RAVENS FLYING HIGH
Baltimore holds off 49ers’ rally to claim Super Bowl title
Before the game began, the in-stadium scoreboard featured a segment on hurricane Katrina, on how people were trapped in the Superdome in 2005. More than 20,000 people were eventually housed there with limited food and water, and limited sanitation facilities. It was, along with the national response to the event, one of the low moments in recent American history.
Then came another one, in a manner of speaking. In the first Super Bowl in New Orleans since Katrina, with 13:28 left in the third quarter and the Baltimore Ravens stomping San Francisco 28-6, the lights went out.
If you were into metaphors — about concussions, about income inequality, about the country’s abdication of one of its great cities, about the American empire — this was your moment. Also, if you specialized in electrical engineering.
But somehow, the NFL managed to outshine its own darkness. The game resumed after a 34-minute delay, and after a lightning storm of a second half, Baltimore held on for a 34-31 victory in Super Bowl XLVII in a game that, after a tedious start, became as strange and memorable a Super Bowl as you could possibly create. The 49ers, who came back from a 17-0 deficit in Atlanta in the NFC championship game, came within five yards of doing it again.
San Francisco had spent the first 32 minutes of game time making mistakes — an illegal formation call on their first play that negated a 20-yard gain, an offside call on what was otherwise a drive-killing overthrow by Joe Flacco on third-and-10, a fumble at Baltimore’s 20, a spooked interception inside their own territory. On Jacoby Jones’s 56-yard touchdown with 1:45 left in the first half, Flacco underthrew the ball, Jones came back to it, fell down, got up, evaded corner Chris Culliver — the homophobic highlight-maker of the week who had a phenomenally awful day — and safety Dashon Goldson, and cantered into the end zone.
With Flacco tying Joe Montana’s record for touchdown passes in one postseason without an interception — 11 to nothing — it was 21-6 at halftime, and Jones opened the second half with his 108-yard odyssey. Writers started composing their game stories, without a doubt in mind.
But then the lights were extinguished, and when they all were illuminated the game began to glow, too. The Niners punted, the Ravens punted, the Niners drove for a touchdown — Michael Crabtree, on a play with a missed tackle that looked a lot like the ones that never reached Jones earlier in the game that made it 28-6 — and after a stalled series, San Francisco’s Ted Ginn. Jr. ran a punt back to the 20-yard line.
Two plays later Frank Gore was in the end zone, and it was 28-20, and the Superdome was releasing a statement apologizing for the power outage. To which San Francisco presumably said, “never mind.”
Baltimore got the ball back and Ray Rice fumbled on a swing pass in the flat, and David Akers flopped like a founder and drew a penalty, which turned a missed 39-yard field goal into a made 34-yard field goal. It was 28-23 with 3:10 left in the third quarter. San Francisco had scored 17 points in 4:10 of game time. And they had an ocean of time left.
The Ravens drove inside the San Francisco five, but were forced to settle for a field goal. With 3:12 left in the first half Ravens coach John Harbaugh had called a fake punt on fourth-and-9; his man got eight. It was an attempt to bury the game; it became three points that danced in the air.
After Colin Kaepernick ran for the longest QB touchdown run in Super Bowl history — 15 yards — San Francisco couldn’t complete the twopoint conversion, but it was 28-26 with 9:57 left.
Baltimore got into field goal-range thanks to an astonishing catch by Anquan Boldin on third-and-1 — Culliver again — and made it 34-29. Kaepernick had 80 yards to go, 4:19 on the clock, and only a touchdown would do.
Vernon Davis dropped an easy ball inside the 30 with 3:25 left, but Kaepernick hit Crabtree over the middle for 24 yards, and Gore ran 34 yards to the eight. They were so close. They got three yards on a run, threw a pass away, called a timeout, had a pass to Crabtree batted down. After everything — after falling behind, after the blackout, after the comeback — the San Francisco 49ers needed five yards. That was it.
And the Ravens sent pressure, heavy pressure, and Kaepernick lofted a pass to the right corner of the end zone just before he was hit. The pass sailed too high, and never had a chance. The Ravens — in the final game for iconic and divisive middle linebacker Ray Lewis, after losing four of their final five regular-season games, in a matchup between older brother John and his little brother Jim, who was chewing
It was an exceptionally American Super Bowl, in the end. A volcano of money and hype, a massive failure, a cast of villains and heroes and families.
the air all day on the San Francisco sideline — escaped.
It was an exceptionally American Super Bowl, in the end. A volcano of money and hype, a massive failure, a cast of villains and heroes and families.
Then there were the kids from Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were massacred by a madman with an AR-15 rifle late last year, who sang America the Beautiful. It was jarring how normal it felt to watch survivors of a child massacre singing about their country at the Super Bowl.
And then came the game, in this great American city, flawed and damaged and beautiful as it is. The day had begun with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell refusing to accept a link between football and concussions on Face The Nation. Maybe he knew that by the end of the day, nobody would remember a single thing he said.