Ladies and gentlemen, your champions of the 2012-13 NFL season: the Baltimore Ravens.
With the knowledge in hand that Super Bowl XLVII was to be future Hall of Famer Ray Lewis’ final game, win or lose, the Ravens marched out to a commanding lead early in the second half before a freak power outage halted the proceedings for over half an hour.
The game took quite a different turn when the lights came back on, as the San Francisco 49ers came storming back from 22 points down, nearly tying the score at 28, but failing to convert a fourth down opportunity.
The game ended with a key goal line stance from the 5-yard line when the 49ers failed to score on fourth down trailing by five points with just under two minutes to play. While they were able to force a three-and-out, the Ravens opted to take a safety rather than punt from out of their own end zone, which left just 4 seconds on the clock.
In the first half, however, it was nearly all Ravens, as they jumped out to a quick 7- lead on their opening possession when quarterback Joe Flacco connected with receiver Anquan Boldin for a 13-yard touchdown.
The 49ers added a field goal before the end of the first quarter, but a pair of touchdown passes in the second to tight end Dennis Pitta and receiver Jacoby Jones—the latter on a 56-yard bomb rather which Jones showed great awareness to get up after the catch and elude a pair of tacklers—made the score 21-6 by halftime.
After Jones added a record-tying 108-yard kickoff return to open the second half to push the score to 28-6, the game started to feel like a blowout, and then suddenly one occurred. In a delay that spanned 34 minutes, the Super Bowl was dark because of a power outage in and around the Superdome in New Orleans.
And when the lights came back on, it was a different ball game. on the 49ers’ next full series, 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick engineered an 80-yard scoring drive that ended in a 31-yard touchdown pass to Michael Crabtree, who bounced off of two defenders before racing into the end zone.
A botched punt by the Ravens set up a short field on the 49ers’ next drive, and running back Frank Gore wasted little time punching it into the end zone to make it a one possession game at 28-20.
After adding a field goal—aided by a running into the kicker call—the Ravens responded with one of their own to open the fourth quarter to stretch the deficit back to 8. It took the 49ers just 3 minutes to score again though, set up by a 32 yard pass to Randy Moss. On second and 7 from the 15, Kaepernick saw that the right side of the defense was left undefended, so he took off running, and didn’t stop until he was in the end zone.
Suddenly San Francisco was a two-point conversion away from tying the game up at 31. The conversion failed, however, as he overthrew Moss, and the Ravens proceeded to take up 5 and a half minutes to add a field goal.
With 4:19 to play, Kaepernick took the 49ers 75 yards down to the five, but three straight incomplete passes all but put an end to their hopes of adding a record-tying sixth Lombardi Trophy to the team’s front office.
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