Halfway through the third quarter of the Super Bowl, after the Atlanta Falcons scored a touchdown to go ahead 28–3 over a dazed-looking New England Patriots team, it appeared that the entertainment value of the game had peaked at halftime, when Lady Gaga dove off the roof of Houston’s NRG Stadium. The Falcons' offense, led by their quarterback, Matt Ryan, was moving the ball as easily as it had all season; the Patriots, meanwhile, were making uncharacteristic mistakes. The announcers started reaching for filler, and the owner of the Falcons, Arthur Blank, travelled from his luxury box down to the sideline, the better to celebrate with his team. It was, as the TV talking head Skip Bayless declared on Twitter for history to remember, all over.

Instead, in the course of a frenzied Patriots comeback, which ended with the team’s 34–28 win in overtime, this year's Super Bowl joined an inner circle of the most exciting championship games ever played. It was a night of records. It was the first game in the fifty-one-year history of the Super Bowl to go to overtime, and the first to feature a comeback of greater than ten points. The Patriots' Tom Brady attempted more passes and threw for more yards than anyone else in Super Bowl history, and won his fifth title, a record among quarterbacks. Brady’s season had begun with a four-game suspension, imposed by the league for his role in the Deflategate scandal. He ended the year as the Super Bowl M.V.P. After the game, the N.F.L. commissioner, Roger Goodell, met by a lusty hail of boos from the Patriots fans in the crowd, handed the Super Bowl trophy to the team’s owner, Robert Kraft. Goodell was also seen seeking out Brady to shake his hand. The cameras found him saying something to the man he'd suspended—it looked like he said "That was awesome."

The Patriots' comeback relied on a long and improbable series of events, including scoring two two-point conversions in the fourth quarter. In the third quarter, Brady threw a fourth-down completion to the receiver Danny Amendola at midfield, keeping alive a drive that resulted in a touchdown moments later. Midway through the fourth, the Patriots linebacker Dont'a Hightower sacked Ryan and forced a fumble, which gave the team a chance to quickly bring the game to within two scores. Late in the fourth, the Falcons had driven the ball to the Patriots' twenty-three-yard line, well within range for a game-sealing field goal. Then, in a sequence of blunders, Ryan was sacked, and then, on the next play, his team was called for a ten-yard holding penalty, pushing the Falcons farther back and forcing a punt. In two plays, one of the most efficient and prolific offenses in recent history lost twenty-two yards. Added up, the game’s clutch moments seemed almost too numerous to count. During the press conference after the game, when asked to recall a specific play, Brady said, smiling, "There was a lot of shit that happened tonight."

There was one play, however, that everyone will remember. With two and half minutes remaining, and the Patriots still down eight points, Brady threw a ball across the middle of the field toward his trusted receiver Julian Edelman. The pass was slightly underthrown, and the Falcons cornerback Robert Alford, who had intercepted a pass earlier in the game, tipped the ball high into the air. As it hung there, it seemed sure to be caught by one of the several Falcons defenders nearby. Instead, somehow, the ball found its way to Edelman. He'd dropped several easy passes earlier in the game, but he got his fingers under this one, securing it before it hit the ground. The Falcons called for a review, which simply gave everyone more time to consider the astounding sight from a variety of angles. It was one of those moments in football that defies what we think we know about gravity and human anatomy. In the past decade, the Patriots have been on the wrong end of some of the Super Bowl's most incredible late-game receptions: David Tyree's helmet catch, in 2008; Mario Manningham's sideline grab, in 2012; Jermaine Kearse's circus catch, in 2015. Now, added to all of the franchise's accomplishments, the Patriots have a ridiculous catch of their own. It may take a while to settle on a name. As the ball had fallen, it glanced off the leg of a Falcons defender, which gave Edelman his shot at it. The foot catch? The ankle catch? In New England, for a long time, it may be called, simply, the catch.