HOUSTON — They were a runaway adding machine in overdrive. For 30 minutes, the Atlanta Falcons threatened to turn Super Bowl 51 into their private fiesta and Tom Brady into their private pinata.
They sacked the unsackable Brady and hit him more than a dozen times. They ran the ball as though they were busting through a paper-mache defense. They sent untouched receivers all over the field, and quarterback Matt Ryan always had the ball waiting for them.
By the time Lady Gaga fell from the sky to start the halftime show, the Falcons were up, 21-3.
Matt Ryan on Super Bowl loss
But a funny and totally unexpected thing happened to them on their way to collect the Lombardi Trophy from Roger Goodell: They ran into the real New England Patriots — and lost 34-28 in overtime.
So write it across the New England skyline this morning in large capital letters, from Back Bay to Cambridge, from Foxborough to where Maine meets Canada. What Bill Belichick hath wrought from the heat of the preseason summer to the games that count for real, nobody– but absolutely nobody — could put asunder.
The Patriots who scored 28 unanswered points in the second half, including a pair of two-point conversions, then won it all in overtime after winning the toss.
They had every reason to question themselves during halftime, but the Patriots won it because they believed. That wasn’t a phony kind of well-it-ain’t-over-yet belief. It was more the way your 5-year old nephew believes in the Tooth Fairy when he finds money under his pillow.
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It was the only logical reason for what the Patriots did at NRG Stadium Sunday night. It had to be. No other army that torn and bloody and with every reason to retreat could come out and carry the day like this. And for all the beauty of Brady’s artistry, the underlying factor was down-and-dirty belly-to-belly trench football.
A single moment underscored that.
They were talking among themselves in the locker room.
Linebacker Dont’a Hightower recalled sitting at halftime and listening. He didn’t pinpoint who it was, but he said the message was “Do your job! Finish! We know what they’ve got. We know what they’re doing. Get out there and execute.”
And that’s exactly what they did.
Inch by inch, the Pats — at one point in the third quarter trailing 28-3 — were crawling back. Now they were down, 28-12, in the fourth quarter with about eight minutes to go. And the Falcons had the ball.
It was third-and-one on the Falcons’ 36 and here came Hightower from his linebacker position, the honest workman doing his job. He zeroed in on Ryan, who — inexplicably to some — had dropped back to throw. Hightower came on like an avenging angel or a giant eraser, determined to wipe clean the earlier mistakes of the embarrassed Patriots.
The linebacker arrived so ferociously, it was almost a dead heat between him and the shotgun snap, which he jarred loose as Ryan went down. The Pats recovered.
He hadn’t lit a spark. He had ignited was a full-scale forest fire. Brady threw four straight completions, starting at the Falcons’ 25 and ending with Danny Amendola cradling the football in the end zone. A two-point conversion kept the flame alive.
But for all the scoring in this game, it was Hightower who got it going and now there was no coping with the Real Patriots. On their next possession, starting on their own 9, Brady completed six of eight passes, got the touchdown and capped this fairy tale with a two-point conversion pass to Amendola.
The Super Bowl was going into overtime for the first time.
It was no contest. The Patriots won the coin toss. Brady should have been given the coin and the MVP Trophy right then and there. He completed six of eight passes, driving 72 yards. Running back James White circled right end for the points that won it.
It was the largest comeback in the history of the Super Bowl as Brady threw for the most yards (466) in the game’s history.
But for me — and I’ve covered all 51 — the Pats set a record that doesn’t show up in the stats, and it will be hard to imagining it ever being equaled. It was a tribute to the man who coaches them, to his assistants and to the players who put it together.
What they did Sunday night was a tribute to the words of the unofficial Poet Laureate of New Jersey, the Late Lawrence Yogi Berra, who continually warned us that “it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.”
It took a while, but her final notes could be heard all the way from Houston to Galveston.
And the Pats, themselves, have their own thoughts (not so private) about those who live outside of Pats Nation as voiced by safety Patrick Chung in the afterglow of a miracle finish:
”People said their offense was going to run all over us and throw all over us, and now they can keep on talking because they’ll just be sitting at home on their couch mad.”
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Jerry Izenberg is Columnist Emeritus for The Star-Ledger and is one of only two newspaper columnists to cover all 51 Super Bowls. He can be reached at jizenberg@starledger.com.
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