A hated pair of cleats and a near-benching that led to Malcolm Butler’s Super Bowl interception

Let’s call it a yard.

But could the difference really be whittled down to 36 inches? We could call it a breath, or the time it takes to rattle off a play call. Maybe it’s within the spike of a seven-stud cleat, just measurably long enough to anchor the most unheralded jam of all time.

However we measure the margin of victory, officially documented by a 28-24 score, it could never account for the dramatic distance between the diverging paths the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks took after a frantic finish to Super Bowl XLIX.

“It changed the direction of both organizations,” former Patriots safety Devin McCourty told The Athletic this week. “We went on to win two more Super Bowls, and (the Seahawks) basically disassembled over the next two or three years. As good as they were, they never got back to that.”

The Patriots and Seahawks will meet again on Sunday, in Super Bowl LX, stoking memories of their go-round. The victory in Glendale, Ariz. kickstarted the second phase of the Patriots’ dynasty, ending a decade-long Super Bowl drought.

Meanwhile, the Seahawks’ quest for back-to-back titles vanished as the desert evening faded to black, Malcolm Butler’s interception sealing their fate.

Seattle’s Legion of Boom defense allowed the fewest points in the league each season from 2012 to 2015 and was being debated among the best ever. Ironically, quarterback Russell Wilson’s interception — or, perhaps, defensive-minded coach Pete Carroll’s decision to give running back Marshawn Lynch the best seat in the house for the game’s final meaningful snap — stole the shine from the Seahawks’ more identifiable unit. The Seahawks remained competitive enough to win a playoff game over their next two seasons, but they were never the same, gradually splintering.

Super Bowl XLIX overflowed with captivating components. The Patriots and Seahawks were historically strong teams with star-studded rosters, and players have called it the fastest and most physical game of their lives. It featured the first 10-point, fourth-quarter comeback in Super Bowl history, and Butler was the perfect underdog to make the most clutch defensive play in NFL history.

As the Patriots relived that night this week, they couldn’t help but think of every last decision — some big, others that have never been publicly shared before — that led to a franchise-altering victory.

‘Take your time. You’ve got to go win this thing.’

The Patriots had a vaunted defense of their own, but Wilson strategically navigated a secondary that included Darrelle Revis, Brandon Browner, Devin McCourty, Patrick Chung and Kyle Arrington, who was perhaps the best slot corner in the league that season. Arrington struggled against the Seahawks’ length at receiver, so Bill Belichick replaced him with Logan Ryan, who ceded too much cushion before backpedaling into the end zone and allowing an easy Chris Matthews touchdown catch to tie the game, 14-14, with two seconds left in the first half.

Belichick was so furious over Ryan’s mistake that he benched him at halftime for Butler, an undrafted rookie with more healthy scratches (four) than starts (one) during the eason. However, Butler made the team as a rarely-used sixth cornerback for Belichick, who had no choice after Butler built a catalogue of high-level plays on the ball throughout organized team activities and training camp.

“All the time,” McCourty says. “That’s why he made the team.”

Still, Butler was a stash-and-save player for developmental purposes. He broke into the rotation late in the regular season due to myriad injuries on special teams, and the coaching staff debated until the day before their divisional round victory over the Baltimore Ravens whether Butler would even be active. They ultimately dressed him, but he didn’t play a defensive snap.

He got 15 defensive snaps in garbage time as the Patriots throttled the Indianapolis Colts, 45-7, in the AFC Championship Game, but the Patriots still debated whether Butler should be in the lineup against Seattle. Oh, what could have been.

Walking off the field at halftime, McCourty was prepared to do all the yelling and screaming necessary to harness his team’s energy in the locker room, but one key twist halted that thought. Earlier in the week, Belichick stopped the team in the middle of practice at the Arizona Cardinals’ facility and walked them off the field. He ran them through a simulated Super Bowl halftime, which is twice as long as the teams’ usual break. Belichick explained how much time the players would have to themselves, then to work on adjustments, then more time to themselves, then more coaching, then back to the field for the third quarter.

“If we didn’t go over that, I would have gone in at halftime thinking I’ve got to get these guys going,” McCourty says. “We’ve got to rally. We’ve got to go yell and scream, and we would have done that. But call that five or eight minutes, then we would have had so much time left to just sit there. And now what?”

