Robert Alford’s pick-six off Tom Brady in the second quarter of Super Bowl LI gave the Atlanta Falcons a 21-0 lead over the New England Patriots and looked as if it could be the knockout blow. Jim Davis’s photo for the Boston Globe of a fallen Brady after a futile dive to tackle Alford appeared to be the lasting image of a likely Patriots defeat.
The front-page editors of the Globe certainly agreed, making it the featured image of the paper’s early edition that reported New England’s disappointing loss to Atlanta with the headline “A Bitter End.”
Stop the presses? Well, not quite. That early edition of the Boston Globe was published and went out to subscribers Monday morning, giving readers a sports version of the infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline from the Nov. 3, 1948 Chicago Tribune.
Family friends in Naples, FL had this delivered to their house this morning. The perils of early edition newspapers. pic.twitter.com/iSbchhrqSx
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) February 6, 2017
To be fair to the Globe, a newspaper goes to print when it has to and there were very few who believed the Patriots had any hope of coming back after falling behind 28-3. Even Pats fan Mark Wahlberg left NRG Stadium early, thinking his team had lost.
Of course, it was anything but a bitter end for the Patriots, who completed a glorious 25-point comeback to defeat the Falcons and win their fifth Super Bowl championship of the Tom Brady-Belichick era. The revised front page for the Boston Globe‘s final Monday edition ended up like this.
The Globe and their readers can laugh about it now. That early edition front page is now an amusing footnote in a stunning, historic Patriots Super Bowl LI victory. Definitely a collector’s item for everyone who had it delivered to their doorstep Monday morning, one that might be worth framing ironically.
About Ian Casselberry
Ian is a writer, editor, and podcaster. You can find his work at Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He's written for Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation.