Most football fans in America are really bummed today.
Except for those in New England and the transplanted Patriots fans, today is a very tough day, indeed. The team, coach and quarterback everyone else loves to hate pulled off the greatest comeback in the greatest Super Bowl ever played.
It wasn’t as if the Patriots won another back-and-forth close game like they have been doing for years. They brought joy to their haters by falling behind 21-0, 21-3 at the half and 28-3 midway through the third quarter. It was over, crown the Atlanta Falcons and league MVP Matt Ryan the new champions of the NFL.
The biggest deficit in the 50 Super Bowls that had been played previously was 10 points, and New England overcame that margin two years ago. But this was different, as the Patriots scored 25 unanswered points to send the first Super Bowl in history into overtime, and when they won the coin toss you knew it was over for the gassed Falcons defense that had been already been the field for more than twice the offensive plays the Falcons ran.
It was a game Atlanta could not lose, and broke the hearts of its fans and all those people who abhor the Patriots for various reasons, mainly because they have been so damn good for the last 17 years. Tom Brady won his fifth Super Bowl, more than any other quarterback, and Bill Belichick won his fifth Lombardi Trophy in seven tries as a head coach in the big game. And despite the enormous deficit, when the comeback began it almost seemed ordained.
For New England fans who have lived through the bogus deflate-gate suspension of Brady and the witch hunt Commissioner Roger Goodell conducted at the behest of jealous owners, it was like dumping a 10-ton bag of salt in a wound opened by Brady’s second half surgery.
And when Goodell presented the trophy to the Patriots, he was basically booed off the podium. You can call it redemption or the greatest comeback by the greatest quarterback of all time, but only those fans who are truly neutral went to bed without feeling the highest high or the lowest low with what they had just witnessed.
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