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| Dear Falcons, this gentleman carrying the football here and scoring is called a running back. Please give him the ball. |
PERHAPS what’s most remarkable, and most telling, about the New England Patriots winning five Super Bowls is how utterly dominant they haven’t been. Consider that the total margin of victory in those five games is 19 points. The most “one sided” of those games, if you will, was a 3-point win over the Eagles which was 14-14 going into the 4th Quarter, after which the Pats scored 10 points, the Eagles got a late TD and New England recovered an onside kick. The first two wins were decided by field goals at the gun, the last on a TD in OT, and in between you had a goal line stand in the last 30 seconds. Bill Belichick has won five Super Bowls in New England, but he very easily could have lost six.
And this is in no way a criticism of the Patriots. In fact, it speaks to their excellence. The Patriots have had some incredible good fortune in those games. But you would do well not to fall into the fallacy that The Lose cautions of frequently, which is to think that luck and skill are mutually exclusive. You have to be good enough to be able to take advantage of good fortune. What it also speaks to is something that I’ve felt for years about Belichick, which is that he is the master of situational football. The weird little bit of game theory he employed at the end of the Super Bowl two seasons ago against the Seahawks can be, and has been, debated, but at least he had some sort of an idea to try in a situation where all of the options are bad. And Belichick was definitely on the ball yesterday in terms of situational awareness – made most apparent, in fact, in a play that didn't work, which was the onside kick down 28-9 in the 3rd Quarter. The Pats don’t have a quick strike offense and needed three more scores. As such, the situation called for the onside kick. It didn’t work, which it often doesn’t, but it was the right play.
And this speaks to an idea I’ve often tried to express when teaching scrabble to new players. One of the things which I often say is that what separates good players from great ones is not how much they win by, but how much they lose by. Because when you’re losing, and it’s all going bad, you have to try crazy stuff in order to win the game, and most of the time it doesn’t work, so you end up losing by even more than might otherwise have. But in trying crazy stuff in order to win the game, you also steal a few games here and there which you wouldn’t otherwise win – and it’s those wins which mark the difference between good and great. The objective is to win the game, and ultimately the low percentage play is still better than the no percentage play.
And sometimes, in scrabble, and in other competitive endeavors, you’re left in a truly terrible predicament, one in which the only hope to win is to make your best play and then hope that your opponent screws up. It isn’t that much to go on, but again, it’s still better than the no percentage play. Who knows? Maybe they will screw it up.
Just like the Seahawks screwed it up in the Super Bowl two years ago when, for some god knows why reason, the Seahawks wouldn’t just line up and RUN THE DAMN BALL from the 1-yard line.
And just like the Atlanta Falcons screwed it up yesterday, when they contrived to commit what was probably the greatest choke in NFL history.
To put this in some context here, when the Falcons scored to go up by 28-3 midway through the 3rd Quarter, 538.com had the Falcons listed as 99.63% to win the game. To put that in some perspective in comparison to some memorable NFL gaffes in recent years, when the Seahawks were on the 1-yard line in the closing seconds against the Pats, they were only at 87.4% to win in that situation. A better comparison would be two weeks prior to that Pats-Seahawks Super Bowl, which was the NFC Championship game, where the Green Bay Packers were 96.2% favorites to beat the Seahawks with 5:13 left in the game and still managed to lose – but this scenario in Super Bowl LI was even more unlikely than that one. It’s basically impossible to lose a game when you’re 99.63% to win if you just go through the motions and let the clock run itself out over time. You almost have to try to lose in that circumstance. You have to screw up, and screw up royally.
The gold standard of NFL chokes has long been the Houston Oilers, on Jan. 3, 1993, blowing a 35-3 lead in the second half and losing 41-38 in OT to the Buffalo Bills. That game was a little bit weird though, in that the comeback was basically an explosion by the combustible Bills offense, which scored four touchdowns in six minutes in the 3rd Quarter. The Oilers still had time to actually rally in that game, kicking a FG in the final seconds to tie the score at 38-38 and force OT. That one was bad, but given all that was on the line yesterday, and given was a calamitous collapse that occurred, this one takes the cake.
