Let’s Be Honest Though, The Atlanta Falcons Absolutely Blew It
It’s the Super Bowl, you know. It’s where stuff happens which transcends the usual petty dramas of the NFL, heroes are enshrined and villains maligned. Remember when the Seahawks didn’t run the ball with Marshawn Lynch that time? Well that ended up winning the Patriots a Super Bowl title and in SB51 they were poised with the same situation. One yard out, needing a touchdown to tie things up (with a 2pt conversion)… and Brady hands off to Jake White who goes straight over the middle.
Not exactly the same thing but close enough to prove a point.
There have been thousands of articles written in the last 24 hours about Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. They’re the best, they already were the best, they will continue to be the best. There’s no reason to add another voice to what is already an overwhelming choir. Instead this one is more about the other side of things because for every winner there’s a loser and for every great comeback there’s an equally horrific choke (in the parlance of our times).
No team had ever won the Super Bowl when trailing by more than seven points at half-time before and the biggest overall comeback was 10 points. In Super Bowl LI, the Falcons led 21-3 at the break and they soon made that 28-3 early in the third quarter. With nine minutes remaining in the game, ESPN’s win probability machine had them at 99.6% to be lifting the Vince Lombardi Trophy within an hour. That’s 996 wins out of 1000, if you play them all out from that moment. Clearly those probability thingies aren’t as legit as they claim to be but still, with the knowledge of what followed it paints a tragic picture for Atlanta Falcons fans.
Matt Ryan on plays he’d do-overs for: “I would like a few back. I think there are plays here and there, I think, everybody across the board would like to have done things differently because at the end of the day, we didn't get the job done.”
Well, the frustrating thing is that you can never get those plays back. You only get one chance and often it’s not until afterwards that you really grasp how important they each were. From leading 28-12 with 9:40 remaining, the Falcons had several of them. They had opportunities where a single score, a single first down, a single completion (or positive rush) might have changed things. The Patriots were hanging by a thread. All the Falcons had to do was close it out but with that lead and having led most of the game since, it seemed from the outside like they were more comfortable than they really were.
Credit to Mike Shanahan, he seemed to realise that. The (now former) Falcons Offensive Coordinator (and Assistant Coach of the Year) has been copping it from all sides over his play-calling in the fourth quarter but Shanahan understood that they needed to kill that game off. Running it over and over to work the clock wasn’t going to be enough, the best way to do it was be to score again. Although they did also need to spend some concerted time on the park to give their defence a breather. After scoring to make it 28-3, the Pats spend 6:25 mins strolling downfield for James White to score. But they missed the PAT. Atlanta then had a penalty and a sack which aided them to a -15 net gain on their next drive before the Pats spent another five minutes and change on their way to a field goal.
Keeping them to three points was a huge boost having seen the Pats get well into the redzone there. The game was set up to where a good drive would all but clinch it for Atlanta. The score was 28-12… you already know this was a turning point.
Tevin Coleman ran for eight on first down, then another yard on second for 3rd & 1, although he was injured on the second play. Which brings us to this…
DECISIVE 4TH QTR MOMENT #1: Matt Ryan is strip sacked by Dont’a Hightower, recovered by Alan Branch at the ATL 25.
That they went for a pass play is nothing dramatic. This is an Atlanta offence that is famed for their aggression. They use these kinds of situations when defences may be anticipating a run to go deep to their wideout threats and it’s been like a blank cheque for them all season. The problem was that with Coleman on the sideline getting treated, Devonta Freeman returned in the backfield. Freeman is the starter and the superior offensive threat, a 1000 yard rusher in 2016. He’s also smaller than Coleman and not quite the same blocker. That’s hardly an excuse though and with the Patriots flooding the line with defenders, Freeman and Ryan completely missed Hightower blitzing from their right edge. Freeman didn’t block him and Ryan didn’t see him coming. Five plays later Danny Amendola was in the endzone and James White’s successful 2PC made it 28-20.
Still this was a game within the Falcons’ hands (talons?). There were less than six minutes remaining, they had the lead and the ball was under their control. Matt Ryan goes play-action on first down, tossing it short to Freeman. The wide receivers went deep to clear out space and with the Patriots rushing five defenders, there was all sorts of space for Freeman to the left. A short completion became a 39 yard gain and they were almost at midfield already.
