Yay Sports! Recap of Super Bowl 51
As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized with great disappointment how ridiculous it is to be obsessed with sports. To put so much energy in rooting for grown men to play a game, when you could do other waaaay more productive things is absurd. Watching the same stories on SportsCenter for hours on end is a great way to kill time but so is reading a book, or knitting scarves, contemplating the meaning of life, literally anything constructive. While I know all this, sports just find a way to pull me back in every damn time.
Since graduating from college I’ve seen my free time dwindle to previously unacceptable levels. Even when you’re busy in college it’s that future busy like, “I’ve got so much to do...tomorrow,” kinda thing. I could always find time to turn on ESPN and just veg out for an hour or two. Having roommates make it even more of a priority, because subconsciously you try to exert your dominance is every trivial way possible. Post-grad I currently live with parents (I know quite the panty-dropper) and they couldn’t care less about my vast wealth of sports knowledge. I had whittled my obsessive sport-centric tendencies down to my Boston area sports teams (I don’t even pay attention that well to the Celtics or Bruins), FC Barcelona, and Mixed Martial Arts. I know what some of you are saying, “That’s still a lot of stuff to pay attention to.” You obviously haven’t heard me recite the first round of every NFL draft since 2005 from memory. This is a huge step for me! It had been going great. But as even a recovering sports addict this past Super Bowl was must watch TV. My target audience for this article is me in five years so if you find this entertaining I’ll be pretty shocked. So fair warning...
As a Patriots fan you’d think that my dad would be looking to surround himself with other equally as excited Pats fans, right? Wrong. “We” decided to watch the game at my sister’s house. Not trying to say anything bad about my sister but it’s the damn Super Bowl and she’s a working mother of two with limited entertaining abilities. I keep my diet pretty clean (insert eyeroll here) so I guess everyone thought I’d love to have chicken and salad for the Super Bowl. Isn’t that what everybody eats? It’s not like it’s the biggest day of junk food consumption or anything. Or I’d like to celebrate the fact that my teams playing again with copious amounts of sugar, cheese, and bad decisions? But I digress. The game is about to start and they’re having their pageantry and fireworks and Luke Bryan singing the national anthem. Me and my dad are posted up in the living room waiting patiently for the game to start. My 3 year old niece is running around making as much noise as she can muster, my 1 year old niece is crawling around being all cute and stuff. Meanwhile the game of the century is about to start and overall I felt pretty good about it. And then the first half happened.
Watching the first half of that game was so painful, I felt physically ill. I know it doesn’t make any sense that my actual physical state was being affected by the actions of grown men a thousand miles away but somehow there I was. It started right after the Falcons scored their first touchdown. The Pats were driving down the field and everything seemed to point to a Patriots score. Then LeGarrette Blount, the guy who literally never fumbles, got the ball stripped in the redzone. As surprising as that was the game wasn’t out of control...yet. The Falcons quickly drive and score again. Then the same feeling i get when the plane I’m on hits some turbulence, “It’s ok, it’s all good. Nothing to worry about.” All the while my palms are starting to sweat and my stomach is a-churnin’. It proceeds to get worse. The Pats in desperate need of a score start moving the ball again. Completing some short passes, minimal gains on the ground, but that’s never stopped them before. As soon as I start thinking they’re gonna score, Brady throws a pick-six and I feel like I’m gonna throw up. The only thing stopping me from cursing and shouting is the fact that three year olds have this habit of repeating everything they hear and I’d rather not have that on my conscience.
My dad has stopped talking at this point, he’s not a graceful loser, he’s not really a graceful winner either which makes him incredibly hard to watch sports with. I’ve tried explaining how “SNAP HIS NECK!” doesn’t really acknowledge the nuance of the game or, you know, basic human decency but whatever. As halftime comes and the Pats are down 21-3 we pack up from my sister’s and head out to watch the second half at home. It was a pretty silent car ride to be honest. My dad wasn’t saying much, I was all in my feelings trying to think about how there was any way for them to come back. My mom, god bless her, awkwardly tries to cut the tension, “Hey at least the guacamole was good...” Yes, yes it was. But even the deliciousness that is my guacamole couldn’t wash the taste of the first half out of my mouth, and also because my dad had parked himself in front of it and almost single-handedly polished it off.
