The Falcons Rose Up but the Patriots Put Them Down: Dumb Football, Super Bowl LI Edition

One of the bigger mysteries of the 2016 NFL season was Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers began the season playing like, well, not himself. He wasn't exactly bad, per se, but he was lacking just enough of his typical accuracy that he resembled another, less Aaron Rodgers-ish quarterback, and that alone was enough to raise eyebrows. The people that wonder about this sort of thing wondered whether the Packers quarterback was beginning his career decline perhaps a little earlier than some other top passers. And then, when he turned back into Aaron Rodgers in the second half of the season, they stopped wondering about that.

There was no smoking gun offered up by even the most obsessive tape grinder for why any of this happened, and no clear or multi-part answer has emerged as far as scheme or technique. The Packers' offensive line was good the entire season, and give or take the half-dozen or so doomed running backs lining up behind him the personnel around Rodgers didn't change much. Rodgers simply got better as the year went on and eventually returned to the dominating form fans know. Why? Because he somehow decided to run the table?

Tom Brady's Super Bowl LI played out as a similar sort of microcosmic mystery. In the first half, he missed throws that we aren't accustomed to seeing Brady miss. Some were the result of pressure, but certainly not all. Atlanta's defense looked like it was moving around at a higher speed than the Patriots offense. That was decidedly not true by the end of the night, when New England's nearly two-to-one advantage in time of possession wore them down, but early in the game Dan Quinn's defense looked like it would turn in a performance to rival some of his work in Seattle. Hell, they even got the first-ever postseason pick-six of Brady to take a 21-0 lead in the second quarter.

Atlanta's defense began to tire in the second half, and as a result they pressured Brady much less late in the game. But also, at a level that's harder to explain, things also just started clicking for Brady. Whereas he had unforced errors in the first half, he was brutally efficient in the second. Once the seal was broken, the Pats went off, scoring 31 points in 26 minutes with five straight scoring drives; four of those were of 70 yards or more.

And this is where the Dumb Football comes in. Call it mystique or a lack of experience in The Big Game, or use whatever narrative-based explanation suits you. Whatever the explanation, opponents always seem to get brainlock late against the Patriots, whether it's the Seahawks not running Marshawn Lynch at the goal line or the Falcons not running the ball much with the lead at all. Atlanta might have had the most serious case of all.

"RUN THE DANG BALL" is the oppressive mantra of a certain kind of mouthbreathing football fan, but the philosophy has its positive attributes. While we're calling out knee-jerk reactions that are not always wrong, "too cute and pass-heavy" is often a descriptor bestowed on Kyle Shanahan's offenses, dating back to his time in Washington, but just because it's easy doesn't mean it's always wrong. Shanahan is not suddenly a bad coach—his play-calling helped the team break records during the regular season and got Atlanta in position to win the Super Bowl, after all. It just so happened that his biggest weakness as a coach emerged at the worst possible time. With a first down at the Pats' 22 and five minutes left, Shanahan called one running play that lost a yard. The rest of the plays in that sequence were passes that resulted in a sack, a holding call, and an incompletion. Atlanta duffed its way out of field goal range and punted; New England tied the game two minutes later.

Passing in that situation might have made sense if the Falcons needed a touchdown, but they didn't. With a 28-20 lead, kicking a field goal likely would have ended the game. The Pats got a miracle catch from Julian Edelman on the drive that ultimately tied the game, but they would have needed at least one or two more improbable plays to recover from a two-score deficit with four minutes left. Even if two more running plays netted zero yards, Atlanta would have been looking at a 40-yard attempt for Matt Bryant, one of the most accurate kickers in the league.

Instead they punted, and on the game-tying ten-play scoring drive that ensued, the Patriots only ran the ball once, on a one-yard touchdown burst by James White. The Pats mostly put Brady in shotgun the rest of the way, and he picked apart a defense that suddenly looked very tired. The best quarterbacks aren't dominant all the time, but give them the ability to hang around—whether that's NFC North teams refusing to take the division in Rodgers' case or a Falcons team unable to close the book on a championship on Sunday—and they're going to find it.

