As all that changed, as the dust settled on the most brutal terrorist attack ever on US soil, the pressure among NFL owners was to play the game.
At that time, it was hard to believe. It is fortunate that they did not find their way in retrospect.
Twenty-five years ago, in a confused nation, using our imperfect domestic security procedures and dealing with a coordinated attack that killed nearly 3,000 innocent victims, many NFL owners insisted — some very loudly — that the game should go on as scheduled.
They wanted to convey to the terrorists that the wheels of commerce would not stop, which benefited the bottom line.
In the end, they were yelled at by people who were specifically told to wear helmets and shoulder pads and stuttered at each other. History has judged those players kindly.
A quarter century after 9/11, it seems far-fetched to imagine that a grieving nation could welcome a football Sunday while bodies are still being pulled from the rubble.
However, after September 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan and the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., most owners intended to set up a full slate five days later. Successfully pushed back players were the voice of reason.
As a famous owner He told me On the 10th anniversary of the horrific shooting, he said, “Most owners thought we should play the game, and when (then-commissioner Paul Tagliabue) decided to wait a week, it wasn’t popular internally. He took a risk, but he did what he felt was right. And I think, looking back, we all respect it and it was the right move.”
Tagliabu, He died in Novemberhe had a strong working relationship with NFL Players Association Executive Director Gene Upshaw, who strongly favored the constituency pausing the action to assess the situation. On September 13, the two men lined up: there would be no games that weekend.
In the year When I revisited the decision with Tagliabue in 2011, he admitted that many of the owners who hired him were unhappy with the news.
“But in my mind, you couldn’t carry on with business as usual, because that’s what it is. is not Business as usual. This was a global, unprecedented event, and it was not appropriate to play football games that weekend.
It seems like an obvious calculation now, but back then the NFL made it even more complicated. Competitive and logistical factors came into play.
In the year In 2001, there were 31 teams, meaning at least one (in this case, the San Diego Chargers) had a bye every week. Losing Week 2 outright and keeping the rest of the schedule intact would force the Chargers to play 16 games, forcing everyone else to play 15, which is one of the reasons why Tagliabue had Week 2 to end the regular season.
That season, however, there was only a week off between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl, which put the league out of the regular buffer zone. Tagliabue and his owners could either eliminate the playoffs (meaning only four teams in each conference qualify for the postseason instead of six) or keep the full field intact but make a quick turnaround by scheduling midweek games in the wild-card round.
Another option, pushing the Super Bowl up one week, was initially rejected because New Orleans, the host city, held most of the coveted hotel rooms at the prestigious automobile dealership convention.
After it was announced that there would be no games in Week 2, there was much discussion about how the league should proceed. It was not the most important speech in a nation of collective shock, grief, anger and fear.
If you’re too young to remember that terrifying time – or not even born yet – it’s hard to convey how powerful the earthquake and tremors were.
For most of our history as a nation, and certainly in the post-World War II nuclear age, our borders felt impregnable. Terrorism wasn’t exactly a foreign concept, but a hostile, coordinated attack on our country seemed like something that could only happen on that scale in a Tom Clancy novel or a summer blockbuster movie.
Airports had some defenses, but not enough. Before 9/11, a passenger dropped a duffel bag onto the X-ray machine belt and shouted, “My flight leaves in five minutes!” It was completely plausible to shout. Grab the bag, sprint to the door and get on the plane while practically running through a low-tech metal detector.
I know, because I has been That guy, incidentally, is sometimes heavily tattooed with a future basketball hall of famer Blasting Pearl Jam on the boombox.
When it was revealed that terrorists trained in flight schools in the US had brought box cutters through security and used them to fly past commercial flights and into buildings – it made many of us feel as if the earth beneath us had changed in an unimaginable way.
Our society was different in ways that young citizens could hardly understand.
For example, on the night of September 11, members of Congress from both political parties stood on the marble steps of the Capitol. They broke in Sudden interpretation “God Bless America.”
In the following days, the news reports and descriptions of the disaster were very sad and everywhere. Many people were affected by the attack, and NFL circles were no exception.
New England Patriots quarterback Joe Andruzzi had three brothers, all New York City firefighters, who — like many of their brave counterparts — rushed to the World Trade Center to save lives after the towers hit.
