DARNOLD DID IT
Congratulations to the Seattle Seahawks, 2025 NFL Champions! Well deserved!
THE GAME IN CHAOS
That certainly was…a Super Bowl of all time. Would have preferred the actual shutout because then it might have ended up more memorable than what felt like a virtual shutout. You know it’s a stinker when all your casual friends are texting you that they are bored. I wasn’t bored, I found this game more watchable than Pats/Rams from 2018, but I will admit part of that was probably just seeing the team I was rooting for winning. This was a Thursday Night Football Super Bowl.
That game felt like an upstart young hopeful team that is honestly a few years away from being a genuine competitor and reached the bowl too early getting its ass clowned by the experience and battle tested actual competitor. You could see the inexperience in the Patriots offense. Honestly, you could see it all playoffs, but they got away with it. Until last night.
Drake Maye just…wasn’t ready. The offensive line was swiss cheese. The Hawks got to him early, upset his rhythm, and his game went out the window. He could not figure out the defense. You could see his processing speed was sluggish. He would hold the ball too long and take a hit or sack, or he’d panic and throw an off-target whiff. He seemed to forget he could scramble, which is one of his best qualities.
You could tell the difference between experience and inexperience with Darnold. The Patriots defense balled out this game, just as they did against their other playoff opponents. Justin Herbert buckled under the pressure. Stroud collapsed under it. Stidham never stood a chance to begin with. Darnold…Darnold stayed alive. He was under a similar level of duress to Maye, but he only took one true sack. He kept escaping, throwing the ball away when needed, not turning it over, and keeping things afloat for the next drive. He wasn’t perfect, but he was the epitome of keeping his cool and control under pressure. This is the redemption of Sam we truly wanted. The Ghosts are gone. He can see clearly now. Sam is now the QB the Jets thought they’d get.
The Seattle defense (who I refuse to call The Dark Side Defense, that shit is cringe), whopped some ass. Total ass. In a Super Bowl with a lot of butts in it. Seattle avenged the loss of Super Bowl XLIX. This is not the team I wanted to see win it all when the playoffs started, but they were far from the team I wanted to see win it the least. I’m so happy for Sam.
CHAOS OF THE WEEK
–The Patriots scoring quickly to start the 4th made this suddenly feel like an actual game could break out. On the next drive they looked alive and in rhythm, like they finally shook off the cobwebs. Then Drake Maye threw one of the worst passes he could possibly throw, directly to Julian Love (ONCE A GIANT, ALWAYS A GIANT). Cris Collinsworth was speechless. The potential for a real game ended on that pass.
CHAOTIC MOMENTS OF THE GAME
–JSN leaving the game for a concussion test was an alarming moment for Seattle, but he came back. Didn’t do much though.
–I’ve never been more impressed with a punter in a football game. Genuinely. The kicker did good too but they also never asked him to make a particularly hard kick. Punter MVP
-The Hawks strip-sacking Maye and then scoring a TD a short time later felt like the moment the game went from “tense, but could go either way still” to “oh the Pats are fucked now”.
THE VIBE CHECK
– Well, we know who is vibing. It ain’t Bill Simmons.
-THE NFL HAS AN OFFICIATING PROBLEM of the week
-Jobe should have been kicked out of the game after he threw a punch during the sideline altercation. Apparently, though, they can’t eject a player if a flag wasn’t thrown in the first place. What a stupid rule.
CACKLES OF THE WEEK
–I went to grab a chicken wing from the kitchen of the party I was at, and came back in watching Seattle run back a fumble/pick. Almost dropped my wing.
BIG OOF OF THE WEEK
-Kenneth Walker with the walk-off home run…before the holding call. Magic moment over.
FRAUD WATCH
–I WAS RIGHT THE FIRST TIME. PATRIOTS WERE FUCKIN FRAUDS. THEY WERE ALWAYS FRAUDS. LAST PLACE ASS SCHEDULE AND A BUNCH OF WOEFUL OFFENSES IN THE PLAYOFFS. TAKE YOUR MEDICINE YOU FRAUD ASS BITCHES
Okay so they weren’t that bad and the defense was great, but I can’t go this whole post without being a hater at least a little bit, so here we go.