An air of inevitability took hold once the Pats tied the game. The Falcons were spent. When New England got the ball to start overtime, the outcome was academic. Atlanta rose up in the first half, but was put down easily in overtime. The Patriots more than doubled what had previously been the largest comeback in Super Bowl history. They set a new franchise mark for biggest comeback in any game. By the end, they made it all look easy.

Atlanta now has an 86% chance of winning, per ESPN. That's about the same Clinton's chances heading into the election — Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn)February 6, 2017

With Donald Trump so closely aligned with the Patriots, there was no discussing the Super Bowl without turning everything into a reference to presidential politics. When the game was shaping up to be a blowout, lefties had a great time online razzing Brady and Belichick about their affection for Trump. When Atlanta lustily shit the bed, there were handy parallels to the Clinton campaign right there, although it's not the Falcons' fault that they didn't go to Wisconsin; they had to beat the Packers at home.

Now that we're done imposing our ideologies onto football games, we can get back to the serious business of yelling at each other about the fine points of national policy when Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz debate on Tuesday night. That's real sports!

Talk about a 180. — MichaelFloyd (@MichaelMFloyd)February 6, 2017

According to Michael Floyd, if you believe in yourself, you too can turn a DUI into a marginal role on a Super Bowl champion team. It's all about staying positive, folks.

BRADY FILMED THIS BEFORE THE GAME WITH FIVE RINGS! I AM SCREAMING — Marina Molnar (@mkmolnar)February 6, 2017

In other news, while Tom Brady may or may not support a president who wants to take away your health care (he does), he's got a cute little ad for a health care provider in the Boston area. Ha, I'm literally dying over here.

Mark Wahlberg leaving — Allen Reid (@Allen_Reid)February 6, 2017

Does it bring any solace to those rooting against the Patriots that the team's most famous/notorious backers gave up on them before their comeback was complete? Probably not much, and yet when the most hated team in the NFL stages the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history, you cling to what you can.

And so here I point out that Mark Wahlberg left NRG Stadium and Donald Trump left the viewing party at the Mar-a-Lago golf club while Atlanta was still leading in the second half. Their team ended up winning, of course, but they didn't get to enjoy the experience of seeing it live. And while tight end Martellus Bennett suggested during Super Bowl week that he likely wouldn't visit the White House even if the Patriots won, he made it official postgame that he wouldn't. Personally, I'd be pretty bummed if I had to hang out with the Patriots and didn't get to meet Marty B, but then I guess Gronk will be there, unless the big lug develops some political convictions in the next few months. I'm also willing to believe the Falcons threw this game so they wouldn't have to mingle with Trump. Now that InfoWars is part of the establishment, we can all just come up with whatever batshit conspiracies we want.

1. Tom Brady. With a fifth Super Bowl title and fourth Super Bowl MVP award, his case for best quarterback ever becomes even more solid. If you see his jersey from the game, be sure to let him know.

Congrats Tom Brady! The greatest of all time.

— Scott Stapp (@ScottStapp)February 6, 2017

2. Julio Jones. Like that amazing Jermaine Kearse catch that got the Seahawks into the red zone late in Super Bowl XLIX, Julio's flying toe-tapper on the sidelines with four and a half minutes left is likely to be consigned to obscurity since the Falcons were unable to secure a victory-clinching score. But, for the record: it was a laughably, impossibly awesome catch.

3. Julian Edelman. James White had more yards on the game, and three touchdowns to Edelman's none, but it's going to be the juggling catch Edelman made off a tip from Robert Alford that gets remembered. Not only did it set up the tying score; it gives Pats fans a handy rebuke to anyone pointing to David Tyree's helmet catch as the most insane in Super Bowl history.

