I will preface this with a guilty admission. Earlier this afternoon I was walking through the kitchen thinking about Tom Brady playing in the Super Bowl yet again, and I blurted out to my dear wife, Carrie, “Patriots 37 Chiefs 27!”
She did not have to say a word. I caught it after I said it. Living in Indiana and rooting for Peyton Manning and knowing how many times Tom Brady screwed that up, it only seems natural. At least we had an off year to marinate before Peyton joined the Broncos. When he did it was okay. He just graduated to a more formidable horse. Colt to Bronco.
So there. How can I pick against Tom Brady?
First and foremost, I hope it is a competitive game. Flashbacks of the 49ers plastering the Chargers and the 49ers whipping the Broncos in games gone by are so so disappointing. Super Bowl XI in Pasadena with the Raiders putting a beat down on Fran Tarkenton’s Vikings in his last Super Bowl was brutal too. I think Dave Humm, Ken Stabler’s back-up, may have found some time at QB that game. I am certain he was holding for PATs and field goals. Amazing what an eight year-old can retain all these years on.
I think I enjoy the Super Bowl now as much as I ever did. Regardless of what happens, again, I just want us to have a good game.
Of course I will always be thankful that Peyton Manning put on a Colts helmet in 1998. He led the Indianapolis Colts to a Super Bowl win. But more than that, Peyton Manning single-handedly made football a much more popular sport in the Hoosier State.
The two Super Bowl Championships the Eli Manning-led New York Giants put together against the evil empire of the New England Patriots will always be a great memory. I kid you not. In the second half of one of those games when the Giants needed a game winning drive, I thought Asante Samuel was going to pick off a sideline route that Eli threw. I was sitting on the ottoman in front of the TV. I held my breath and when it went through his hands I dropped my head between my knees and when I rose up suddenly I got light headed and wondered if I was going to faint. I didn’t. The Giants won and Tom Brady and the Patriots went home unhappy and that was great.
If I live to be 110, the Super Bowl will forever be imprinted on my mind with disappointment. When you are thirteen and you have watched a guy play quarterback all your life and you got his autograph a few times and you loved his team, as bad as they usually were, and they finally get to the Super Bowl it is like time stood still. And it has.
Super Bowl XVI between the San Francisco 49ers and the Cincinnati Bengals was a Super Cinderella Bowl like we had seen before and I doubt I ever see again. Both teams were 6-10 in 1980. Then in 1981, the Niners were 13-3 and the Bengals were 12-4. They met in the regular season. The Niners beat the Bengals in Riverfront in what was their worst game of the season. They met in a Super Bowl played in a cold weather climate for the first time, as the game was played in the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan. It is gone now. The last time I saw it driving through there to a Moody Blues concert, they were using the parking lots as drive-in theatres.
But what a season 1981 was.
The Bengals lost. Going down 20-0 at halftime will do that. 26-21 was the final. The losing team outgained the offense of the winning team the first time ever in a Super Bowl. Ken Anderson set a new SB completion percentage record. He was 25 of 34 for 300 yards. The Bengals turned the ball over too many times and ran Pete Johnson one too many times to the right on the goal line when Ken Anderson should have run a bootleg that was working during the season. Someone on that line was giving something away. Fred Dean made that last stop look way too easy.
I always thought Kenny was thinking they should have run the bootleg too when I looked at this picture.
It is 2021 not 1982.
What Tom Brady has accomplished for so long is amazing. Patrick Mahomes is a player too. And we need a Super Bowl now more than ever.
No team has ever hosted a Super Bowl until Tom Brady decided the part ways with New England and play with the team in host city this year, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Rams played the Steelers in Super Bowl XIV in the Rose Bowl and I believe that is the closest we ever came before now.
Tampa Bay 37 Kansas City 27 that is the pick here.
Have a great time tomorrow.
And don’t be afraid to speak the rights.
Danny Johnson