In the early hours of the 6th of February, people from across Britain battled the desire for a good night’s sleep in order to watch Tom Brady and the New England Patriots play the Atlanta Falcons in the 51st Super Bowl.
The game was a truly marvellous spectacle where Tom Brady led his team on an amazing comeback from being 28-3 down to winning the game 34-28. The first half saw the Atlanta Falcons run up the score to 21-3 by halftime.
Then, came the part that everyone who wasn’t bothered with the football was waiting for, Lady Gaga. Considering recent years have seen acts such as Beyoncé and Bruno Mars who both killed the half-time show.
Lady Gaga didn’t do that much to stand out (still not as bad as Coldplay though). It was by no means a bad performance, but it was lacking the political overtones many were expecting and it didn’t do much to set the tone for a game that is supposed to be fuelled with aggression either.
The second half began and the scoring fest continued with the Falcons adding another touchdown to their lead, making the score 28-3. Considering a team who was only 10 points behind made the greatest Super Bowl comeback of all time, this looked like a done deal.
On the next series, Tom Brady led the Falcons 75 yards to score a touchdown off a pass to Running back James White. The Patriots’ kicker missed the extra point making the score 28-9 with 13 minutes left.
“It was lacking the political overtones many were expecting”
The Patriots scored a field goal to make the game 28-12 before almost shutting down the Falcon’s offence to get the ball back almost straight away. On this drive, Brady threw the ball to Danny Amendola for a 6-yard touchdown.
With the 2-extra point try good, the score was now 28-20 with just under 6 minutes to go. The Falcons responded by moving the ball 67 yards in just three plays, this meant that realistically, all they had to do was wind the clock down and score an easy field goal and the game was theirs.
This is exactly what Atlanta did not do, as they took a massive sack followed by a 15-yard penalty when one of the Falcons’ offensive lineman held a Patriot player kicked the Falcons out of field goal range. This meant the Patriots would have one more shot to tie the game with about 3 minutes left on the clock, only 90 yards and 11 Falcons stood in their way.
This didn’t matter though, as Brady took the Patriots all the way down to the 1-yard line where James White ran the ball in from the one and Danny Amendola scored the 2-extra point to tie the game with close to a minute left.
The game was going to go to Overtime, the first time that this had ever happened. The Patriots won the coin toss and elected to go for the score. Which after a drive of pure class where James White carried three would be defenders into the end zone with him to mark the greatest Super Bowl comeback ever seen.
The game is now being widely regarded as one of the greatest Super Bowls of all time due to the fact it helped establish nearly 40 new records.
