Ahmad Bradshaw scores his bizarre winning touchdown in Super Bowl XLVI. Pic: Sports Illustrated |
While the game was gripping, it was hardly a scoring spectacular, more a battle of mind games between the two head coaches and the two star quarterbacks Tom Brady and Eli Manning.
Mario Manningham's late game catch down the sidelines was the David Tyree moment of the game, but what about that winning score? The mind games battle peaked in the last couple of minutes with the Giants trying to run down the clock in a bid not to give Brady's Patriots back the ball but the plan looked like it had backfired.
When Ahmad Bradshaw picked up the ball and ran towards the endzone, the Patriots defense stopped and allowed him through, with the intention of stopping on the one yard line.
I'd love to know what Bradshaw was thinking at that point - what would you do? Score potentially the winning Super Bowl touchdown or take one for the team, run down the clock and set up a possible winning field goal.
Bradshaw somehow decided to do a bit of both. He stopped, went to sit down and then, perhaps accidentally scored. The reaction of his fellow players was a "What have you done?" kind of bizarre.
On the sideline, Bradshaw shrugged his shoulders, not knowing that he'd actually decided the game.
It made a not-that-memorable game memorable for the winning touchdown that nobody wanted to score.