While reading this QB ranking column from Bill Simmons (which is leagues better than the silly one John Clayton wrote up. For starters, he’s got 14 different categories and he actually makes the list interesting. But I digress…) he mentions that David Tyree hasn’t caught another ball in professional football since his famous “helmet catch” in SB XLII.
For whatever reason, I found this unbelievable. My recollection was that Tyree was an annoyingly effective receiver that year- especially down the stretch where he suddenly became Pro Bowl caliber. Even if he wasn’t on the Giants now, surely he must be somewhere else, right? So I checked it out and sure enough, it’s true- injured in the 2008 pre-season and never played again.
So the final catch of his career is a “football lore” moment, immortalized and over analyzed for the rest of time. The flipside is that, he was a young receiver and it was basically his final play as a professional.
The football Gods are an interesting bunch.