occurrences. On a day when fourth-year quarterback Joe Flacco actually outdueled three-time Super Bowl Champion Tom Brady through the air, things had to go terribly wrong for the visitors to wind up losing. And that’s just what happened.
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NO FEAR: Flacco let is all hang out on Sunday, but it was the kicking game that did the Ravens in.
In one of the most hotly contested, grind-it-out football games of the season, the No. 1 seeded New England Patriots beat the No. 2 seeded Baltimore Ravens, 23-20, in the AFC championship game. The game, which took place in 36-degree weather at New England’s Gillette Stadium on Sunday, was the Patriots’ launching pad to Indianapolis to compete against the NFC Champion New York Football Giants in Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday, Feb. 5. For the Patriots, the road to Indy was anything but paved.
After a first-round bye and a dismantling of the Tim Tebow-led Denver Broncos, 45-10, in the AFC divisional playoffs, New England locked horns with gritty Baltimore. Facing the 13-4 Ravens and their top-ranked defense, the high-powered Patriots offense still had plenty to prove. Led by Brady’s 39 touchdown tosses and his career-best 5,235 passing yards this season, the 14-3 Pats averaged 32 points per game. By the same token, their suspect defense was giving up an average of 21 points every week. Playing in the game of their lives on Sunday, the Patriots would need to turn in solid efforts on both sides of the ball.
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UP AND OVER: Brady's quarterback leap proved to be the margin of victory for New England.
In the first quarter, Brady connected on six of his first 10 passes. Not horrific numbers, but not up to Brady’s standards. One of his incomplete passes, in fact, was an uncharacteristic overthrow to a wide-open Rob Gronkowski at the Ravens four-yard line. “Gronk,” who set an NFL record for tight ends this season with 17 touchdown receptions, would once again turn out to be New England’s top receiver of the day with five receptions for 87 yards. After failing to find the end zone during their second offensive series, the Patriots settled for a 29-yard field goal by Stephen Gostkowski with 5:49 left in the opening stanza.
During the second quarter things got busy. The Ravens evened the score when Billy Cundiff drilled a 20-yard field goal just 39 seconds in. Less than four minutes later, New England took the lead again on a seven-yard run off right tackle by Benjarvis Green-Ellis. The Ravens were thinking pass when Brady made a delayed handoff to Green-Ellis that fooled even middle linebacker Ray Lewis. Flacco returned the favor to even the score once again with 6:03 remaining in the half on a perfectly thrown six-yard bullet to seldom-used tight end Dennis Pitta. It was like watching a championship prizefight unfold on the gridiron as both sides responded with well-designed plays.
The Patriots got the ball back at their own 20-yard line and Brady immediately marched them down field. Five of his first six plays were pass completions to the likes of Gronkowski, Wes Welker and Aaron Hernandez. Three straight incompletes, however, left the Pats with fourth down and 10 yards to go from the Ravens’ 17-yard-line. Gostkowski jogged in and promptly put the pigskin through the uprights to give the lead back to New England, 13-10, with three minutes left in the half.
Immediately following the field goal, Lewis could be seen walking up and down his own sideline trying to pump up his defensive teammates. “Field goals ain’t gonna beat us,” he yelled at anyone within earshot. “Field goals ain’t gonna beat us.” Ironically, that statement would come back to haunt his team in the second half.
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THREE FOR THREE: On a crucial day when he had to be, Gostkowski was perfect from the field.
The third quarter began with New England taking a touchback and starting from its own 20. Brady and company would eat up nearly six minutes on the clock with a 14-play drive that culminated with yet another field goal, a 24-yarder, from Gostkowski. Baltimore responded with an 11-play drive that started from its own 22 and ended with Flacco throwing his second scoring toss of the day, a 29-yard catch and run to first-year wide receiver Torrey Smith. Smith pulled down three catches during the game, but none was more exciting than this one, which he walked in on a tightrope with 3:38 left in the third. Baltimore had the lead. 17-16, and the faithful at Foxborough were growing antsy.
