A Tale of 2 Super Bowls
Why both teams deserved to win and lose a wild night of two games in one
The Super Bowl was a wild game from start to finish. It was the first overtime Super Bowl in NFL history. We witnessed two all time great catches late in the fourth quarter. We saw Tom Brady and Bill Belichick win their fifth Super Bowl together and, weirdly enough, saw them do it by their biggest winning margin ever — in a game that went to overtime.
But more than anything else, it was a tale of two Super Bowls, one in which Atlanta led 28–3 and dominated for 36 suffocating minutes, the other with New England storming back to reel off 31 straight over the final 26. Only 12 Super Bowls in history had a stretch with a 25-point differential. It happened twice Sunday night.
In a championship game featuring teams that combined to win 29 games this year, neither team should be bad enough to allow a 28–3 or 31–0 stretch. Somehow both teams did in the same game that both New England and Atlanta deserved to lose at different moments due to some catastrophic coaching and game plans.
So where did it all go wrong?
It’s easy to shrug off the hole the Patriots found themselves in at 28–3 since they won, but New England never should have had a chance. That Atlanta blew the ending so badly doesn’t erase the terrible start New England had or the bad decisions they made along the way.
New England’s mistakes are more subtle, in part because they were bigger picture instead of specific moments like Atlanta’s, and in part because some of the mistakes ended up working out in the end.
You have to question the overall game plan for New England from the get-go when it put the team in position to go down 28-d by the middle of the third quarter. Giving up 28 points wasn’t a shock. Atlanta had an all-time great offense and New England allowed a pick-6 along the way. The real shock was the three by New England’s name and the inept offense that led to it.
There were four main units in this game. Three of them ranked in the top-5 in the NFL this season. The other one was the Atlanta defense. Yet New England could get nothing going for almost three quarters. What happened?
What happened was a bad game plan. New England was never going to out-speed or out-athlete Atlanta, nor most of other teams in the NFL. That’s not because the Patriots are more white than the other teams; it’s because they simply have not built their team around athleticism. Atlanta was always going to run faster and jump higher. New England needed to win by exploiting mismatches, by wearing down the defense, by getting the receivers into space, and by dinking and dunking their way down the field while keeping Atlanta’s offense off of it.
That’s not rocket science. It’s what every analyst predicted, and it’s the same game plan the Patriots have executed to win so many games and Super Bowls over the years. It’s New England football as we’ve come to know it, and it’s what we watched over the final hour as the Patriots came storming back.
Instead, we saw New England over-commit to the run early on, getting stuffed several times in short-yardage situations. We saw the Patriots repeatedly take deep drops and look for throws up the seam and down the sideline, plays this team sans-Gronkowski is not built to make. How many times did Brady put the ball in a spot where Julio Jones, Mohamed Sanu, or Tevin Coleman probably make the catch but Julian Edelman, Danny Amendola, and James White were just a step too slow or a few inches too short?
The Patriots tried to turn Tom Brady into Aaron Rodgers, forcing him to throw guys open and create space down the field instead of just dumping it over the middle and letting their shifty guys create their own space. And it failed for well over half of the game. The top-five Patriots offense scored just three points on their opening seven drives against a very average defense. The attack worked later, but only once Atlanta finally started to wear down and once New England adjusted to shorter passes and dump-offs and let their guys run with the ball after the catch, like they’ve done so many years.
New England’s other big mistake was settling for a field goal on two separate occasions when aggression was almost certainly the right decision.
The first was just before half time. Atlanta was up 21–0 but Brady had just completed a 28-yard pass to James White, giving the Patriots a first down on the 29 with almost a minute and a half remaining and two timeouts. It was an excellent chance for New England head to the break down just 14 points after a disastrous start. Instead, the Pats allowed almost 30 seconds to run off the clock before snapping the ball, then another 25 seconds after the next play. New England picked up a first down two plays later but suddenly had only 23 seconds left, finally calling one of their two timeouts.
Finally close to the promised land for the first time all game, New England never even got a chance to throw the ball inside the 10, instead taking a holding penalty before a short pass to Martellus Bennett designed to run the clock down to halftime before Gostkowski’s field goal. The Patriots might not have scored a touchdown on that drive anyway, but their passive playcalling and poor clock management never even gave them a chance in a game where those extra four points were obviously going to matter.
The next field goal decision was even worse. With the score 28–9 and the clock under ten minutes, the Patriots opted for a field goal to close the gap to 28–12. But wait, that pulled New England to within 16 points — that’s just a two-score game!
