American football rules
Super Bowl LI was the first Super Bowl to go into overtime with a 28-all tie between the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots, which the Patriots eventually won with James White scoring a touchdown on the Patriots' first drive.
2007 New England Patriots season
The Patriots finished the 2007 regular season by winning all sixteen of their games. They became only the fourth team in NFL history to finish a regular season undefeated, and first to do so since the 1972 Miami Dolphins. The Patriots were also the first team with a perfect regular season since the NFL expanded its schedule to sixteen games in 1978. Thus, they broke the record for victories in a single regular season that had been shared by the 1984 San Francisco 49ers, the 1985 Chicago Bears, the 1998 Minnesota Vikings, and the 2004 Pittsburgh Steelers, and later tied by the 2011 Green Bay Packers and 2015 Carolina Panthers, who each finished with a record of 15–1. The 1984 49ers and 1985 Bears would win Super Bowl XIX and Super Bowl XX, respectively, the 1998 Vikings and 2004 Steelers would lose their conference championship games, the 2011 Packers would lose their first playoff game, and the 2015 Panthers would lose Super Bowl 50.