THIS GUY ALMOST WON MVP? THIS COACH WAS COACH OF THE YEAR? THIS OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR WAS ASSISTANT OF THE YEAR? THESE ARE YOUR HONORS? EMBARASSING. If the Chargers had any semblance of offense these bums would have gotten toasted in the wildcard, because they were a wildcard team with a soft ass schedule and good fucking luck until last night. Schedule Merchants. Josh McDaniels is a hack.
To every Patriots fan who got mad at me for doubting them all year: suck on that shit. I hope Drake Maye has a Dan Marino career. Hall of famer who loses a Super Bowl in his second season and never goes back. I guess all those kindergarteners in Boston gotta wait a bit longer to see a Super Bowl.
SNUFF FILM OF THE WEEK
-Will Campbell, who would die for Drake Maye, let Drake Maye die.
DISAPPOINTMENT DUCK
–Drake Maye. Look if he wasn’t a Patriot I’d probably like him a lot more and I feel bad ragging on him so much, but damn. He was not ready. If he had remembered he could scramble before the 4th quarter he might have had a better day. Of course if Josh McDaniels could have noticed his QB was struggling and called more screens or quick plays or something to help, that might have been good too. But Joshy is a hack
MOST UNWATCHABLE TEAM OF THE WEEK
–Oh baby you know it’s them fraud ass Patriots
OTHER THOUGHTS
-Bad Bunny doesn’t make music for me and I’ve never even heard his songs before this game, so honestly I can’t comment on the halftime show too much. Sometimes a show just isn’t for you, and that’s fine (tell that to the legions of complete dipshits who apparently feel otherwise, but I digress). However, I was deeply impressed with the stage and production of this particular show, with all the moving parts and amazing camerawork. From a production standpoint, amazing work. The coolest show I’ve seen in a long time on that front.
The Ads were just as bad as expected. The occasional chuckle. Mostly just celebrities being silly or wacky. Weird amount of Butts, but I won’t complain. I like butts. I did laugh at the Liquid Death exploding head ad, probably because it focused on actual comedy instead of celebrities being wacky. Fuck all the AI ads. Also jesus, Millenials really are the target audience for nostalgia now, huh. TWO Backstreet Boys ads? In 2026? I’m gonna throw up.
SPECIAL NOTE: TUNE IN EVERY DAY THIS WEEK FOR NEW POSTS! I’ve gotten too many ideas for comics to give up on some, so this week will feature 3 comics and the nominations post for the Chaos awards.
The alternate ’Busterverse where Walter Peck ISN’T an asshole.
You mean Dickless
First, for the Bad Bunny show, I strongly recommend this BlueSky thread where someone explained all the symbolism with the show: https://bsky.app/profile/beckyhammer.bsky.social/post/3meffq52d4k2h
It’s legit fascinating, and very explicitly political in places (yes, beyond the very obvious stuff). A lot of us didn’t understand it (for a variety of reasons), but those that did understand it all no doubt loved every single moment of it.
As for the game itself… yeah. The Patriots had maybe the easiest road to the Super Bowl ever, and got just as exposed as I figured they would be two weeks ago. Those plays before that hilariously terrible interception had just enough hope that maybe this could become a real game… but then the 23 year old QB turned out to be a 23 year old QB. Strange how that works.
The Patriots’ future is still impressive as hell, though. Not just Maye, note how his blind-side O-Linemen were both rookies. This really does feel like a team built for the future, and while promising starts have turned to ash in no time flat before, I’m sure not betting anything against them.
Unfortunately, the link requires login. I thought “viewing posts without login” was the original marketing push of that hellhole site?
I think this was my favorite of the “extended music video” style halftime shows. I still kind of prefer something that looks a bit more like a concert, but if you have to do this method, they did very well. I don’t know much about his music (and it’s not really my genre) but it was a little underwhelming of a vocal performance I have to admit, he was a bit too mumbled. My spanish is subpar (so I had absolutely no shot at PR spanish, lmao), but from what I’ve heard the message was good. I liked the bit with the flags at the end, that was a cool display of unity.
