DON’T STAND PAT
The Super Bowl will be decided today with some familiar faces — Brady, Belichick and the Patriots — showing up once again. So if teams have any dream of winning a title, they had better start planning now on how to beat the Pats, because the road to the Super Bowl will invariably pass through New England
Wanna win the Super Bowl? Then this century you’d better either be the
New England Patriots, or plan on beating the New England Patriots.
It seems as long as Bill Belichick and Tom Brady remain with that team, and you’re one of 31 other NFL teams, you might as well study up all year on how to knock ’em off.
Really. Get out your microscopes and look for the tiniest of edges. Heaven knows they do. And you know they’re damned good at it.
Why wait until a week before an AFC playoff game to start your deep-dive? Or two weeks before the Super Bowl? Get a jump on it, like, NOW for the 2019 season.
Because in 12 of the 18 seasons that have passed since the Patriots reached their first of nine Super Bowls this century — in 2001 — either the Pats themselves have won the NFL championship game (five times) or a team that defeated them in the playoffs did (seven times).
That’s two-thirds of the time. Or 67%, if you’re into that whole digital numerology thing.
And the frequency is only increasing. It’s been true in seven of the past eight years. Amazing, eh?
We already know it will be the case this year. The 13-5 Patriots have reached the NFL’s biggest stage yet again. They face the 15-3 Rams in Super Bowl LIII on Sunday to decide the 2018 NFL champion.
Indeed, the odds demand that if you’re truly serious about winning the Lombardi Trophy anymore, you ought to prep all year for a showdown encounter against the Patriots. Start drawing up plays now. Run game tape ’til your eyes bleed to find the most minuscule of advantages, or Brady flaws, or defensive weaknesses.
Because if you’re an NFL head coach, you cannot possibly be serious when you look your players in the eyes once they report back to you in April from their offseason, if you don’t inform them that you and your staff are so intent on winning the Super Bowl, you’ve already got those suckers from Foxboro down cold, and plan to keep on studying them, week in and week out, over the coming nine months.
Look, everybody but the Patriots and their fans are tired of seeing these guys in the Super Bowl so much. But to the credit of Patriots players and coaches, to a man, you’ll never detect a glimmer of gloating.
“We’ve just been fortunate to play good enough in the playoffs to advance and get to this game. It’s hard to believe this is the ninth time,” Brady said. “I’ve just been beyond blessed. I’ve said that so many times. I’ve been a part of so many great teams that have had the opportunity to play in this great game, and it is a oncein-a-lifetime experience.”
Only for him and Belichick, it isn’t. It’s an every-other-year experience, on average. Even more than that for Brady, who missed nearly the entire 2008 season with a blown ACL. He thus has reached the big dance in 9-of-17 starting seasons — or 53% of his career. How ridiculous is that?
A sixth Super Bowl win for the Belichick/Brady bunch would come as a surprise to precisely no one. They’re favoured by 2-3 points. More than half of their players own at least one Super Bowl ring. And should the game get tense in the waning moments, well, no one dressed in white jerseys, silver helmets and blue pants will exactly be knocking at the knees.
“You’ve got to make plays at critical times,” Brady said. “And if we get some situational opportunities — y’know, two-minute drives, short-yardage situations — we’ve just got to convert and get the job done.”
A second Super Bowl win for the Rams franchise, meantime, wouldn’t come as much of a surprise, either. The NFC champions are a talented, solid team.
On offence, the Rams — who will wear their old-style bright blue jerseys, yellow pants and blue helmets with painted yellow ram horns — are led by a savvy, accurate young quarterback in Jared Goff. He and two hard-tostop running backs, Todd Gurley and C.J. Anderson, shine behind a seasoned offensive line.
On the other side of the ball the Rams possess not only the NFL’s most disruptive defensive lineman in tackle Aaron Donald, but perhaps the most dominant pair of interior D-linemen in Donald and Ndamukong Suh. They mess up the opposition’s run, and they harass the opposing
quarterback with pressure any passer, Brady included, hates the most: Instantly up the middle.
Add to that a playmaking secondary featuring one of the NFL’s best lockdown cover corners, Aqib Talib, and a kicking game that’s second to none. Plus, the Rams are extremely wellcoached by one of the most promising, bold, creative young leaders — 33-year-old Sean McVay — to come along in league history.
It’s been 19 years since the Rams’ only Super Bowl win, and it happened right here in Atlanta — albeit at the longgone Georgia Dome.
Two years later, that great offensive powerhouse coached by Dick Vermeil and quarterbacked by Kurt Warner went for two championships in three years. But some guys named Belichick, then 49, and
Brady, then 24, led a Patriots upset to spark their incredible dynastic run.
Now they’re out for ring No. 6?
“Obviously, if we win, that would be an incredible achievement for our team, and (a) great remembrance (is) a Super Bowl ring,” said Brady, who has literally one handful of them already. “And we want to play for those rings. That’s what being a competitor is all about.
“Our team has established very high standards. You can’t win a Super Bowl ring in September, or October, or November, or December or many times in January. You can win it only in one month. You can’t buy it. It’s something that’s earned. And if you win it, it takes a huge effort. And I think that huge effort is what you remember more than anything.”
If that makes you want to puke, well, for football championship-game variety you could always turn to U.S. college football.
Oh, wait.