Elias Says...

The Elias Sports Bureau is the official statistician for every major sport, as well as the Worldwide Leader in Sports (which I'll refer to frequently just as "WWL").  They run an article every day giving a few tidbits from the previous day.  Here are a few nuggets from the Super Bowl:

It's been a long time since kickers were also wide receivers

• There have been 5 winning scores in the final minute of a Super Bowl, including Sunday night when Eli found Burress after a great inside move, with 35 seconds to go. The others include:
  
  • Montana to Taylor in Super Bowl XXIII
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  • Adam Vinatieri twice, in Super Bowl XXXVI and Super Bowl XXXVIII
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  • The Colts Jim O'Brien (right) kicked a field goal with 5 seconds remaining to beat the Cowboys in Super Bowl V
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• Peyton and Eli have become the second pair of brothers to start and win a Super Bowl. The other?  Keith and Jim Fahnhorst, both with the 49ers, but in separate years.
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• The Patriots are 84-1 in the regular season the past seven seasons when leading in the 4th quarter.  Each of the past two seasons, they've blown 4th quarter leads in the playoffs. I'll try to find who the "1" is, but I do not believe it is the Colts.  Both years were also with touchdown drives, which Brady has never had in the playoffs.  They have all finished with a field goal to win.

However, I'm giving a Wag of My Finger to Elias for missing this stat:  I was returning home last night from being out of town, and decided to watch the first quarter of the Super Bowl from last year (By the way, for those that don't own all 4 playoff games from last year, buy this DVD immediately).  After the coin toss, Jim Nantz threw out the stat that the NFC had won the coin toss 10 straight years in the Super Bowl.  I remembered hearing that, but forgot about it.

This year made it 11 in a row after the Giants won the toss, and went on an almost 9 minute drive. The chances of winning 11 coin tosses in a row is 1 out of 2048, or  0.05%, assuming a fair coin. Maybe Congress can look into this as well when they meet with Roger Goodell.