By Ben Goodman ’16, Sports Editor

It hadn’t been done in a decade, but this group of youthful believers had defied expectations and permanently silenced its detractors. The white-clad players, meanwhile, drooped off the field, contemplating how another jaw-dropping catch and incredible comeback had snatched from an Arizona Super Bowl from their grip. As the navy blue and neon green confetti fell from the rafters, it was evident the back-to-back champion Seattle Seahawks were on top of the world.

Or not.

It was actually the New England Patriots that emerged Super Bowl XLIX winners on February 1^st, and a crazy ending that only got crazier had football fans around the world contemplating “what-if’s?” like the one above. Though millions watched the game, which became the most watched TV event in American history, let’s set the scene one more time.

Down 28-24 with about a minute left, the Seahawks were midfield with the ball and the need to score a touchdown to win the game, after seeing all-time-great quarterback Tom Brady and the Patriots offense erase their ten point lead through two quick touchdown drives. Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson dropped back and lofted a long pass down the right side line that seemed to hit the ground- a mundane incompletion. Yet, as viewers craned to see the action near the five yard line (the Seattle sideline obscured the view), it became apparent that receiver Jermaine Kearse had miraculously tipped the ball off his legs and snagged it, all while on the ground. This description does the catch little justice, and Patriots fans were quite aghast after NBC announcer Chris Collinsworth compared it to the infamous (or famous, for Giants fans) David Tyree-helmet-catch that derailed the then-unbeaten Patriots’ chances back in Super Bowl 42 in the same stadium, and it seemed the world was falling in New England. “I couldn’t believe it was happening again!” groaned Evan Snerson, founder of the blog “Patriots Home” a die-hard Boston sports fan, “At that moment, I felt like everything was conspiring to beat us.”

Indeed, “everything,” many argue, should have succeeded. With the ball on the one yard line on second down, with 26 seconds to go, the Seahawks, with one timeout, came out in a “bunch” formation, wherein two receivers, Kearse and Ricardo Lockette, clumped together on the line of scrimmage. This, Seattle coach Pete Carroll reasoned postgame, was a response to the Patriots’ “goal-line package,” wherein they stacked all of their defenders near the ball, and up-close, so as to possibly stop a running play, which in Carroll’s mind, presumably, justified his team’s play call: a pass. Kearse was supposed to set a pick on the Patriots cornerbacks, while Lockette would become open for the easy score. At 0:26, Russell Wilson, in shotgun, took the snap, hesitated, and fired the ball toward the edge of the end zone, but basically nothing else went right. Undrafted corner Malcolm Butler easily shed Kearse’s pick, read the pass, and jumped in front of Lockette, intercepting the ball and falling down at 0:22, four seconds later, cradling the pigskin, and the Patriots’ victory, like a baby. After the game, predictably, Carroll and Wilson were grilled about the decision to pass instead of handing the ball to running back Marshawn Lynch. Many, including Collinsworth, who exclaimed, “I can’t believe the call!”, lambasted the decision from the outset.

The burly Lynch, after all, is known for bulldozing defenders and reaching the end zone, and letting him get the ball was in some minds the safest, best option. “Too many things can go wrong in a crowded endzone (when one elects to pass,)” quipped Cory Tell, an Academy alumnus whose prominent blog, Cory Tell All Sports, extensively covered the game. Of course, as Snerson added, “It would be remiss to overlook an excellent play by Butler himself.” Even if the call was questionable, Butler had to make a huge effort to get around the screen and pick the ball off, and, to be cynical, if Lockette had hauled in the pass for a touchdown, what story would be told about the call? Would Carroll be the zany mastermind who outfoxed legendary Patriots coach Bill Belichick by thinking outside the box and passing? Would Russell Wilson be, well, the next Tom Brady?

The beauty is that these are, again, hypotheticals, because what happened happened. We’ll only dream of the Seahawks defending back-to-back titles, looking for a “three-peat,” and we’ll only wonder how Brady and Belichick would’ve coped with losing three Super Bowls after winning their first three. In four seconds in the desert, victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat, or the other way around; it depended on whether one was celebrating in the bars of Beantown or sobbing in the Emerald City. In four seconds, the script was flipped, and Super Bowl 49 became an instant classic.