UPDATE: This story was updated at 4:03 p.m. Friday with some additional comments on The Streak.
For the first time, the Super Bowl will kick off this weekend without an alum from Pennsylvania’s high school football all-star game, the Big 33, on the field.
But Big 33 leaders are saying “Long Live The Streak” anyway.
That’s because, their argument goes, if you look deep enough on the New England Patriots roster, you’ll find one Yasir Durant slotted among the players on the Pats’ injured reserve list.
In 2016, Durant, then a senior at Philadelphia’s Imhotep Charter High School, was selected to play for a Pennsylvania team that defeated Maryland’s all-stars 26-14.
If you don’t know, injured reserve is a designation reserved for a player who can’t play because of injury, but whom the team doesn’t want to cut loose with an injury settlement.
Placement on injured reserve creates a roster slot for someone who actually can play on game day, while keeping the hurt player in the fold, for now.
But many times, in the National Football League, it means the players are barely there.
According to Patriots beat writers for PennLive’s Massachusetts cousin, MassLive, Durant hasn’t spent any appreciable time at the team’s facilities since going on the list July 30.
The nature of Durant’s injury was never disclosed.
It’s not clear that he’s with the team in California this week; the Patriots’ press office did not respond to questions submitted for this story.
For the Big 33, it’s clearly not the same as, say Beaver Falls’ Joe Namath guaranteeing – and then delivering – victory in Super Bowl 3, or Joe Montana piloting the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowl titles in the 1980s.
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But you bet your pigskin they’re counting it if gets the streak to 60 years, said Garry Cathell, executive director of the Pennsylvania High School Football Coaches Association, which now runs the game and associated activities.
“It meets our categories,” Cathell said, without a hint of sheepishness this week. “We’re trying to keep that thing going as long as we possibly can.”
At this point, The Streak, believed to be the only one of its kind in the nation, has taken on a life of its own.
But Cathell said it’s going to get harder and harder to keep the Big 33 streak alive as more Blue Chip high schoolers are encouraged to enroll early and practice with their college teams during what should be the spring of senior years.
That takes those players off the table for the Big 33, which is played the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.
“Especially your skill kids and in particular your quarterbacks,” Cathell said.
“You know, these really good Pennsylvania quarterbacks and Maryland quarterbacks, they’re early enrollees automatically. They got to go in and learn the system and get a spring underneath their belt. So we lose them.”
To compensate for that, the Big 33 has taken to naming four honorary players (Big 37, anyone?) from both Pennsylvania and Maryland who would have made the roster but were already gone to college.
Big 33 organizers have also taken to listing Super Bowl coaches (then-Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Frank Reich), and general managers (Kansas City Chiefs General Manager Brett Veach) on its alumni list.
Fortunately, the credibility of The Streak hasn’t had to rely on that yet.
There have been years with a single Big 33 alum who never played a snap in the big game: See recent back-up quarterbacks Brian Hoyer (Super Bowl 52) or Matt Schaub (Super Bowl 51).
But they were suited up for game day.
Durant’s situation does feel a little different to some.
Big 33er Kyle Brady, the Cedar Cliff High School tight end who played for the Patriots in Super Bowl 42, said it’s amazing the Big 33’s roll has lasted this long.
“I think that’s a testament to the quality of football in Pennsylvania and the other states that we’ve played,” Brady said in a telephone interview Friday.
But in this case, he said, it feels to him like an asterisk situation.
PennLive, and probably only PennLive, reached out to Durant for comment this week, unsuccessfully.
Durant, who played his college ball at Missouri, was signed by the Kansas City Chiefs as an undrafted free agent in 2020.
He was traded to the Patriots in 2021, and then spent most of 2022 with the New Orleans Saints.
He was out of the league in 2023. after a short training camp invite from the Denver Broncos.
But he clawed his way back this year after two successful seasons with the United Football League, a spring league that gives players on the margins one last chance to chase their dreams for pay.
On June 24, the Patriots signed Durant to what the football salary tracking site Overthecap.com has listed as a $1 million deal.
It’s unclear how much of that money was guaranteed, but Durant is clearly on the payroll.
Durant will be a free agent at the end of the season, meaning he’ll most likely be on the market, looking for a football employer all over again.
But, for Super Bowl Sunday? The only thing that matters to the Big 33 streak?
“As far as I’m concerned, you know, this young man is part of the New England Patriots,” said Cathell.
Fun bonus fact: Durant, 27, has already contributed once to the Big 33 Super Bowl streak.
On Feb. 7, 2021, during Super Bowl 55, Durant, in his rookie season, played three special team snaps for the Kansas City Chiefs in a losing effort against the Tom Brady-led Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Even though he won’t be wearing pads or helmet this year, he gets to shoulder The Streak all by himself.
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