50 Most Memorable Super Bowl Moments, No. 1: David Tyree’s helmet catch
As the NFL approached its highly anticipated golden anniversary Super Bowl, Yahoo Sports took a look back at some of the most memorable moments in the game’s history.
In our rankings, the moments went beyond the great scores and plays. We also took a look at entertainment performances, scandals/controversies and other events associated with corresponding Super Bowls.
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After a nearly two-month countdown (and compelling case for another top choice), here’s what Yahoo Sports tallied as the No. 1 Most Memorable Super Bowl Moment:
Tyree’s helmet catch
The Patriots had navigated their way through the regular season with 16 wins in 16 games, the weight of not just their march to glory but also the Spygate controversy growing heavier with each passing week.
They were in the desert for a coronation. To celebrate, not to mourn.
But after several of the most frantic, head-shaking moments in Super Bowl history, the Giants did serve as pall bearers, ushering out New England’s pursuit of perfection as it was they who carried the giant, gleaming Lombardi Trophy out of University of Phoenix Stadium.
New York’s defense had held the Patriots’ explosive offensive in check, and the teams had scored just 24 combined points when the two-minute mark of the fourth quarter hit. It was a far cry from the nearly 37 points a game New England had posted throughout the season.
The Giants faced third and 5 from their own 44-yard line with 1 minute, 15 seconds to play. The Patriots’ defenders closed in on quarterback Eli Manning quickly, with Adalius Thomas coming from his blind side, making Manning slide forward in the rapidly-closing pocket. Defensive tackles Jarvis Green and Richard Seymour followed, with Green getting a good grasp of Manning’s white jersey and Seymour getting his hands on him too.
Somehow, Manning stayed on his feet, backpedaled several steps, and heaved the ball about 40 yards downfield, where little-used receiver David Tyree (he’d had just four catches in the regular season but three in the game) and Patriots safety Rodney Harrison both leapt to claim it.
Tyree got both hands on the ball, pinning it to his helmet with his right hand. His vice grip was strong enough to maintain possession even as Harrison wrestled him down to the grass, pulling on Tyree’s right arm, bending the receiver backwards over his thigh as they fell back to Earth.
Four plays later, the Giants scored, on a Manning-to-Plaxico Burress pass, and the Patriots’ attempt at a game-winning drive fell dead.
It was a funeral, just as New York had planned. A red, white, and blue confetti-covered funeral.
The amazing catch vaulted Tyree into football’s lore, but it was the last catch he ever made in an NFL uniform. He missed the 2008 season to injury, and played briefly with the Baltimore Ravens in 2009 before retiring with 54 catches in 83 career-regular-season games, and four more in the postseason, all of them in that 2007 run by the Giants.
“In some ways, I look at the catch as the culmination of a lot of things in my life,” Tyree told The MMQB in 2015. “It was really a culmination of a journey of faith and adversity and that’s why it’s so significant for me personally. Because from the time I was a kid, I wanted to be remembered. I don’t know why. It was just one of those things as a kid where I would hear about other people who had somebody significant in their family, and I just wanted to be remembered for something like that. …
“So that catch was really the embodiment of my desire that I had even as a young man, not even knowing what my life would hold. It’s a story of faith, of seeing your faithful promise from God come to pass. So there’s a lot behind the scenes that most people would never really grasp, and it really is so much more than just a catch.”
Tyree is remembered, with great fondness by Giants fans, and something less than that by Patriots fans. But he is, undoubtedly, remembered.
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