Weekend winners (Super Bowl division)
All the Rams, of course, but Matt Stafford is a different dude this morning because of last night. Completely different. He was going to post the numbers to get into the Hall of Fame, but before last night he was a compiler, a very poor man’s Dan Marino who churned up numbers with a rotten franchise throwing to his generation’s best wide receiver. Now, he’s a Super Bowl champ and will be a first-ballot Canton invitee with a career-altering ring on his finger.
All the Rams, of course, but Sean McVay is a different coach this morning because of last night too. Prodigy and genius and all the other glowing terms about his football savant-ness are great. But they eclipsed by being called a champion.
The halftime show. Wow, that was aces. It was not Prince, but I don’t know if anything will be Prince-quality. Still is was aces
Michael R, who got a very impressive five correct in the Super Bowl props contest. Michael, send me your address and I will email you a gift card. Michael got Heads, blue, over the anthem, and entered Cooper Kupp’s name in the other four categories, hitting two (last TD and MVP, although if I had a vote on MVP I would have gone with Aaron Donald, still non-QB MVP cashed too). Well done sir, and here’s hoping you found an outlet and turned your clairvoyance into some real greenbacks.
The Sopranos Chevy commercial. Well-played, friends. Well-played indeed.
Bonus pick No. 1: Caesar’s. Not for the commercials, per se, but for the genius move of giving their big-time players a true Super bonus. Selected Caesar’s gamblers and customers got to watch a Manning MegaCast last night. And by all reports, it was excellent. In an industry in which everyone is looking to attract players, real bonuses are beneficial and ideas like that are genius.
Bonus pick No. 2: Family matters on Super Sunday as Van Jefferson raced from the game to an area hospital where his wife was giving birth to a baby boy. As Jefferson was dashing to the hospital, Rams safety Taylor Rapp proposed to his longtime girlfriend after the Rams’ win.
Weekend losers (Super Bowl division)
All of us who had shares in a slew of Odell Beckham Jr. prop bets. He was fast out of the gate – and scored the first TD at plus-900 money for someone you know – but the knee injury before halftime stalled his stats at two catches and 52 yards.
NBC NFL viewers. For my money, the best broadcasting crew in the NFL did their final game last night. Al Michaels is likely headed to a monster deal with Amazon and Michele Tafoya is retiring to get into politics. (Seriously.). Cris Collingsworth likely will be paired with Mike Tirico, who is very good, but he’s no Michaels.
My waistline. Dear Lord (and lard), the 5-at-10 crew consumed somewhere north of 12 billion calories Sunday.
That missed extra point cost more than a few million players who had Rams minus-3.5 or 4 a few million (and maybe more like a few hundred million). ESPN’s excellent sports betting writer David Purdum quoted multiple executives at Vegas sports books who said Rams winning the game but Bengals covering the spread was their dream scenario. Also of note here, as Joe Don pointed out in an email, the botched PAT also meant that the score stayed at 3-13 rather than 3-14, which would have delivered free DiGiorno’s pizza pies to 1,500 folks. Wonder if Johnny Hekker, the Rams punter/holder who dropped the snap, owns stock in DiGiorno’s.
Bonus pick: Any pretense that anyone actually cares about head injuries in the NFL. I’ll bet a sizable part of my very modest retirement nest egg that Cooper Kupp was Cooper Koncussed on that final TD catch. The helmet-to-helmet hit he took in the end zone was vicious.
Bonus pick No. 2: Eli Apple was getting torched on social media but NFL players who obviously are not an Apple after allowing Kupp’s game-winning TD. That said, Apple could shut a lot of them up – especially Chiefs WR Mecole Hardman, who lost to Apple’s Bengals two weeks ago, with a very simple, “How was the Super Bowl view from your couch? At least you got to see all of Dre.”
Bonus pick No. 3: The two huge calls that were botched. Tee Higgins yanked Jalen Ramsey’s face mask on his 75-TD early in the third quarter and that defensive holding on third-and-goal before the Rams’ Super Bowl-winning TD was brutal.
Elsewhere in sports
Boston has won eight straight NBA games. So there’s that.
Nice win for UTC on the road at Furman over the weekend.
Scottie Scheffler won the Waste Management golf event.
Speaking of golf, hey, I love the energy and enthusiasm and noise at the famed 16th at the WM tournament. It’s a blast. Heck, you may know someone who had a taste on a hole-in-one at 16 this weekend at plus-400 – bet $100, win $400 – but all the throwing of beers and drinks and trash is a rotten look, be it golf or FIFA soccer or a tractor pull if you ask me.)