Butler’s history
SB hero deserved better fate with Pats
Like sportswriters, sponsors, fans and various fat-cat league officials, Malcolm Butler was limited to the role of observer at Super Bowl LII.
The difference is that Butler was in uniform that night at U.S. Bank Stadium.
Another difference is that he was also in tears.
And now he is in transit.
See you later, Malcolm Butler. Thanks for contributing the single greatest play in Boston sports history . . . and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Strange, isn’t it? If only for his game-saving, championship-winning interception in the last moments of an earlier Super Bowl — XLIX, played on Feb. 1, 2015 in Glendale, Ariz. — Butler should be a man whose money is no good in and around Boston. He should be able to walk into all the gin joints in all the towns in all the commonwealth and be treated like Bird, like Orr, like Big Papi. Like Brady.
Oh, to be sure: He’s not in the same Rushmorian class as those guys, never will be. Those guys won championships — plural — and are either enshrined in their sport’s Hall of Fame (Bird, Orr) or will for-sure get there once the paperwork is done (Big Papi, Brady).
Butler was the undrafted, littleknown cornerback who stepped out of the shadows and into Super Bowl history when he intercepted an ill-advised pass by Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson. You all know the particulars — if Wilson completes the pass for a touchdown, Seattle wins its second straight Super Bowl. If the pass is incomplete, perhaps the Seattle coaching staff gathers up its spilt marbles and hands the ball off to wrecking-crew Marshawn Lynch on third-and-goal. And if
that doesn’t work, there’s still another shot on fourth-and-goal.
But Butler made the interception. Seattle’s second straight Super Bowl championship became the fourth Super Bowl championship of the Bill Belichick/Tom Brady era. As decadent as this sounds, it had been 10 years since the Pats’ last Super Bowl championship, and a whopping one year, three months and two days since the Red Sox toppled the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 6 of the 2013 World Series to secure what had been the Boston sports market’s last championship.
It was Malcolm Butler who ended the drought.
Greatest moment in Boston sports history, right?
OK, you have a right to ask about Bobby Orr’s goal against the St. Louis Blues in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals on May 10, 1970.
You have a right to ask about John Havlicek stealing the ball against the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 7 of the 1965 Eastern Conference finals, earning the Celtics a 110-109 victory.
You can ask about Carlton Fisk’s 12th-inning home run in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, leading the Red Sox to a 7-6 victory over the Cincinnati Reds.
You can ask about . . . well, you can ask about dozens of other great Boston sports moments. But none of them turned near-certain defeat into heart-pounding, titlesecuring victory. Orr’s goal may well be the most “memorable” moment in Boston sports history, this because of the epic photo by the late Ray Lussier for the old Boston Record-American, a precursor to today’s Herald. Orr is absolutely the greatest hockey player of all time, but if the B’s didn’t take out the expansion Blues in Game 4 they’d have finished the job in Game 5.
What Havlicek swiped from the Sixers in ’65 also is “memorable,” but that’s because the late, great Johnny Most made one of the great play-by-play calls in the history of sports broadcasting: “Havlicek stole the ball!!!”
Fisk’s homer gets a historical bump because of the urgent body English deployed by Pudge to make the ball stay fair. Memorable? Yes. Greatest? The Sox lost Game 7.
As for Adam Vinatieri, his game-winning field goal in the Tuck Rule Game was in the divisional round. Had he missed on his last-second field goal attempt in Super Bowl XXXVI the game would have gone to overtime.
Malcolm Butler made one play that turned a Super Bowl loss into a Super Bowl championship.
Now he’s gone, having agreed to a five-year, $61 million deal with the Tennessee Titans. Since $30 million of the money is guaranteed, Butler has gone from crying, as in at the Super Bowl, to laughing, as in all the way to the bank. So you don’t need to shed your tears for Butler. He did just fine.
But it doesn’t change the fact that the man who contributed the single greatest play in Boston sports history is leaving town under strange, goofy circumstances. We still don’t know why Bill Belichick chose to let Butler rust on the sideline during the Pats’ 4133 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LII, other than the coach’s Golden Oldie that he did what was in the best interests of the team. Given the outcome of the game, it was as empty an answer as Belichick has ever delivered, leading to a truckload of theories that range from “performance issues” to “My buddy knows a guy who knows a cop in Minnesota who said that . . .”
Butler did finally weigh in yesterday, telling the Herald’s Jeff Howe that he, like the rest of us, never got a good reason.
Unless Butler turns out to be the mastermind of Russian meddling in American elections, he deserved better than this. The Pats will play the Titans next season, but the game is in Nashville; barring another Gillette Stadium playoff showdown, there will be no Malcolm Butler return to Foxboro next season.
Look at it this way: We got so caught up in the politics of Isaiah Thomas’ Garden video tribute that it never occurred to us to prepare something for Malcolm Butler. Just in case.
See you in 2024 at the 10th anniversary Super Bowl XLIX celebration, Malcolm.
Until then, it’s been real.