The big plays are coming. They’re concentrated in the end of halves. One thing that made this Seattle Seahawks-New England Patriots showdown a real old-timey heavyweight championship fight were the uppercuts traded as time wound down.
There were body blows along the way too. Hit your opponent with a hundred body blows that make up with relentlessness what they lack in ferocity, and the final punch means a heck of a lot more.
For our analogical purposes, any play that added more than two expected points counts as a hit to the gut, a little play that shaped the result in subtle ways.