On January 14, 2012, the Patriots hosted the Broncos in a divisional playoff game.
The Patriots had won thirteen games in the regular season. The Broncos had won eight. Their quarterback was Aaron’s old teammate, Tim Tebow.
In their last game, six days earlier, on January 8, the Broncos had beaten the Steelers—after losing their last three regular-season games by an average of sixteen points. On January 8, Tebow wrote “John 3:16” in his eye black. He ended up throwing for 316 yards, averaging 31.6 yards per completion.
In the first three quarters, he threw 16 passes.
The game’s only interception, by the Steelers quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, had been thrown on 3rd down and 16.
Ratings for CBS’s telecast of the game had peaked at 31.6.
It had been exactly three years since Tebow had written “John 3:16” under his eyes for the BCS National Championship Game. Within a few hours, “John 3:16” became the most searched-for term on Google, followed by “Tebow” and “Tim Tebow.”
It was a miraculous string of coincidences. But Tebow would need more than a miracle to beat the Patriots.
It was below freezing in Foxborough. The air was dry and clear but the field was rock hard. As the teams faced off, their breath shot toward the ground in billowing puffs of silver smoke. But Aaron Hernandez burst out on the fourth play of the game, running the ball forty-three yards downfield—his longest run of the season. The Patriots scored a touchdown with the next play, then scored four more in the first half.
Hernandez carried the ball five times in the game, giving the best rushing performance a tight end had ever shown in the NFL playoffs. Rob Gronkowski proved his mettle again by making ten catches for a total 145 yards. Early in the fourth quarter, Hernandez was taken out of the game with a head injury—one of several sustained in the course of his football career. But the Patriots’ victory was decisive: a 45-10 rout.
“I wish I had [Aaron’s] moves,” Gronkowski told the New York Times after the game. “He can really juke it.”
A few weeks later, the boy from Bristol found himself in Indianapolis, playing in his first—and only—Super Bowl.
American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson sang the national anthem, accompanied by a children’s choir.
As she came to the “broad stripes and bright stars,” NBC’s cameras zoomed in on Aaron.
Hernandez looked lost in thought. With his mouth slightly open, he swayed side to side as he took in the moment.
Four years earlier, in Super Bowl XLII, the Patriots had gone into the game with a perfect season under their belts. Beating their opponents, the Giants, in Arizona would have given them the first 19–0 record in NFL history. And the Patriots did hold the Giants at bay—until the very end of the fourth quarter. With 2:37 left on the clock and the ball on their 17-yard line, the Giants began a spectacular eighty-three-yard drive, culminating in David Tyree’s astonishing, one-armed catch and Plaxico Burress’s game-winning touchdown.
It was a stunning upset, and the game had been thrilling. The Fox telecast broke all previous Super Bowl records. And now, the same teams, same coaches, and same quarterbacks were facing each other again in Indiana.
The Patriots won their coin toss and deferred, giving the Giants first possession. The Giants moved the ball at first. But the Patriots pushed the Giants back for three plays in a row, sacked Eli Manning twice, got the Giants out of field goal range, and forced a punt.
Then, on the Patriots’ very first play, Tom Brady found himself in trouble in the end zone, threw the ball away, and got flagged for intentional grounding, resulting in a safety. The penalty gave the Giants a two-point lead.
By the end of the first quarter, the Giants had widened that lead to nine points. A second-quarter field goal by the Patriots brought the score to 9-3. Then, Brady led a spectacular, fourteen-play, ninety-six-yard drive, resulting in a Patriots touchdown.
Heading into halftime, Aaron’s team had taken the lead by one point.
Madonna played the halftime show. Then, in the third quarter, Hernandez caught a twelve-yard pass, faked out linebacker Chase Blackburn, and brought home another epic drive, totalling eight plays and seventy-nine yards.
Aaron’s touchdown gave the Patriots an eight-point lead.
During the regular season, Aaron’s end-zone dance had become an internet meme.
After each touchdown, Hernandez would pretend to toss money into the air—making it rain.
Now, in a revised version of the routine, Aaron pretended to open a safe, remove stacks of bills, and toss them into the air.
“I’m trying to get this money,” Aaron had told his childhood friend, Tim Washington. “That’s the goal, and I’m going to bust my ass in any possible way to get it.”
The goal had been met. Among other things, Aaron’s end-zone pantomime conveyed his cockiness—and the sense that, at the age of twenty-two, he had become a bona fide superstar.
At that moment in Indianapolis, Aaron Hernandez stood at the top of the world.
The Giants scored two field goals in the quarter and sacked Brady on a third down, injuring the quarterback’s already-tender left shoulder. But the Patriots held the score to 17-15.
In the fourth quarter, Patriots receiver Wes Welker dropped a crucial, game-winning pass.
“It’s a play I never drop,” Welker would tell the New York Times. “I always make it. And in the most critical situation, I let the team down…It’s one I’ll have to live with.”
Finally, the Giants had an opening. Late in the quarter, Eli Manning took advantage of that opening, with an eighty-eight-yard drive that culminated in one of the most bizarre plays in Super Bowl history.
The Patriots were down to their last time-out. The Giants were on their 6-yard line.
There were sixty-four seconds left on the clock.
The Giants were within twenty-four yards of a field goal. It had been four years since their kicker, Lawrence Tynes, had missed a field goal of less than thirty yards.
All that the Giants had to do now was run the clock down before kicking the field goal and winning the game.
Of course, Bill Belichick understood this. His only hope was to let the Giants score a touchdown, regain possession, and use that last minute to score again.
Eli Manning understood it, too. He passed the ball off to running back Ahmad Bradshaw, who ran hard up the middle, instead of trying to run down the clock.
If the Giants scored now, the Patriots would still have a minute of play.
As he approached the 2-yard line, Bradshaw seemed to realize that no one was trying to stop him. Manning screamed at him to fall down.
The Patriots had parted like the Red Sea.
Right at the goal line, the running back planted his feet, crouched, and spun around. But it was too late—Bradshaw’s own momentum continued to carry him over the goal line. As he flopped backward, awkwardly, the Giants scored.
The odd, ugly touchdown gave the Giants a four-point lead, but left the Patriots fifty-seven seconds to work with—and with a quarterback like Tom Brady, fifty-seven seconds could be an eternity.
Brady’s first pass, to receiver Deion Branch, was incomplete. Hernandez lost focus and dropped an easy catch. The Giants sacked Brady again on third down, forcing the Patriots to use their final time-out, sixteen yards shy of a first down.
Branch and Hernandez redeemed themselves on the next two plays. Branch ran out of bounds, at the 33-yard line, for first down. An eleven-yard catch by Hernandez moved the Patriots up to the 44. An illegal substitution penalty against the Giants moved the Patriots up another five yards.
Then, with nine seconds left on the clock, Brady threw a perfect Hail Mary to Hernandez in the end zone.
Surrounded on all sides by Giants, Hernandez stretched his hands out and jumped for the ball.
The Giants jumped higher. As Aaron fell backward, two Giants fell on top of him.
The ball went flying. Gronkowski lunged for it, missed.
Once again, the Giants had beaten the Patriots.
Hernandez was heartbroken, he told reporters. At twenty-two, he had many more years to bring home a Super Bowl ring. But in the off-season, Aaron’s world began to crumble.