FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Stephon Gilmore made arguably the biggest play of Super Bowl LIII. Give Duron Harmon credit, too, for getting to Jared Goff on the Patriots’ all-out, second-and-10 blitz. Don’t forget de facto coordinator Brian Flores, either, for the call, or Bill Belichick for assembling a heady defense ready for the moment.
And then there’s the other crucial piece of that championship team: Brian Hoyer, the Patriots’ backup quarterback, the only one of 46 New England players in uniform who didn’t make it into the game two Sundays ago.
It may sound crazy to say that the Patriots might not have lifted their sixth Lombardi Trophy in 18 years without a guy who didn’t take a meaningful game rep all year.