Today, Tom Brady should buy himself a cupcake, put a candle in it and blow.
It's the 10th birthday of the enforcement of the "Tuck Rule," or NFL Rule 3, Section 22, Article 2, Note 2, and one could argue it changed Brady's, the New England Patriots' and the Oakland Raiders' fates forever.
It was a snowy night in Foxborough ... wait, do we really have to go over all the details? Surely every football fan remembers what happened Jan. 19, 2002, in the AFC divisional-playoff game. The Raiders were up 13-10 with less than two minutes left when Brady pump faked a throw, was hit by Oakland cornerback Charles Woodson and the ball came loose.
The Raiders recovered the ball and should have been on their way to the AFC Championship Game in Pittsburgh. But someone pointed out the stupidest rule in the history of sports ...
NFL Rule 3, Section 22, Article 2, Note 2: When player is holding the ball to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his arm starts a forward pass - even if the player loses possession of the ball as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body.
The Tuck Rule made the play an incomplete pass, and New England's Adam Vinatieri hit a 45-yard field goal to tie the game and another kick to win it overtime.
"We were robbed, and I still get sick thinking about it," Woodson, now a Packer, said when the Raiders played Green Bay last month.
It gets worse.
Mike Pereira, then the NFL director of officiating, defended the call at the time. "I may agree that Brady was not trying to throw the ball" but "he never controlled it long enough to consider him a runner."
Pereira is now an analyst for Fox and he admits that the Tuck Rule stinks and should be changed. "A pass should only be ruled incomplete if the ball comes loose in the actual act of passing the ball," he said. "If it comes loose in the tucking motion, then it should be a fumble."
No Raiders fans, Pereira's home address is not in the book.
The Tuck Rule really got the ball rolling, pun intended, on the Patriots' dynasty, as they won three of the next four Super Bowls and set a record for most wins in a decade with 126.
"We got a few breaks and situationally, we made some plays," Brady said when the Patriots played the Raiders in October. "It was a game that, anyone who participated in that game, will certainly never forget."
Drew Bledsoe won't forget. He had been injured and there are some who think he would have won back his starting quarterback job if Brady lost to the Raiders that night.
The Rams might have won another Super Bowl that season.
Or the Raiders. They would lose their head coach, Jon Gruden. After Gruden and his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, routed Oakland in the Super Bowl a year later, the darkness hit. The Raiders lost 11 or more games for seven straight years.
"That was Jon Gruden's last game with the Raiders," receiver Tim Brown told ESPN. "And I don't know if it was, if it was a Freudian slip or not, but in the locker room he said, 'They are never going to allow you guys to win here.' "
They. The officials, the NFL, Pete Rozelle's ghost.
Maybe because it has been 10 years, Patriots players can let Raiders players have a shred of peace and satisfaction and just say, "Yeah, you were robbed."
How about defensive tackle Richard Seymour, who is both? He not only played in that game with the Patriots but is with the Raiders now.
"I was on the opposite side of it," Seymour said, grinning, "so I don't have a comment on it."
Do it for your Raider Nation ...
"I don't have a comment," he said, the grin now about to swallow his face. "What's funny is that me and (Steve) Wisniewski, Coach Wisniewski, we were lined up against each other that whole game."
I am sure Wisniewski thinks that's a hoot.
All right then, you Brady. (Hi, Gisele.) The world is your oyster. How about throwing the Raiders a few shrimp, after 10 years.
"You'll never get the right answer out of me that you're looking for," Brady said. "That's the way it goes."
Raiders-Patriots 'Tuck Game' turns 10