Surprisingly Patriots didn’t even rank in top 10 for easiest regular season schedules to get to super bowl. And if we consider playoffs – the 21 Bucs definitely had a much easier path even just thinking of recent winners.
The Broncos were the best team in the AFC this year and I am taking zero arguments otherwise after that performance
I wonder what these guys are doing right now. Are they still thankful? Were they time-traveling Seahawks fans? Inquiring minds wanna know.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5B1xRKWAAkQqof?format=jpg&name=large
Also, that game was more or less as expected. I said I wouldn’t be surprised if New England got their doors blown off, and oh, look, that’s what happened. Shocking. It’s hard to take a team that only had ONE win against an opponent with a winning record during the regular season too seriously, given how awful their competition in the playoffs was. I’m just annoyed they didn’t lay a goose egg. Robert Kraft deserved that, and then some.
Their playoff competition wasn’t bad though? Texans were everyone’s favorite trendy dark horse team to pick. Chargers are a good solid club. Really only the Boncos game was easy (and even that is overstated, because Nix was not all that great this year).
The talks surrounding the Texans and Chargers are bizarre because in both cases, a lot of people knew the flaws those teams had and still picked them to beat New England anyway. NE’s defense just punked both units so badly that it just completely altered the perception of both offenses. The CJ Stroud talks were especially egregious. Yeah, he was awful, but picking off ANY QB 4 times in a game–much less a playoff game–is a sign of elite defense being played as much as poor quarterbacking.
For as much as that offense was clearly inexperienced, I do think that defense was largely as advertised; Seattle was lucky the running game was solid and Darnold didn’t fuck up because it wasn’t their greatest game on offense. If NE can get somewhat of an offense going this is probably a closer game.
Yea, I’d agree it’s a little less funny when comparing their playoff schedule. The only thing I’d say is the Giants beat the Chargers. So while I like Justin Herbert… their offense had problems protecting him against a Giants defense that was – outside of Brian Burns – mostly woeful this season. So I don’t think they were a very tough challenge for the Pats.
The Texans were pretty solid, and you could cleanly sell me that the Pats D made CJ look bad as much as CJ made CJ look bad. For the Boncos, I’ll grant you Bo Nix had his ups and downs (another team the Giants were beating handily until the 4th). The weather would have made it tough even if Bo was playing, so I’ll concede it’s not like the Pats ONLY beat them because he was gone, it just kept the picture cloudy whether the Pats were as good as their schedule said they were.
Honestly? I just think it’s funny that only one of NE’s wins came against an opponent with a winning record – the Bills. It may not be that big of an abnormality… I’ve never checked the stat for any of the Giants’ Super Bowl years, so maybe it’s a more common occurrence than I think it should be. But it’s fun to laugh at Robert Kraft, cuz he’s a dick.
I disagree about the Broncos, I think they cleanly beat the Pats with healthy Bo. Bo takes care of the ball and is pretty solid under pressure, something Stroud is not. They are probably leading by like 10 when the snow hits and nobody scores again.
I was shocked Herbert and the Chargers choked that hard but the playoffs kinda swung my opinion of the Pats into “defense was legit the whole time, offense was a fraud the whole time” When I went into the playoffs kinda expecting the opposite.
To be fair their defense seem legit enough since they were the main reason the Pats had a chance until the wheels finally came off in the 4th quarter. The offense on the other hand looks like they were trying to do an impression of a Kerry Collin led offense if you know what I mean.
My cackle of the week was when the announcers started talking about how the first half may be the first half in Superbowl history to not have any penalties during it, only for a penalty to be called on the very next play.
Gotta hand it to Evil Rabbit, his halftime is still better than Madonna’s.
As for the BSB ad, it could have been worse, imagine if they played their old demos.
“Lover Boy” anyone?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD8gude9hYI
New England’s postseason run was always going to be an extremely frustrating discussion no matter the result, but obviously a win would have made it easier for Patriots fans to deal with.
