INDIANAPOLIS — Go ahead and tell Vince Wilfork he’s too fat and slow to be an every-down defensive lineman. Go ahead and do that, but do so at your own peril.
You’ll be quickly reminded that without Wilfork the Patriots would not be in Indianapolis this week preparing to play the Giants in Super Bowl XLVI.
If you are deceived by Wilfork’s appearance (he’s listed at 6-foot-2, 325 pounds, but his weight is a lot closer to 400 than 300), you wouldn’t be the first.
Even Patriots coach Bill Belichick was deceived by Wilfork’s — shall we say — husky appearance.
“I made a big mistake his rookie year when I made a bet with the team about giving them a night off when I put Vince back there to catch a punt,’’ Belichick recalled yesterday.
The bet: If Wilfork caught the punt, the players were off for the night. If he muffed it, they had meetings.
“He has soft hands … you can’t [even] hear the ball hit his hands,’’ Belichick said.
Wilfork caught the punt and the team got the night off.
“It took Bill about four years to realize I wasn’t going to drop any,’’ Wilfork said yesterday. “By that time, he had me catching the ball, but I had three in my hand already, so it was four balls I had to handle to give my teammates a night off. I never dropped one. Every year he added one.’’
Wilfork said Belichick called off the bet in the fifth year, knowing what the outcome would be.
“You can talk about appearance; he doesn’t have the classic appearance [of an athlete],’’ Belichick said. “But he’s a good athlete. He’s in good shape. I think of those plays he made at the end of the Baltimore game last week on third-and-3 when he made the stop on the trap play and on fourth-and-6 he got a hold of [Joe] Flacco and he threw it away.
“Those were late in the fourth quarter when the whole game was on the line and he made those critical plays there.’’
Wilfork dominated that AFC Championship against the Ravens early, forcing them to abandon their running game when he made a couple bone-crunching tackles for losses that set a tone.
Then he helped seal it late in the game with a tackle of Ray Rice for a three-yard loss on third down to push the Ravens out of game-tying field goal range and then, on the next play, he hurried Flacco into an incomplete fourth-down pass with a savage bull rush.
Wilfork finished that game with six tackles (three for a loss), a sack and four hurries. And he did it while being double- and triple-teamed for a lot of the game.
What leaves you marveling most about him is that, unlike most players his size who play on only run-specific downs, you have to send a cavalry out there to wrest Wilfork from the field.
According to ESPN statistics, Wilfork played 51.8-percent of Patriots defensive snaps in 2009, a number pretty typical for a run-stopping defensive tackle of his size.
Wilfork’s snap total went up to 69.8 percent in 2010 and this season he played in 86 percent of them. Against the Ravens in the AFC title game, Wilfork played 67 of the 70 defensive snaps — 95.7 percent.
“You rarely see a defensive lineman playing 90 percent of the snaps,” Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo said.
“He has the ability to play all three downs,’’ Belichick said. “This year, he has taken a lot of pride about not coming off the field, which I love in a defensive lineman. Vince has had a great year for us. He’s had obviously a great career, had an outstanding year last year, but this year it’s even gone a step higher.”
What charms you about Wilfork, the only defensive player on the Patriots who was a part of their last Super Bowl championship team (in 2004, his rookie year), is the fact that he’s more interested in winning than being a star.
“Sometimes I make plays that are noticeable and sometimes I don’t,” he said. “I don’t get a bunch of sacks, I don’t have any sack dance or any dance you can remember me by but, trust me, I do play hard.”
Wilfork presents one of the biggest challenges for a Giants offense that ranked last in the league in rushing this year.
Mark Anderson, the Patriots defensive end, said the Giants offensive line will “have a load’’ to deal with in Wilfork.
“His size … he looks like he might be slow if you don’t know him, but once he gets on the field … he’s quick,” Anderson said.
Wilfork showed that quickness making two INTs earlier this season with returns of 36 and 19 yards. Pop up the YouTube videos of his two picks and what you’ll see is a viable candidate for “Dancing with the Stars.’’
“Legendary,” is the way Belichick gushed about those two plays.
“A lineman’s dream,” Wilfork said.