Editor’s note: Sports Uncovered, the newest podcast from NBC Sports, will shine a fresh light on some of the most notable moments and figures in sports. The sixth episode tells the story of "The Bill Belichick You Don't Know," profiling a different side of the New England Patriots' iconic coach.
The Tuck Rule no longer exists.
NFL Rule 2, Section 22, Article 2, Note 2 was abolished on March 20, 2013 by a 29-1 vote of the ownership.
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The Washington football club, then led by former Raiders executive Bruce Allen, abstained. So did the New England Patriots, who benefitted the most from its inclusion.
It gave them second life on a snow-covered night in New England, allowed Tom Brady to wave a magic wand and create a dynasty. The Raiders entered that AFC divisional-round playoff as a team on the upswing. They reached the AFC title game the previous season and were again legitimate title contenders under a young coach named Jon Gruden.
He joined the Raiders in 1998 after beating out Bill Belichick, among others, to become Raiders head coach. Gruden turned a 4-12 team first into a .500 club and then an AFC juggernaut with a championship window wide open.
The Raiders and Patriots met in that playoff game on the same upward trajectory. They left on divergent paths.
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The moments after Charles Woodson knocked the ball from Brady’s grasp with two minutes left in the Jan. 19, 2002 playoff were the pivot point. The play was ruled a fumble on the field and overturned on replay. The Tuck Rule made it an incomplete pass.
“That’s the worst call,” Woodson told NFL Network, “in the history of sports.”
The Raiders and their fans still aren’t over it. The Patriots look back on it with a wink and a wry smile, knowing somewhere deep down they got away with violating the spirit of the law.
The letter of the law mandated the Tuck Rule be applied in that instance, something Belichick knew from experience. He was on the wrong side of that ruling in Week 2 against the New York Jets. That’s why he knew right away, the Patriots would retain possession.
“It was a very similar play to what happened with the Jets, when Anthony Pleasant hit Vinny Testaverde,” Belichick said, via NFL Network. “It was the same thing. We hit him, the ball came out and we recovered. We thought we had the ball, but Vinny was bringing it back into his body. It was very similar to the Oakland play. When I saw the replay on it, I knew what the call should’ve been because we were involved in that situation earlier in the year and came out on the other side of it.”
More from Belichick, via ESPN: “It played a big role in that season — it cost us the Jets game and it helped us win the snow game.”
The fact he calls it the “snow game” shows it was less consequential to the Patriots, a mere stepping stone on the path to bigger things.
The Patriots went on to win their first of six Super Bowl titles under Brady and Belichick. That partnership’s now over, with Brady in Tampa Bay. The pair split with Brady considered the best quarterback of all time and Belichick considered the greatest coach of all time.
The Raiders call it the “Tuck Rule Game,” specifically identifying when their franchise began to fall apart.
That loss was Gruden’s last before owner Al Davis traded him to Tampa Bay for two first-round picks, two second-round picks and $8 million.
“That was the turning point for two organizations,” former Raiders quarterback Rich Gannon said, via The Ringer. “At that point, nobody really knew who Tom Brady was. And then Jon Gruden goes back to Oakland and packs up his office and is traded to Tampa Bay. That was the worst decision that Al Davis ever made in his years running the Oakland Raiders. That was a horrible decision.”
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While the Raiders reached the Super Bowl the following year, they fell apart in a loss to Gruden and the Buccaneers and never recovered. They went 13 years without a winning record, an unreal playoff drought for one of the NFL’s best teams.
Gannon thinks that fate could’ve been avoided by retaining Gruden.
“We were building something special, that was the problem [with the trade],” Gannon said. “It’d be like separating Drew Brees and Sean Payton or Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy or Belichick and Brady. I’m not trying to put myself into that category, but we were in the infant stages of doing something unique and special.”
The Raiders believe a bad call, or the application of a lousy rule or both jobbed them that night. It’s something that sticks with them and their fans even now.
“You don’t ever get over that,” Gruden said in Jan. 2019. “It’s the last time that team will ever be together. It’ll never be the same. Those guys fought as long and hard as they could. It’ll sting forever.”
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