Super Bowl 51 preview: Patriots, Falcons image of contrast
By Don Banks
The New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons are meeting in the Space City, with two contrasting histories colliding.
HOUSTON — As Super Bowl matchups go, the disparity in pedigree couldn’t be any starker.
One team is in search of respect in Super Bowl LI, the other revenge, but both emotions provide powerful motivation. New England, with its Deflategate chip on its collective shoulder, is looking to add to its impressive historical haul, seeking a fifth Super Bowl title that would vault it to an elite level that only two other franchises have reached.
Then there are the fresh-faced Atlanta Falcons, who at 51 seasons and counting are as old as the Super Bowl itself, and still searching for that first ring. Not since Pittsburgh and Arizona met up in Super Bowl XLIII in early 2009 has there been a Super Bowl pairing that featured one franchise with as many as four rings pitted against one with none. If experience matters, this year’s Super Bowl should tell us plenty.
Will the rich get richer, or will the new kids on the block get to take the big confetti shower that comes with winning this game on the NFL’s grandest stage? Will the old master Tom Brady prevail yet again and strike a blow of retribution against the league, or will his onetime acolyte, former Boston College star Matt Ryan (he wore No. 12 back then), punch his ticket and join the club of Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks? And which defensive-minded leader will prove superior in the chess match of coaching, the grizzled and revered Bill Belichick or the well-respected and youthful Dan Quinn?
And perhaps most importantly, after a 2016 season that was considered lackluster in many ways, can this showdown of the first-timers versus the familiar make up for everything else in the end? Can a classic Super Bowl render moot everything that came before it?
With any luck, next Sunday evening in Houston’s NRG Stadium will provide the ultimate answer.
* If Atlanta (13-5) pulls the upset and becomes the first NFC team to reign over the NFL since Seattle three years ago, the league’s most under-appreciated streak will continue. There have been eight different Super Bowl champions in the past eight seasons (2008-2015), and that’s the longest stretch of that particular brand of parity in the Super Bowl era. The Steelers, Saints, Packers, Giants, Ravens, Seahawks, Patriots, and Broncos are your past eight champions, and the Falcons can push that run of diversity to nine.
The Patriots (16-2) can obviously put an end to such talk, winning their second title in a three-year span. If so, they’d become the first team to manage that kind of spurt since…. New England won three out of four Super Bowls from 2001-2004.
It’s an intriguing pairing that clearly offers the Patriots their sternest test of what has been largely a cruise-control season.
“They’re very explosive, have tremendous playmakers on offense, very fast, and have playmakers on defense (who) turn the ball over and create a lot of negative plays,’’ Belichick said. “They’re just a solid team that’s had a great year. They’ve kind of been on top there wire to wire. They’re an impressive team to watch. We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got a lot of things that we need to understand and how to play Atlanta, how to play them well. Things that we’re going to need to do well in this game are different from any game that we’ve played here in a little while.’’
* The Falcons’ wait for Super Bowl glory — if it finally arrives — will be record-setting. Atlanta would be winning a ring in its 51st season, the longest any franchise in the Super Bowl era has endured before winning it all. The next longest drought that was eventually ended belonged to New Orleans, which was in its 43rd season when the 2009 Saints triumphed over the Colts in Super Bowl XLIV.
The Patriots were in their 42nd year in 2001 before they took home a Lombardi trophy, and Denver didn’t win a Super Bowl until its 38th season of existence in 1997.
Atlanta has also gone 18 years between Super Bowl trips, having last made the game following the 1998 season, the franchise’s only other Super appearance. That’s the third longest gap between a team’s Super Bowl runs, bested only by a pair of relocated teams. The 1970 Colts went to Super Bowl V while in Baltimore, and then not again until 2006 in Indianapolis, in Super Bowl XLI. The Los Angeles Rams made Super Bowl XIV in 1979, and then didn’t make it back for 20 years, when the 1999 St. Louis Rams won a ring.
* The Falcons are an exciting young team featuring only four players with previous Super Bowl experience — all of five games worth. Of those, veteran pass rusher Dwight Freeney has the most, with two Super Bowl appearances as a Colt. Much has been made of Tom Brady having more games worth of Super Bowl experience (this will be his seventh) than the entire Atlanta roster.
But the Patriots having 21 players who have been in this game assures nothing. Teams with the edge in Super Bowl experience are well under the break-even mark in the past four decades, and the two Super Bowls that New England has lost in the Belichick-Brady era both came to a team with less combined experience in that category (the Giants, both times).
While Quinn has those two recent Super Bowl appearances as Seattle’s defensive coordinator to lean on in terms of Belichick’s vast edge in playoff appearance — which included that memorable last-minute loss to the Patriots two years ago in Phoenix — consider this: Belichick has logged more career playoff wins (25-10) than the Falcons second-year coach owns total wins (21). The Super Bowl will be Belichick’s 36th career postseason game as a head coach, more games than Quinn has coached overall (34, he’s 21-13 in his career).
* It always sounds simple enough, but Atlanta’s best shot to beat New England is by imitating the Patriots, who rarely make the game-turning miscue. They are machine-like in their efficiency, and they have made the backbone of their dynasty the ability to wait for the other team to screw up and hand them an advantage. Former New England quarterback Drew Bledsoe said it best recently:
“They’re so hard to beat because they never, ever beat themselves,’’ Bledsoe told me. “If you pointed to one thing the Pats do better than anybody else in the league, year after year, game after game, they very, very rarely make the big mistake that allows the other team to beat them. Teams that come in and take them down actually have to beat them. They have to play an extremely clean game.’’
And they have to refuse to settle for field goals in the red zone. Which is a Patriots defensive specialty, forcing their opponents to settle for three instead of seven or eight. New England demoralized the Steelers in the AFC title game by making Pittsburgh kick field goals, and blunting the effect of their red zone drives.
“The Patriots for years and years have always been willing to give a little in the middle of the field,’’ Bledsoe said. “They prevent the big play and then they just tighten up in the red zone and force teams to settle for field goals. To me the key to the game is whether or not (the Falcons) can put the ball in the end zone when they get in the red zone.’’
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* You want to talk about glamor matchups in the Super Bowl? I’ll take the best and most proven defensive mind in the game (Belichick) matching wits with the hottest play-caller in the NFL this season, Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, who will be coaching his last game in Atlanta before being hired by San Francisco as head coach.
Just as Belichick truly starting making his reputation for genius by building a game plan to slow down the high-scoring Buffalo Bills K-Gun offense in Super Bowl XXV as the Giants defensive coordinator, perhaps this will be Shanahan’s shining moment of strategic accomplishment if he can help Atlanta conquer the NFL’s No. 1 scoring defense in this Super Bowl, 26 years later.