HOUSTON (AP) – There’s no hiding it. One edge the New England Patriots have over the Atlanta Falcons in Sunday’s Super Bowl can’t be denied: experience.
It’s a factor never to be scoffed at when the AFC and NFC champions meet for the league title.
Sure, New England (16-2) has a bunch of young players — 16 with four years or less in the NFL — and the Falcons (13-5) actually have four guys who have played in a Super Bowl: Dwight Freeney, Courtney Upshaw, Dashon Goldson and Philip Wheeler. Don’t let that mislead you.
When a team has a quarterback and a coach in their seventh Super Bowl together, along with a slew of players who helped it win the championship just two years ago, well, that’s the kind of experience that can be key.
Just ask Tom Brady.
“I’ve got a good regulation of my emotions and I know when I need to get amped up and I know when I need to relax a little bit, and I think you learn those things,” said Brady, a three-time Super Bowl MVP who’s 4-2 in the game.
“You kind of have to be right on the edge. It’s such an emotional game. You don’t want to be out of control, but you can’t play with no emotion. You strike different chords for different emotions at different times.”
That might sound strange coming from a player who rarely hides his feelings on the field. Just think back to his return game in Cleveland after his four-game “Deflategate” suspension, when Brady was pumping up Patriots fans on hand during warmups.
Yet he insists Super Bowl Sunday calls for moderation in approach.
“It’s a long day,” Brady said. “I mean it’s a long day because it’s been a long week because there’s a lot of things you’re doing. You’re doing a lot more things this week than you normally do for a game week. Just to get to the game, it ends up being … a four-hour game? A longer pregame and a longer halftime, so … it ends up being 4½ to five hours.
“You’ve got to be able to have something left at the end of the game. You can’t waste it all early in the third quarter.”
A quick look back to New England’s victory over Seattle in the 2015 Super Bowl shows that Brady and the Patriots had plenty left. They rallied from a 10-point hole to win.
The Falcons aren’t discounting the edge of having been down this path. Freeney, who won a ring with Indianapolis at the 2007 game, believes the mental approach is critical.