GRITTY RECEIVER DEVIL MAGIC — Mike Tunison (@xmasape)February 6, 2017

4. Matt Ryan. Costly strip sack aside, it's hard to pin this loss on the Falcons quarterback. Coming up short in the Super Bowl probably doesn't do a favor to his reputation, but whatever—Ryan played well enough to win. Whether 2016 marks his permanent arrival in the top echelon of quarterbacks remains to be seen, and we can all look forward to the Is Matt Ryan Elite debates to come, but there's no denying he was worthy of his MVP award. Perhaps one of these years a league MVP will manage to win the Super Bowl again.

5. Dont'a Hightower. One of the odder stats to come out of the game is the fact that in New England's seven Super Bowl appearances in the Brady-Belichick era, the Patriots haven't scored a single first-quarter point. The Falcons didn't score in the first on Sunday, either, though they went on to drop three touchdowns on the Pats in the second. Things were bleak for New England in the fourth quarter as the Falcons had a 28-12 lead with nine minutes left. Hightower's strip sack of Matt Ryan gave the Pats a short field, and a chance. New England scored five plays later and added a two-point conversion to make it a one-score game.

1. Kyle Shanahan and Dan Quinn. The Falcons offensive coordinator won't have much time to dwell on this one, as he's soon to begin the herculean task of trying to rebuild the 49ers. Hopefully, if he ever gets a lead late in the game in San Francisco, he will remember that running the ball is his friend. Quinn, for his part, had his defense ready to play, and it's not their fault that they were eventually worn down due to the huge time of possession disparity. Still, he is to be faulted for burning all the Falcons' second half timeouts early despite holding a huge lead.

2. Jake Matthews. Playing in the Super Bowl in his hometown, the Falcons left tackle committed a killer holding penalty in the fourth quarter that pushed the Falcons out of field goal range and possibly kept them from putting the game away. The fact that he struggled in pass protection against Chris Long should bring delight to those who enjoy seeing NFL legacy families represented on the big stage.

3. Roger Goodell. The commissioner performed his duty of shaking Tom Brady's hand and presenting the Patriots with the Lombardi trophy amid peals of boos. As soon as the trophy left his hands, he was out there, off to stare gravely at the NFL shield, or whatever it is the commissioner does with his free time.

4. Atlanta sports. A beleaguered and often overlooked sports market got to spend two weeks in the national spotlight, reminding us that it's unfairly maligned—only to have its collective guts ripped out in the most excruciating way possible. So chin up, ATL, maybe things will shake out well for the Hawks and they'll get trashed in the NBA Finals by the Warriors. Always room for optimism.

5. Nazi punchers. Any time Richard Spencer is happy, that's a bad thing.

Those who embrace football, dumbness and all, must admit that the yawning gap between seasons is a test on their patience. To be sure, the NFL never fully fades from the spotlight of the national media. The league does what it can to encourage this, what with clunky attempts to make every seemingly pedestrian administrative task into an event. This helps to explain why the release of the regular-season schedule has its own several-hours-long TV special in the spring.

But, this year, the NFL has to be relieved going into the off-season. After a dreary regular season and a largely underwhelming postseason, Super Bowl LI was an instant classic, and produced the first overtime in a championship game in the modern era. Roger Goodell received some minor comeuppance, and that can't be a bad thing for the morale of football fans, even ones inclined to hate the Patriots.

One thing I love about the immediate aftermath of the Super Bowl is the TV pundits reflexively assuring audiences that the two teams involved are bound to be in the championship picture again next season, never mind that both teams that participated in Super Bowl 50 last year missed the playoffs entirely this season. Still, the fact that one of the teams this year is the Patriots lends a little more credibility to those statements, since the Pats are always in contention. The Falcons, though—I mean, they should good again next season, but a lot of people assumed that of the Panthers after their loss, too. Exorcising this particular debacle won't be easy.

The real thrill for New England in the off-season is identifying which former lacrosse player they will sign in March, secure in the knowledge that he will eventually be a key playoff contributor for them nine months later. Oh, and I suppose they have to figure out what they're doing with Jimmy Garoppolo. Some teams might be interested in that guy.

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