Bob Wisener Brady, Pats locate cure for boredom
Along with the fanciful TV commercials in the Super Bowl should have been one for Sominex, preferably at the two-minute warning in the second half when bedtime beckoned to some viewers.
Guessing you’ve heard by now that the championship game of the National Football League came up a little short in excitement. As Johnny Carson might be asked: How dull, how sleep inducing was it?
It was so bad that someone at ESPN reminded that “Super” in the game’s title is not an adjective but a brand name.
One of the game’s many proposition bets involves picking the player who scores the first touchdown. Raise your hand if you selected Sony Michel, though the game was 53 minutes old
when the New England running back broke up what had been a battle of field goals.
Two field goals, one by New England for a 3-0 halftime lead and one by Los Angeles for a 3-3 tie after three quarters.
They never got close to the projected over-under, or total score, of 55.5 points. Though correctly picking the Patriots, favored by two, I lived in an alternate universe to think it would be 37-35.
Super Bowl LIII ended, 133, with more footnotes than memorable football plays.
Tying the record of six Super Bowl victories set by the Pittsburgh Steelers, New England further validated itself as a sports dynasty. Three NFL titles in the last five seasons to go with three in the past decade set apart this original American Football League franchise, whose late owner Billy Sullivan belonged to the “Foolish Club” of AFL owners who got things going in 1960.
Someone said that with a sixth NFL title for each, coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady have “put distance between themselves” and four-time winners Chuck Noll (Steelers coach) and Joe Montana (49ers quarterback).
That’s about as deep as anyone got in a day-after analysis of this spectacle of sport on what in this country has come to be a high and holy day of football.
“I’m always impressed with the Patriots,” Michael Wilbon said on ESPN’s “PTI” program Monday, “but that (Sunday’s game) was a low point in Super Bowl history.”
Ennui, rather than excitement, gripped the game early. When Brady was intercepted on his team’s first series and the Patriots missed a field goal on their second, it dawned upon this viewer that New England was not exactly sharp.
Then again, this hadn’t been a Patriots team for the time capsule with none of its five losses to a playoff-bound opponent. Pro football’s Tiffany franchise of the past two decades was a road underdog against Kansas City in the AFC Championship game, New England turning back a challenge mounted by subsequent league MVP Patrick Mahomes for an overtime victory widely interpreted as a last stand for the club.
The Rams, making their fourth Super Bowl appearance, played like uninvited quests, which in the minds of angry New Orleans Saints fans they were. Whether Drew Brees and the Saints could have done better on Sunday can be debated endlessly, and probably will be among a fan base that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell couldn’t get change for a 20-dollar bill.
A strong Super Bowl contender for most of the season but getting to the big game only by dint of terrible officiating in the NFC Championship game, Los Angeles generally looked overwhelmed against New England.
Time and again, Rams receivers could not separate themselves from Patriots defenders with linebacker Dont’a Hightower, in particular, giving an MVP-worthy effort. More’s the pity that a Carson or a David Letterman isn’t around to grill the Rams in a monologue after a Super Bowl that the club punted on its first eight possessions.
Still, it was 3-3 midway in the fourth quarter, anyone’s game, until Brady took the Patriots on the touchdown drive that catapulted the team into history. CBS cameras got reaction shots of supermodel Gisele Bundchen cheering on her husband as he made one clutch throw after another. ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser, in fact, called Brady’s lob to tight end Rob Gronkowski between three defenders “as beautiful a pass as he’s ever thrown.”
Perhaps that will be the lasting takeaway of this game, that watching Brady play pitch and catch with his receivers is an ornament of modern professional football. They named Julian Edelman, Brady’s leading receiver on this day, MVP and quickly began assessing his status as a future Hall of Famer. We may have seen the last of Gronkowski, who along with Brady is a cinch for the Canton, Ohio, shrine.
A more interesting discussion perhaps is whether Brady or Belichick is more important to the Patriots’ dynasty. As in popular music, if we’re not sure whether John or Paul wrote the song, can we just call it a Lennon-McCartney composition?
Las Vegas oddsmakers, trying to create a conversation, immediately made the Mahomes-led Kansas City Chiefs 6-1 favorites to win the next Super Bowl. To which ESPN’s Wilbon said, “The Patriots are the favorites until I see them knocked out in the middle of the ring.”