Addendum To: Super Bowl LI Breakdown, Prediction, Anti-Pick

Wow ... some game, huh?

Is it The Greatest Super Bowl Ever?  Yeah, you could say that.

I still have no idea how New England came back from 28-3 down late in the third quarter to tie the game in Overtime and then win it in the extra frame.  So, without the benefit of sabermetrics, I can only say that, well, Atlanta just choked.

I'm still shocked that last night's 34-28 OT win is the largest margin of victory the Patriots have in their five Super Bowl wins.  The other four, in chronological order, are 3, 3, 3 and 4.  With the Pats being so good ever since the turn of the millennium, there is an image of the franchise as being dominant.  That's sort of misleading.  Now, the Patriots frequently race out to a big lead and take the hearts out of their opponents during the regular season and postseason.  But when it comes to Super Bowls, they just grind out victories (although comebacks, let alone something as unheard-of as Super Bowl LI, is something uncharacteristic of New England).  It may not be pretty, but finding a way to win five times in seven trips to the title game is the kind of security I will always want in my sports teams.

As for my predictions, well, they're all over the map.  Friends of mine are crediting me with predicting that SBLI would be the first-ever championship game to go to Overtime, and I'll take that.  I also thought that the Pats would win on a Touchdown; I got the six-point margin of victory right, but I gave both teams 14 more points.  I also thought that the winning score would be a Tom Brady pass into the end zone, and even though Brady did lead the team in the Fourth Quarter and OT, he handed the ball off to James White to penetrate the end zone and end the game, so I wasn't technically right about that, either.

As for the other predictions that I made in my last blog post:

1) Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking predicting that there wouldn't be a sack in this game.  Both teams registered five.

2) Brady threw for 466 yards.  Ryan was close -- 284.  Nuts that the Falcons were coasting and Ryan didn't even reach 300.  Also, he finished with Quarterback Rating of 144.1 -- and lost.

But I nailed my Anti-Pick of Over 58, even though I had to wait a long while of feeling as if I blew that choice.  Understand where I was at after New England managed to tie up the game late in regulation.  Super Bowl LI had 56 points in a tie game.  Unless someone scored a Safety, the next score, be it at the very end of the fourth or in OT, would push the total over 58 and would give me the hypothetical victory.  I didn't have to worry about the fate of my bet because I knew I was going to win regardless of which team scored.  So I all had to do was sit back and sit pretty and watch what went from an absolute bore to one hell of a game.  Well, I didn't really have to worry about it at all because the Anti-Pick is fake.  But I would have made a lot of money off of my life savings!