#grownostr

#nostr

#football

#Raiders

#Patriots

Tom Brady has a minority stake in the Las Vegas Raiders. This is the team he beat in 2001, in the last game ever played in the old Gillete stadium, formerly Schaefer stadium. The Patriots went on to win the superbowl that year.

A lot happened in that game. It snowed throughout, accumulating 6-8 inches. The Raiders were on the verge of winning in the last two minutes of the game when Charles Woodson hit Brady. He went to make a pass or tuck the ball. The ball came out and the Raiders recovered it. The officials on the field ruled it a fumble. This would have ended the beginning of a legacy, but the replay official overturned the ruling on the field and ruled the play an incomplete pass. Hence the change in the tuck rule the following season. This afforded Brady the opportunity to get the team in field goal range.

Adam Vinatieri kicked the winning field goal with little time on the clock. What the writers and historians will fail tell you is that the snow blowers, would frequently clear the lines at time outs, commercial breaks and quarter breaks.

The Raiders called a time out, a gambit frequently used to ice the kicker. They meant it literally this time as it was snowing and Ice was on the field. This worked to the Raiders disadvantage. During the time out, one of the maintenance crew went to clear the lines on the field, he also used his blower to clear the area where Vinatieri was to kake his kick. Probably illegal, but nobody cared, and the fans in Foxboro cheered on their working class hero.

Vinatieri made the winning field goal. Brady went on to win the rest of the playoffs, the suberbowll, 6 more championships in the following 2 decades and become the GOAT. Not bad for a backup quarterback who at the beginning of the season played second fiddle to Drew Bledsoe.

Brady owes his thanks to the fateful moment of the Raiders timeout and the maintenance worker who made it all happen. I know. I was there.