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Sunday night, the New England Patriots beat the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI thanks to a historic comeback. It was the first Super Bowl to ever go to overtime. Here's all the Super Bowl coverage you could possibly need.

The Falcons jumped out to a 21-0 lead, and with a little more than two minutes remaining in the third quarter, they still led 28-3. The game was firmly in hand. Then Tom Brady & Co. scored 31 unanswered points to win the Super Bowl. Insane. Just ... insane.

Needless to say, the Falcons' collapse in Super Bowl LI invoked memories of the biggest sports collapses throughout history. Win probability data says the Falcons had a 99.7 percent chance to win the game at one point:

The biggest collapse in baseball history also includes a New England team overcoming long odds. As you know, the Red Sox rallied from a 3-0 series deficit to beat the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS. Boston then went on sweep the Cardinals in the World Series, clinching their first title in 86 years.

The question now on everyone's mind is which collapse was worse, the 2004 Yankees or these Falcons?

Sure, the Golden State Warriors blew a 3-1 lead to the Cavaliers in the NBA Finals last year, as did the Indians in the World Series, but blowing a 3-0 lead is another matter entirely. It had never happened before in baseball history and it hasn't happened since.

Comparing the two collapses is quite difficult. For starters, we're comparing one game to a best-of-7 series. Both the Patriots and the Red Sox had their backs up against the wall, but the Patriots only had to win one game. The Red Sox had to win four. Not only that, the Red Sox trailed in the late innings of Games 4 and 5 of the 2004 ALCS. There were mini-comebacks within the comeback.

Some quick facts:

  • The Falcons blew a 25-point lead. Before that, the largest blown lead in Super Bowl history was a mere 10 points. Their blown lead was 2 1/2 times the previous record. Geez. The largest deficit the Red Sox overcame in the 2004 ALCS was two runs.
  • The Yankees had Mariano Rivera, the greatest reliever in history, on the mound with a one-run lead against the 7-8-9 hitters in Game 4. He blew the save. It was one of only five blown saves in 96 career postseason appearances for Rivera.
  • NFL teams were 0-124 when down 17-plus points heading into the fourth quarter this season, including playoffs, before the Patriots' victory Sunday.
  • MLB teams are 34-1 in series when they take a 3-0 lead. The 2004 Yankees are the one series loss. Only six times in those 35 instances has there even been a Game 5.

In terms of win probability, the Red Sox were down to an 18 percent chance to win Game 4 when Rivera took the mound in the ninth inning. Their single-game win probability never dipped lower the rest of the series.

Also, the Red Sox had a .605 winning percentage during the 2004 regular season. If we assume their chances to win each ALCS game was 60.5 percent -- a dubious assumption considering the 2004 Yankees had a .623 regular-season winning percentage, but let's roll with it -- their odds of winning four straight games was 13.4 percent. That's quite a bit better than the 0.3 percent chance to win the Patriots had at one point during the Super Bowl.

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An epic collapse gave the 2004 Red Sox their first championship in 86 years. Getty Images

How does the historical impact of each series play into it? The Patriots just won their fifth Super Bowl of the Brady era. The Red Sox hadn't won in 86 years. For that reason, the Yankees' collapse is much more memorable. Red Sox fans were long-suffering. That wasn't the case with the Patriots. The emotional tug definitely factors in.

Another thing to consider: The Yankees didn't blow a championship. They only blew the chance to play for a championship. New York still would have had to go out and beat the Cardinals in the World Series, and who knows how that series would have played out. The Falcons were staring a title -- the first in franchise history -- right in the face. A win gave them a championship. The stakes were higher.

Both the Falcons and Yankees did something that had never been done before. No team had ever blown anything larger than a 10-point lead in the Super Bowl, then the Falcons blew a 25-point lead. No baseball team had ever blown a 3-0 series lead before the Yankees, and no one has done it since.

Is one collapse worse than the other? Surely, but good luck getting people to agree on which one. Me? I wouldd have to say the 2004 Yankees had the bigger collapse. All they needed to do was win one game out of four. Their margin of error was much greater, and they still couldn't finish the job.