I am an old New Englander, both in genetic heritage and upbringing. Nobody has more tenacity than a New Englander. If we say we are going to do something, it gets done.
The Patriots were going to win that Super Bowl, however they had to do it.
Yeah, when the Patriots were down 28-3 I told my young son, who’s a Pats fan, “Listen, I know this hurts, but the fact is you have a 50/50 chance of being back here next year. Meanwhile my Eagles have about a 1/50 chance of making it at any point in the next 5 years.”
Only the Patriots could film that extra scene being pretty confident they’d have a chance to use it in the near future.
I liked the comment on the Daily Show last night: “It was a real David and Goliath story -that is if Goliath had gotten back up and ripped off David’s arms.”
Brady filmed that during his suspension at the start of the season. He had to be convinced by the director Bobby Farrelly, of the Farrelly brothers, to film the scene because it would be awkward if it got out and the Pats didn’t make it to the Superb Owl or lost it. But again, this was filmed at the very start of the season so the chances of the Pats getting there, let alone winning, were still pretty remote.
I re-watched the game with some of the discussion here in mind:
I may have to back off my criticism of being in shotgun on that play. Apparently that’s their thing, in that they ran shotgun on more than 50% of all their plays. I kept a mental count for all snaps, which includes plays called back by penalty, and could easily have errors from just tallying in my head. But tallying under center/shotgun counts, I remember the splits 9/10, 15/17 and 19/22. So it’s kind of their standard procedure to be in shotgun.
Their clock management was atrocious. Keeping in mind they didn’t actually run that many plays, in the second half (which started 21-3) they took the play clock down to around 5 their first three plays, which was a 3 & out. For the rest of the game they hiked the ball with 20 (!) seconds left on the playclock just as often if not more often than 10 or fewer seconds. It was pretty rare they hiked the ball with less than 10 seconds, and those just seemed like normal plays with a bit of a late lineup and maybe some presnap adjustments. They really didn’t play the clock at all.
Their timeout usage was piss poor. The first timeout was called from the head coach on defense when the Patriots had 3rd & 12. Okay, fine, I can’t fault that one. They were up either 21-3 or 28-3 at the time. The next one was called on offense on 2nd and 10 for no reason whatsoever. They kind of milled around in the huddle for 15 seconds, then Matt Ryan walked over to the ref and waited for the play clock to get down to 2 and called a timeout. Again, it’s 2nd and friggin 10 and you have a lead. Just run the ball up the gut and call it good enough. The third timeout was the bad challenge, which the broadcast already showed as a clean catch before the challenge was called. Horrible.
By contrast, the Patriots’ use of timeouts was stellar. On that Falcons drive that had the disastrous chain of events after getting to the 22, then backing up to midfield, the Patriots only spent one single timeout.
Unrelated to this thread, I saw a bunch of talking heads devaluing Brady’s performance based on the fact that he sucked for three quarters. Rewatching the game, he was great for the entire first quarter. Second quarter, not so much. But then again, With 9 minutes left in the second quarter, the Falcons never touched the ball on offense again. Obviously the pick six was terrible, but that was sandwiched between two many-play drives. Penalties helped, but a lot of that 9 minutes was Brady completing passes to move the chains.
Brady first quarter passing stats: 6-8 for 68 yards, which is a passer rating of 100.00. Not exactly terrible.
Brady wasn’t awful for the first few quarters, the Falcons defense just rose to the occasion. They had young, hungry guys eager to prove themselves. They played with passion and energy and were all over the place, covering receivers and jumping instantly on the run. The Pats had trouble getting around that.
But the Pats won the time of possession battle and any defense is going to get worn out. The Falcons offense barely saw the field. It’s not that they were awful, but either they succeeded with explosive plays (either running or passing) which took them down the field quickly or failed quickly and punted. They didn’t grind and give their defense a break. That’s a good way to get a lead but a bad way to sustain it. This Super Bowl can be a great teaching tool for teams.
It’s like watching The Tortoise and The Hare in football form.
It was a bad challenge, but not because of that. At full speed, it looks like he dropped it and caught it on the bounce. The Pats rushed to the line and were going to snap it ASAP - Edelman even talked about that last night on Fallon. So the Falcons had to decide whether or not to throw the flag before they had a chance to see the replay. The whole time we at home are watching the replays, the flag had already been thrown - it takes time for the ref to jog over to the coach, confirm what he’s challenging, and announce it to the stadium.
