SHOCK VICTORY: New England Win First Overtime Super Bowl; Three Records Broken

Just now, the Patriots won the first ever Super Bowl to go into overtime. They won it 34-28 over the almost indefatigable Atlanta Braves after coming back from a huge 28-3 deficit in the third quarter. No less than three Super Bowl records were broken tonight, in a game that rivaled last year's World Series in improbabilities. Super Bowl LI will have a lot of digital ink spilled on it, that's for durn sure.

Broken Records:

I counted three; if you know of any more, leave 'em in the comments.

• Tom Brady racked up the most passing yards advanced by a quarterback.
• Tom Brady has now won five Super Bowls.

And most significantly:

• By far, the Patriots rallied back from the largest in-game deficit to win. As indicated above, they were down by 25 points! The previous record was a deficit of only 10.

Atlanta's Crushing Defense...

In the third quarter, to be quite frank, the game looked like one of those you wanted to turn off early because watching the rest of it seemed a waste of time. The surprise of the first three quarters came from the Atlanta defense, which acted almost as if they had a mind-tap on Tom Brady. They were that good at sacking him, stymieing him, provoking him to throw off a bad pass, and in one crucial moment intercepting him. To put it bluntly, they were all over him. It's as almost as if the defensive line had hired a Tom Brady play-alike and practiced hard on thwarting all his moves. They were that good.

Of course, the Falcons' Matt Ryan deserves a lot of credit for a game very well played. But had Atlanta's defense not been so suffocating, it would have been a race up the numbers between he and Brady. Even though the Falcons lost, they deserve a helluva lot of praise for how they played the first three quarters.

...And Atlanta's Collapse In The Fourth Quarter.

As I indicated above, the Pats looked like they were going down to an ignominious defeat as the third quarter ended. The humiliating cap came just after they scored their first touchdown: the conversion kicker hit the right post (!) and the ball bounced out of the score zone. Had the fourth quarter not been what it was, that pole-bobbled conversion would have been the symbol of the game.

But the Pats finally shook themselves loose from the Falcons' domination. From 28-9, Brady and the crew got another field goal to make it 28-12. The Fox commentators then called it a "two-score game." This proved to be literally true. The Parts not only got a touchdown but also a two-point field conversion easily.

As the game neared its end, it was clear that the great Patriots has gotten their mojo back. They racked up another touchdown with little more that a minute left in the game. The Falcons, showing the fatal weakness in their strategy, had set up this change in momentum with a horrid set of downs that not only included a sack but also a penalty; both put them out of easy-field-goal range on the 10 to sadly punting on the fourth down. Their mistakes had gotten them pasted with 4 and 32 (yards to go) when the Pats turned the game around. This itself might be a record, though not of the good sort.

After their second fourth-quarter touchdown who put them at 28-26, the Pats got an incredible two-pointer that looked like a round in a demolition derby. James White looked like a demolition car as he piledrove over the goal line only to be pile-driven back. But it didn't matter: the game was tied.

Overtime Domination

As was the custom for this first overtime, the coin was flipped again and the Pats won the toss. They elected to receive. From there, it was almost a solid string of first-down pass completions. Brady and the Pats drove the ball from their 20-yard line all the way up to a clean touchdown. It was as if the Falcons of the first three quarters had vanished and been replaced by a lesser team.

Why Atlanta Lost

Geez: they almost had it! But in sad retrospect, the Falcons were like an Olympic long-distance runner who aimed for track dominance early in the race, only to fade away in the last laps because he ran out of energy. A sad story, in a way a profoundly sad story but an old one.

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These are my hurried comments after watching one of the more boring Super Bowls turn into the most exciting Bowl I've ever watched. Here are some sports-MSM links that'll fill in the inevitable blanks in the above:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2017/02/05/super-bowl-2017-51-li-patriots-falcons-analysis-tom-brady-matt-ryan/97529938/

https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/tom-brady-leads-greatest-comeback-in-super-bowl-history-033006372.html

http://www.ctvnews.ca/sports/patriots-win-super-bowl-34-28-in-overtime-1.3271903

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Thanks for reading! Comments? Leave 'em below!

(Images from here and here; thanks to @me-tarzan for the perfect image for this Super Bowl "oscillator" game!)