No, no it isn’t. That is a four-score game. That’s four times New England has to get the ball into the endzone. Sixteen points is only a two-score game if the Patriots get a stop, score a touchdown, make a 2-point conversion, get the ball back and score another TD and then another 2-point conversion. At this point of the season after 1,130 minutes of football, New England had made just one 2-point conversion, yet they chose a path that would require them to make two in the final ten minutes (plus two touchdowns and two stops!!).
But if you go for it on 4th and goal and don’t score a touchdown, the game is over!!
This is a classic mistake coaching mistake trying to “keep the game close.” If you go for it and don’t score, you’re still down three scores and likely need three touchdowns to win the game. The problem is, even with the field goal, New England was very likely to need three touchdowns to win the game anyway.
The average NFL team converts a two-point play just over 50% of the time. True to form, New England was one-for-two on 2-point plays this season. That makes the odds of converting twice successfully about one-in-four, or just over 25%. The odds are very high that New England is going to miss a two-point conversion at some point — if they even get the chance to go for two of them. They were very likely to need three more scores anyway.
Kicking the field goal to cut the deficit to 28–12 isn’t about “keeping the game close.” It’s a disillusion that only tricks New England into thinking the game appears closer than it actually is. The Patriots kicked off to Atlanta down 28–12 with under ten minutes left. Historically, that still left the Falcons with a near 100% chance of victory!
Yes if they had gone for it and not score the touchdown, the game is very likely over. But the game was still almost certainly over even with the field goal! A New England touchdown instead could’ve cut the Falcons’ win probability to 97%, still a very probable win. It’s easy to just write off the difference between 97 and 99+% — but would you rather have a 1-in-36 chance of winning or 1-in-over-300?
A field goal kept the narrowest of hopes alive but still required a total breakdown by Atlanta and a series of miraculous catches and conversions by New England to come through. Think about what had to happen for the converted field goal to be a success — Atlanta’s unlikely fumble, the Falcons not scoring again, the Edelman catch, two Patriots touchdowns, and two New England two-point conversions. But wait, now the game is only tied! New England had to do all of that just to get their odds of winning back to almost 50%. They still had to stop Atlanta once more and win it in overtime too.
The entire sequence worked out in the end, but you can’t judge process by outcome. New England played conservatively and with a very poor game plan, and it should have cost them any chance to win.
But of course it didn’t. And that’s because everything changed in the middle of the third quarter.
With 8:31 left in the third, Matt Ryan completed a pass in the flat to Tevin Coleman and Coleman waltzed into the endzone as the Falcons took a 28–3 lead and all but ended the game. At that point, Matt Ryan had a perfect passer rating at 158.3 and had thrown just two incompletions all game, and the Falcons were averaging 6.7 yards per rush.
From then on, despite holding a seemingly insurmountable lead and only needing to run the clock out, Atlanta ran the ball just four more times. After 28–3, Atlanta had one 39-yard screen to Freeman that nearly turned into a touchdown and the insane 27-yard catch by Julio Jones destined to join Marcus Paige and Endy Chavez in the what-if Hall of Fame. Outside of those two plays, the Falcons ran 14 other plays for a combined -22 yards. Oof.
During the same stretch of football, New England ran 49 plays and gained 351 yards. They had the ball for 49 of the game’s final 65 plays and 20:34 of the game’s final 27:29. Atlanta could not keep the ball or do anything with it, and the defense simply could not get off the field.
So what happened?
First, there was the confused game plan. Remember Julio Jones, the guy that made one of the all-time great playoff catches? Atlanta targeted him just four times all game, fewest of any game the entire season. Remember Atlanta’s speedy running backs and how devastating they were catching passes out of the backfield all season, and remember how Freeman had that 39-yarder that was almost a touchdown and how Coleman scored on his lone catch? Atlanta only threw the ball one other time to either player all game.
Atlanta had one of the best offenses in league history by putting their athletes into space and exploiting mismatches. How did Jones, Freeman, and Coleman get a combined seven targets in the biggest game of the year? How did Atlanta average over 7.5 yards a play and lose a game??
The script got worse as the game grew on. With eight minutes left, Atlanta had a 3rd and 1 on its own 36-yard line. At this point they were averaging 5.8 yards per carry. A run gives Atlanta a great chance at a first down. Even if the run was stuffed, Atlanta punts the ball away with a 16 point lead and under eight minutes left, giving New England the ball deep in their own territory, still a near-100% chance of victory. Instead the Falcons dialed up a deep drop for Matt Ryan, Freeman missed his block, and Ryan was strip-sacked. New England recovered the ball and scored a touchdown five plays later, and suddenly it was an 8-point game.
