National Football League

Nick Wright: Julian Edelman's catch perfectly summarizes the Patriots' dynasty

Published Feb. 8, 2017 2:18 p.m. ET

Andrew Lynch

It will go down as one of the greatest — and luckiest — plays in NFL history. And for Nick Wright, Julian Edelman's miraculous catch as the New England stormed back to win Super Bowl LI was a perfect encapsulation of the Patriots' dynasty.

This week's Make Me Smarter football podcast with Wright and NFL Hall of Famer Cris Carter is stuffed full of Super Bowl goodness, from why momentum didn't cost the Falcons a championship to who should have really won Super Bowl MVP (hint: he wears No. 12 and answers to "The GOAT").

NICK: Everyone's talking about the Edelman catch. I tweeted in real-time, "The Helmet Catch" may have just been replaced by "The Shoestring Catch." It was an impossible play.

And because of that, people are going to talk about luck. People are going to talk about, "Man, if the corner for Atlanta had actually made a worse play, if he was a half-step behind, instead of trying to catch it, he would have just knocked it down," and then we might be talking about the Atlanta Falcons as Super Bowl champions.

The Edelman catch, to me, is the perfect end note if the Patriots don't win another Super Bowl — and they very well may — but on this Patriots run, and here's why: Because they have now won a game in part because of an impossible catch and lost a game in the Super Bowl because of an impossible catch — the Tyree catch.

This is what makes, to me, the Patriots the most impressive of all the dynasties I've ever seen, is they have been in the Super Bowl so many times, the luck's evened out. That's not supposed to happen in the NFL. The Patriots played in seven Super Bowls [in the Brady era], right? They've won a couple, I think the best way to put it is they controlled the game. ...

The other five could have gone any way. The game against the Rams could have gone either way. The game this past weekend could have gone either way, the Giants games could have gone either way, and they're about 50-50 in those games. Yeah, they got lucky, but every Super Bowl involves some luck. The Patriots have been there so much the luck's evened out at this point.