Many New England Patriots fans didn't have much confidence in their team pulling off a historic comeback to win Super Bowl LI when the Atlanta Falcons held a commanding 28-3 lead in the third quarter. Patriots linebacker Kyle Van Noy, however, never wavered in his belief that a miracle was not only possible, but doable.
In a recent Q&A with NFL.com, Van Noy was asked if he actually believed the Pats could beat the Falcons when trailing by 25 points.
Yeah, the whole time. You (as a fan) were probably devastated and shocked, saying the F-word a little bit. For us, we just knew that we didn't play to our capability, and we knew that all we needed was one play to get us started. That was our mindset in the second half. In the locker room, there was really no big speech that set everyone off. We all looked at each other and said, "Let's go to work, the right way." That was our mindset, just one play at a time in the game. We kept that mentality and it just snowballed and snowballed, and you couldn't stop it once we got going. A lot of people don't [realize it], but the defense only gave up 21 points in that game. That's really good [going against] a team as high-powered as they were playing the entire season. We knew that we had a really good defense and we just needed to keep at it.
The Patriots offense, led by Tom Brady and James White, went to work in third quarter and New England ultimately tied the score at 28 with an epic second-half performance. White clinched the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history with a rushing touchdown on the opening drive of overtime.
But Van Noy and the defense played a huge part in the historic comeback, too.
Dont'a Hightower's strip sack at 8:24 of the fourth quarter with the Patriots trailing 28-12 arguably was the most important play of the comeback, and Trey Flowers' sack late in the fourth quarter halted a Falcons drive that easily could have put the score out of reach.
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The Patriots certainly played like a team that believed it could win, and with Brady at quarterback, it's easy to understand why there was such a high confidence level throughout the team despite the 25-point deficit in the third quarter.
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