Well, That Was SOME Super Bowl, Wasn't It?

If you are a regular reader of The Grandstander, you know that one phrase I often say is "This is why you follow Sports", and Super Bowl LVIII contested yesterday between the Chiefs and the 49'ers was certainly one of those instances, although for much of the game, it didn't seem like it would be.

The game was scoreless after one quarter, and San Francisco led 10-3 at halftime.  The 49'ers dominated  much of the game and should have had a bigger lead.  Both teams lost fumbles deep in the other's territory as they were marching toward the end zone.  Patrick Mahomes had thrown an interception, and Travis Kelce had made one catch for one yard.  It appeared that we were headed towards a duplication of the 13-3 Patriots win over the Rams a few years ago.

The Chiefs scored ten points in the third quarter to take a 13-10 lead, so things had picked up some.  Four minutes into the fourth quarter, the 49'ers scored a touchdown, and then something happened that changed everything:  the point after touchdown attempt was blocked.  A potential four point lead was now a three point lead for SF, and that changed everything and not just for the people in block pools.

The teams then exchanged field goals, with the Niners going ahead 19-16 with 1:53 remaining in the game.   Then, when the lights were the brightest and the heat was the hottest, Patrick Mahomes took over.   The Chiefs drive the field and that is when the specter of the failed PAT came into play.  If San Francisco has a four point lead, the Chiefs have to score a touchdown.  KayCee gets stopped inside the ten and on fourth down, Harrison Butker kicks the field goal to tie the game 19-19  with :03 remaining and send it into overtime.

We'll never know if the Chiefs would have scored a TD if they had to there to win it.  With Mahomes at the helm and the team rolling, you would certainly like their chances, but the FG was as sure a thing as there was.   We all know what happened then, but to summarize for the record:

• The 49'ers win the coin toss and elect to receive.  They drive the field, but are forced to settle a field goal.  SF 22 - KC 19.
• The Chiefs take the kickoff and proceed to drive  seventy-two yards in 12 plays.  This includes a critical scramble for eight yards by Mahomes on a fourth and one play five plays into the drive.
• Seven plays later, 1st and goal from the three, Mahomes hits Mecole Hardman in the end zone for the winner, and the Chiefs win their third Super Bowl in four seasons, 25-22.
• Bedlam ensues.

What had started out as a low key game, if, that is, the Super Bowl could ever be described as low key, turned into one of great drama and excitement, and it confirmed  the Kansas City Chiefs as a true dynasty with three Super Bowl wins within four seasons.  It also reaffirmed the fact that if Patrick Mahomes isn't the best football player in the NFL right now, he is certainly the most exciting, and that Andy Reid is certainly one of the best coaches to ever stroll an NFL sideline.

Kudos go to the 49'ers.  They are a very, very good team, and Brock Purdy certainly now belongs in the upper echelon of NFL quarterbacks, but some questions must be raised about head coach Kyle Shannahan. This is now the second Super Bowl where his teams have blown a fourth quarter lead not to mention him being OC of the Falcons team that blew that 28-3 lead to Brady and the Patriots a few years back.  And now there are stories that are intimating that the Forty-Niners were not fully aware as to how the overtime rules in post season games worked.  If that is true, that certainly falls at the feet of the head coach.

*********

I started the watching the game by taking notes around the events surrounding the game itself, and this is what I came up with:

• How about that opening with Frank Sinatra singing "My Way" over clips of the two teams.  Can you say "over the top" and just a little bit too self-reverential?
• What was with Post Malone's teeth?
• Reba McIntyre did the Anthem in 1:35.6.  Very good job but 5.36 seconds too long.
• There's going to be a movie version of "Wicked"?  I can't wait.
• Loved the Lionel Messi Michelob Ultra commercial with Dan Marino making an appearance at the end.
• The Dunkin' Donuts commercial with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Tom Brady, and Jennifer Lopez was great.
• I am guessing that the RFK Jr. for President ad using animation and music from his Uncle John's 1960 campaign could not have gone over well with the extended Kennedy Family.

After that, I pretty much stopped paying attention.  Don't ask about Usher's halftime show.  We were eating dinner (which is one good thing about a 48 minute halftime break) and weren't paying all that much attention to it.

********

In other sports news, the Pirates made a free agent signing yesterday, veteran catcher Yasmani Grandal.  To be sure, Grandal is not Johnny Bench, but it is a signing that could - COULD - be significant for the team this upcoming season.

Leave it to the Pirates, though, to announce it on the morning of the Super Bowl.  Does the team actually TRY to avoid making news?

The Championship Games

Yeah, I know that I am at least three days late to the party on this, but I do want to put my 

worth in on this past Sunday's NFL Conference Championship games.  I will state that the doubleheader Sunday of the AFC/NFC Championship is one of my favorite sports days of the year, and in the 49ers v. Eagles and Bengals v. Chiefs, both games appeared to be attractive and exciting matchups.

