When the Patriots trailed 24-14 heading into the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLIX, it would have been easy to write them off. No team had ever overcome a double-digit second-half deficit to win a Super Bowl before, and teams trailing by 10 or more points at the start of the fourth quarter had been 0-29 in past Super Bowls.
But the Patriots fought back and won, making theirs the biggest second-half comeback in Super Bowl history.
When the Seahawks got the ball back while leading by 10 points early in the fourth quarter, it looked like they had the game in the bag. At one point the Seahawks’ win probability was calculated at 96.5 percent.
That all changed when Tom Brady marched the Patriots down the field on a nine-play, 68-yard drive that resulted in a touchdown pass to Danny Amendola, then the Seahawks’ offense went three-and-out, then Brady marched the Patriots’ offense down the field again on a 10-play, 64-yard drive that ended with a touchdown pass to Julian Edelman. In a span of 12 minutes, the Patriots had gone from a win probability of 3.5 percent to a win probability of 94.1 percent.
The Seahawks needed an extraordinary comeback in the NFC Championship Game to get to the Super Bowl — where they were the victims of a great comeback by the Patriots.