It was a bad challenge because the reward wasn’t worth the risk of being wrong. If the pass had been ruled incomplete, it would still have been 2nd and 10 for the Patriots from their own 36. Forcing them to 4th and 10 was definitely worth risking their last time out. 2nd and 10, with 2 minutes & 2 timeouts, not so much.
(((hugging self)))
Another way to look at it, with the score so lopsided for 3/4 of the game I was pretty resigned to the Pats fate, unlike the one with Seattle which was x hours of stomach-churning intensity. It made the comeback so much more miraculous.
I still think the Giants vs Bills Super Bowl was the best ever as it was a close seesaw game for all 60 minutes. This was basically two different halfs.
- How exactly does a major sport like the NFL allow a team not to have a chance to come back in overtime. The rule of “a field goal doesn’t decide it” is an improvement but still isn’t fair. Alright, the Falcons put on a major choke job. But the NFL has had some 83 years to get a more balanced approached (receiving team scores, then team kicking off gets the ball back. If they score, play until a third score).
- when Brady was suspended the first four games and had to spend time with his supermodel wife, I thought that might be a blessing in disguise. As long as the Patriots back up QB could get at least two wins (he got three), New England would have a more rested Brady for the postseason, if he made it. When guys like Elway, Kelly and Montana were 39 (Brady’s age), they were retired. Always makes me wonder if NFL coaches should play the backups more in the regular season, keep the main guy from getting too dinged up. But, no, “quarterback controversy” and coaches are risk averse. Lou Sabah gave a young Daryle Lamonica significant playing time to the veteran Jack Kemp on the mid60s Buffalo teams that won two AFL titles.
The Falcons absolutely had a chance to come back in overtime. Stop the Patriots’ offense from scoring. Teams only score a touchdown 18% of the time starting on their own 25. If you can’t be that 82%, maybe you deserve to lose.
The current overtime rules are perfect. Each team has an advantage. The team that receives first wins if they score a touchdown, but if they don’t get in the endzone, the advantage shifts to the other team. They know exactly what they have to do on their drive. If the other team punted to them, they just have to get into field goal range to win. If the other team kicked a field goal, they know they have to go for it on 4th down if they’re not in kicking range.
If both teams were allowed to have a chance with the ball, only the kicking team would have an advantage, and it would be unfair.
I haven’t re-watched it and given that I was about a half-bottle wine deep, I’m not sure I completely processed the game as I was watching it live. But I have two fundamental perceptions about what changed the game:
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New England was losing the running game to Atlanta big time in the 1st half but turned the tables in the second, both in terms of getting their own ground game going and also by stopping Devonta Freeman from reeling off big runs. That put more pressure on Matt Ryan and it put less pressure on Tom Brady.
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New England sped up the game and got really, really comfortable playing the equivalent of ‘fast break’ football. They moved the ball wall and kept Atlanta’s defense on the field, and it seemed like everyone from Atlanta’s coaching staff to the units on the field were feeling some trepidation about how to play the Pats on defense. Consequently, Brady just started picking them apart. That, in turn, put even more pressure on Matt Ryan and the offense to choose between conservative play selection and playing the style of play they wanted, which was aggressive.
I think the fast break analogy is fitting because this reminded me of one of those basketball games where a team gets out to a big lead, but the losing team goes on a run and starts putting pressure on the winning team to manage the clock.
When the game was somewhat neutral, Atlanta had the advantage. They had better athletes and slightly more talent at various positions. But when New England sped the game up, they got closer to Atlanta, and for Atlanta, they were entering uncharted waters and didn’t know how to get out of the brewing tempest.
Defeat has a thousand fathers in this case, but it really comes down to two culprits:
- If Freeman had picked up a blitz assignment, Ryan would have likely hit Robinson for a deep touchdown that would have made it 35-12. Ryan was even getting into his throwing motion by that point as he was sacked.
- If the Falcons had just run the ball with four+ minutes remaining in regulation, they likely bleed the clock down to around two minutes, and kick a field goal for a 31-20 lead, which the Patriots most likely don’t come back from.
Excellent summation. I would also add the exhaustion factor. At one point in the third, early I think, there was a graphic they popped up showing the Falcons having run 33 plays, and the Patriots had run 69. They were attempting to show how efficient the Falcons had been on offense, but all I could see was a really tired Falcons defense. By the end of the game, the Pats had 93 plays vs. the Falcons 46. The defense was out there again by half.
A zoo in Atlanta and one in Boston made a wager on the outcome of the game, the losing city would name one of their baby zoo animals after the winning QB. Today the Atlanta zoo introduced baby Tom Brady, a Madagascar hissing cockroach. 
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