We were stunned. An entire roomful of people watched that finish and couldn’t believe it. After Kearse made that ridiculous juggling catch to get the ball down to the five-yard-line we thought there was no doubt the Seahawks would score the go-ahead touchdown. They had 1:06 left, plenty of time for three dives into the line by Marshawn Lynch. Surely one of them would result in his crossing the goal line.

Well, on the first play from the five, Wilson handed off to Lynch, who got four yards. Now it was even simpler, right? The Seahawks probably had two plays to get one yard for the TD. But Seattle’s coach Pete Carroll called for a pass on the next play, and it was intercepted by the Patriots’ Malcolm Butler one yard deep in the end zone. Carroll said after the game that “… we had plenty of time to win the game … we were playing for third and fourth down, give them no time left … but didn’t work out that way.”

Calamity! But now the Patriots had a problem. If Butler had had the presence of mind (I don’t know who would have) to stay in the end zone when he made his interception, the ball would have come out to the twenty-yard line with 0:20 seconds left and plenty of room for Brady to take a knee and let the clock run down. Because Butler advanced the ball out to the two-yard line and then the Patriots were penalized half the distance to the goal for celebration, when Brady set up for the next snap he was in the end zone. If he knelt at that point he’d concede a safety making the score 28-26 and the Patriots would have to free-kick to the Seahawks from the New England 20-yard line with 12-15 seconds left. The way Wilson had thrown the ball to his fellow Seahawks in the second half, after receiving the kick he might have gotten a ball downfield into field-goal territory and set up for a winning three-pointer with one or two seconds left. What to do, what to do?

Aha! Get the Seahawks to encroach across the line of scrimmage before snapping the ball at the one! That’s what Brady did, and it worked. Seattle was charged a five-yard penalty and now Brady could just kneel down. All that strategizing became a little moot when, after the penalty, one of the Seahawks got so furious he was ejected and his team charged another 15 yards, but it was a nifty piece of coaching and executing nonetheless.

My goodness. Congratulations to the Patriots, sympathies to the Seahawks. That was one of the most exciting Super Bowls of all time.