I was not surprised at all to see the Falcons winning this game. I’ve been saying for two weeks that I’d thought they would win. The defense isn’t élite, but you could see that they were extremely well prepared, which was always one of Dan Quinn’s hallmarks when he was in charge of the defense in Seattle. When you’re well prepared, you can keep the game simple: keep the ball in front of you and react, make the tackle, make New England exert a lot of energy on the offensive end. And the Pats had to try to keep the ball and chew up time, even when losing, because the Falcons offense is explosive and capable of gashing anyone. The Falcons were averaging upwards of 9 yards per play in the first half on offense, and it was the Pats and not the Falcons who were making all of the mistakes. This is a good team in Atlanta. They were quicker than the Patriots, and they absolutely blitzed them on both sides of the ball in that first half. They have a lot of talent there, but what they don’t have, above all else, is experience – and that includes Quinn, who is only in his second year as an NFL head coach, having taken over for the perpetually underachieving Mike Smith, a guy whose rap included, among other things, poor attention to detail when the game bogged down and required situational awareness.
Up 28-9, the Falcons are still okay. Even up 28-12 in the 4th Quarter, the Falcons are okay. They take over the ball again after a New England field goal with 9:44 left in the game – and proceed to put forth 9¾ minutes of the most astonishingly bad football imaginable. And keep in mind as I’m recounting this, that for New England to win this game, pretty much all of these things have to occur. That’s how much of a long shot we’re talking here. Let’s take it from the top, with some proper buzzard points for emphasis, because the buzzards were circling when all of this was over:
• I think I said to The Official Spouse of In Play Lose at some point during this mess of an ending – the two of us enjoying some bar food and whiskeys at The Official BBQ Joint of In Play Lose – that if the Falcons lost this game on one play, it was this one: 3rd-and-1, with just over 8:00 to go in the game. What do we do here, Falcons? Here’s an idea: RUN THE DAMN BALL! Atlanta is averaging almost six yards per carry in this game. Furthermore, the Falcons pass protection hasn’t been very good. Further still, the Falcons defense has been the field forever, thanks to a combination of quick strikes by the Falcons offense plus the return of a pick six shoehorned in between a pair of long New England drives. By the end of the 3rd Quarter, the Pats had run 62 plays and the Falcons had run 33. And even more important than anything else, the Falcons need to kill the clock. The clock is the enemy at this point, not the Patriots. If the Falcons run the ball and don’t make it and punt, New England’s starting 60 yards away from the goal line, if not more. If the Falcons do make the first down, they’re going to kill another 2:00-3:00 on the next series of downs.
But the Falcons love the passing game. It’s their bread and butter. Okay, so here’s an idea: throw it short, or throw it out to the scat back in the flat and tell him to beat the linebackers to corner – which is something the Falcon backs had been doing all day. Just get rid of it. They don’t want to take a sack here.
And I have no earthly idea what play the Falcons were trying to run – and I’m not even sure the Falcons knew, either, but there goes Ryan taking a 7-step drop and no one’s open and the play design is a mess, and the back who should have the ball in his hands instead doesn’t know where he’s going and he whiffs on a block, and Matt Ryan seems to be moving in slow motion back there with his big, long, slow windup to his delivery. Strip sack, fumble recovered by the Pats on Atlanta’s 25 yard line and suddenly the Pats have life.
This is absolutely, positively the worst possible thing Atlanta could’ve done, because the tired defense goes back on the field and the Pats have finally figured out how to move the ball, and now all of the momentum and belief is over on the New England sideline. In some ways, the Falcons would have been better off if the Pats had somehow managed to run the fumble back for a score, because at least they keep your defense off the field and out of a high leverage situation. This just can’t happen in this situation. New England was only going to win this game is the Falcons gave them easy opportunities. Well, they just did.
• So the Patriots score and now it’s 28-20 and the Falcons mess-up the kick return, are stuck back on their own 10-yard-line and full panic is starting to set in. But they bust a big play for 39 yards by … hey, look, it’s a short pass to the scat back in the flat, gee whiz, where was that play a couple of minutes ago? At this point, the clock is running again, the Falcons line up for their next play and then snap the ball with about :25 left on the play clock.
And at this point, it’s pretty obvious to me that no one out there for the Falcons is thinking, because running the play clock down to :01 or :02 before snapping it is just basic football here. If I’m Kyle Shanahan, the Falcons Offensive Coordinator, I’m screaming this into the radio in Matt Ryan’s helmet. You would think that, when you’ve played as much football in your lives as these guys, that this sort of tactic would be common knowledge and almost come instinctively. And apparently, you would have thought wrong.
• So the Falcons get themselves stuck again after running a couple more plays which make no sense, only to then be bailed out by Julio Jones making one of the sickest catches that I have ever seen, and now they’re at the New England 21 yard line with about 4:45 to go. What to do now? How about this one: RUN THE DAMN BALL. You’re in field goal range here, you have a solid kicker, and three running plays will also force New England to take their three timeouts. Even if you just ran three straight times up the middle and then kick it, you’re up 31-20 with about four minutes left, the Pats have to score twice and have no timeouts.
