Rally tally: Crazy endings on the rise
Early this season, comebacks, close games commonplace
Call it a Comeback Sunday the NFL hasn’t seen in years.
The Dolphins and Cardinals made history by overcoming 20-point halftime deficits to win on the same day while the Jets rallied from a 13-point deficit in the final two minutes.
Two other teams almost joined the club. The Falcons fought back from a 28-3 third-quarter deficit, only to fall short against the defending Super Bowl champion Rams when Jalen Ramsey picked off Marcus Mariota’s pass intended for Bryan Edwards in the end zone, sealing a 31-27 victory.
Joe Burrow helped the Bengals erase a 17-3 halftime deficit in Dallas, but Brett Maher kicked a 50-yard field goal as time expired to give the Cowboys a 20-17 win that dropped the reigning AFC champions to 0-2.
Two weeks into the season, close games and wacky finishes are a common theme. It’s great news for the league, giving viewers who have no fantasy football or gambling interest reason to stick around until the end.
There have been 12 games decided by three points or fewer already, the most through the first two weeks of a season in NFL history.
Eight teams have overcome a deficit of at least 10 points to win or tie, the secondmost through Week 2, trailing only the 1987 season when nine teams did it.
Tua Tagovailoa’s performance was most impressive. He tossed six touchdown passes to lead the Dolphins to a 42-38 in Baltimore after trailing Lamar Jackson and the Ravens 35-14 going into the fourth quarter.
“We basically had to play perfect complementary football to come back from a deficit like that, and this is a really good team so I couldn’t be happier with him, and his teammates know,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said of Tagovailoa. “His teammates learned a lot about him, and I think he learned something about himself.”
Tagovailoa improved to 8-1 vs. Super Bowl-winning head coaches, the highest win percentage league history with a minimum six starts.
His critics should be silent for at least another week.
Kyler Murray put on a spectacular display of his own to help the Cardinals overcome a 20-0 halftime deficit against the Raiders in Las Vegas. Murray ran in from the 3 on the final play of regulation and made a perfect throw into a tight window through traffic for the 2-point conversion to send the game into overtime.
Then, Byron Murphy Jr. returned Hunter Renfrow’s fumble 59 yards for a touchdown to give the Cardinals a 29-23 win.
“There were so many do-or-die plays, I lost count, where we had to have this stop, had to have this 2-point conversion, had to score, had to have this fourth down and guys just kept fighting,” Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury said. “Nobody blinked. At halftime, it was ‘Hey, we have to settle in and do what we do.’ ”
Multiple teams hadn’t rallied from 20-point halftime deficits to win on the same day until both the Dolphins and Cardinals did it Sunday. It was the first time that two teams overcame a deficit of at least 20 points at any point in a game to win in the same week since Week 4 of the 2011 season.
Of the three teams who blew big leads, the Browns should be most bitter. They would’ve won if Nick Chubb had stayed in bounds instead of run into the end zone for his third touchdown with 1:55 remaining. That score gave the Browns a 30-17 lead but the extra-point was missed.
Joe Flacco tossed two TD passes in a 60-second span sandwiched around a recovered onside kick as the Jets pulled off an improbable 31-30 victory. Teams had won 2,229 consecutive games when leading by at least 13 points in the final two minutes before the Browns blew it.
The three comebacks by the Dolphins, Cardinals and Jets — all on the road, too — marked the second time in league history that three teams overcame a fourth-quarter deficit of at least 13 points to win on same day.
The way this season has started, expect to see plenty more comebacks.