Wasted energy. Uncomfortable silences. And a desperate search for a way to snap out of it before re-taking the field.

Belichick’s Patriots routinely practiced “gotta have it” situations — crucial moments with the game on the line, offense against defense, hitting intensified, focus maximized and the competition taken seriously. Before Super Bowl XLIX, Belichick told the players every play against the Seahawks would be a “gotta have it” situation.

He also alerted his players that the first and second half in a Super Bowl can often feel like two different games. The flow gets disrupted at halftime, and it can be a chore to recapture their energy if their focus erodes. If the Patriots peaked too early in that locker room setting, they’d risk losing control of the game.

“Every play was so incredibly critical,” says Joe Judge, then the Patriots’ assistant special teams coach. “You can’t afford to waste any plays. Nothing exists after that game. You’ve got to make sure you execute and take advantage of every play you have. You can’t afford a mental mistake. You can’t afford a missed assignment. You can’t afford to do something stupid that detracts from it. So just how important every play was going to be and how they add up over the course of the game. I remember the speed of the game, big plays left and right, like a heavyweight fight where everyone was landing blow after blow after blow.”

Two of the Patriots’ biggest stars were particularly stunned. Tom Brady threw a bad first-quarter interception into the end zone, and his third-quarter pick set up the Seahawks to take a 24-14 lead. Brady’s interceptions cost the Patriots at least 10 points.

Meanwhile, Revis couldn’t stick with Doug Baldwin, who used an official to pick Revis and race open for an easy 3-yard touchdown catch. It was a stunner for Revis, who had been targeted 45 times after Week 8 but only surrendered 15 catches for 240 yards, one score and three interceptions (one for Revis, two deflected to teammates). He led the NFL with 42 of 50 All-Pro votes as the league’s best corner.

Brady, of course, bounced back. Facing a 10-point deficit and a defense that allowed 13 fourth-quarter points over its previous eight games combined, Brady closed the game with back-to-back touchdown drives, completing 13 of 15 passes for 124 yards and touchdowns to Danny Amendola and Julian Edelman.

Even though the offensive game plan was finalized by Wednesday of the bye week, Brady had last-minute reservations about their package of low red-zone plays. So Brady, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and the staff installed the play that resulted in Edelman’s touchdown the day before — with no chance to practice it.

They came up with a three-by-one formation with tight end Rob Gronkowski, Amendola and wideout Brandon LaFell on the right side of the formation and Edelman alone to the left. Brady and the staff believed the Seahawks would max blitz and utilize a post safety off that look, so running back Shane Vereen stayed in to block.

Jerry Schuplinski, a Patriots offensive assistant at the time, said that, sitting in the coaching booth, his eyes lit up before that play.

“It’s split zero,” he recalled saying on the headset. “All the pieces that had to come together for us … it was just a great example in the biggest moment of the biggest game, the team and the offense doing everything they were supposed to do. And it culminated with the throw from Tom to Julian.”

Edelman ran a return route — selling an in-breaking route to cornerback Tharold Simon before shuffling outside — and Brady delivered a dart to give New England a 28-24 lead with 2:02 to play. Edelman ran the same route out of a slot formation on the prior series, but Brady missed him. The touchdown route was more of a trend-breaker, as it was rare at the time for an outside receiver to run a return route.

“We kind of figured we would have Julian one on one,” Schuplinski said. “And it was just going to turn into, ‘Take your time. You’ve got to go win this thing.’”

‘This team just can’t win the big one’

Butler doesn’t get the glory without Browner’s remarkable instincts. But more than that, the Patriots might not have been in this game without Browner.

After winning Super Bowl XLVIII with the Seahawks, Browner jumped at the opportunity to join Revis in New England in free agency. At 6-foot-4 and 221 pounds, Browner was authoritative with his presence and demanding with his message. He added instant credibility as a leader.

