Late holding flag takes the drama out of ending
A questionable late penalty on Philadelphia Eagles cornerback James Bradberry with less than two minutes remaining meant that a scintillating Super Bowl 57 had a bit of an underwhelming finish.
Kansas City won its second Super Bowl in four years by beating the Eagles, 38-35, on Sunday in Glendale, Ariz. It was an exciting back-and-forth game that saw the Chiefs claw back from a 10-point halftime deficit.
One of the few gripes for football fans — particularly Eagles fans — was the anticlimactic ending.
The Chiefs were driving and faced third-and-8 at the Eagles 15-yard line with 1:54 remaining when Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw incomplete to JuJu SmithSchuster. But officials flagged Bradberry for defensive holding, which negated the incompletion and, more importantly, gave the Chiefs a first down.
Replays showed that Bradberry made light contact with Smith-Schuster, though it didn’t appear to affect the play much.
Many fans — and some football commentators — disagreed with the call.
Former NFL tight end Greg Olsen wasn’t happy with the decision on the Fox broadcast and ESPN and Amazon analyst Kirk Herbstreit was also critical on social media.
The only person who didn’t seem upset with the call was Bradberry himself.
“It was a holding. I tugged his jersey,“Bradberry said. ”I was hoping they would let it slide.”
Referee Carl Cheffers said it was a “clear case of a jersey grab.”
“The receiver went to the inside and he was attempting to release to the outside,“Cheffers told a pool reporter. ”The defender grabbed the jersey with his right hand and restricted him from releasing to the outside. So, therefore, we called defensive holding.”
Kansas City was able to essentially run out the clock from that point forward.
Betting
When Mahomes rallied the Kansas City Chiefs to a Super Bowl victory, he also led a comeback for the
sportsbooks.
Kansas City’s win meant the books were winners on the betting line, which generally favored the Eagles by 1 1/2 points and drew plenty of wagering on the NFC champions. That victory by the sportsbooks offset a loss on the total, which was 51 1/2 points at many places that were hit hard by bets on the over.
“Best case was Chiefs and under,” Chuck Esposito, sportsbook director for Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, said in a text message.
Jason Scott, BetMGM vice president of trading, expects the national handle on the Super Bowl to set a record simply because sports betting is legal in many more states. Jay Kornegay, vice president of race and sports operations at Westgate Las Vegas, expects the handle to be the highest, but probably will come in below expectations.
Caesars Sportsbook tweeted that it took $2.2 million in New York on the Eagles to cover the 1 1/2point spread. The bettor probably had a good feeling when Philadelphia led 24-14 at halftime.
Jets
Continuing to reshape their offensive coaching staff, the New York Jets have hired former Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator Todd Downing as their passing-game coordinator, a source confirmed Monday.
Downing, who was fired after the season, has ties to two quarterbacks who might be potential offseason targets for the Jets — the Titans’ Ryan Tannehill and the Las Vegas Raiders’ Derek Carr.
Downing was the Raiders’ quarterbacks coach in 2015 and 2016 and their coordinator in 2017 — three Pro Bowl years for Carr, who is expected to become a free agent this week.