Could Super Bowl 49 be the first to go to overtime?
Super Bowl 49 has the makings to be one of the great Super Bowls of our time.
With all of the records that Super Bowl 49 has broken in the two weeks since both conference championship games, let’s just add one more possibility to the list.
No, we’re not going to talk about the amount of chicken wings people will eat altogether at Super Bowl parties throughout the country, nor will we talk about how vast the inflation is on Super Bowl tickets this year (as ridiculous as it is).
It’s worth noting that none of the previous 48 Super Bowls in the Super Bowl era have gone into overtime.
The last time the pro football championship game went to overtime was 1958, a time where the internet didn’t exist, technology as we know it today was seen as the future and it was the first pro football game to be nationally televised.
Fast-forward 57 years later and here we are with a Patriots-Seahawks matchup similar to that of the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants in 1958. Like the Colts were, the Seahawks are an exciting team on the rise with a young, star quarterback looking for their second title while the Patriots are the glamourous dynasty with the (soon-to-be) legendary quarterback, looking for the perfect ending to what could be the near end (if not the end) of the Brady-Belichick era.
Besides, after the season the NFL had with all of the off-the-field issues, then “DeflateGate”, the league needs Super Bowl XLIX to be a classic like the ’58 NFL Championship game.
If there’s anything that we learned from the Patriots Super Bowls of past and the Seattle Seahawks throughout the last three years is that neither team is going to allow the other to take over the game, nor will either back down toward the end – meaning the game won’t be over until the fat lady sings, either in Boston or Seattle.
Seattle’s played in two overtime games this season, winning both in Week 3 against the Denver Broncos and in the NFC Championship game against the Packers, while the Patriots have yet to play in the extra frame.
When these two teams played each other two years ago, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, just a rookie back then, led the Seahawks on a 14-point rally in the fourth quarter to lead Seattle to a 24-23 win in Week 6.
During the regular season, New England was fourth in points per game while Seattle was first in points allowed per game, total defense and pass defense. Something will give on Sunday.
Super Bowl XLIX is also just the fifth time that both No. 1 seeds reached the big game with Seattle becoming just the 12th defending champ to return to the final game of the NFL season.
On a similar note, the Patriots are making a record-tying eighth appearance in the Super Bowl and a win would tie Bill Belichick with Chuck Noll with four titles and make Tom Brady the third quarterback in NFL history with four Super Bowls.
(Not too shabby for a sixth round pick.)
It will only be fitting that with a game featuring a pair of team that’s had more storylines, whether they are ridiculous or relevant, than a daily issue of the New York Daily News, that this game turns out to be one of the best Super Bowls of at least the last decade.
To make it perfect, hope for a fifth quarter, for the first time in the big game.
Statistics courtesy Pro-Football-Reference.com