To me, the image of Malcolm Butler recognizing the impact of what he’d done with his goal-line interception in Super Bowl 49 is iconic.
Not only did it win a game, cap a season, stop a great team from going back-to-back, validate a dynasty with an impossible play that trumped an equally impossible play that was causing flashbacks in New England. It altered the way people will recall the principals involved. It was a play that changed a lot of obituaries.
The expression on Butler’s face screams what must have been going through his mind: “What did I just do!!!???”
I asked Butler on Saturday after practice if he’d seen the picture.
“Yeah,” he smiled. “And I don’t want to see it no more.”
Why, I asked. Butler shifted back and forth, ran his hand over the top of his head and looked away.
“As a grown-up, when I see guys make great plays on national TV in a big game or professional sport and I see them cry I’m like, ‘Man, what you crying for?’ “ Butler explained. “But it happened to me and I totally understand why they crying. It’s just, it was a great emotional moment.”
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I asked him if that moment was the one of realization of what he’d done, while the play itself was made while his mind was out of the way and his training and preparation had him on auto-pilot.
“That’s accurate,” he said.
But you don’t like it?
“It’s a lovely picture,” he allowed. “I know all the mothers and all the ladies like it, but as a man, we don’t want to see ourselves cry. It’s a great picture. Just looking to move forward.”
Beyond being uneasy about an image catching him at the moment of his emotional breakdown, Butler knows orders from above are to leave February far, far behind.
He made that clear when asked if the Super Bowl MVP truck Tom Brady handed off to Butler had been graced by its first owner. "Naahh, no rides. We got too much work to do around here for that."