"Keith Bulluck missed his biggest goal — to play in a Super Bowl — by one year.

Twice.

In 2000, he was watching Super Bowl XXXIV on television when many of his future teammates with the Titans came up just short against the Rams. A few months later the Titans drafted Bulluck, but in his 10 years with the franchise it never got back to the big stage.

Next Sunday, Bulluck will watch the Super Bowl on television again, perhaps in a New York sports bar where he viewed games this season, as his former teammates with the Giants play the Patriots.

Again, Bulluck missed the big game by year, his stint with the Giants lasting only for 2010.

Bad luck? Definitely. But he's not beating himself up. Bulluck, 35, is enjoying life after 11 years in the NFL. The death of a close friend, and a chance to see the sport from a different perspective, helped him accept closure to his career.

So when no team signed him after his one-year deal with the Giants expired, he took it in stride. What gnaws at him a bit is not playing in a Super Bowl after several missed opportunities with the Titans.

"What can I do?" Bulluck said. "I feel like that — playing in a Super Bowl — just wasn't in the cards for me. There are two things I didn't accomplish that I wanted to and one was to win defensive MVP and the other was to play in the Super Bowl. Well, neither happened."