It probably wasn’t even a full hour into Sunday’s Fox broadcast — eight-and-a-half minutes were left before halftime of Super Bowl LI — when play-by-play man Joe Buck dared to let the audience aware: No team had ever come back from a two-touchdown deficit to win an NFL championship.
Really, it didn’t need to be said right then. A comment like that in the regular season could have sent the audience to go flipping channels. Even in the early rounds of the playoffs.
Sure, Atlanta sported a 14-0 lead over New England, and it became 21-0 moments later when Robert Alford returned a Tom Brady interception for a touchdown.
It’s not as if we were going to over to the Bravo channel to see if “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” were about to start ordering party favors. But couldn’t Buck have come up with some alternative facts to capture the moment instead?
Yet he was hardly finished. Fast forward to the start of the fourth quarter, and Fox’s new score graphic showed Atlanta with a 28-9 advantage.
“It would be an unprecedented comeback if the Patriots climb out of this hole to win their fifth Super Bowl,” Buck exclaimed.
If the odds seemed better that environmentalist Melissa McCarthy could come back and save the world from imploding, at least everyone was being honest about all this. Actually, it was kind of refreshing to know the real deal. Because without that context, viewers might have been turning away from seeing history made.
After the way the 2016 NBA Finals and World Series went from one seemingly done outcome to another, this was the NFL making televised sports great again, with Fox’s nudging.
A Julian Edleman catch that Buck called “incredible” enough to pull up a replay of a David Tyree catch in the 2007 Super Bowl, and now we’re tied up and about to go into the first Super Bowl overtime.
“It’s a complete reversal of fortune,” said Buck
Analyst Troy Aikman chirps up: “Don’t ever count Tom Brady out.”
“Best ever?” asks Buck.
“The best ever in my book, I said it this week regardless of what happened tonight,” said Aikman.
That may have been solidified on the first series of overtime.
“A toss to White … he’s … IN … Patriots win the Super Bowl!” Buck captioned the comeback.
“Brady has his fifth! What a comeback!”
“It’s 34-28 in overtime and the Patriots have redefined the word ‘momentum’ here tonight. … And if there was any doubt coming into this game about Tom Brady and where he ranked — no one has ever won more Super Bowls, no one has ever been better. That was incredible.”
All that said it better was the overhead Fox camera shot on Brady, crouching on the ground with his head down, finally popping up for a hug from head coach Bill Belichick.
Extra points
• It was only used once, but the debut of the “Be The Player” virtual reality replay element early in the second quarter showed how Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan had just a small window of vision and opportunity to find Julio Jones on a big completion.
The 360-degree computerized enhancement has never been shown before in a TV game.
• A real headline on USAToday.com: “Joe Buck wore a checkered tie and sported facial hair, for all of you who bet on that.”
• During a moment with Terry Bradshaw, who appeared on camera for a Fox promo, it was obvious enough that he had a sauce stain on his white shirt that social media was all over it. Turns out, it was just the first part of a commercial for a laundry detergent.
But did Bradshaw really have to take his pants off as well while he was waiting for his shirt to get laundered?
• “NFL on Fox” pregame show anchor Curt Menefee gave a shoutout to the retiring Brent Musburger, who once hosted “The NFL Today” for CBS. “If he and Irv (Cross) and Phyllis (George) had not succeeded with the pregame show format back in the ‘70s, none of us would be here.” …
• If ESPN’s Chris Berman didn’t teach any broadcaster about how one may want to avoid torching their voices during the week-long festivities but did it anyway, congrats to Fox’s Charissa Thompson and Jimmy Johnson for already struggling with that five hours before kickoff even happened.
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