James White finally has found the time to relive one of his crowning football achievements.
The New England Patriots running back revealed to reporters Thursday he recently watched the team’s Super Bowl LI victory over the Atlanta Falcons in full for the first time. FOX re-aired the historic game Sunday, giving White a chance to watch it from start to finish.
NFL fans remember what happened: the Patriots came back from a 25-point deficit, a Super Bowl record, in the third and fourth quarters and pushed the game into overtime, where White scored the winning touchdown to clinch New England’s fifth Super Bowl title.
“It was my first time actually watching the full game a couple of days ago when it was on,” White said on a conference call, per a transcript the Patriots released. “It was pretty cool to see, it was a hard-fought game. We all expended a lot of energy out there, it took everybody to win that one. It was a great comeback, a great team victory. All that conditioning in the offseason and all those practices, that’s made for those moments.”
White caught 14 passes for 110 yards with one touchdown and carried the ball six times for 29 yards with two more touchdowns and a two-point conversion. The Super Bowl-winning touchdown was the biggest highlight of the game, but his legendary overall performance didn’t compel his wife to join her husband’s previous attempt at retracing his steps down memory lane.
“No, my wife actually didn’t watch it,” White admitted. “I watched it with a couple friends a couple weeks ago and they left and I just watched the end of it, so my wife didn’t really chime in on it at all.”
Although White and Patriots fans undoubtedly enjoyed re-watching Super Bowl LI, former Falcons wide receiver Taylor Gabriel wasn’t very happy to recall Atlanta’s most painful moment in all its agony.