An uncharacteristic fumble on the ensuing kickoff by Patriots return man Danny Woodhead gave the ball right back to Baltimore at New England’s 28-yard line. Despite a 14-yard run by Flacco, which put the Ravens at the Patriots 11-yard line, the visitors could not find the end zone and settled for a 39-yard field goal by Cundiff, which extended their lead to 20-16.
Woodhead redeemed himself by running back the next kickoff for 41 yards. Brady followed on first down with a 23-yard strike to Gronkowski, but the six-foot-six, 265-pounder suffered an ankle injury when he was tackled awkwardly by Ravens safety Bernard Pollard. Gronk hobbled off the field and headed for the locker room as Brady continued the drive into the fourth quarter. Once the Patriots got down to the Ravens’ 10, they surprised everybody in the stadium by calling five consecutive rushing plays. Woodhead got them as close as the one-yard line, but back-to-back runs by Brady and Green-Ellis left the ball a little more than a foot from the goal line. On the next snap, Brady kept the ball himself and dove over the line of scrimmage, holding the ball straight out to break the goal line and give the Pats the lead, 23-20.
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TAKE THAT BALTIMORE: Brady emphatically spiked the ball Gronk-style following his rushing TD.
Flacco directed the next Baltimore drive to New England’s 46-yard line, but his second pass of the quarter was picked off by Patriots linebacker Brandon Spikes and returned 19 yards to midfield. That’s when Brady’s second pick of the day took place immediately thereafter as he tried to go for all the marbles on first down and fired a 55-yard missile that Pollard deflected into the waiting hands of cornerback Jimmy Smith. Untouched, Smith ran the ball out of the end zone and all the way back to his own 39-yard line.
With 7:07 left in the game, things really started to get interesting. Flacco once again marched his troops down to New England’s 30, but couldn’t get any closer and actually went for it on fourth-and six from the 33-yard-line. Extreme pressure applied by Patriots nose tackle Vince Wilfork, however, forced Flacco to wind up airmailing the ball out of bounds. The Patriots took over on downs with 2:46 remaining, but couldn’t secure a first down and punted the ball right back to Baltimore with 1:44 on the clock.
On the Ravens’ final drive Flacco came out flinging. He launched nine straight passes, five for completions, as Baltimore got as close as New England’s 14-yard line. His seventh pass attempt, on second-and-one with 27 ticks left, was a perfectly placed pass to Lee Evans in the right corner of the end zone. Evans snared the pass momentarily, but a split second later, Patriots safety Sterling Moore knocked the ball loose and it was ruled an incompletion. The Patriots dodged a bullet. On the next down, Flacco went back to the same side of the end zone, throwing a line drive to Pitta, but this time Moore knocked the pass down and suddenly Baltimore was facing fourth down with 15 seconds remaining.
In jogged Cundiff to do what he had done so many times before: kick another field goal from inside 40 yards to force overtime. On the season, he was 10-of-12 from between 30 and 39 yards. But this is when things went awry for the Ravens. Cundiff’s kick sailed wide left, clearly missing the uprights. The entire Ravens sideline gasped and stood in disbelief with jaws wide open. Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh could only mutter: “He missed it.”
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WIDE LEFT: While Cundiff (7) was heading home, Wilfork was leading New England's victory dance.
In a game that saw Flacco and Brady match one another with the same number of pass attempts (36) and completions (22), it was Flacco who threw for more yards (306 to 239). Flacco also threw for two touchdowns while Brady was held scoreless through the air for the first time in 18 postseason games.
As a result of Cundiff’s rare miss, the Patriots were given one of the rarest gifts of all: A ticket to Indy to compete in their fifth Super Bowl since 2001. It will also be a chance at redemption as they face the New York Giants, the same team that beat them in Super Bowl XLII, 17-14, in Glendale, Arizona. For Brady, one of seven Patriots returning from that game, it’s been a long time coming.
Terry Melia is the former longtime Public Relations Manager for the Upper Deck Company and a freelance writer living in San Diego. His prose will be filling this Blog as often as he can spin them.