Celebration wanes as playoffs loom Mainers witness perfection

For Josh Braley, it was some kind of birthday present.

Not only did his wife Allison give him two tickets to his first pro football game, but they enabled the 27-year-old Orland man to witness a moment in sports history as the New England Patriots capped off the first 16-0 regular season in NFL history Saturday night with a 38-35 victory over the New York Giants at East Rutherford, N.J.

“I’d wanted those tickets for a long time, ever since I saw that game on the schedule,” said Braley. “When I got them on my birthday [on Oct. 29], I knew they had a chance to go unbeaten, but then I’d look at the schedule and say ‘this team would beat them’ or ‘that team would beat them.’

“But it worked out perfectly.”

While Braley described himself as a “mad” Giants fan, he wasn’t overly disappointed that the Patriots became just the fourth NFL team to go through the regular season unbeaten – and the first since the Miami Dolphins went 14-0 in 1972 – at his team’s expense.

“I wanted to see the 16-0 game even being a Giants fan,” he said. “I also wanted to see a close game, and it was close. It couldn’t get any better than that.”

Braley attended the game with buddy Chris Soper, 28, of Bucksport, in seats 21 rows up on the left side of one of the end zones at Giants Stadium.

“It was very intense,” said Soper, who had seen eight to 10 previous Patriots games in person but was making his first trip to Giants Stadium. “Probably 30 percent of the people there were Patriots fans, and it was just crazy. You couldn’t hear anything. The fans had come to play ball along with the teams.”

That nearly a third of the crowd of 79,110 were Patriots fans wasn’t a big surprise, given that during the week preceding the game some Giants fans were getting big money by selling game tickets on online auction sites.

There was money to be made, too, outside the stadium on game day.

“We had heard people were getting $1,600 to $2,400 for tickets, and some people asked for ours but we didn’t bother with it because we understood the historical value of the game,” said Soper.

“I told my wife I’d sell them for about $20,000,” joked Braley. “Anything under that I wouldn’t take.”

Braley and Soper noticed the electricity in the air as the game began, even though the Giants already had clinched the No. 5 seed in the NFC playoffs that begin next weekend and could not enhance that seeding with a win over the Patriots, the top seed in the AFC.

Yet when the Giants took an early 7-0 lead Soper knew the Patriots were going to be in for a major challenge.

“As soon as the Giants scored on the first series, I felt it definitely was going to be a close game,” he said. “It was just intense, back and forth, the whole way through.”

Their vantage point ultimately provided Soper and Braley a direct view of the game’s decisive play, a 65-yard touchdown pass from New England quarterback Tom Brady to Randy Moss with 11:06 left in the fourth quarter.

“We were right in front of where he caught it,” said Soper.

The play not only gave the Patriots a 31-28 lead after they had trailed by 12 points in the third quarter, it enabled Brady to break the NFL record for touchdown passes in a season (50) and Moss to break the single-season mark for TD catches (23).

“When they broke the records they didn’t announce anything about it at the stadium,” said Braley. “But everyone knew.”

The record-setting touchdown strike came just one play after an open Moss had dropped another long pass from Brady that would have put the Patriots deep in Giants territory.

“On the first play when he didn’t catch it, being a Giants fan I was glad because I didn’t want him to catch it,” said Braley. “But on the second one, you could just feel the momentum change.”

While Saturday night’s win proved historic for the Patriots, Soper and Braley agreed the team’s biggest goal remains to be accomplished.

“16-0 is meaningless without the Super Bowl, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see something like this,” said Soper. “It’s been 35 years since it happened the last time, and you never know when it’s going to happen again.”