Julian Edelman, Plays We Remember, and Things We Forget

Julian Edelman ran a crossing route early in the fourth quarter, at a moment when Super Bowl XLIX seemed as likely to fizzle into formality as to regain its earlier drama. The Patriots were down ten at that point, and faced a third-and-fourteen in their own territory. Tom Brady stepped through a dissolved pocket and found Edelman streaking on a diagonal. Edelman caught the pass, and Seattle safety Kam Chancellor—the hardest-hitting member of football's hardest-hitting defense—slammed into him. The crown of Chancellor's helmet met the side of Edelman's, but Edelman held on, spun, and scampered forward, wobbly but still game. Only upon replay was it obvious that Edelman's knee had touched the ground, but the yardage was plenty for a first down, and the drive was underway.

This play, more than Jermaine Kearse's juggling catch or Malcom Butler's interception, has stuck in my mind in the days following the game. My memory narrows on the moment, I think, because it seems a cleaner summary of this sport's essence than any part of the happy mess that came later. This play turned not on surprise or flukery or sudden virtuosity but on basic football roles embodied to the absolute. There was the grim, visored Chancellor, the far edge of the Seattle defense, tasked with extracting the full price of any first down. Even his surname is in on the act—it sounds like a mean vocation pursued in a medieval gallows. Then there was Edelman, the inheritor of Wes Welker's old playbook, who during game action looks frictionless, tiny, and acute, and who during his post-game interview looked like Boston's collective id as imagined by the world's least restrained comic-book illustrator, with a beard climbing to his eyelids and a mouth trumpeting Northeastern exceptionalism. And there was Brady, regal and upright among the pushing lineman, evading and redirecting the violence.

The play was the night's most extreme version of the compromise made with every tackle. Chancellor wanted to dislodge the ball or, at least, stop Edelman from advancing. Edelman wanted to catch it and run. So the helmets hit, and the knee skimmed the grass, and then everyone lined up again.

Edelman would go on to catch the drive's penultimate pass and, a few minutes later, the game's final score, and after the mayhem of the endgame I felt moved to remind anyone who would listen of his contribution. It looked like he had absorbed some neurological damage during the hit from Chancellor, and I wanted his bravery noted. As the night went along, my arguments devolved from "They wouldn't have won without him" to "He got fucked up."

Though there has since been some spare discussion of the propriety of Edelman's remaining in the game, at the time it seemed impossible that he might be removed. NBC's Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth took the stock code words for a spin, Brady hurried the Pats to the line, and Edelman shook off the fog. Indeed, it felt as if the national conscience was relieved by the moment's magnitude; there was no chance, here, of an intervention on behalf of long-term safety, which left us to enjoy the show.

And it was, a great many things notwithstanding, quite a show. Those who claim that violence sits at the center of football's appeal are only half-right; so, too, are those who argue that its true beauty lies in design and discipline. Football is a blend, a balance between the symbolic risk common to nicer team sports and the very real risk of human harm. A play starts, players sprint and cut along their appointed paths, options are exercised, defensive principles applied, and wham!—the fanciness is flattened, and gives way to the oldest struggle around.

This is not a simple thing. Every year, it becomes harder to look past the problems with football than it was the year before, and Edelman's inspired late play reminded us of those problems at least as much as it celebrated the game's rough charm. The term "concussion" has become almost euphemistic in its commonness, so let us acknowledge instead that we may have witnessed, on Sunday, some incremental depletion of both the span and quality of Edelman's life.

Still, in my memory of the game, I not only accept Edelman's risk but celebrate it. This says something about the unreality of televised football—which goes quadruple for the all-points spectacle of the Super Bowl—and something more about the power of the game's fundamental element. The solid hit, that quick trial of will and physics, is an adaptable device; it gives a crummy game heft and a great game a shade of myth. Against our better judgment, it resonates.

It also redeems. I would like to consider myself an enlightened person. I sympathize with hobbled ex-players. I find the NFL's handling of issues of safety superficial, its rule changes myopic, its studies suspicious, its settlement offers insulting. But that catch and tackle, the hard thud of true trouble landing atop symbol, relegated all those concerns to preamble. I was glad when Edelman went on, however queasy-legged, and glad when the NBC men stuck dutifully to their script, and when the night's last touchdown completed the morality play's arc.

To watch football, now, is to be aware of an artifice of audience manipulation as elaborate as it is unconvincing. Socks are subject to strict legislation while the PED-swollen calves underneath go ignored, classic rock bumper music sounds over season-ending injuries, and quasi-charitable jersey patches and field logos cover the finest-tuned capitalist engine in sports. We all see the phoniness, and at our noblest moments the sight of it makes the NFL seem easy to quit.

And then, in the last quarter of the last game of the most vile season in recent memory, a flash of the real arrives, and we are reminded why we watch. We see a hit that can make confetti of convictions, and we see its target shrug it off. Our hearts a little fuller and our ethics scuffed, we say we'll be better next year.