Outside Gillette Stadium, it’s easy to remember Week 5 of the 2014 season for Belichick’s “on to Cincinnati” refrain. The Patriots were coming off an embarrassing 41-14 loss in Kansas City on “Monday Night Football,” and rookie quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo replaced Brady in the fourth quarter for 12 inconsequential snaps. Anytime Belichick was asked about benching Brady or anything else that could be deemed a distraction, he repeated, “on to Cincinnati.”

Inside Gillette, though, it was a whole different story. The Patriots were tense after dropping to 2-2. After they arrived at Gillette in the wee hours of the morning, every player retreated to their car to drive home, but Brady walked into the building to get a jump on the Bengals.

As the week progressed, leaders emerged in many forms. The players policed the room to eliminate anything unacceptable from the equation because they legitimately believed in their ability to accomplish something special together.

Browner and Revis were jawing at each other on the walk out to practice, and it continued to fester through the workout. They had a communication issue on one particular play, and the verbal jousting turned into a shouting match before Browner punched Revis twice, knocking him to the ground.

Time seemed to stop for everyone else as they wondered if the train was now off the tracks for good. But Revis got to his feet, the two shook hands and were perfectly fine the rest of the way. By all accounts, both 10 years ago and now, they never had another issue.

Browner and Revis didn’t have another issue, anyway. Belichick was hyper-focused on the field surface at University of Phoenix Stadium, knowing the added layers of paint on a grass surface would compromise players’ footing. So the coach made an unpopular ruling that all players would wear seven-stud cleats for the game. While the longer spikes are great for traction, they’re more uncomfortable than regular cleats.

No one wanted to wear the seven-studs, but Browner took it to another level and got into it with people in the locker room. Belichick had someone deliver a succinct message to Browner: If he didn’t wear the seven-stud cleats, he wouldn’t be active for the Super Bowl.

As it turned out, Browner needed them more than anyone.

Just as the Seahawks did prior to halftime, they flew down the field at a breakneck speed while the hourglass ran out of sand. Jermaine Kearse made a juggling catch from the ground off a Butler deflection to gain 33 yards to New England’s 5-yard line with 1:06 to play. The Seahawks immediately used their second timeout.

The play brought back all kinds of lovely thoughts for the Patriots, who had seen David Tyree’s “helmet catch” in Super Bowl XLII. Some were on the field to witness Mario Manningham’s brilliance in Super Bowl XLVI. Would Kearse be the next? Was the defense about to give away Brady’s lead for the third Super Bowl appearance in a row?

There had already been pressure mounting within the building to end the drought, especially after those two stomach-turning losses to the Giants and other missed opportunities along the way.

“We just couldn’t get over the hump,” McCourty says. “Even more, it was Vince (Wilfork) and Tom who were part of before. The rest of us were like outsiders, in a sense. We felt that way. I don’t like speaking for everybody — there were definitely some. It wasn’t hate toward the generation before us, but we felt like no one believed (we) were worthy because of what they accomplished with three Super Bowls. Because we still had Tom, it created this expectation of, ‘You either won it, or you suck.’ We had been to AFC Championship Games, 14-2 my rookie year, none of that mattered. It was, ‘You didn’t win the Super Bowl.’

“Going 0-2 in the Super Bowl is rough as a player. That’s where a good amount of us would have been. Now the narrative (would have been), ‘This team just can’t win the big one. We know Tom Brady and Bill Belichick can, but these young guys just can’t win the big one.’”

Brandon Browner’s seven-stud cleats (right). (Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

‘If he doesn’t wear them, history is different’

Linebacker Dont’a Hightower saved the Patriots on the first snap out of that timeout, coming through with the first of his Herculean Super Bowl plays that caused Belichick to dub him “Mr. February.”

During that season’s stretch run, Hightower played with a torn right labrum in his right shoulder that required offseason surgery. But as Wilson handed off to wrecking ball Marshawn Lynch, Hightower peeled off left tackle Russell Okung’s block and took down Lynch — with his bad arm — at the 1-yard line.

“I do what my coaches ask me to do and try to live by what my teammates expect me to do, either as a team captain or as the toughest son of a b—- out there on the field,” Hightower once said. “I want people, whenever they think of Hightower, to think, yeah, he tackled Marshawn Lynch on the 1-yard line, which was a great play, but he was a tough son of a b—-. That’s kind of been my legacy, just doing what I can for my teammates.”

