By: Dan Casey
This past Sunday was one of the best clutch sports days in Boston’s recent memory. The Patriots had a come from behind win against the Saints on a 17 yard touchdown pass from Tom Brady to rookie receiver Kenbrell Tompkins. “Until that clock said all zeros on it, we were going to fight until the finish,” Tompkins stated after the game, which was exactly what they did. The Patriots drove down the field in just over a minute left to the end zone, which is impressive even if you didn’t have a future Hall of Famer running your offense. Most of the fans at Gillette left assuming the game was over and there was no way to come back; especially after Brady threw his late fourth quarter pick. But a quick stop by the defense gave the offense one last chance to get that winning touchdown and stun the leaving stampede of Patriot fans. Tom Brady marched down the field stringing together multiple passes and eventually finding his way into the end zone.
This win was all the more impressive because of the fact that the Patriots had no timeouts, the only way to stop the clock after a catch was to get out of bounds, or to spike the ball after sprinting to the line of scrimmage which would result in a loss of a very costly down. This limited the Pats to the plays they could run in caution of running out the clock. So not only did the Patriots score a winning touchdown with under two minutes to go, they did it sprinting down the field after every completion that didn’t stop the clock.
I myself was watching the game and was guilty of changing the channel to the Red Sox game pregame show and was beyond surprised to see that the Patriot had come back to win. Overall it was a very clutch performance by the men in red, white, and blue and it will make people stay in their seats and stay tuned in the next time the Patriots are losing a seemingly out of reach game.
Just over 30 miles away at Fenway Park the Red Sox were about to get underway with the second game of their American League Championship Series against the Detroit Tigers. The Red Sox lost the series opener and failed to score a run due to the terrific game pitched by Anibal Sanchez. Sanchez was on his game and was in contention for a no hitter for most of the game. This was carried over by the Detroit bullpen which held the Red Sox scoreless. Game two was a déjà vu moment for Boston fans as the Red Sox failed to be able to score runs, this time against Cy Young favorite Max Scherzer. That was until the 8th inning and David Ortiz walked to the plate with bases loaded. The score was 5-1 and the Red Sox had only 5 hits up to that point in the 17 innings played in the series. It couldn’t have been written up any better with one of the Red Sox greats coming to the plate with a chance to put Boston into a good position to win the game. And that was exactly what he did, clearing the bases with one swing and getting the crowd on their feet again. With the way that the Detroit pitching was going, it seemed a distant hope even for a hitter like Big Papi to touch them all but he delivered with two outs and it changed the momentum of the game and the entire series. The Red Sox are hoping to reach the World Series for the first time since 2007, the last time they hoisted the Commissioner’s trophy. The Red Sox hope to keep their momentum going from this win to hopefully get them back to the World Series.
