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There have been better finishes. There have been more memorable moments. There have been games with more on the line. But never has a Super Bowl been as great, from start to finish, as the one played Sunday night by the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots.
On one side, there was the Eagles, a hard-luck franchise without a Super Bowl title to its name, a fact worn like a scarlet letter by a fanbase with a chip on their shoulders approximately the size of the Liberty Bell. On the other side, the dynastic Patriots, led by the greatest coach and quarterback combo in NFL history, going for a record-tying sixth Super Bowl and attempting to win three Super Bowls in four years for the second time.
Super Bowl Halftime Show 2021
Watch the 100 greatest plays in Super Bowl history. Regarded as one of the best steals in draft history, Brown played for the Giants from 1953 through 1965 after joining the team as a 27th-round choice. Re-live the Giants' magical victory over the undefeated New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. The play, which was a third-and-5, also included the eventual Super Bowl MVP, Eli Manning, escaping three Patriots defenders to avoid the sack and heaving the ball down the field in Tyree's.
Add in the intrigue of the Eagles' young, MVP candidate Carson Wentz going down late in the season and being replaced by cast-off Nick Foles, and it was as much soap opera as football game.
NFL Throwback: Top 100 Super Bowl plays Watch the 100 greatest plays in Super Bowl history. NOW PLAYING video NFL Throwback: Top 10 players to never make a Pro Bowl Find out which 10 players are. So we took a look at every Super Bowl ever, and ranked them from worst to best. With Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta with the Patriots and Rams, there's chance that this game could rank high on the list.
A majority of the list of best all-time Super Bowls tend to have two things in common.
Top 15 plays from Super Bowl 2021: Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski go vintage while Bucs D pummels Patrick Mahomes. Today News Post Team 2 days ago.
The first: slow starts. Last year's 28-3 comeback by Brady was historic and made for one of the best finishes the NFL has ever seen, but it came at the expense of a mostly unwatchable first half. The same went for the Rams-Titans Super Bowl that came down to the final play. Ditto for both of the Pats' other title-game losses. The Belichick/Brady Pats had never before scored in the first quarter of their seven previous Super Bowls.
The other is that the games can usually be defined by a single, decisive play that swung (or helped swing) the result. The Tyree catch. Kevin Dyson coming up short. John Riggins 43-yard rumble. Santonio Holmes' toe-tapper. Malcolm Butler's pick. Adam Vinatieri's kicks. James White in overtime.
Super Bowl LII was a barnburner from the opening kick. As for defining moments: how much time ya got? Here's why Sunday night's classic will go down in history as the G.O.A.T.
1. There was controversy.
Oh, was there controversy. The two biggest plays of the game were disputed touchdown catches by the Eagles, both of which were ruled TDs on the field and then, upon replay, looked like clear incompletions, even by the confusing, oft-arbitrary nature of the NFL's much-maligned catch rule.
On the first, Corey Clement bobbled the ball and didn't get both feet in bounds after gaining possession. Officials somehow determined that Clement's bobble didn't reset the process of his catch and the Eagles went up by 10 points. On NBC's broadcast, Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth were in disbelief after the ruling. They'd spent the previous few minutes outlining all the ways Clement's flub meant the touchdown would be wiped off the scoreboard.
Amazingly, the next touchdown overrule appeared even more of a no-brainer. Zach Ertz caught the ball near the goal line, reached out and then bounced the football off the turf in the end zone, losing possession. It was a virtual replay of a play that went in the Patriots favor in December when Pittsburgh's Jesse James made an identical move and had his last-minute touchdown overturned. That play handed New England home-field advantage in the playoffs and forced the Steelers to play a tougher divisional playoff game than the Pats. It changed the entire landscape of the AFC.
Ertz's 'catch' was upheld though, this time with the reasoning that the tight end had established himself as a runner. If a receiver is in the process of making the catch when he bounces the ball in the end zone, it's a drop. If he's running into the end zone, it's a touchdown.
How Ertz, who took a half-step before crossing the goal line, was ruled a runner will go down as one of the most controversial calls in Super Bowl history. (The irony of the New England Patriots being on the receiving end of two horrible officiating decision shouldn't be lost on anyone, by the way.)
2. Doug Pederson's play-calling.
Almost a decade after it happened, Saints coach Sean Payton still gets lauded for his risky (and ultimately successful) decision to open the second half of Super Bowl XLIV with an onside kick. With the guts he showed Sunday, Eagles coach Doug Pederson made Payton look positively conventional.
After New England grabbed momentum by scoring a touchdown near the end of the first half, the Eagles got to fourth-and-goal from the one-yard line. A field goal and a six-point lead looked like a fine way to go into halftime. But Pederson, as he's done all season, rolled the dice – this time in the high-stakes room.
