The right team won Super Bowl XLIX, with New England rallying to beat Seattle 28-24. (Hey, didn’t a simulation game play out exactly the same way?? Down 24-14, the Pats came back and won on a Tom Brady TD pass??)
Naturally, given what happened to clinch the victory at the end there, tons and tons and tons of football fans, analysts, and broadcasters across North America all suddenly think they know better than NFL coaches and offensive coordinators, with all their second-guessing. Okay, yes, if it were former NFL players second-guessing the call to pass instead of handing it off to Marshawn Lynch, then that’s fine. But what I’m talking about is people that’ve never stepped on the field in their lives thinking they are smarter than Pete Carroll or coordinator Darrell Bevell. The thing is, with only 26 seconds left, the Seahawks wouldn’t have had time to run the ball on 2nd, 3rd, and 4th down (if necessary), so they opted to throw on 2nd down. Malcolm Butler – ahhhh…the classic “The Butler Did It” headlines…. – happened to make a great play to clinch it for New England.
The bottom line is that it would be easy to knock Pete Carroll and point to his failures as an NFL head coach, but c’mon. Another comment is at least the NFL was spared from embarrassment…think about it, had Lynch gotten the ball there and scored to win the game, he would have treated the post-game on-camera interview as a joke and said nothing, the way he’d done all week with his “I’m just here so I don’t get fined” and “Y’all know why I’m here” nonsense. (And shame to those people who defend him for his actions.) And of course, with that loss, the Seahawks’ defense can finally shut up about how great they are.
(Image courtesy Getty Images)
And this victory by Brady should, once and for all, end that ridiculous debate of whether he or Peyton Manning is better. It’s no contest. Brady is 4-2 in Super Bowls – and easily could be 6-0 – while Manning is 1-2 with a blowout loss (Seahawks last year) and another game where his interception cost Indianapolis a chance to tie (Saints in 2009). Okay, yes, the elements were different, and the Seahawks’ secondary was banged up this time around, but Manning and his record-setting offense lost 43-8 to Seattle last year. Brady led a comeback from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter against these Seahawks. Case closed.
Finally, wow… the Boston team with the longest championship drought is the Celtics, and they last won in 2008! The Bruins won a Cup in 2011, and the Red Sox won the World Series in 2013. I still think those Sox should have an asterisk next to their name, though, as they practically tanked the previous season just to get Bobby Valentine fired. That’s real gutless and unprofessional, but I digress.
Congratulations to the New England Patriots, once again the model franchise in football. Haha to those haters who all came out after that KC game earlier in the season.
A Life of Knuckleballs 
#1 by Gary Trujillo on February 2, 2015 - 4:52 pm
Brady also could have easily been 3-3 in Super Bowls. I also believe their first title against the Rams was bullcrap because of the “tuck game” against the Raiders. They shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
#2 by alifeofknuckleballs on February 2, 2015 - 5:01 pm
Gary, you got me there. I really wonder, though, what would have happened after that year. I think they still would have gotten rid of Drew Bledsoe and kept Brady given the way he played during the regular season. But yikes, Brady was awful in the first three quarters of that “Tuck Rule” game against Oakland. He couldn’t put together any decent drives.
You know, the Patriots then got off to a 3-0 start the next year and then lost four in a row and missed the playoffs. Who knows. With those two years of not winning a championship, would Belichick have still been around? Hmm. Brady’s career might have gone in a different direction. So…yeah I’ll give you that.
Well, at least we know that Montana was 4-0 in Super Bowls and threw zero picks in those big games. I don’t like the 49ers but I guess we can’t dispute that fact about Montana.
#3 by Gary Trujillo on February 2, 2015 - 5:10 pm
Even as a Rams fan, (a MAJOR reason why I hate the Patriots.) I still have to give Joe Cool some respect. Boy did I hate him as a kid. The 49ers destroyed us in that 89 NFC Championship Game….and this was after a dramatic win over the Giants in the Meadowlands the week before!
The game last night was a shocker. I believe you could have run the ball at least once with 30 seconds on the clock…even with a stacked line. Smash-mouth. A pile of bodies for all the marbles. It’s sort of a no-brainer. I’m still in disbelief. Well, I suppose that’s why you gotta love sports.
#4 by alifeofknuckleballs on February 2, 2015 - 5:15 pm
I see. My problem with the 49ers is during the early 1990s when they were still in the same division as New Orleans, the Rams, and Atlanta, it was a fairly easy division that they could go undefeated in that division and then lose 2-3 games to the other teams on the schedule and then have a first-round bye with that 14-2 or 13-3 record. Let’s face it, that division was a joke at that time. Then there’s the fact that Steve Young, with his one Super Bowl win, was given legendary status even though he couldn’t beat Dallas the previous two years and wasn’t exactly elite in Tampa Bay. Yeah I know about his accuracy and his toughness…but at the end of the day it was just one title.
Yup. That’s why you gotta love sports.
I wonder if you were disgusted that Kurt Warner didn’t get elected to the Hall in his first year of eligibility. I’ve heard arguments about that and I guess it makes sense, but I would think as a Rams fan you would/might have a different take.
#5 by Gary Trujillo on February 2, 2015 - 5:20 pm
The Hall of Fame in any sport doesn’t intrigue me like it did as a kid. It seems like the older you get the more you care about the now. It doesn’t matter when he gets in, but I was definitely up in the air about him until he took the Cards to the Super Bowl. That cemented it in my eyes.
#6 by Gary Trujillo on February 2, 2015 - 5:21 pm
BTW…the Rams had some good teams in the early 90’s! C’mon! 🙂 We weren’t the Bears or the Redskins admittedly.
#7 by alifeofknuckleballs on February 2, 2015 - 5:30 pm
Okay. Darn those Falcons and Saints then, for allowing SF to pile up all those wins on an annual basis. 🙂