NEW ORLEANS — No power? No problem.
The Ravens have fought and won some ugly games in their last five years of playoff appearances, but last night’s 34-31 victory over the 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII, which featured a mysterious 34-minute power outage in the Superdome, was a thing of substance over style.
“How can it be any other way?” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said, reflecting on the power outage that stopped the game — and Baltimore’s momentum — after the Ravens had taken a 28-6 lead on a 108-yard kickoff return by Jacoby Jones on the first play of the third quarter.
“It’s never pretty, it’s never perfect, but that’s us,” Harbaugh said.
The outage — which was still under investigation after the game — came four plays into the third quarter, dimming the Superdome’s bright lights and causing temperatures inside the world’s largest indoor stadium to rise.
But the delay also seemed to light a fire under the slumbering 49ers, who ran off 17 consecutive points to get back in the game. No team had ever come back to win a Super Bowl after trailing by 22 points.
“Both teams had to deal with it,” Harbaugh said of the outage, during which players stretched their hamstrings and ran short sprints to keep their muscles loose. “Actually, I thought they dealt with it better, obviously. They were able to turn the momentum of the game.”
49ers coach Jim Harbaugh said he simply tried to make sure his players kept track of their time and stayed loose.
PHOTOS: RAVENS TAKE SUPER BOWL TITLE
“I thought our guys battled, they competed,” Jim Harbaugh said. “We got a spark, and we weren’t going to look back after that. I thought we battled right to the brink of winning. It was a heck of a football game.”
The 49ers closed the gap to 28-13 on a 31-yard pass from Colin Kaepernick to Michael Crabtree, and Frank Gore’s 6-yard run made it 28-20 one series later. David Akers’ 34-yard field goal — which came right after he got a reprieve on a hooked 39-yard attempt due to a running-into-the-kicker penalty — made it 28-23.
“We just had to stay poised,” said Baltimore defensive tackle Arthur Jones.
The game wasn’t decided until the Ravens’ goal-line stand inside the final two minutes, but Baltimore had shown its trademark resiliency following the power outage.
“I think it’s fitting that we won that way,” said Flacco, who completed 22 of 33 passes for 287 yards and three first-half TDs. “We are a tough, blue-collar city, and that’s the way our games kind of come down. We were up 28-6 … and the next thing you know the 49ers get right back into it and play great football, and we had to grind it out.”
During the delay, the public address announcer asked the sellout crowd of 71,024 to remain in their seats and they complied, even doing several spontaneous waves while officials tried to figure out what had gone wrong.
After midnight, Entergy, which supplies power to the Superdome, and SMG, which manages the stadium, issued a joint statement on the power outage.
“A piece of equipment that is designed to monitor electrical load sensed an abnormality in the system,” the statement said. “Once the issue was detected, the sensing equipment operated as designed and opened a breaker, causing power to be partially cut to the Superdome in order to isolate the issue.”
“Backup generators kicked in immediately as designed. Entergy and SMG subsequently coordinated start up procedures, ensuring that full power was safely restored to the Superdome.
“The fault-sensing equipment activated where the Superdome equipment intersects with Entergy’s feed into the facility.”
The companies said they would continue looking for the “root cause of the abnormality.”