Babs #95 Super Bowl

[Robowe]

With regard to #2, if the officials don't ignore the facemask by the Pats on Sanu, that is a replay and not a loss of yardage via the holding call.

As to Babs, on the winning TD he was absolutely mauled by two Pats OL. The PI two plays was also a bit ticky-tack.

That's the thing. As mentioned in this Bill Simmons article on theringer.com, he mentions 19 plays that had to go the Patriots' way in order for them to complete the comeback. It's pretty amazing that they all happened once Atlanta had the 25 point lead:

https://theringer.com/bill-simmons-five-time-super-bowl-winning-mailbag-288bc8928c09#.iv7opm8gj

One additional note: I can’t remember an NFL team losing a playoff game that could have flipped on more individual plays. Once Atlanta took that 25-point lead, had any one of NINETEEN different plays gone differently (not counting Matt Ryan’s failure to kill more clock just by delaying the snap on multiple Atlanta plays), the Falcons might have won the Super Bowl:

Amendola’s fourth-and-3 catch; Brady’s 15-yard third-down scramble; three post-onside-kick plays when Atlanta had second-and-1 from New England’s 32 and went backward (holding, dropped pass, sack, along with a wasted timeout); a 25-yard Bennett catch on third-and-1 (set up a field goal to make it 28–12); Atlanta blowing second-and-2 and losing the ball (Coleman stuffed, then the Hightower strip sack); Mitchell’s first-down catch on third-and-11; White’s two-point conversion; Roberts’s game-saving chase-down tackle on Freeman’s 39-yard screen pass; Atlanta blowing the chance at the clinching field goal on New England’s 22 (Freeman stuffed for minus-1, Ryan sack, holding, deadly incomplete pass to stop the clock); Brady’s third-and-10 pass from New England’s 9 to a double-covered Hogan for 16 (his best throw); the Incredelman; Amendola’s two-point conversion; the coin flip; and, finally, the ill-advised first-and-goal pass to Bennett that Atlanta could have picked off. Nineteen plays!