Then, chaos ensued, as the running clock dipped below a minute. Belichick holstered his two remaining timeouts, instead fixated on the frantic happenings on the sideline across the way. So while everyone — everyone — on the Patriots’ headsets had been wondering about a timeout, Belichick didn’t want to give the Seahawks a chance to collect themselves as they stammered through substitution issues.

On the field, players wondered if they’d be instructed to let the Seahawks score, as they did three years earlier against the Giants. And while the strategy was understandable with a running clock in the final minute, it was a miserably helpless feeling for a defense. They felt a beat of silence, assuming that was the incoming order, but defensive assistant Brendan Daly flexed his arm and flashed three fingers, signaling the Patriots goal-line package with three cornerbacks. McCourty, Chung and pass rushing defensive end Akeem Ayers came off the field for defensive tackles Alan Branch and Chris Jones, along with Butler.

The Patriots stuffed Lynch twice earlier in the game in similar situations, so Belichick didn’t think the Seahawks would run against that defensive look. And with the “goal line plus three” package, the Patriots only had one play call. The eight guys in the box play the run, and the three corners match the receivers, with Revis on Baldwin, Butler on Kearse and Browner on Ricardo Lockette.

The Patriots had a straightforward assignment for a straightforward objective: Protect that yard.

The sideline was a different environment. Judge and special teams coach Scott O’Brien collected the kickoff return unit to discuss their “Desperado” play, a Cal-Stanford type of return where they could plan for the laterals and hope for a miracle. Upstairs in the booth, Schuplinski and the offensive staff were focusing on plays that would help them to get into field-goal range.

“That’s all you’re thinking, ‘What’s the next situation I’m responsible for?’” Judge says. “I have nothing to do with the defense, so for me to sit there and watch it like I have a ticket in the stands is irrelevant. If they score, we’ve got to be ready to roll.”

After Lynch’s run and the Seahawks’ unsettled substitutions, Wilson got to the line in a shotgun formation with Lynch to his left. Wide right, Kearse was stacked over Lockette, creating an obvious tell. It was one of Seattle’s red-zone staples, and the Patriots practiced it in the week before the game. Butler went through it, too, in the unlikely event he ended up on the field, so he knew how to adjust when the coverage rules changed against a stacked formation.

Browner immediately ID’d the play and lined up in Kearse’s face for the jam — there have been whispers out of Seattle that they should have abandoned the play as soon as Browner stepped up. Even some Seahawks appeared to know Browner called out the play and adjusted Butler’s assignment, instructing him to sell out for the quick pass.

“Browner was on it,” McCourty says. “He put himself in position to not be the hero. He put himself into position to allow the young rookie to go out and make a play. Malcolm was our young guy we were all so proud of. Everyone kind of gave him advice. Everyone cared about Malcolm being in the right place.

“We all thought of Malcolm as this young dude, and it’s incredible he made the team. It was like your little brother got this cool opportunity and you wanted him to do so well. Him making that play, no one was like, ‘Damn, I wish that was me.’ Everybody was like, ‘Man, this is awesome. Young Strap making a play like this.’ It was super cool.”

When Wilson called for the snap, Browner and Butler planted their seven-stud cleats into the grass and exploded out of their sets. Browner’s jam on Kearse did enough to ruin the timing and spacing of the play, and Butler attacked the ball with the exact amount of tenacity that’s required to win a Super Bowl.

“It’s going to be there forever,” Butler once said. “That’s the best play I’ll ever make in my life, period, no matter what else I do.”

McCourty adds: “That play will never go away. Forever.”

Judge had his back to the field while speaking with Amendola about the ensuing kick return. That’s when Amendola’s face, combined with some unhinged rambling, got the message across that something big just happened.

We don’t need the kick return! We just won the game!

“Just awesome,” Schuplinski said. “Great memories. Great feeling. Great everything.”

Next time you see the replay, take a peek at the seven-stud cleats.

“I always think about that when you watch Browner jam the receiver on that final play, and his feet are in the ground,” Judge said. “If he doesn’t wear them, what if he doesn’t play, what if we don’t make that play? History is different.”

We could call it a yard. But we know it’s so much more than that.