THE JOURNAL
Mr Jimmy Garoppolo leads the San Francisco 49ers onto the field. Photograph by Mr Michael Zagaris/San Francisco 49ers/Getty Images
The overwhelming majority of people in this world do not live in the US, never mind San Francisco or Kansas City, so if you’re reading this, the odds are high that you don’t give a hoot who wins the Super Bowl on Saturday. You’re just hoping something exciting happens.
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Last year’s Super Bowl had zero excitement. Please tell us it’ll be different this year.
It’ll be different this year. When the 49ers and the Chiefs won big in their conference title games – the semi-finals, each to find the best team of the two regional conferences – to advance to the Super Bowl, the excitement odds shot up. With all due respect to their vanquished opponents, few face-offs in Super Bowl history would’ve been less arousing than stodgy Green Bay (that’s in Wisconsin, by the way) versus bland, anonymous Tennessee. Think of the bullet we all dodged. Of the four possible Super Bowl match-ups going into the conference title games, we wound up with far and away the sexiest.
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“Sexiest” wasn’t the word we were expecting there. Can you elaborate?
Sexiest in all senses of the word, including the most literal, which is to say there are a lot of sexy men in this game, even without the NFL’s most decorated sexual accelerant, Mr Tom Brady, who will be watching the game at home with his supermodel wife. That’s a lot of sex appeal to yank out of the Super Bowl in one swoop, but San Francisco 49ers quarterback Mr Jimmy Garappolo, Mr Brady’s former understudy, a Mr Brady-esque dreamboat with Mr Oscar Isaac eyebrows, more than replaces it.
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Mr Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs. Photograph by Mr David Eulitt/Getty Images
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And who’s the other guy, the one with the fusilli hair?
That’s Chiefs quarterback Mr Patrick Mahomes, the reigning NFL MVP, a human laser show and maybe the best football player on the planet right now. Make a mental note. You’ll hear his name a lot. This is only his third NFL season and his second as a starter, and already he’s led the Chiefs to their first Super Bowl in 50 years.
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Holy crap! Did you say 50 years?
Yes. That is a long time. So long, in fact, that Mr Mahomes’ father, Mr Patrick Mahomes Sr, who pitched for 11 years in Major League baseball, wasn’t even born.
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People who care about American football seem very excited about this game. True?
Super true. This is a great game. Mr Mahomes’ arm is the missile launcher you’d expect from the son of a Major League pitcher and he’s got explosive play-makers all over the field. The 49ers, meanwhile, have been the NFL’s best team on both sides of the game, offence and defence, with a fearsome defensive front seven – the first line of defence, the guys who do the quarterback sacking and pressuring – and a modern running attack on offence that no one has been able to stop all season. It’s also a face-off between two of the most gifted play-callers in the league, 49ers head coach Mr Kyle Shanahan, the son of a Super Bowl-winning coach, and Chiefs head coach Mr Andy Reid, an offensive genius who reached the Super Bowl 16 years ago with the Philadelphia Eagles, but has never won.
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Mr Raheem Mostert of the San Francisco 49ers. Photograph by Mr Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
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It’s been 50 years since the Chiefs were here. What about the 49ers?
Ah, interesting you should ask. Six years ago, the 49ers came up a yard short of pulling off a 22-point comeback against the Ravens in the Super Bowl. One of the provocative questions about this Super Bowl broadcast is whether we’ll see any footage of it. The quarterback who nearly pulled off that comeback was Mr Colin Kaepernick. The last thing the NFL wants to do is remind the world that Mr Kaepernick was so good that he almost won a Super Bowl six years ago with some of these 49ers. Even his name being uttered during the Super Bowl will be a noteworthy moment. It would seem hard to avoid, but don’t put it past the NFL to try.
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We’ll keep our eyes and ears open. Now the most important question, because we have a bet to place: who’s going to win?
The 49ers? When all else fails, pick the superior defence. Actually, though, the Chiefs’ defence has been quietly excellent for two months. They could be the better defence for one night, especially considering they don’t have to play Mr Mahomes. Most impartial observers would give the coaching edge to Mr Shanahan, only because Mr Reid, for all his schematic brilliance, has a long and well-documented reputation for perplexing late-game decisions. But Mr Mahomes can cover up a lot of mistakes. So, maybe go with the Chiefs? You know what? You’re on your own with this one.
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