Is there a saint of second chances?

Malcolm Butler, patron saint of second chances.

bostonglobe.com - Malcolm Butler, patron saint of second chances - The Boston Globe

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Let’s be honest here. Most casual Patriots fans really didn’t know who Malcolm Butler was before Sunday night. “I don’t even know if Malcolm drinks beer,” said Brett Gilliland, head coach at West Alabama, where Butler played college football. “But he shouldn’t have to buy one in Boston ever.” Turns out he is an undrafted rookie from Vicksburg, Miss., who played his college ball at Hinds Community College in Raymond, Miss. (population 1,911) before transferring to West Alabama. OK, hands up if you’d heard of Hinds Community College or West Alabama before Sunday night.

Malcolm Butler is the most improbable duck boat benefactor in history.

Imagine that: You own a fleet of duck boats, and you’re sitting there at about 10 o’clock Sunday night, and your stomach is already churning because you ate too much chili and you watch as the ever-talented and ever-loquacious Marshawn Lynch rumbles down to the 1-yard line. And you’re thinking about all the money, all the fun, that’s going to go out the window. And then you start thinking about shoveling because it’s about to snow again. And then, just as you want to turn away, Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll calls a slant pass instead of just handing the ball off to Lynch. And a kid you’ve never heard of steps in front of the pass and gives you a windfall and a story to tell the grandkids. Vince Wilfork, the Patriots’ hulking defensive tackle and all-around nice guy, said Butler’s teammates nicknamed him Scrap because of the way he’s always around the ball. Back in West Alabama, they called him McBreezey.

“He’s fast,” Gilliland said.

He’s also resilient. He got kicked off the team at Hinds Community College during his freshman year. Two years later, he was invited back, played well, and transferred to West Alabama. “He turned his life around,” Gilliland said. “Malcolm’s not just a quality football player. He’s a quality person.” Gene Murphy, the head coach at Hinds, can vouch for that. Murphy took no pleasure in asking Butler to leave the team.

“It wasn’t any one thing,” Murphy said. “He lost focus.”

He left campus and worked at a Popeyes chicken.

The Malcolm Butler that came back two years later was a different person. “He was extremely focused, extremely determined, much more mature,” Murphy said. “And the thing about Malcolm, he’s humble.”

Butler was like a lot of kids at Hinds.

“They need a second chance, whether it’s academics or sports or whatever,” Murphy said.

“Malcolm is a living testimony to the importance of second chances.”

Butler was giving away 2 inches and 20 pounds against Seahawks receiver Jermaine Kearse when they both went up for Russell Wilson’s rainbow pass in the waning moments of Super Bowl XLIX. Two hours before it officially became Groundhog Day, it was Groundhog Day, deja vu all over again. Butler made a terrific play, leaping high to knock down the pass. But as Kearse fell to the ground, the ball bounced off his limbs like a pinball before he gathered it in. The comparisons to the New York Giants’ David Tyree making a similarly impossible catch, on the same field seven years ago, as the Giants went on to snatch the Vince Lombardi Trophy away from the Patriots, were as predictable as they were apt.

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Despite his stupendous effort, Butler was poised to bear some responsibility for losing the Super Bowl. Devin McCourty, the Patriots safety, said his mother turned off the game with two minutes to go and just started praying. She isn’t the only Patriots fan who turned off the TV, but I doubt most of them were praying. It was painful to watch. Patriots Nation was about to listen to a Groundhog Day-like cacophony, from coast to coast, about them feeling deflated, blah, blah, blah. Then an unheralded, mostly unheard of 24-year-old kid from Mississippi stepped up and stepped in, jumping the route and making the most difficult catch of any Patriot Sunday night, making the most important interception in franchise history, earning himself a place in New England folklore, forever. Gene Murphy had spent most of Sunday recruiting prospective players in Mississippi, young men who are maybe too cocky or maybe too unsure of themselves, because at that age they can be either or both. At each stop, in each living room, he told them about one of his players who experienced all that, in the midst of something called growing up. He told them about Malcolm Butler. Murphy was so busy talking to prospective players that he didn’t make it home until the second half of the Super Bowl, which he watched with his wife, Dot, an assistant coach on the Hinds football team. When Butler made the play that cemented his place in New England history, Gene and Dot Murphy were sitting in their living room, 1,432 miles away from Boston. They just smiled at each other, knowing that life is about second chances, and that a young man they both believed in had come to embody all that and more.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com

bostonglobe.com - Malcolm Butler, patron saint of second chances - The Boston Globe

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