I have one last observation to make about last night’s Super Bowl game. It’s not sour grapes. The Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers and they deserved to win. So congratulations to the Chiefs, their fans, and to Taylor Swift.
That said, I believe that the 49ers loss came down to one small, but hugely costly mistake.
Almost three-and-a-half minutes into the fourth quarter, the 49ers culminated a 75-yard drive with a touchdown. That gave the Niners a three-point lead, 16-13 before the point-after-touchdown conversion attempt.
In the NFL, after a team earns six points, they have the opportunity to earn an extra point, known as the point- after-touchdown or PAT. The ball is placed at the 15-yard line and the kicker comes in and kicks the extra point. The overall NFL success rate for the PAT is around 95%, so it’s all but a gimme. For the San Francisco 49ers, prior to last night’s game, only one PAT was missed all season.
But in last night’s all-important Super Bowl game, the extra-point kick was blocked.
Big deal, you say. It’s only one point, you say. But missing that PAT was a huge deal. And, arguably, it may have cost the 49ers a Super Bowl victory. If the kicker had made the extra point, the Niners would have had a four point lead and the Chiefs wouldn’t have been able to tie the game with a three-point field goal.
The next three scores in the fourth quarter were field goals. Two by the Chiefs and one by the Niners. So, had the kicker made the PAT earlier in the fourth quarter, the Niners might have won, 20-16 at the end regulation play.
I’m not suggesting that both teams would have played exactly the same way if the Niners had a four-point lead versus a three-point lead. Instead of kicking a 29-yard 3-point field goal with six seconds left in the fourth quarter to tie the game and send it into overtime, the Chiefs would have been four points down and needed a touchdown. Maybe they would have scored a TD and won the game, just as they did in overtime. But if the Chiefs didn’t make it into the end zone at the end of the fourth quarter, the San Francisco 49ers would be the Super Bowl champs instead of the Super Bowl chumps.
I’m just sayin’