Eagles 31- 49'ers 7

Well, as you have often read in this space, no sporting event ever comes with a guarantee, and never was that proven more true than in the NFC title game in Philly.

Only minutes into the game, on San Francisco's first offensive series and sixth snap, this happened:

Niners QB Brock Purdy, one of the better stories in the NFL this season, took an awkward hit on the elbow and was out of the game.  This put Josh Johnson, SF's fourth string QB into the game and, effectively, ended it.   The Eagles ended up winning 31-7 and would have probably won the game anyway, but here's something that probably wouldn't have happened. Down only 14-7 just before halftime and possessing the ball deep in there own territory, Purdy probably wouldn't haver fumbled, as Johnson did, seen the Eagles recover it, score, and take a 21-7 lead into the locker room at the half.

So, a highly anticipated game became a laugher and a blowout.  It happens, because as a wise man, or maybe a wise guy, always says, there are no guarantees when you buy a ticket to a professional sports contest.  Or watch one on television.

Chiefs 23 - Bengals 20

Unlike the NFC game, the Chiefs and Bengals delivered with a really good game in the nightcap.  Joe Burrow had a good but not a great game for him, and Patrick Mahomes, playing with a bad right ankle that severely limited his mobility and forced him to stay in the pocket, was excellent.  He proved that for all of the talk about Burrow and Trevor Lawrence and Jalen Hurts and Justin Herbert and Josh Allen, all of it justified, he, Mahomes, is the best quarterback  and might well be the best player in the entire NFL right now.

For all of that, though, the teams were tied 20-20, and it appeared that the game was headed into overtime when, with seconds remaining, Mahomes took off running and was forced out of bounds with :05 remaining when the Knuckleheaded gene that seems imbedded in the DNA of the Cincy Bungles (need I remind you of Vontaze Burfict and Pacman Jones in a similar circumstance in a playoff game with the Steelers a few years back?) kicked in in the form of linebacker Joseph Ossai that led to this:

Ossai pushed and shoved Mahomes to the ground when he was clearly, CLEARLY out of bounds.  Out came the yellow flags, and fifteen yards was tacked onto the play, and Harrison Butker kicked what was now a chip shot field goal to win the game for the Chiefs as time expired.  Ossai was devastated over his dumbshittedness, but he shouldn't feel too bad, because I'm betting that Butker would have nailed that field goal even without the fifteen yard penalty.

Thus, we had one game decided early due to a fluke injury, and another game decided, maybe, by a stupid and totally unnecessary penalty.  The Thrill of Victory and The Agony of Defeat encapsulated twice in the same day.

This now leads up to an interesting Super Bowl LVII in Glendale eleven days from now.  

These are some of the storylines that will be bandied about ad nauseam  between now and then....

• Andy Reid coaching against his old team, the one he took to a handful of NFC Championship games and one Super Bowl, that fired him.
• Two Black QB's starting in a Super Bowl for the first time.
• Two brothers, Travis and Jason Kelce, facing off against each other for the first time ever in a Super Bowl.
• Will Gronk really attempt to kick field goal in a Fan Duel commercial?
• Will Greg Olsen, now a dead man walking in the Fox booth now that Tom Brady has retired "for good", talk longer than Castro used to talk in one of his marathon speeches to the Cuban people back in the day?
• Rhianna

As I type this, the Eagles are 1.5 point favorites over Kansas City.  I think that the Eagles may be a better team than KayCee, but the Chiefs have an advantage in the most important position on the field in Patrick Mahomes at quarterback.  My inclination is that in what figures to be  close game, the team with the better QB is the one to pick, so I lean to the Chiefs at +1.5, but I'm not ready to put any cash on the line just yet.

Looks like a dandy matchup between two really good teams.  Can't wait.

Chiefs Win!

When the Chiefs took possession of the ball deep in their own territory with about eight minutes remaining in the game and trailing San Francisco 20-10, Joe Buck made the comment "Well, the Chiefs have the 49'ers right where they want them", referring to how the Chiefs had come back from double digit deficits in their prior two playoff wins.  It was a throwaway line for a cheap chuckle, but it seems that everybody's favorite play-by-play guy Buck was rather prescient, as the Chiefs proceeded to score a TD, force a three and out by San Francisco, score another TD, force the Niners to turn it over on downs, and then score another TD.  Presto change, a 10-20 deficit was now a 31-20 lead for Kansas City.  All in the space of about five or six minutes of game time.  It was pretty amazing as you watched it unfold.

In case you missed it, my Grandstander prediction post on Saturday ended with these words: 

"Oh, yeah, the Chiefs to win it in a high scoring affair.  An MVP for Mahomes, and good Guy Andy Reid finally gets a win in the Big One."

