HOUSTON -- When all was said and done Sunday and Atlanta Falcons center Alex Mack was limping back to the team's locker room, it was unclear what hurt worse: letting a 25-point lead slip away in the Super Bowl or his fractured left fibula.
"We wanted to be able to let it rip,'' Mack said. "We failed to make plays ... it makes it all the more painful to have that lead and let it get away from you.''
Mack confirmed after the New England Patriots' 34-28 overtime victory in Super Bowl LI that he had played the game with the fracture in his lower left leg. Mack had suffered the injury in the Falcons' win over the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game.
"We found out after the NFC Championship Game that it was broken,'' Mack said. "That's tough news to take. It turned out it was a high enough break in the fibula that it didn't cause any instability in the ankle of anything ... I was more afraid of not being able to play in this game than how hard it would be."
Mack played all 46 of the Falcons' snaps on offense, and Atlanta was able to rush for 104 yards in the game. The Falcons had 86 of those rushing yards in the first half when they built a 21-3 lead.
The Falcons didn't run directly behind Mack that often, but the 31-year-old was able to hold up at the point of attack as the Falcons opened the game with plenty of two-back and two-tight-end sets as they found a way to stress the perimeter of the Patriots' defense.
Atlanta running back Devonta Freeman ran for 32 yards on a cutback run on the Falcons' first play from scrimmage, and by the time Freeman went around the left end for a 5-yard touchdown run, he already had 71 yards rushing in the game. Mack didn't look completely comfortable in warm-ups and dialed things back slightly in pregame warm-ups, as backup center Ben Garland did more of the individual drills.
However, Mack was more locked in on the Falcons' inability to hold a 25-point lead in the game than he was playing on a fractured leg.
"You've got to be able to finish,'' Mack said. "It's an unfortunate lesson to have to learn, but games are tough ... kudos to the Patriots for keeping at it.''
He also added: "We just needed to be able to do a little bit more on offense ... Control the clock a little bit better.''
A source told ESPN's Adam Schefter that if Sunday's game were the regular season, Mack could miss six to eight weeks. Mack is also believed to have received a pain-killing injection before Sunday's game.
Mack did not receive any special attention on the sideline from the Falcons' medical staff at any point in the game. Instead, he sat with the other offensive linemen on the bench as he normally would.
Mack didn't practice the week after the win over the Packers and was limited in the team's practice this past week in Houston.
"Getting a chance to see him practice at full speed on Wednesday, Thursday was really important for me," Falcons coach Dan Quinn told ESPN's Ed Werder on Saturday. "I wanted to make sure he could go do his thing and just really fly and haul. He's such a unique player because of the quickness he plays with, so I was pleased to see that. We held him the week prior to heal and get right. I was pleased he got the work in. It was totally by design. We were going to give him half his normal reps on Wednesday and Thursday and let him do the normal Friday, and that's how we laid out the week for him. It went exactly like we thought."
This fracture occurred just above the plate that Mack had inserted in his left leg after he broke his fibula in 2014.
This past week, the Falcons switched Mack's injury on the mandated injury report from "ankle'' to "fibula,'' and at that point, some in the league said they believed that meant there was some kind of fracture and that the injury would likely be at the bottom of the fibula and the top of the ankle.
When he took the field, Mack joined an exclusive list of stars who played in the Super Bowl with major injuries, including former Rams defensive end Jack Youngblood, who played in Super Bowl XIV with a broken fibula; Charles Woodson, who played in Super Bowl XXXVII after having surgery for a crack in his right fibula a month earlier; and Terrell Owens, who played in Super Bowl XXXIX with a fractured fibula and torn ligament in his right ankle that he suffered seven weeks before the game.