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| Matt Ryan |
February 5, 2017: The Atlanta Falcons had a fraction of one job, and they couldn't do it. To borrow an old expression, it was as if the condemned man had jumped out of the electric chair and executed the warden.
Super Bowl LI was played at NRG Stadium in Houston. With 2 minutes and 12 seconds left to play in the 3rd quarter, the Atlanta Falcons led the New England Patriots 28-3. After a scoreless 1st quarter, they got a 5-yard touchdown run from Devonta Freeman, a 19-yard touchdown pass from Matt Ryan to Austin Hooper, and an interception of Tom Brady that Robert Alford returned 82 yards for a touchdown, all in the 2nd quarter, for a 21-0 lead, before Stephen Gostkowski kicked a field goal on the last play of the half. In the 3rd quarter, Ryan threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Tevin Coleman. It was Atlanta 28, New England 3.
In the 1st 50 Super Bowls, no team had ever blown a lead of more than 10 points and lost. With less than 18 minutes to play, the Falcons had a 25-point lead. They were in great shape to win the 1st World Championship in team history, 51 seasons, the entire Super Bowl Era.
Several sources said that the Falcons had a 99 percent chance of winning at that point. One source said it was 99.9 percent.
In a major "Perhaps I spoke too soon" moment, I posted on Facebook, citing a Boston-based police drama: "Somebody call Rizzoli & Isles, there's 11 Bostonians getting killed!"
With 2 minutes left in the 3rd quarter, Brady threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to James White. Gostkowski missed the extra point. 28-9 Atlanta. With 9:44 left in regulation, Gostkowski kicked a field goal. 28-12 Atlanta. Still not exactly ominous.
With 5:56 left, Brady threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Danny Amendola. And White scored the 2-point conversion. Now, it was 28-20 Atlanta. Now, it was ominous.
With 57 seconds to play in regulation, White ran 1 yard for a touchdown. Now, it was 28-26 Atlanta. Brady passed to Amendola for the 2-point conversion. The Patriots tied the game, and we had the 1st Super Bowl that went to overtime.
The Patriots won the coin toss to start the overtime, and the Falcons never got the ball. With 11:02 left in the 1st overtime, White scored on a 2-yard touchdown run, and the Patriots had won the ballgame, 34-28.
Lost in all the fuss over Brady and the Falcons blowing it was the fact that White had joined Terrell Davis as the only men to score 3 touchdowns in 1 Super Bowl; and that, with the 2-point conversion, he had set a record, scoring 20 points in a Super Bowl.
Boston, and all of New England, were now the beneficiaries of "the greatest choke in baseball history" and "the greatest choke in football history."
And Tom Brady was certified as not merely the greatest quarterback, but the greatest player in the history of football.
How could the Falcons have blown it?
* The officials called 9 penalties on the Falcons, only 4 on the Patriots. They penalized the Falcons for 65 yards, the Patriots only 23. The Patriots gained 4 1st downs as a result of penalties, the Falcons only 1. A dubious pass interference call in overtime helped the Patriots.
It's been suggested that there were no bad calls in this game, and that the disparity in the penalties was due to the Patriots being sufficiently disciplined, and the Falcons not. Really?
* Lady Gaga's halftime show, while widely praised, was long. Maybe it threw the Falcons off their game. In the 1st half, Atlanta outscored New England 21-3. The rest of the way, New England outscored Atlanta 31-7.
* And, of course, there is the Patriots' proven legacy of cheating, which makes any claim of Brady as the greatest anything just plain dishonest. We don't actually know that the Patriots cheated at any point in the 2016-17 NFL season, including in the Super Bowl. We only know that they have been caught cheating multiple times. They have forfeited the presumption of innocence.
Did they cheat in this game? There has never been a serious accusation of it. But think of it this way: We have more proven instances of Belichick and/or Brady cheating, and the other benefiting from that cheating, than we have investigations of them cheating and being proven not to have done so. So which is more likely: That these were the only times they cheated, or that they cheated in many more games, including this one?
You can argue that, even with the Patriots having cheated, the Falcons should still have been able to hold onto a lead that was 25 points with a little over 17 minutes to go, 19 points with 10 minutes to go, 16 points with 6 minutes to go, and 8 points with 1 minute to go.
But they didn't. They were so close to forever eliminating their status as a joke franchise. Instead, they deepened it. They have gotten far more blame for losing this game than the Patriots got credit for winning it. The number "28-3" has been burned into sports fans' collective psyche.
Since then, Atlanta United have won the 2018 MLS Cup, and the Atlanta Braves have won the 2021 World Series. But, as some teams have proven, even winning a World Championship in their sport doesn't eliminate the pain of such losses. If the Falcons ever do win a Super Bowl, no matter how memorable it might be, people will always remember "28-3."
Clayton Trutor, a writer for the website SB Nation, published a book in 2021, shortly before the Braves won that year's World Series. Noting that the Braves had played 55 seasons in Atlanta and won just 1 World Series, the Falcons 55 and none, the NBA's Hawks 53 and none, and 2 NHL expansion teams granted and later moved without either having reached even the Conference Finals, he titled his book Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta -- and How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports.
In 2019, a poll ranked this game 9th on a list of the 100 Greatest Games of the NFL's 1st 100 years.
UPDATE: In 2023, the film 80 for Brady was released, with this game as the focus. It starred Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno, Jane Fonda and Sally Field as old friends who went to this Super Bowl together, and Brady had a speaking part in it.
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February 5, 2017 was a Sunday. There were no other football games played. Baseball was out of season. There were 3 NBA games that day:
* The Brooklyn Nets lost to the Toronto Raptors, 103-95 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
* The Boston Celtics beat the Los Angeles Clippers, 107-102 at the TD Garden in Boston.
* And the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 105-99 at the Chesapeake Energy Arena (now the Paycom Center) in Oklahoma City. Russell Westbrook scored 42 points for the Thunder.
There were also 3 NHL games that day:
* The New York Rangers beat the Calgary Flames, 4-3 at Madison Square Garden.
* The Edmonton Oilers beat the Montreal Canadiens, 1-0 in a shootout at the Bell Centre.
* And the Washington Capitals beat the Los Angeles Kings, 5-0 at the Verizon Center (now the Capital One Arena) in Washington.
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