Not only did he leave his offense on the field, but he called for a gadget play that featured a direct snap to the running back, who tossed to tight end Trey Burton, who threw on the run to a wide open Nick Foles – yeah, the quarterback – in the end zone. Touchdown.
Top 10 Forgotten Super Bowl Plays
There was a fourth-quarter lead change in the game so you can't say the Pederson decision won Philly the Super Bowl. But after it happened, beating the Pats suddenly felt probable, not possible.
Oh yeah; Pederson called the play after Josh McDaniels and the Patriots ran the same exact one earlier in the quarter. On that one, Brady was wide open but the ball slipped through his fingertips. The ebbs and flows of the game were tremendous.
3. The wildness extended all the way to the special teams – and not in a good way.
Stephen Gostkowski, one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history missed a chip-shot field goal, the Eagles failed to convert an extra point and then Pederson gambled (poorly, for once) with an early two-point conversion attempt that failed and could have been a crucial lost point for Philly. The Super Bowl tends to bring out the crazy and this one delivered it.
4. Bill Belichick got out-coached.
In a Super Bowl. By a second-year coach calling plays in the biggest game of his career. It was staggering to watch in real time and even more remarkable upon analysis. Belichick's defense was so ineffective that making a third-down stop and holding Philly to a fourth-quarter field goal felt like a moral victory. The sitting of Super Bowl XLIX hero Malcolm Butler will be talked about for years. And then there was the backbreaker: A 14-play, seven-minute drive at the end of the game that killed almost the entire clock and forced New England into what was basically a one-and-done drive. The Super Bowl has never seen anything like it.
Top Super Bowl Plays
5. Even after a backbreaking fumble that appeared to end the game, New England managed a stop on the Eagles to force a field goal with 1:05 left.
Brady would have 58 seconds and no timeouts to get a touchdown and two-point conversion for the tie. After the Eagles gave up underneath yardage on a few plays, the Pats were in position to attempt a Hail Mary with nine seconds left. Brady ducked out of the rush (shades of Eli Manning in Super Bowl LII) and heaved the ball into a scrum at the goal line. It was tipped and, as it was falling to the ground, there was a split-second when it appeared that Phillip Dorsett might make a miracle touchdown grab off the deflection. As the entire city of Philadelphia held its breath, the ball bounced harmlessly into the end zone.
6. The teams combined for 1,151 yards, the most ever in any NFL game – not just the playoffs, but the regular season too.
The 74 combined points were the second-most in Super Bowl history and New England's 33 points were the most for any team in a title-game loss.
Top Super Bowl Plays
Some will say that a game with such horrible defense can't be one of the best ever. Others will look at the final score years from now and think that a game needs to be closer than eight points to be a classic. They'll be wrong. The back-and-forth, 60-minute thrill ride of Super Bowl LII goes down as the best in the 52-year history of the game. With so much on the line, a team everybody left for dead just before Christmas stunned the world to bring home the Lombardi Trophy for the first time.
When Eagles kicker Jake Elliot made the field goal that essentially cinched the game, Bill Belichick stared straight ahead, clearly pondering his next move. Tom Brady had done it before. How was he going to do it again? But as the future Hall of Famer was about to sift through the unparalleled football knowledge he's gained through the decades, he did something you rarely see, whether on the sideline or off. It was almost imperceptible and went away as quickly as it came. But for that briefest of moments though, it looked like Bill Belichick smiled.
He knew.
There was a time not long ago when it was a given that the Super Bowl would be a blowout. Lopsided results for America's biggest game were so common that the whole thing became like a bad joke from an early ‘90s stand up. 'What's the deal with airline food? I'd rather watch a Cowboys/Bills Super Bowl with my mother-in-law!' From 1984 to 1995, 10 of the 12 Super Bowls were decided by a margin of 13 or greater. Look at some of these scores: 38-9, 46-10, 55-10, 52-17. Honestly, 52 to 17? What a horrible game for the casual fan.
But around that time—around the turn of the century—the Big Game started to tighten up. Perhaps as a reflection of the salary cap era that began in 1994, teams seemed more even and, as a result, Super Bowls became a hell of a lot more entertaining. The Patriots won* three championships in four years each by a margin of only three points. We've had the Giants win by three. The Steelers win by four. The Giants again by four. The Ravens by three. And, of course, last year's goal line interception which ended with New England winning in the waning moments by four.
That interception, undoubtedly one of the most exciting, dramatic, there-aren't-enough-adjectives-to-describe moments in sports history...was not the best Super Bowl play ever. Honestly, it wasn't even the best one in the last eight years. That distinction probably goes to a play where David Tyree pinned a football against his helmet after a miracle heave from Eli Manning to upset the undefeated Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.
Top 100 Super Bowl Plays
That's how great these games have been lately.
We've had so many remarkable moments recently that we had to break them down—with a little assistance from several NFL players and celebrity fans. These are the most Immortal Super Bowl Moments of the Millennium.
