PRO FOOTBALL ’95 : Patriots’ Rookie Keeps Going and Going . . . : AFC: Curtis Martin finally reaches end zone to beat Browns, 17-14.

Second effort wouldn’t have been enough. Not on this day.

Not when two of football’s best teams had spent 59 minutes punching, shoving and chasing each other through chopped-up grass as if it were December.

Curtis Martin is only a rookie, but he knew this. He could hear the Cleveland Browns cursing him. He could see their stares.

So when Martin stepped into the New England Patriot huddle with 24 seconds remaining Sunday and was ordered to jump over brown helmets for the game-winning touchdown, his jumbled thoughts condensed to one.

“No way I’m getting stopped,” he told himself. “No way.”

He leaped, Pepper Johnson hugged him, so he leaped again. Stevon Moore grabbed him, so he stretched his body farther.

By this time the weary Browns had quit, but not Martin. He made one final push, threw his arms out over the goal line, gently held the ball there as if it were a jewel, and the Patriots were given six points and, after a two-point conversion, a 17-14 victory before 60,292 at Foxboro Stadium

“Wild, man,” Martin said. “Indescribable.”

It was a first-game victory for a Patriot team not thought to be this bruising. It was a first-game loss for a Brown team that had led for 59 minutes before collapsing in exhausted confusion.

It proved the existence of third effort.

“They were breathing hard, we were breathing hard,” said Bruce Armstrong, the tackle whom Martin followed into the end zone. “Today, this was football.”

It was also a seminar on misconceptions.

The Patriots, everybody’s favorite story last year when they won their last seven regular-season games, were expected to struggle because of a nonexistent running game and weakened defense.

Martin, a third-round draft pick from Pittsburgh, answered that first question by gaining 30 yards on his first carry, one important yard on his last carry, and 71 in between.

Bill Parcells, the Patriot coach who hates young players, called him a “one-game wonder” and refused to let him hold a postgame news conference in a room used by veterans.

The Browns screamed at him the entire afternoon, yelling “That’s your last run, rookie,” and “Stay in bounds rookie, I want a shot at you!”

Martin, who says he reads the Bible to inspire him to knock helmets, merely smiled.

“I, uh, don’t think Bill Parcells has to worry about me having a big head,” he said.

The Browns, meanwhile, were thought to be a team that was great in every way except for quarterback Vinny Testaverde.

On Sunday, he was their only great player.

Testaverde completed 20 of 29 passes for 254 yards and two touchdowns of 70 and 30 yards to Michael Jackson. Andre Rison was used as little more than a decoy, with only two catches.

All three were on the sidelines when the vaunted defense allowed a 14-play, 85-yard drive in the final five minutes.

The drive featured a 30-yard screen pass from Drew Bledsoe (30 of 47 for 302 yards) to lead-footed fullback Sam Gash, who was stunned to find nobody near him.

“There was a missed call on the defense,” Brown Coach Bill Belichick said.

He neglected to note that the defense might have been sharper if safety Eric Turner, who sat out all of training camp in a contract dispute, had not been gasping for air after the first quarter.

The drive also featured a fourth-and-one dive by Bledsoe that was good for a first down on the Patriot two-yard line.

The Browns protested that it was a bad call, but neglected to note that Bledsoe dove over the exact spot where all-pro Michael Dean Perry played last year.

Perry, who didn’t like Belichick, left for Denver in the off-season.

The afternoon ended with fans waving and screaming at Martin for his autograph as he walked into the locker room. Being a rookie, he promised them he would be back.

The angry Browns needed no such promise.

“We will learn,” Stevon Moore said. “We will learn.”