On Sunday, Tom Brady will face the Raiders for the sixth time in his career. Want to guess his favorite memory from those get-togethers? Turns out, you don't have to because Brady (or whomever runs his Facebook page) will happily tell you:
Yep, that's the Tuck-Rule game.
A quick refresher for those of you just back from Mars: In January 2002, the Patriots were hosting the Raiders in an AFC Divisional matchup. With 2:24 left in a game played in blizzard-like conditions, and with Oakland leading 13-10, cornerback Charles Woodson stripped quarterback Tom Brady, the Raiders recovered, and they appeared headed to the conference championship.
Except that the tuck rule -- a term no one had heard of to that point -- saved Brady and the Patriots, and, you could argue, altered the future of both organizations. New England would go on to win this game, the Super Bowl, and two more before 2005. The Raiders, meanwhile, lost Jon Gruden to the Buccaneers a few weeks later. They went to the Super Bowl the following season where they were blown out by -- wait for it -- Gruden's Buccaneers, and wouldn't win more than five games for the next seven seasons.
"We were robbed, and I still get sick thinking about it," Woodson, who returned to the Raiders in 2013, said several years ago.
He was slightly more emotional during his post-game comments at the time: "It's some bulls---, it's some bulls---," Woodson said according to ESPN.com. "That's exactly how I feel, I feel like it was a bulls--- call. It never should have been overturned."
Brady, meanwhile, had a slightly different take.
"It was really a very fortunate call, and the Raiders fans still let me hear about that call," the quarterback told ESPN.com several years ago. "But we took advantage of it and made the plays to win the game."