We got home and I turned on my TV as soon as I could, I don’t know why but I had this feeling that I needed to watch the rest of the game. As any self-respecting fan knows you can’t turn it off at half-time. They need your help! You have to be there for your team! Yes, super illogical and in no way is true but logic and fanaticism seem to be mutually exclusive. With my hopes high and dreaming of the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history, what’s first thing I see? A Falcons touchdown, now up 28-3 and I feel lower than the PSI on the Deflategate footballs. See I can joke about that. I needed to grab food, it was going to be a long depressing night. My dad who had been watching in the living room passed me, “Are you going to bed?!” I asked incredulously. I mean, you gotta stick it out, even if your team is getting its ass kicked. He was. He had a flight in the morning, but someone who’s such a braggadocious winner would stay up an extra hour or two and finish the game out. But no, not this night. I wish I was him, I wish I could have turned it off, but I’m an addict. I needed to see this game out, even if the stress of it was going to take a few years off my life.
The Patriots take over down 25 points and finally look like they can move the ball. A couple nice throws here, a couple nice throws there. They get down to the Falcons red zone and score. At this point I just want them to play better and not get embarrassed because the memes at half-time were savage and I really didn’t want to see them on Monday should they have continued to perform like that. The touchdown helped calm my nerves a little. The kicker takes a step back, lining up for the routine extra point and CLANG, right off the goal post. Cause of fucking course it does. How this game had gone, I wasn’t surprised.
The third quarter comes and goes with 15 minutes left to play of what seemed to be a lost cause. Not because the Patriots were playing terrible, just that 19 points is 19 points, they are hard to come by and the Falcons offense would surely score more points...surely. The Pats get the ball again after a stalled drive from the Falcons and get a field goal. Ok, a few more points. I can hear the announcer say, “all they need now is two touchdowns and two two-point conversions.” Like it’s just that easy. I think the conversion rate on two point tries is in the 20% range so the likelihood of two of them is pretty absurd. The Falcons offense starts to show some prospects until Dont’a Hightower comes in a causes Matt Ryan to fumble. That’s when the mood changes, you see the Pats looking like this is their game when they're still down 16 points and the Falcons now look dejected. I’m standing up in my room, by myself, cause you know, it helps them play better if you’re standing. The Pats drive down the field with shorts passes and a little help from the defensive holding penalties and score! I’m pretty jazzed at this point, they need to get this conversion but there was a chance now. A direct snap to the running back and he takes it in to bring the game within eight points. The Falcons get the ball and with their last possession of the game move the ball into Patriots territory with two minutes left. If they just hold the ball for a minute, kick the field goal, they win and this article never gets written. Instead they have Matt Ryan drop back for a deep throw and the Patriots manage to get a sack dropping them on the edge of field goal range. Everybody is thinking, “ok they run it, get a few yards and kick this field goal.” Instead they drop back to pass again and there’s offensive holding and they move back another ten yards. Matt Ryan throws the ball away and they have to punt. And even though they’ve been down virtually all game, it seemed like everybody knew what was going to happen next.
Aided by one of the craziest catches in football history by Julian Edelman (maybe we can forget about David Tyree already) Tom Brady leads his team down to tie the game. With a quick pass to Danny Amendola the Pats converted the two-point conversion and have successfully overcame a 25 point deficit in the biggest game of the year. and it was about to go to overtime. I’m still standing up at this point because I know if I sit down they won’t play as well and it’ll be my fault if they lose. The coin toss for overtime goes to the Pats, they receive the kick, and the rest is history. James White, with the performance of his life runs the ball in the end zone on a sweep to clinch a win and solidify Tom Brady and Bill Belichick as GOATs in their respective categories. It also caps off Brady’s revenge tour for getting the first four games of the season taken away. I ran to wake my dad up to tell him that we won. I’d imagine going from dead asleep to waking up in a world where your team authored the biggest comeback in the history of the Super Bowl would be pretty spectacular. But all I was met with was, “No way, you’re lying. I got a flight in the morning.” I tried to explain that they had won in overtime but I definitely didn’t get the reaction I was looking for.
And that was it. I was back in my room by myself, my dad wanted to sleep not celebrate. So there I was, happy for sure, but there was a noticeable, “ok, what now?” feeling. What was next was waking up at 6am to go to work where nobody cares about the Super Bowl. There was no one to talk to and revel in the fact that “our” team won. I love sports but I love sports more when I’m with other people. It’s an artificial tribe we’ve created to enjoy things with. I realized that I only love them because we love them. When you don’t have friends and people to share an experience with even the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history is anti-climactic.