(Granted, it was the Patriots’ victory two years ago.) In order to tie the game, Brady and the Pats still needed to: Only one Super Bowl in history had ever seen a team overcome longer second-half odds.
Even after the sack and the punt, the Falcons were still overwhelmingly likely to win the game. The counter-argument, of course, is that 8 percent is still improbable. The odds of a team doing the former are about 3 percent for the latter, 8 percent. If the Falcons had run the ball on those second and third downs instead, then kicked the field goal, they’d have forced the Patriots to mount an 11-point comeback with something like 2:30 to play - not an 8-point comeback with 3:30 to go. Between that and a 10-yard holding penalty on the subsequent play, the Falcons were pushed out of accurate kicker Matt Bryant’s field-goal range and had to punt the ball back to Brady. But on second and 11 from the New England 23, the Falcons decided to pass instead of running the ball and setting up an insurance field goal, and Ryan was sacked for a loss of 12. Ryan hit Devonta Freeman for a 39-yard gain to reach midfield, and a few plays later, Julio Jones made an amazing catch that seemed destined to join the pantheon of great Patriot-killing Super Bowl grabs. Atlanta still had about a 92 percent chance of winning the game according to ESPN’s win probability model, but a window had been opened for the Pats.Īt first, the Falcons appeared to close it again. The Patriots had just finished scoring 17 unanswered points to pull to within a single score of Atlanta, and the Falcons had run a grand total of six offensive plays over that span before QB Matt Ryan started the drive at his own 10. The play he’s talking about came as the Falcons clung to a 28-20 lead with about four minutes left in regulation time.
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