Had a peculiar conversation with the boss (aren’t they all?) when discussing this assignment for this publication.
“Mike’s the new guy,” one of us thought aloud. “We’ll let him deal with making the case for Seattle to win the Super Bowl.”
This was a situation where I recognized the ridiculousness of the statement in mid-sentence.
Making the case? As if beating Peyton Manning, the 1B to Tom Brady’s 1A, and the Denver Broncos, 43-8, didn’t lay the foundation. As if the Seahawks being the obvious No. 1 team in the NFL, conference championship hiccup aside, since the first of November didn’t amount to a ton of bricks and a truck full of mortar.
Kraftwerk had the easy part of the deal, y’all. And if the rationale was “let’s have somebody else play the bad guy for a change,” our meeting of the minds failed miserably.
The New England Patriots clearly are the bad guys going into Sunday’s game. If you don’t see that, you’re viewing Richard Sherman and Marshawn Lynch through whatever goggles you wear.
Our current national conversation over air and urinals cemented that, as if three Lombardi Trophies, a hated head coach, a playboy tight end and a quarterback who carries a man-purse and is married to an underwear model hadn’t. Rooting for the Patriots is akin to hoping Andre the Giant would suffocate Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania III.
Which is precisely the reason New England will slap Seattle silly and win its fourth world championship (surely they play American football in Russia and China, don’t they?) on Sunday night.
Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and Team America Can’t Stand live for this. It won’t surprise me if we find out they concocted this hootenanny with the footballs to drive up the hate and distract the Seahawks and the league office from something even more insidious.
That’s Belichick. He is a thousand steps ahead of you and at least two Vince Wilfork belly lengths in front of the rest of the league. And let’s not forget he replaced Pete Carroll, who didn’t really garner respect as a head coach until his second NFL job at the University of Southern California. In terms of an X’s and O’s matchup, this one is like professor vs. frat boy. It is no contest.
The second marquee battle is Brady vs. Russell Wilson at QB. Oh, please. The only debate left is whether you would choose Brady or Joe Montana as your starter in one game for a billion dollars. And I’ll take whichever guy gets to throw to Jerry Rice in his prime. Otherwise it isn’t a fair fight.
Wilson might be the nicest human being on the planet. He also has a knack, dating back to his college days, of being almost unbeatable when his team is ahead. He is more slippery than a fully inflated football in a January monsoon.
Now, the truth nobody in the star-struck national media wants to tell you: He’s a glorified game manager. And as all of America saw two weeks ago against Green Bay, if you have any luck at all containing Marshawn Lynch, Wilson will overcompensate and make your day with one, or two, or three, or four interceptions.
Once Wilson falls behind by a touchdown or two in this game, the Seahawks are sunk. His only two second-half comebacks of enduring significance came two years ago against a godawful Patriots defense (minus Darrelle Revis, minus Brandon Browner, minus Jamie Collins) and two weeks back at the expense of an epically hideous Dom Capers-coached Green Bay resistance.
And New England will have that early lead, because Brady is an assassin. In the trio of Rob Gronkowski, Julian Edelman and Brandon LaFell, he has the best selection of weapons at his disposal in this transcendent 14-year run. His opposition, the Seattle secondary, is plagued by elbows and shoulders that aren’t in nearly as good a shape as their tongues.
The average “fan” wearing a No. 12 Seahawks jersey cannot name more than two of Wilson’s receivers. There is good reason. They make Brady’s 2006 lineup of Troy Brown, Reche Caldwell, Jabar Gaffney, Ben Watson and Daniel Graham look like first-ballot Hall of Famers.
Legacy, statistics and personnel all are brought up too extensively when analyzing Super Bowls. The title usually goes to the team that is just a little bit hungrier.
That sounds counter-intuitive, because, my goodness, we’re playing for the top prize in the biggest sporting event this side of the World Cup and Daytona 500 (laughs). I’m not too proud to admit, however, that the Patriots got fat, dumb and happy at the end of the triple-zero decade as institutional arrogance set in.
New England has no such problems now. The Brady-Belichick brain trust has never exhibited sharper tunnel vision. My confidence going into this game stems from how much more closely this title run resembles the ascent of 2001 and 2003 than the grave disappointment of 2007 and 2011.
The Patriots weren’t at the top of anyone’s power rankings most of the year. National pundits tried not to cheer too loudly in Kansas City while holding a moment of silence for a deceased dynasty.
Seattle is the team with all the pressure to repeat, a weight under which every team since the 2004 Patriots has buckled. The Seahawks will join the 1985 Bears and 2000 Ravens as a “historic” defense to go one-and-done rather than revolutionizing the game.
Final score? The Patriots might not put up XLIX, but the margin will be XIV or more.
Sometimes it feels so good to be bad.
Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His email is koakes@sunjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Oaksie72.
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