10 thoughts on Super Bowl 49

1. What an incredible game. If you're watching that Super Bowl with no vested interest in either team, you have to hope that some loophole allows the game to go much longer than 60 minutes or any number of overtimes. And it was a game that had that feel to it, right up until Malcolm Butler's interception. The game was one yard away from being one of those "team with the ball last wins" games, where there is back-and-forth action until the final whistle.

2. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick have been considered for quite some time now to be the best quarterback/head coach combination in football history. It's time that each got their own individual greatest-of-all-time recognition, too. Four Super Bowl wins across 15 years, two other appearances that required miracles to result in a Patriots loss, and a neat and clean bookend to the greatest football franchise in the millennial generation's lifetime.

3. There will never be any better support against the "let them score and save ourselves as much time as possible" argument than we got last night. It may have been the right call in Super Bowl XLVI, with the Giants needing only a field goal to win the game. But in last night's victory, Bill Belichick and Matt Patricia trusted the New England defense, and the payout was infinite.

4. The reason any of this "let them score" discussion even came about was because Seattle drove 79 yards in the final two minutes. But perhaps one of the most under-talked-about aspects of those final two minutes were the two timeouts Seattle was forced to take. The Seahawks' first charged timeout came after an incompletion on first down, in order to avoid a delay of game penalty. Timeout number two came again with the clock stopped, after what could have been the defining play of the Super Bowl (at the time). If Seattle has two timeouts instead of one, it may change their play call on second down.

5. That being said, welcome to the Defend Pete Carroll segment. Because the Seahawks only have one timeout, they must pass at least once, since they did not have enough time to run the ball. Let's go inside the huddle between Carroll and the Seattle offensive coordinator. Here they are, one yard from taking the lead, and here is the Patriots corner they want to attack:

• A rookie
• Former University of West Alabama Tiger
• Zero career NFL interceptions

You're telling me that they don't feel good about that play call? Sure, hand it to Marshawn Lynch on second down. If he doesn't score, Seattle has to burn its final timeout. On third down, if they run again, they don't have enough time to run a third time on fourth down. Now, maybe Lynch scores on second down, but maybe he could have scored on first down, too. Maybe he fumbles and the Patriots recover at the goal line. Take hindsight out of the equation and the decision to pass the ball made sense.

Not bad at all.

6. Bill Belichick is now 21-8 in the postseason as the head coach of the New England Patriots. All eight of those losses were to teams they faced that regular season. The corollary to that is that Belichick has never lost to a playoff team that he was seeing for the first time that year. In 29 games. That's not bad.

7. All of this being said, this Super Bowl win was Tom Brady's. This was the cementing piece of the G.O.A.T. conversation, the pièce de résistance that we had been aching for for 10 years. Patriots fans needed this win for Brady. This championship may be on the same level as Ray Bourque's Stanley Cup victory with the Colorado Avalanche in 2001, where we longed so badly for one player to get his championship. Except that Brady already had three, and it wasn't about him getting a championship, it was about him being the greatest quarterback of all time.

8. Any jokes about under-inflated footballs or locker room boys have been flipped to coming from Patriots fans, instead of being directed at them. This was vintage Patriots eff-you, we-know-we're-up-against-the-world mode on the biggest stage in football. No other team plays with a chip on their collective shoulder quite like the Patriots do, and especially not at such high a level.

9. This was a game of many emotions. After taking Seattle's best punches to start the second half (a field goal and touchdown to go up by 10 points), here is how the Seahawks' final four drives panned out:

• Punt
• Punt
• Punt
• Interception

With each defensive stop by New England, you felt more and more life. It was truly a team victory, and was a microcosm of the Patriots' season. Every player was instrumental in the win, and with that, there's only one thing left to do.

10. On to the parade. Cue the duck boats.