Jacksonville Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin spent 45 gut-wrenching minutes walking around the team’s training facility, trying in vain to get hold of his son Tim, who worked on the 60th floor of Two World Trade. He finally It reached Tim’s cell phone The boy made the long journey down the stairs and reached the ground 20 minutes before the building collapsed.
And, 25-year-old Arizona Cardinals safety Pat Tillman, who enlisted in the Army next spring in response to the attacks, turned down a three-year, $3.6 million contract offer. Two years later, Tillman, a corporal in the US Army Rangers, He was killed By friendly fire in Afghanistan.
After 9/11, a common theme was that people wanted to help as much as they could.
In June, I left New York Giants coach John Harbaugh An unknown group came out For the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, former Giants linebacker Jesse Armstead told the audience how he and his teammates got through the event.
The defending NFC champion Giants opened their season in Denver Monday night and landed at Newark Airport the next morning — Tuesday, Sept. 11. Less than three hours later, United Flight 93 from the same terminal in Newark to San Francisco was hijacked to target a location in Washington, D.C., passengers attempted to storm the cockpit, and the jet crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania.
Armstead, voice rising and eyes wide, told current Giants players he could see the flames across the Hudson River from his New Jersey home after two more hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center’s 110-story twin towers.
In the hours that followed, he and some of his teammates were at the scene in Jersey City to help rescue workers. Four days later, 35 Giants players were transported in police boats across the Hudson to Ground Zero to offer moral support to survivors in the rubble.
Flags fly at half-staff outside an empty Soldier Field in Chicago on the first Sunday since the September 11, 2001, attacks. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Gamers across the country were shaken by uncertainty about air travel safety and whether their families would be protected from possible terrorist attacks. For the Giants, New York Jets, Washington Redskins and Pittsburgh Steelers, that concern is exacerbated by their proximity to the affected areas.
Michael Strahan, then the star defensive end for the Giants, was particularly animated and upset during a conference call hosted by Upshaw before the Week 2 games were canceled. Strahan described the chaos in New York City during rescue efforts and the bomb threat, and the Giants said they could still see smoke from the Twin Towers rising from the team’s practice fields.
Eddie George, a former Tennessee Titans star, recalled in 2011, “He made that decision … Michael’s statement.”
Major League Baseball players expressed similar sentiments as they suspended the season because of the attack, with games set to resume on Sept. 17. New York Yankees star shortstop Derek Jeter made his stance clear to reporters: “They’re still trying to find people. I really don’t think it’s the right time to be playing baseball.”
In the end, waiting to get back on the field until September 23rd (“Thursday Night Football” was not yet available) proved to be the right move for the NFL. In the year
Members of the Kansas City Chiefs waved flags as they entered the stadium before the game against the New York Giants, the first since the September 11, 2001, attacks. (Elsa/Getty Images)
Although they initially wanted to reduce the playing field and shave a week off the postseason, the owners opted for a better approach: They threw money (and tickets) at the problem, paid off the car dealers and switched dates.
In his first game with the Patriots and newly installed starter Tom Brady on a last-second walk-off field goal, the “Best Show on Turf” stunned the St. Louis Rams is memorable.
It was the first of six Super Bowl victories for Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who invoked the “special American spirit” as Tagliabue presented him with the Lombardi Trophy after the game.
“We’re proud to be a symbol of that,” Kraft told the Superdome crowd and a large television audience. “Spirituality, faith and democracy are the cornerstones of our country.” We’re all veterans, tonight the veterans are world champions.”
It was a monumental attempt to equate the moment of athletic triumph with the struggle to move forward after a devastating accident. Yet as a collective, NFL owners don’t deserve a victory lap.
Pete Rosell, Tagliabue’s longtime assistant, once said his biggest regret was not canceling Sunday games after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Friday, November 22, 1963.
Surprisingly, many of the owners believed that plowing ahead and playing was the right course. At that critical moment, the players looked at football closely and understood the historical implications of not accepting the seriousness of the event.
“We were still in shock,” George recalled ten years after the attack. “We didn’t know what was going to happen next, when you see the World Trade Center collapsing in front of your eyes, and it is. Realthe hype for a team in the stadium seems unreal.
“We decided, ‘This is a great American tragedy that will be told after 100 years or so. It’s bigger than the play.’ “
