Super Bowl Sunday

3-28.

If you're from New England, this is a code you instantly recognize, seared into our collective memories on February 5, 2017.

With just over two minutes remaining in the third quarter of Super Bowl LI, the Patriots were trailing the Atlanta Falcons. My hometown team looked despondent. Slumped on my hotel bed in NYC, I felt much the same way.

But somehow, inexplicably, the Patriots mustered a comeback. Scoring 31 unanswered points, the Pats went on to win the game in overtime, securing their fifth title.

This Sunday my team will vie for their seventh Super Bowl victory. Long gone are the days of power couple Brady and Belichick. This new crop of guys has no storied legacy on which to rely. They will need to calm their nerves and play their hearts out if they are to overcome the talented and gritty Seahawks.

And I will be watching, this time, ironically, from a hotel room in ... Atlanta.

"If you're not gonna go all the way, why go at all?" — Joe Namath, quarterback of the New York Jets and Super Bowl III Champion (January 12, 1969)