To My Fellow Georgians – Is God a Patriots Fan?

February 5, 2017
by Jere F. Moore

It was a truly incredible and miraculous reception, and that’s when I knew. That’s when I knew that God wanted the Patriots to win and that there was no longer any hope for the Falcons.

Well, did you watch it? Did you watch what was the most important sports game in history for the state of Georgia? Of course you did. And you saw the Falcons jump to a 14-0 first half lead. You heard the announcers say that no Super Bowl team had ever come back from a 14 point deficit to win. You saw that lead build to 28-3 with just a few minutes left in the third quarter.

You saw the young Falcon defense take charge early on and set the tone for most of 3 quarters. You saw that the Falcons had come to play and that they did play, and dominate, for nearly 3 full quarters. Unfortunately for the Falcons, however, the Patriots would play the full game. Now, if you give Tom Brady the ball for a whole quarter with literally no offensive opposition, then he will wear your defense down and tire them out, and he will prove that there is no such thing as an insurmountable lead. He would do that this evening, but first, he needed for the momentum to shift.

Then you saw the missed blocking assignment that allowed Matt Ryan to be blind-sided. You saw the Patriot defender hit Ryan’s passing arm at the very instant that it was about to begin to move forward. Another thousandth of a second and the result would have been an incomplete pass instead of a game-changing fumble. But it wasn’t.

You saw that, when the Pats couldn’t seem to advance on their own, we would literally pull them down the field with a gift of three first downs in one drive.

You saw the Pats score. And then score again. Yet, even as we watched the points mount, this time for the Pats, even so we hoped, we had faith, that the play would soon happen that would cause fickle Mo to jump back again to where he belonged – on the side of the Falcons. You saw, too, that the play never came.

And then it happened. The second coming of the Immaculate Reception. The play that was every bit as miraculous and otherwise unexplainable as the catch by Franco Harris on that December day in 1972, that led to the Steelers’ first playoff win ever. As we all know, the Steelers would go on to become a football dynasty that would beget a record four Super Bowl rings for quarterback Terry Bradshaw. It was that record that would fall on this night.

Brady had lofted a pass to Julian Edelman. Three Falcons vied with Edelman, in the air and then on the ground, for the reception and control of the ball. Eight hands were reaching desperately for the oval orb, which somehow, remarkably, as if divinely guided, nestled softly and securely into the hands of Edelman, who was all of that time somehow held suspended from the ground by the Falcons’ players. It was a truly incredible and miraculous reception, and that’s when I knew. That’s when I knew that God wanted the Patriots to win and that there was no longer any hope for the Falcons.

So, the ending foretold and known, there was little left but to ponder the question, why did God want the Patriots to win? Had the Falcons committed some sin or sins, unknown to us but known God? Were the Pats a more spiritual team than the Falcons? To be frank, neither team appeared to me to be particularly spiritual. Did anyone see either team praying together at any time before, during, or after this most important game of the year? I didn’t. Of course, I didn’t really see much of anything after the Pats’ winning touchdown. They could have been praying all over the field and then gone up into the stands to evangelize, and I would have probably missed it all. But I don’t believe that’s the reason, anyway.

Certainly, there is no way that I can actually know the real reason that God wanted the Pats to win, not in this life, anyway, but I do have an opinion. I believe that God wanted the Pats to win because Tom Brady’s parents were there. Mrs. Brady had been suffering from an undisclosed illness for more than a year so that, according to Sportingnews.com, prior to the Super Bowl she hadn’t attended any of her son’s games, and Tom’s father had attended only one. Their attendance at The Big Game was highly doubtful, as well, but, as we would see, fate was not going to allow them to miss it. Not today. Not this game.

So that’s why I believe that God wanted the Patriots to win. Then, maybe I’m overthinking it. Remember Occam’s Razor? Maybe the real answer is actually much simpler.

Maybe it’s just that God is a Patriots fan.