Media members crowd around New England Patriots’ Drake Maye during Super Bowl LX Opening Night at San Jose Convention Center on Monday in San Jose, Calif. (Scott Strazzante/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
The longest two weeks of the year are almost over. This fortnight without football is nearing an end.
The time between the NFL conference championship games and the Super Bowl is maddening. Doesn’t it feel like Drake Maye ran his bootleg for the first down that clinched the AFC title in Denver years ago, not just a couple of weeks?
That’s NFL time messing with you. All season long, the games come in waves, week after week. Your internal sports clock adjusts. Thursday night. Sunday. Monday night. Occasionally Saturdays, when the college game takes its break to gear up for the march of bowl games and playoffs.
The two week break between conference championships and the Super Bowl is manufactured anticipation. Sometimes, it feels like two weeks of Christmas Eve. Often, it feels like two weeks of colonoscopy prep.
When you get to this point of the season, you don’t want to catch your breath. You want to keep going. You don’t stop at mile 24 of a marathon. You don’t want to stop when the peak comes into view.
Give the NFL credit. Nobody revs up the hype machine like Roger Goodell and his band of accountants. If the NFL didn’t make dump trucks full of money on the two week break between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, we would’ve seen the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks play this game last Sunday night. We’d be days deep into the game’s dissection. Instead, that will bleed into the time we should use watching the Winter Olympics.
Two weeks of analysis that comes full circle. Did Drake Maye suffer a shoulder injury in Denver? Can the Patriots work around Maye’s bum shoulder? Actually, Maye’s shoulder looks pretty good, but will Sam Darnold overcome that awful game he had against the Patriots on Monday Night Football six years ago? How does Darnold’s lost seasons with the New York Jets affect Maye’s shoulder?
You know who must love all this? Malcolm Butler. The Patriots hero of Super Bowl XLIX, whose goal-line interception in the final minute ensured a New England victory the last time it met Seattle in the Super Bowl, Butler’s career-defining moment has been everywhere these two weeks. On the other hand, Pete Carroll, Seattle’s head coach at the time, and Russell Wilson, the quarterback who threw the pass, probably aren’t as pleased with this trip down memory lane.
New England Patriots strong safety Malcolm Butler intercepts a pass intended for Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Ricardo Lockette during the second half of Super Bowl XLIX in 2015. (Kathy Willens/Associated Press)
Predictions, we have two weeks of predictions. Many of the football expert talking heads expect a Seattle win. A corgi who boops a ball down a flight of stairs with its nose picks Seattle. A lion in a zoo in Des Moines, Iowa also picks the Seahawks, but I think as a snack. A cockatoo and a wallaby in Miami both like the Patriots to win.
We have so much time to fill waiting for the game, we look at how these teams are kind of sort of not really linked in any meaningful way. For example, we know the Patriots were dreadful in 1992. Their 2-14 record earned the top pick in the 1993 draft, which they used on quarterback Drew Bledsoe. Seattle was also lousy in ’92, but the Seahawks had a 10-6 win over New England, so the Pats got Bledsoe, who led them to the Super Bowl a few seasons later. The Seahawks got quarterback Rick Mirer with the No. 2 pick, who threw 56 interceptions with 41 touchdowns in four seasons in Seattle.
You can’t have two weeks of filler without gambling, and prop bets are fun. What will Bad Bunny begin the halftime show with? Will the Patriots first offensive play be a run or a pass? Will Patriots wide receiver Mack Hollins enter the stadium barefoot, as is his want? Will NBC cut to a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge or Alcatraz at the first commercial break?
Speaking of prop bets, one caught my eye. There’s no doubt NBC will sprinkle in snippets of music from Boston and Seattle throughout the broadcast. You’ll hear Aerosmith and the J. Geils Band, maybe Dropkick Murphys.
There’s a prop bet going around regarding Seattle music. Will the first band be Pearl Jam? Soundgarden? Alice in Chains? Nirvana? Some of these bands have been on my personal playlist for decades. Seattle is a fantastic city, one I’ve enjoyed with each visit.
Two weeks gives you a lot of time to think about things like that. Against a different opponent, the Seahawks would be easy to root for.
That said, give me Patriots, 23-20. And Soundgarden’s “Rusty Cage” going into the second commercial.
