Unique hat-trick hard to beat

When the National Football League announced its weekly honours list on Tuesday, New England receiver David Patten was unsurprisingly named NFL Player of the Week. That will do for now, but when it comes to one-game performances, what Patten did in Indianapolis last Sunday will be hard to top.

Consider: in the entire history of the National Football League, only a handful of players have managed to run for, throw for, and catch a pass for a touchdown all in the same game. Prior to last weekend, the last to accomplish the feat had been the late Walter Payton, the legendary Chicago Bears running back, who did it in 1979.

The unique hat-trick is so rare that in the 42-year history of the New England Patriots, only three players had accomplished the feat in the same season. No one had ever come close to doing it in one game. What then might have been the odds on David Patten, who had never scored in a New England uniform, of not only becoming the first to hit for the cycle, but doing it in one half? Not only did Patten run (on a 29-yard reverse), catch (a franchise-record, 91-yard bomb from Tom Brady), and throw (on a gadget-play, cross-field lateral from Brady followed by a 60-yard heave to fellow receiver Troy Brown) touchdowns in the first 22 minutes of Sunday's 38-17 upset of the Indianapolis Colts, he did it the first three times he touched the ball.

"It's truly been a dream of mine, but with the road I've taken to get here, I truly know that the Lord had his hands on me," Patten modestly said afterward. "That experience really makes me appreciate where I am today."

Five years ago Patten had pretty much resigned himself to a life devoid of football. Although he had played for four years at Western Carolina and was ranked among the nation's top receivers in his final year, no NFL team drafted him when his collegiate career ended.

So in the summer of 1996 Patten was supporting his young family with a job at a coffee factory in South Carolina but when the offer came to join an Arena Football League team, he grabbed it. He spent that season with the Albany Firebirds and the next year signed a free agent contract with the New York Giants. The Giants released him at the end of training camp, but re-signed him to their practice squad a day later and activated him the day after that.

After years as a back-up receiver and kick-returner, he moved to the Cleveland Browns, where he played in a starting role last season, but when he signed with New England this year, the question in most people's minds wasn't whether he could crack the starting line-up, but whether he could make the team at all.

Through sheer perseverance he had carved out a place for himself on the roster, in part because the Patriots' all-star wide receiver Terry Glenn was suspended for the first four games of the season after running foul of the NFL's substance abuse policy.

Glenn had returned with an explosive performance a week earlier in San Diego. Patten, who had been relegated to the bench with the star wideout's return, wouldn't even have been in the line-up against the Colts had not Glenn pulled a hamstring in a Thursday practice session.

When Patriots coach Bill Belichick was asked about his triple-threat wide receiver after the win in the RCA Dome, he registered a look of mock surprise.

"Patten?" joked Belichick. "What did he do?" With all three plays coming on first downs, the total elapsed time for the three was about half a minute. Patten, moreover, followed his record-setting hat-trick with a fourth, more conventional touchdown catch in the final period, leaping to pull down a six-yard pass from Brady in the end zone.

Now, catching two touchdown passes and running for another might qualify as what Patten gets paid to do. Throwing one was another matter.

Patten, you see, had never before completed a pass. Not in the NFL, not in the Arena League, not at Western Carolina, not even back in high school, but he was supremely confident that he could do it.

"I've been playing football for what? Eighteen, 20 years," the 27-year-old Patten explained, invoking the sort of logic that is usually lost on football coaches.

"When you're not catching the ball, you're throwing it back, whether it's in your back yard or on the practice field. I just finally got the opportunity to do it, that's all." Ironically, when the Patriots first installed the trick play into Sunday's game plan, it was designed for Patten to be on the receiving end of it.

"When we started running the play in practice we had Troy doing it," revealed Belichick. "When he threw it, Patten caught the ball and turned around and whipped it back, threw it about 30 yards over everybody's head, just to let us know that he could throw it every bit as good as Troy could, so we wound up switching them."

The quick strikes had all but hushed the hometown crowd in Indianapolis, and, with two touchdowns already under his belt, Patten allowed himself to hope that New England offensive co-ordinator Charlie Weis might call his number to throw the ball.

"It had been in the back of my mind since the beginning of the game. I'd practiced it during the week. I didn't know whether he was going to call it, but whatever he was calling was working. It gave me an opportunity, and Troy beat his man," recalled Patten. "I told him 'Troy, I don't care what they do, I'm gonna throw the ball up. Just don't let them intercept it.' And he scored a touchdown."

It didn't take long for word to get around that Patten's unique accomplishment was the NFL's first since Payton 22 years earlier. Before he had even finished dressing, tight-end Jermaine Wiggins had already invoked Payton's nickname to dub his team-mate "Sweetness".

"It's the first I'd heard of it," said Patten. "It was a great day, one of those days when everything was clicking. Every time I touched the ball I was able to make something happen, but that's what I pride myself on. Every time I go out there I feel like I have a chance to do that."