PHOTO BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New England Patriots’ Tom Brady raises the Vince Lombardi Trophy, after defeating the Atlanta Falcons in overtime at the NFL Super Bowl 51 football game Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017, in Houston. The Patriots defeated the Falcons 34-28.
By STEVE KRAUSE
So … how did it happen? How did the Patriots go from looking like stumblebums for 2 1/2 quarters to world-beaters without missing a beat?
I’m pretty sure the City of Atlanta is still asking the same question. Here they were, getting whatever the equivalent of duckboats are down there ready for a big parade. It being only the city’s second-ever professional sports championship — and first since the Braves won in 1995 — it would have been done to the max.
Then … whammo. Somebody flipped the switch twice, off for Atlanta and on for the Patriots.
And that, as much as anything, tells you all you have to know. At the precise moment the Falcons started running out of gas, the Patriots woke up and realized where they were and what they were about to lose.
It wasn’t just the Super Bowl, in the case of the Patriots. It was the opportunity to stick it to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in the most public of ways — and the chance to put “Deflategate” in the rear-view mirror permanently.
But as my father was fond of telling me, “things don’t get done by themselves.” And Sunday, a confluence of events worthy of being called a harmonic convergence conspired to take the Super Bowl away from the Falcons and give it to the Patriots. Because there’s absolutely no way this should have happened.
In a perverse way, the Falcons were their own victims. They played so well in the first half, they probably surprised even themselves. This happens a lot with young teams. They just don’t comprehend how good they are and start waiting for the other shoe to drop.
This is part of what tripped up the Falcons when they were up 28-3 later in the third quarter. It was a four-score game at that point. They’d spent 2 1/2 quarters denying the Patriots the meat of their offense (catch-and-run receptions) and there was no reason to expect anything to change. Right?
Well, not exactly. The Falcons ran out of adrenaline. And when they did, the Patriots were there, waiting for them.
They started making the mistakes they’d avoided earlier. The Patriots scored a touchdown and added a field goal to make it 28-12 (Stephen Gostkowski’s miss on the PAT was inconsequential). Now it was just a two-score game.
About 10 seconds after Joe Buck told all that the Falcons hardly ever turned the ball over, Dont’a Hightower strip-sacked Matt Ryan and the Patriots recovered. Talk about being a jinx!
Bing, bang, boom. Touchdown. On the 2-point conversion the Patriots drew up a play that we used to diagram in the dirt in the old Aldworth Schoolyard when we were kids — a direct snap to James White, with Brady acting as if the ball was hiked over his head. It worked, and now it was 28-20.
With the clock in their favor, all the Falcons had to do was drive down the field (remember, Ryan was having a very good day throwing the ball), kill some clock, and kick a field goal to make it a two-score game again.
But they couldn’t do it. The Patriots sacked Ryan on a second-down play at the New England 23 when they should have just run it up the gut and settled for the field goal. That bit of misfortune, plus a holding penalty, metastasized into a fourth-and-23, with Atlanta out of field-goal range.
The resulting punt put the Patriots at their own 9 with 3:30 to go. And here, the Falcons’ defense showed itself to be thoroughly gassed. It had been on the field twice as much as the Patriots’ defense. Again, the Falcons were victims of their own success. They were done.
Brady sliced and diced them for 91 yards on 10 plays (included was the Julian Edelman version of the famed David Tyree catch), along with the 2-point conversion, and we had a tie game.
If you’re into literary allusions, this was like the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” when ghosts take over the ship and steer it. It was as if the game was being controlled by unseen forces.
The Falcons had to know they were finished when the Patriots won the toss to begin the overtime.
And of course they zipped down the field, going 75 yards in eight plays to score the winning touchdown.
Sporting events often take on other characteristics. If you’ve seen a game turn on a dime, it can be as if an avalanche, or a tornado, is picking up steam and will destroy everything in its wake. Maybe it’s a lifetime of being a Boston fan, when I’d watch in despair as the Yankees or Canadiens always managed to come back and ruin it for us. Even the Patriots were victimized once by the Colts in 2007 AFC championship game.
But something told me Sunday that this game might end up special. The TV stayed on (having a house full of company helped). Either they’d go down in flames, or launch an improbable comeback, but no matter what, I was going to watch.
Still can’t believe what I saw, though.