I believe I had that!

Some other quick comments.....

Mahomes was not as sharp and spectacular as we have become used to seeing.  He was off target early, and he did throw two interceptions, but then there were those final eight minutes.  It reminded me of John Facenda's line about the Steelers in the Super Bowl IV highlight film.  Allow me to paraphrase.....(imagine Facenda's Voice-of-God tones with NFL Films music playing in background) "Patrick Mahomes wasn't always great.  He was only great when he had to be."

Commercials.  To be honest, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention.  I liked the "Pahk the Cah" commercial for some self-parking car.  I didn't realize until I read in the paper this morning that Molly Ringwald was in the avocado commercial (need to look that one up).  It seems that MC Hammer is going to finance his entire retirement by playing the washed-up, forgotten, 15-minutes-of-fame guy in Super Bowl commercials; nice work if you can get it.

After watching Shakira bumping-and-grinding and J-Lo pole dancing, I made the following comment on Facebook:  "Next year the NFL should just hire fifty or so people from the porn film industry and let them have at it on the stage for the half-time show."  Four seconds of Janet Jackson's exposed bosom seems so long ago...and so innocent!

The Chiefs not only won the game, but they easily covered the 1.5 point spread, which gave me a winning ticket.  In football wager that I made at the Rivers Casino this football season, I finished with a record of 27-18, a winning percentage .600.  If only those wagers were for $500 or $1,000 each, instead of my usual five or ten bucks (twenty on the Super Bowl!), I'd be leaving for Hawaii tomorrow morning.  It was a fun experience making these legalized wagers throughout the season.  It certainly added to my interest in many of the games, even with my penny ante wagers.  I'll look forward to doing it again come next season, although I am under no illusions that I will be able to duplicate such successes come 2020.

Despite the travails of the Steelers this year, I cannot recall enjoying a football season quite as much as I enjoyed this one.  I will miss it now that it is over.  True, the XFL opens up this coming weekend, and I suppose that I will give it a shot, but, C'MON, MAN, I have no high expectations for that.

I will end this post as I usually end my Super Bowl wrap-up posts.....Pirates pitchers and catchers report in nine days!!

Super Bowl Prediction

Like many of you out there, I, too, am looking forward to the annual exercise in bacchanalia that is the Super Bowl.  As is my custom, I will not wear myself out by watching the five or six hours of pre-game bullshit that will be shown on Fox, ESPN, or other networks.  As has been our custom, we will either head out to the movies in the afternoon, or watch one on TV to "prepare" for the game.  I will probably tune into the Fox telecast around 6:00 to catch a bare minimum of pre-game hoopla and then settle in to watch the game, which is set to kick off at 6:30.

I am offering one interesting "prop bet" for your consideration:

The Over/Under on number of Vituperative Comments about Joe Buck Across All Social Media Platforms has been set at 1.7 Billion (with a B) Snide-Snarky-Hateful Comments.  I'd definitely go with the OVER on this one.

As for the game, I am looking forward to a competitive and exciting game.  Great defensive team in San Francisco.  Explosive offensive team in Kansas City.  The 49'ers can run.  The Chiefs have perhaps the best and most exciting offensive force in football in quarterback Patrick Mahomes. 

I think it's going to be a fun game to watch, and I'm calling it for the Chiefs to win their second Super Bowl, and even fifty years after they won their first one in Super Bowl IV....

(Allow me to interrupt here with a personal memory.  I watched the Chiefs defeat the Vikings in that long ago Super Bowl on a black and white TV in a dormitory at Slippery Rock State College.  Lots and lots of water under many bridges since then.)

....okay, where was I?  Oh, yeah, the Chiefs to win it in a high scoring affair.  An MVP for Mahomes, and good Guy Andy Reid finally gets a win in the Big One.

Enjoy the Game, everyone.

Championship Sunday Reflections

Random thoughts on this past Sunday's NFL Championship Games.....

• Without question, the single most dazzling play of the the weekend, if not of the entire season, was the 27 yard touchdown run by Patrick Mahomes that (a) put the Chiefs ahead 21-17, and (b) effectively ended the game.  We are seeing a passing of the torch in quarterbacking in the NFL (a subject of a future Grandstander post whenever I get around to organizing my thoughts on the topic) with a new wave of young and exciting QB's getting ready to take over, but there can be no doubt as to who the best of the New Wave is, and that is the Chiefs' Patrick Mahomes.