The Super Bowl (and the postseason as a whole) was just a case of NE’s offense’s biggest weaknesses all getting exposed in the worst ways. The reality was that this unit was heavily punching above their weight all season, and the weak schedule obviously helped to mask a lot of the underlying flaws that group still had. The left side of their OL is young and struggled mightily to protect Maye. The WR room is painfully average and struggled to separate/win reps against elite secondaries, and Drake Maye’s turnover bug came back at the worst possible time. The running game falling back into nothing similar to what it was early in the season only added to those issues and all came to a head in the Super Bowl once they faced arguably the best team in the league. With a slightly altered path, they could have full-well ended up a first round exit, but instead the unit was able to scrape by and do the absolute bare minimum to win games and claw their way out of the Conference.
Of course people are going to run with the schedule talks, given that their regular season list was absurdly weak, and the fact that all of their opponents in the AFC Playoffs were deeply flawed in some way only makes it easier for people to simply point at the end result and shout frauds. While I get it, I still don’t think that’s entirely fair to them. The Chargers, Texans, and even Broncos, while injured, still presented extremely difficult challenges that NE was able to overcome, and I think they deserve a little credit for winning the conference under those circumstances, even if the end result was an expected ass-whooping. What this run showed, at least to me, is that New England is a lot closer to contention than basically anyone could have expected, but they still have a fairly long way to go. Losing the Super Bowl just makes it extremely difficult to really put their season into proper perspective. I would have considered 8 wins and competitive play in December a “success” for this team and they ended up winning the AFC outright. They’ve provided reason to believe that they can at least be in the mix moving forward, and that’s probably the most important takeaway from this run. The question for them now is whether they’re able to make those necessary upgrades that fully elevate them back into true contention.
A flawed good team punching above it’s weight is probably the best way to describe the 2025 Pats
They did what they needed to get where they were but they were never as good as the record and stats made them look
Seattle definitely deserved the win, great to see. I’m really curious to see how both teams do next year. Seattle has the best odds to repeat and the Pats odds aren’t too bad. It feels like they vastly over performed this year. I really don’t expect to see the Pats make it back.
It’s just as interesting to speculate as to who will tank. With Pittsburgh bringing in McCarthy and looking like they’ll keep QAaron, they have the same coach-QB vibe as washed-up Carroll and regressing-back-to-his-mean Geno. Steelers are on the same train to the 2027 first overall pick as Raiders were for 2026.
Holy shit, so many ideas the week is packed? Don’t think that’s happened to this extent before (depends on how much of these are checkdowns).
Will cherish this especially when we hit the summer drought.
This Pats team reminded me of another superbowl Pat’s team…thr 1985 club that also kind of lucked their way into the bowl.
Happy for Darnold to shed his ghosts. He certainly looked way more comfortable and adapted quickly.
I’m not a Bad Bunny fan but enjoyed the sets, symbolism and energy. The shoutout to the telecommunications line operators is much appreciated for all the hard work they do after a storm/hurricane.
It hurts more than usual to be a Vikings fan right now, but I’m still so happy to see Sam win a ring after we chucked him to the curb for NINE.
I feel like there were very few ads I didn’t hate to my core this year, and some of those, mainly the pokemon ad, I was cringing at instead. I’m even a pokemon fan, it just felt like a lot of whiplash coming off of Gambling Ad into AI ad into AI ad into AI ad into HeGetsUs.
As for the game, there are times when people decide a game is the REAL super bowl before it starts and then the Super Bowl itself happens and people take a step back and decide otherwise. Not this time, the two best teams in the league this year met in the NFC Championship game. The “Drake Maye was Robbed of MVP didn’t you see how he performed against common opponents” belief dies a swift and painful death as he has one of the worst playoff performances of all time for any player to get to the Super Bowl, and while he probably needed to play at least above average to win that game, he didn’t get anywhere close.
Still a little pissed that special teams prevented that from being the Rams’ doing.
Now knowing BSB irks you as much as tidbit about certain players used to play basketball in college, I’m going to add part of the lyrics from one from their old demo.
Shoop do do do do do do
I’m dreamin
Shoop do do do do do do
I’m dreamin’
Yeah baby, Dreamin’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liDfr766NdE&pp=ygUYYnNiIHRlbGwgbWUgaSdtIGRyZW1haW5n
Enjoy the fruitiness!
Also Allen Iverson used to play football in high school.