Then the play that should have won the title. If things had worked out differently, it would have gone down as one of the legendary catches in Super Bowls, not quite on the level with David Tyree or Santonio Holmes maybe… but something close. Stepping up through pressure, Matt Ryan hit Julio Jones down the right sideline and the genius that he is, somehow Jones was able to get both feet down and hold a ball that was angled well out of bounds. Incredible stuff and about the third catch of that game that only he, of all the players that took the field in SB51, could have made. That he made it with Eric Rowe seemingly attached at the hip makes it even greater.
1st & 10 at the NE 22. Comfortably within field goal range, a field goal that would probably have ended the contest and crowned the Falcons champions for the first time in their history.
DECISIVE 4TH QTR MOMENT #2: Matt Ryan is sacked for by Trey Flowers for a 12 yard loss.
DECISIVE 4TH QTR MOMENT #3: Penalty on Jake Matthews, ATL, offensive holding. Ten yard loss.
There were four ways they could blow it from there: a turnover, a sack, a penalty or a missed field goal… and they did two of them. On consecutive plays as well, the holding overturning a 9yd completion to Mohamed Sanu. On 3rd & 33, Ryan went incomplete to Tyler Gabriel and they had to punt the ball back with 3:44 still on the clock and nothing added to the score.
This is where the criticism about play-calling makes its strongest case. To be fair, they did run on first down. Freeman was popped for a one yard loss by Devin McCourty. Had the Falcons and Shanahan and coach Dan Quinn been more conservative then they could have run it twice more and started getting into those New England timeouts as well – Bill Belichick called his first one after the sack. You effectively give up any chance of scoring but you eat at the clock and you give your kicker the chance to put your team up by 11 points. Hell, take a couple knees if you want. Had the scores been level then they probably would have done just that but the pressure of the rallying Patriots was a lot to bear. They went for the kill and Matt Ryan, who had played such a superb game, made his biggest blunder when he failed to react quickly enough to the pass rush.
It’s tough because it looked like his O-Line had it covered with six blockers guarding four pass rushers until the sheer strength of Flowers and Hightower broke through and Ryan tried to run out of there, costing them a couple more yards. You have to know that a sack is a nightmare at that moment and somehow the ball has to get out of there. He admitted as much afterwards, but again that’s way too late. Then the penalty is another bullet in the foot.
DECISIVE 4TH QTR MOMENT #4: Julian Edelman completes the catch for 23 yards, Atlanta challenges the call but the catch is confirmed.
Brady’s last two drives will be remembered as defining moments for him. Don’t forget that he completed on 3rd & 10 at his own 9yd line to get the first of them going. Having been on the end of a couple Super Bowl worldies in the past, the Edelman catch now becomes immortal but if you’re an Atlanta Falcons fan then you’re seeing it in a whole other light.
Robert Alford already had a pick-six of Brady earlier in the game. Again he jumped the throw here, reading that Brady was looking to place one over top of him and he got his hands to the ball as he turned, yet it was on him that split second too fast and all he could do was bat it up in the air. From there two other Falcons (Ricardo Allen and Keanu Neal) had a play at it but it was Edelman who secured it, somehow. The ball collided with feet and hands and legs and air before the Pats WR inexplicably got a hand underneath it and tucked the pigskin against his chest.
Had it been incomplete, Brady still would have had another few plays to keep driving. Had it been intercepted then once again we’re talking game over. The way that the Patriots prepare means that not a single one of those players or coaches will fail to realise the tiny details that needed to go their way for the comeback to happen but those tiny details are the same ones that they prepare for. Once the catch was confirmed, the rest felt inevitable. The Patriots would roll on methodically, pacing their way carefully down the field and watching yardage disappear in their wake like the ticking of the game clock… which was now no longer an issue. They’d find a way to score and then they’d find a way to make that score count for an extra two. Their season ended on a failed two-point conversion last time and this is not a franchise that repeats their mistakes.
Sure enough, that all happened. Brady completed to Danny Amendola for 20, to James White for 13 and then for 7 and White rushed his own way in for the touchdown. Amendola caught the conversion and it was 28-28. The Falcons were only able to find 16 yards in the last 54 seconds and for the first time in history the Super Bowl was headed for overtime.
DECISIVE 4TH (/OT) QTR MOMENT #5: The Patriots win the coin toss and elect to receive the ball for the first possession of overtime.
Perhaps if the Falcons had won the toss, they might have been able to get themselves back into the game, but by then they’d already blow it. It was no surprise when the Patriots got the last little slice of luck that they needed and it was no surprise when eight plays, 75 yards, 3 minutes and 58 seconds later they completed the biggest comeback win in Super Bowl history.