So, of course, Atlanta goes empty backfield and tries to throw it.
I give up.
• Hey look, Matt Ryan just took another 7-step drop and took a sack for a loss of 13 yards. Throw in a holding penalty on the next play, and the Falcons are going backwards. They’ve lost 23 yards and taken themselves out of field goal range, when all they needed to do was just RUN THE DAMN BALL and this game is as good as over. Instead, they have to punt, Brady has two timeouts left plus the 2:00 warning to work with, and the Atlanta defense is gassed.
And if you’re the York family down at The Pants in Santa Clara, you might start wondering, at this point, what you’re getting with Kyle Shanahan as a head coach for the 49ers. Shanahan is one of those guys I generally don’t like in the NFL who has used nepotism to get himself into some plum gigs, a la the Ryans and the Grudens of the world. I was talking online to a rueful 49er fan after the game, and I said to them, “so, you realize this guy calling these awful plays is your head coach next year, right? Good luck with that.”
• So the defense is just basically dead on their feet out there for the Falcons, at this point. In the game, overall, New England ran 93 plays and Atlanta ran 46. It’s not really a surprise that the Patriots chew them up here, as Brady thrives in this situation, but there is still time for another awful coaching move, which occurs with 2:03 left in the game when Edelman makes a circus reception of a ball that seemed to bounce off about six guys. The Falcons kept getting hands on Brady’s passes, but they could never corral the sucker, and this one boings off hands and feet and everything else and Edelman comes down with the ball – and for some inexplicable reason, Dan Quinn decides to challenge the call.
Now, here’s the thing. The obvious reason to challenge it is if you think it hit the ground, but you have an official out there adamantly gesturing that it didn’t, you have a giant replay board up there where every person in the stadium can see that it didn’t, and you almost certainly have someone looking at that replay in your booth who can see that it didn’t. Furthermore, the Patriots are likely to scramble up to the line of scrimmage to get a play off, as teams are coached to do when a potentially challengable call occurs that is in your advantage, but they’re probably not going to beat the 2:00 warning, which is an opportunity lost. So DON’T STOP THE CLOCK FOR THEM!
But Quinn uses his last timeout here for this foolish challenge – the Falcons having wasted the other two previously, including having to burn one earlier in the 3rd Quarter on a play where their defense only had 10 guys on the field. Do not do this, Dan Quinn! You just gave the Pats a stoppage of the clock. You gave them extra time and extra plays at a moment where those things are absolutely precious.
And when the Pats do score to tie the game, Atlanta only has :57 left and has no more timeouts, and all of the options are terrible at that point. Atlanta has to try running the kickoff back even if it goes in the end zone, which they then make a hash off, and now they don’t have any good options. Even just having one timeout in that situation would have afforded them a chance to throw the ball 20-30 yards down the middle of the field, stop the clock, and give them the opportunity to get into field goal range.
What. A. Mess.
And there was zero doubt in my mind that, having won the toss to start the OT, the Patriots were going to win that game. Zero. None. Goose egg. It was the only thing predictable about this game.
So the Patriots have now wriggled off the hook twice in a row in the Super Bowl, owing entirely to the fact that their opponents have messed it up. But you know what? The Patriots ultimately didn’t mess it up and that counts for something. It counts for a lot, actually. It counts for two more Super Bowl rings. And I don’t even know where the Falcons go from here. Yes, they’re a young team with good talent that seems to be on the rise, but you don’t blow a Super Bowl and instantly snap it all back into shape. You don’t just get over this kind of thing. You just don’t. The game of football is too hard and too demanding, and just getting to the Super Bowl in the first place usually involves a confluence of events going your way: maybe you have a decent injury run, maybe your biggest adversaries have injury problems of their own like the Panthers and the Seahawks did, or maybe you catch a break when an opponent who you were wary of trips and stumbles all over themselves like the Cowboys did against the Packers in the playoffs. A lot of times, in order to be successful, things have to break your way which you have no control over. So for godsake, when you do have that control, you just can’t go about giving it away.
That, and RUN THE DAMN BALL FALCONS! Sheesh.
I feel bad for the long-suffering fans in Atlanta, which is a stunningly-awful sports city. The Falcons have never won a Super Bowl, the Braves only won a single World Series despite making the playoffs 15 years in a row, the Hawks are the epitome of mediocre, the city has lost two hockey teams, and Atlanta is also the only place on earth to host two enormous events – the Super Bowl and the Olympics – and have no one coming away with anything good to say about either experience. Cool city, though. It might make a good location for the future Hall of Lose, since losing seems to be what they know and do best.