• What the Tennessee Titans did to close their season, make it into the Playoffs as the final wild card team, and then defeat both the Patriots and the Ravens on the road, was remarkable.  Mike Vrabel should be the Coach of the Year because of it.  It was great story.
• The Titans fell because the Chiefs were able to take Derrick Henry out of the ballgame, and they did so not only with the explosiveness of Mahomes and his receivers, but by controlling the ball themselves and eating up a lot of the clock on drives.  San Francisco, take note.
• If the 49'ers-Packers NFC title game had been a prizefight, the refs might have stopped in midday through the second quarter.  Vince Lombardi must have been rolling in his grave watching the Packers defense get shredded by the 49'ers.
• Aaron Rodgers (much like Lamar Jackson the week before against the Titans) rolled up lots of gaudy passing numbers in the second half, when the game was already lost, but he came up small in the first half with an interception and two lost fumbles that led to a 27-0 halftime lead for San Francisco.  His facial expressions and body language throughout that game were those of a beaten man.  Very un-Rodgers-like.
• Raheem Mostert.  I must confess that up until Sunday, I had never heard of this guy, and with good reason.  In the last two years, he has been cut by six different NFL teams, and the 49'ers are his seventh team.  This past Sunday, however, we saw him rush for over 200 yards and score four touchdowns.  There is a very strong likelihood that he will never even come close to another day like that again in his career, but for one day, and maybe one day only, he was a reincarnation of Jim Brown and OJ Simpson rolled into one.
• Mostert went to Purdue University where he also ran track and was a teammate of my friend Stephanie Bonk, so I can claim two degrees of separation from him.

So this leads us to a very interesting Super Bowl match-up in two weeks.

After watching the playoffs for the last three weeks, I don't think that there is any doubt that the two best teams survived and are advancing to Miami.  This leads to the final Grandstander Confidence Rankings (GCR) of the season:

1. Chiefs
2. 49'ers

San Francisco is a very good team, and if any defense might be able to contain Mahomes, it might be this one.  The Niners can also run and control the ball, to the point where QB Jimmy Garoppolo only had to throw eight passes in the game on Sunday.  That could serve to keep KC and Mahomes off of the field, but the same was said about Derrick Henry and the Titans going into the AFC title game, so the Chiefs know how to play defense, too.

It is an intriguing match-up, to be sure, and I won't give an official prediction until closer to Super Bowl Sunday, but I will restate my long held belief:  When in doubt, go with the team with better quarterback, and we know who that is.

Patriots and Cardinals Advance

Off the top of my head thoughts on yesterday's NFL Playoff games.....

• I thought Rob Gronkowski was supposed to be injured.
• Why would any team win the coin toss and then choose to defer, thus giving the ball to Tom Brady and the Pats to start the game?
• When Brady hit Gronk for a TD on that opening drive, I posted this on Facebook: "The Chiefs will not lead at any point in this game."  I believe I had that.
• That was a marvelous, textbook, time consuming touchdown drive that the Chiefs engineered in the fourth quarter.  Only trouble is that it consumed too much time and the Chiefs were down by fourteen, not seven, points at the time.  What could Andy Reid have possibly been thinking?
• A lot of the so-called experts said that the Patriots were vulnerable in this game.  Sure didn't look that way to me.

• For about three and one-half quarters that Packers-Cardinals game was a bit of a snoozer.  But then...WOW.  A game like that is why you follow sports.
• For those first three and one-half quarters, was it a function of really good defense, or a couple of inept offenses?
• I admit that I didn't see the Cardinals all year, but if Carson Palmer played like that all year, how did they win thirteen games?
• In winning that game last night, Palmer may well have been the luckiest player in the NFL all season.  Especially after that fourth quarter interception in the end zone that he lobbed up to Green Bay.   That was a certifiably awful throw.
• Did you notice that the Cardinals started to make things happen when they decided to start throwing the ball to Larry Fitzgerald?
• That game tying drive that Aaron Rodgers put together, with no time outs, less than a minute to play, and after being sacked back to the two yard line, and included not just one, but two unbelievable Hail Mary passes, will be forgotten because the Packers lost the game, but that was just Amazing and Unbelievable with a capital A and a capital U.
• How in God's name does a defense allow Larry Fitzgerald to be standing all by himself with no defender within 15 yards of him?  In overtime of a playoff game no less.

And not to pick on the zebras, but how can that guy screw up a coin flip? Also, and this isn't the Officials' fault, but the endless debates and reviews on what is or is not a "Catch" are totally ridiculous and absurd.  That it was even subject to debate both on one Fitzgerald reception and the Green Bay reception that tied the game was, well, I hate to use the same world twice in the same paragraph, but it was absurd!  And we have seen that dance in almost every NFL game this season.  Something really needs to be done about that.

Looking forward to that Steelers-Broncos tussle today.  More so than how an impaired Ben Roethlisberger will play today, it will come down to this: Which version of the Steelers defense will show up today, and which version of Peyton Manning will show up for Denver?

#HereWeGo.