From there Atlanta got the ball back and, just a few plays later, completed the insane catch to Julio Jones, giving them 1st and 10 on the New England 22 with 4:40 remaining. The Julio catch should’ve been the play that stopped the bleeding and won the game for the Falcons. At this point, just running the ball three times was the optimal strategy. Even if Atlanta doesn’t get the first down — and remember they are averaging 5.7 yards per carry — they can run the clock below three minutes and give Matt Bryant a 40-yard kick for an 11 point lead.
They did run once but then took a 12-yard sack, a holding penalty on another pass, and an incomplete pass, saving New England over a minute of time and putting themselves out of field goal range. Here and elsewhere the Falcons also stumbled by repeatedly snapping the ball with plenty of time on the play clock when all they had to do was run the clock out and celebrate their win. Somehow Atlanta went from 1st down on the 22 to punting the ball while using just one minute of clock. Disaster.
Another huge mistake came a few plays later on the wild Edelman catch. Atlanta threw the challenge flag two seconds before the 2-minute warning with New England unready to snap the ball. The Falcons could’ve let the clock hit the 2-minute mark and then had the full TV timeout to look at every angle of the Edelman play — they could’ve seen like the rest of us that it was in fact a catch and saved a timeout they sorely needed. Instead they burned the timeout and they did so before the 2-minute warning, giving the Patriots a free extra play and timeout. The only goal is to run the clock out!
A few plays later New England has tied the game at 28 with 57 seconds left as FOX reminds us that no Super Bowl has ever gone into overtime. On cue, Atlanta seemed to hunker down and prepare itself for overtime. Have they not watched New England play in a Super Bowl before?
Flash back to New England’s first Super Bowl victory in 2002. The Patriots had held a 17–3 lead with ten minutes left before the Rams came all the way back to tie the game with 1:21 left. The game appeared to be headed to overtime and the Rams had all the momentum, but the Patriots aggressively moved the ball down the field in their no-huddle offense, setting up Adam Vinatieri for the game winner. Two years later, New England faced the same situation. Having blown a lead three times to Carolina, the Patriots got the ball back with 1:13 left in a tie game. Again they were aggressive and moved the ball down the field, and again Vinatieri won the game.
You might not realize that Atlanta had the NFL’s leading scorer this season in Matt Bryant — you might not realize it because Atlanta failed to utilize Bryant all game outside of four measly extra points. Bryant is one of the NFL’s most accurate long kickers of all time. In Atlanta Bryant converted 24 of 32 field goals from 50+ yards, including 6 of 8 this year alone! That 75% conversion rate is second all time behind only Matt Prater, far better than the NFL average of just 44% conversion.
All the Falcons had to do was get the ball to at least the New England 40 and Matt Bryant would’ve had a good shot of getting them the win. They would have only 57 seconds without any timeouts but would likely need only around 35 yards with the NFL’s newly crowned MVP under center and an offense that was averaging almost eight yards a play.
Instead, Atlanta seemed unprepared to take advantage of the opportunity. Eric Weems made an ill-advised decision to return the kickoff from a yard deep in the endzone, costing his team 14 yards and five seconds. From there, Atlanta picked up a first down but stayed in-bounds, then threw a 4-yard pass to Hooper in-bounds that forced them to spike the ball and suddenly the opportunity was gone. There was no attempt to get the ball to Jones or one of the star running backs, no throws near the sidelines, and no throw down the field until a desperation heave on third down.
You might argue that Atlanta simply wanted to get to overtime at this point and not risk giving the ball back to New England with a chance to score, and that’s fair. But this is the Super Bowl and you have the MVP under center, the scoring leader at kicker, and one of the greatest offenses in NFL history.
Now — now??! — you get conservative??
Atlanta had a few other chances to stop the bleeding. They could’ve tried a surprise onside kick to start the overtime. That would’ve been a risky move, but the defense wasn’t prepared to stop Brady anyway and a recovery would’ve put Atlanta within a first down and a field goal of victory. Atlanta also went home with two timeouts in their pocket. The defense was gassed, and the Patriots were moving the ball at will. There’s no need to save timeouts for a clock situation in overtime. What are you saving them for, Atlanta? Why not let the defenders catch their breath, or what about calling a timeout with the season on the line before a goal line stand that never happened?
Atlanta made one mistake after another, and the mistakes compounded into a disaster they won’t soon forget. New England made plenty of mistakes of their own before Atlanta fell apart. Both teams deserved to lose for half of the game, and both deserved to win for the other half.
As fate would have it, Atlanta deserved to lose just a little bit more, when even any one of 20 or 30 things could’ve gone the other direction and saved an otherwise victorious Super Bowl evening.
But unlike Alexander Hamilton, Atlanta threw away their shot.
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