For nearly two weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, football felt insignificant.
The country was grieving. The smoke still rose from lower Manhattan. Families searched for answers. And inside the Patriots locker room, offensive guard Joe Andruzzi was living every family's worst nightmare, desperately trying to find out whether his brothers were alive.
When the NFL finally returned on Sept. 23, with the Patriots facing the Jets in Foxborough, football became something else entirely. It became a moment of unity.
And at the center of that moment stood Andruzzi.
The image has become one of the defining photographs of the post-9/11 sports landscape: Andruzzi emerging from the tunnel holding two American flags high above his head before the Patriots and Jets took the field.
What most people didn't see was everything that had happened in the days leading up to it.
Waiting for a Phone Call
On the morning of Sept. 11, Andruzzi was sitting in a dentist's chair. He had no idea his life was about to change.
"Here I was in a dentist chair on Tuesday, 9/11," Andruzzi recalled. "I didn't realize what was happening over the radio."
As he drove home, listening to radio reports from New York, panic set in.
"My heart went to my throat because I just had a very strong feeling that one, two or even three of my brothers were there," Andruzzi said. "Unfortunately, one was one of the first respondents in."
Andruzzi's brothers, Jimmy, Billy and Marc, were New York City firefighters. Marc was so new to the job that Sept. 11 was supposed to be just days before his official start date.
"He was a rookie," Andruzzi said. "He was supposed to start on Thursday the 13th."
For hours, nobody knew anything. Andruzzi frantically called New York.
No answers.
For roughly 12 agonizing hours, his family waited.
"I couldn't get down to New York," he said. "Calling and calling for like the next 12 hours."
Finally, word arrived.
A stranger with a telephone had called Andruzzi's parents with a message from one of his brothers: he was alive.
"Twelve hours later, I think my father finally called and told me that my brother gave the phone number to a guy in the street who had a phone and asked him to call," Andruzzi said.
Relief arrived, but so did the reality of what they'd endured.
One brother later showed him just how narrowly he escaped.
"When I first ran into Jimmy at my parents' house," Andruzzi said, "he was holding his index finger and thumb together and saying that's how close he was to death. He was running out of Tower One when it was falling behind him."
"It still gives me chills to even talk about it."
Returning to Football
The NFL postponed games the weekend following the attacks, a decision Andruzzi thought was the right one.
"Thank God they canceled the weekend," he said. "I think that was one of the best decisions that the commissioner had made."
Like millions of Americans, Patriots players struggled to focus on football.
Linebacker Matt Chatham remembered the strange combination of fear, uncertainty and obligation everyone carried when the league returned.
"It was a weird game," Chatham said. "It's wasn't your typical, you walk on the football field and think only about football. That definitely wasn't one of those days."
The Patriots and Jets represented the two regions most directly affected by the attacks, and the pregame ceremonies carried enormous emotional weight.
Chatham remembered standing for the national anthem and hearing aircraft overhead.
Players had been told there wouldn't be any flyovers.
"We were told no planes," he said. "What's happening?"
For a brief moment, fear returned.
"You hear the rumble of planes overhead," Chatham recalled. "You're thinking in ways you would never have thought before had that not happened the week before."
The Flags
The night before the game, Andruzzi's father had floated an idea.
Could his firefighter sons somehow be honored?
The next day, Patriots owner Robert Kraft approached Andruzzi with the same thought.
Soon, Andruzzi's brothers were standing at midfield before the game, representing not just themselves but every first responder who had rushed toward danger.
"I mentioned to them," Andruzzi said, "'You're not a Patriot or a Jet fan right now. You are an American.'"
Then came the moment.
As Andruzzi made his way toward the field, he noticed two American flags taped inside the tunnel.
"It was a spur-of-the-moment thing," he said. "There was two flags taped on the tunnel of Foxboro Stadium coming out."
He grabbed them.
"And they called my name and I grabbed them off the wall and held them high in the air."
The crowd erupted.
"I'll never forget coming out there and hearing the roar of the crowd," Andruzzi said. "Hopefully the first and last time we ever see the Patriots and Jets fans holding hands."
In that instant, rivalries disappeared. For a few moments there were no teams, no standings, no wins or losses.
Just Americans.
A Team Rallies Around One of Its Own
Inside the Patriots locker room, everyone understood what the moment meant.
Andruzzi wasn't thinking about himself.
"I look up to them every day. They are my heroes," he said of his brothers. "I never looked at myself as a hero."
His teammates felt the same.
Center Damien Woody, who played alongside Andruzzi on the offensive line, remembered the emotional impact of learning what the family had experienced.
"These guys were right there on Ground Zero," Woody said. "Right at the epicenter of the worst terror attack in our history."
Watching Andruzzi emerge from the tunnel became a defining memory.
"That day, just watching Joe run out of the tunnel, you felt like your heart was wanting to explode because you just had so much adrenaline," Woody said.
Andruzzi remembered the support, too.
He specifically recalled teammates including Ty Law, Lawyer Milloy, Drew Bledsoe and Tom Brady embracing him afterward.
"They all came over and hugged me and said thank you."
The Turning Point Nobody Saw Coming
The game itself would become one of the most consequential afternoons in franchise history.
Late in the fourth quarter, Jets linebacker Mo Lewis delivered a crushing hit to Bledsoe along the sideline. A little-known second-year quarterback from Michigan entered the game.
His name was Tom Brady.
The Patriots lost that afternoon, falling 10-3, but history had quietly shifted.
The emotional day that began with Andruzzi honoring first responders also became the day the Brady era began.
Years later, ESPN's Chris Berman reflected on how unusual the atmosphere was around the entire NFL season.
"Nobody was normal and nobody was thinking normal," Berman said.
The Patriots, meanwhile, drifted beneath the radar.
"When they started to win," Berman said, "they really were under the radar. And I think in retrospect, that was really helpful to them."
More Than Football
By the end of the season, the Patriots would shock the football world.
They would win Super Bowl XXXVI.
When they celebrated in New Orleans months later, Andruzzi's thoughts returned to the people who inspired him that September day.
"To hold that trophy up meant a whole lot to me and what they represent and what they do," he said.
For many, the story of the 2001 Patriots begins with Brady replacing Bledsoe.
But those who were there remember something deeper.
They remember a frightened brother waiting for a phone call.
They remember firefighters standing at midfield.
They remember Patriots and Jets fans united as one.
And they remember Joe Andruzzi grabbing two flags from a tunnel wall, raising them high above his head and helping give a grieving nation a moment it would never forget.
