Sports gods smiled on the Pats
President George H. W. Bush did the ceremonial coin toss for the Super Bowl 15 years ago at the Superdome, six months after 9/ 11. The New England Patriots lost the toss, but won the game. It was Tom Brady’s first championship.
On S unday ni g ht in Houston, only two weeks removed from a spell in the ICU, Bush, 92, was back for the toss. Broadcaster Joe Buck said there was a “not a tougher man in this stadium tonight,” a tribute to his being the youngest U. S. Navy pilot in the Second World War, having survived at sea after being shot down. The others in his plane were killed. Bush survived. Survival and perseverance would become something of a theme in the game. Bush tossed the coin. The Patriots lost.
They usually do. In their record nine Super Bowl appearances, the Patriots are 2-7 in the coin toss, and have never won it in any of their record five wins. But on Sunday night, that opening toss by President Bush was only the second most important coin toss of the night.
In the first ever overtime Super Bowl, the Patriots won the coin toss at the end of regulation time. Of course they would. It was the one that mattered. Taking the ball first, they marched down t he f i eld and into history. On Sunday night, the fates were arranged even for the coin flip.
The greatest Super Bowl ever played? Perhaps the greatest game? Not really. For most of Sunday night, the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots offered up a game that was neither interesting nor particularly well- played. Even the fourth quarter Patriots’ comeback — the greatest in the history of championship sports — was equal parts a horrific collapse by the Falcons who, if they had simply refrained from a single one of the half dozen critical errors they made, would still have won the game.
But it was astonishing and thrilling. The Patriots coming from 28- 3 down to win 34-28 in overtime made Super Bowl LI one of most remarkable games ever. The greatest coach in NFL history, Bill Belichick, the greatest quarterback in NFL his- tory, Tom Brady, with now the greatest record — seven Super Bowl appearances in 16 seasons, five of them victories. Such dominance has only been achieved by the 1950s Montreal Canadiens ( in a six team league) and the 1960s Boston Celtics.
The drama of Super Bowl LI was the great role reversal. The Patriots — by far the best team in football for years, having finished their last five seasons in at least the semi-final game — managed to win as underdogs. They were favoured to win beforehand, to be sure, but one thing seemed to elude the mighty Patriots, precisely because of their mightiness. The epic comeback, the impossible victory. The sports gods, about which I have written before, were on their side.
After NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, the villain’s villain, had unfairly suspended Tom Brady for four games at the beginning of the season, winning the Super Bowl would be Brady’s sweetest revenge. True enough, but to win against t he odds? How could he do that? The odds always favour the Patriots.
Yet the sports gods arranged it in a masterful conspiracy. Mishaps plagued the Patriots, and Brady himself threw an interception returned for a touchdown — surely the highlight that would be replayed endlessly as the moment where the Falcons broke the Patriots’ back. In that magical fourth quarter, supernatural help was in abundance. The referees were summoned to first penalize the Falcons for holding — denying them a chance to put the game out of reach. In overtime, they booked them for pass interference, putting the Patriots on the goal-line to win. Both calls were right.
For the last decade or so the Super Bowl involves one long- to- be- talked- about physics-defying catch. Surely the Falcons had it, when Julio Jones made a catch that even computergenerated animation could not duplicate. That would be the defining moment, surely? No, t he Patriots countered with Julian Edelman’s less athletic but more impossible catch. Fox Sports had 70 cameras on the game and it took that many to provide evidence that the catch had actually been made.
But it was. Bill Belichick has now won Super Bowls 15 years apart, with really two entirely different teams, save for the sine qua non, Tom Brady. It is a remarkable accomplishment, putting him in that rarefied coaching air with the most successful professional coach ever, Scotty Bowman, who won nine Stanley Cups with three different teams ( Montreal, Pittsburgh, Detroit), the last a staggering 30 seasons after the first.
Part of the attraction of sports is that it creates instant history, which is not possible to do in business or scholarship or literature, or even politics.
The history made this Super Bowl was not just a moment though, but evidence of an excellence which has endured, even if improbable in the final instance.
PART OF THE ATTRACTION OF SPORTS IS THAT IT CREATES INSTANT HISTORY.