The Logo Super Bowl 53 Deserves
That game fucking sucked. I honestly should have legitimately just skipped it.
17 years ago the Patriots and Rams combined for one of the best Super Bowls ever played. This was like Hollywood saw that franchise sitting in a bin, gave it to a hack director with no budget, and told him to remake it for an easy cash grab. What a shit game. I’ve never had a Super Bowl make me angry simply due to how crap the level of football was. This was a Thursday Night Game packaged as a Super Bowl. Can you imagine how people could think the NFL is rigged after this? Do you think the NFL would make their biggest tentpole pop culture event into this boring garbage? Nobody is happy this is how the season played us out except Pats fans and it’s only because they won it. I doubt any Patriots fan is going to reach for this DVD when they feel like rewatching some old glory. This game deserves to get thrown in a bin next to the other forgettable super bowls we’ve gotten this millennium, like Bears/Colts or Hawks/Steelers. This is the kind of super bowl people are going to have trouble remembering when thinking about past super bowls in a few years.
I don’t want to hear any of that bullshit BUT IT WAS A GOOD DEFENSIVE GAME THO bullshit. That game sucked. It was offensive ineptitude as much as it was good defense. There was plenty of quality defense. The Rams D held up their end of the bargain until late in the 4th and made some legit good stops. But the offense also just…never seemed to work. Brady didn’t look frazzled, he just looked kinda confused and old sometimes. Goff on the other hand was atrocious. The Pats D did well to stuff the run and go after Goff, but even when he had time he still sucked complete ass. He took forever to find a wide open Cooks in the endzone on a play that would change the game if it worked. He took several awful unnecessary sacks, including one where he rolled out of a busted pocket and waltzed over to the sideline, getting leveled despite having all the time in the world to just throw it away. He did it twice. This was a bad football game. If you want a good defensive super bowl go re-watch Broncos/Panthers when Von Miller and Kony Ealy were absolute studs. Each QB got sacked at least 5 times and fumbled twice. That was a good defensive game. This was taco bell shits.
The fact that Gurley was clearly hurt probably changed this game severely. With Gurley the Rams might have been able to do something on O other than splash donkey pee into their eyes. Magic wunderkind McVay didn’t seem to make quality adjustments either, take the easy plays to get something moving even if it is weeny chunk yards. This wasn’t a good Super Bowl. It wasn’t even a good football game.
I wrote an entire goddamn rant about how bored I am watching the Patriots play offense but by the final drives when they actually made some big plays I was fucking thrilled because something was finally fucking happening and all I wanted them to do was just kick the field goal and end it so I could go home. I was begging for the Patriots to end me and if that game went into overtime I might have rioted.
Fuck
I never thought Maroon fucking 5 would be one of the least dull parts of a super bowl, and Maroon 5 is flaming garbage and they were still crap
EDIT: With a good night sleep to ruminate, I think I have a better idea why this game sucked. This was a game that if you turned it on during Sunday afternoon, you’d switch to another channel. For a Super Bowl, it had a complete lack of memorable moments. No Iconic plays, offensive or defensive. Even the worst Super Bowls I’ve watched have had a few plays that felt like important moments in SB lore. The Bears/Colts had Devin Hester’s return. Steelers/Hawks had the trick play from Randle El and the abysmal officiating. The Broncos Panthers game, even if you hated it, had better moments, like the fumble Cam gave up on. The Seahawks blowout had the hilarious opening safety and tons of great defense. The Ravens/Giants had back to back kickoff returns and amazing defense. What did this game have? The wobbly duck that Goff threw up under pressure that got picked off? That’s basically it. Julian Edelman basically got MVP because he had a decent stat line when no one else did. This game added nothing to the history of Super Bowls. For the supposed most important game of the year, it was a complete waste of time.
That’s the first Super Bowl I’ve actually wilfully bailed on. 53 minutes to crack open, LA punts on eight drives before even troubling the scoreboard operators, and… and… it felt empty.
Three words came to mind: Michael Jordan’s Bulls. Similarly dominant. Similarly boring.
The Pats weren’t even dominant in this game. They just weren’t as bad as the Rams. They did dominate the AFC in the playoffs, which really only KC had a chance to stop them.
Only two teams (KC and NO) had any chance to stop the worst NE team in a decade. How is the NFL so bad right now?
This is the first Super Bowl I haven’t watched in 35 years, and man, it sounds like I picked a good one to skip.
That game makes me wish that I didn’t watch a less than legal CBS stream and watched the legal ESPN feed in my neck of the woods so I could at least have an interesting story of whatever inane nonsense the MNF team said.
I like defensive games. I am one of the few people I know who liked Super Bowl 50. But at least that had memorable moments, epic defensive plays and *some*scoring.
The Rams made it obvious that they didn’t belong here, and that we would have had a better game if the Saints hadn’t been screwed.
The only highlight for me is that Brady looked pretty darn shaky for most of the game. My brother in law (Pats fan) couldn’t believe the number of short passes that Brady missed or had bad placement on. These have been his hallmark for the decade. Here’s hoping that the Patriots sign him to an epic contract and his play immediately sinks like a stone.
Yeah – at least the Seahawks looked like they were having fun.
50 was Broncos vs. Panthers; the Seahawks won 48.
Also, you hang in weird crowds. All of the casuals I know were surprised at how much they loved the low scoring game– but that’s because 50 featured such game-impacting, high-throttle defensive plays. Sacks and INTs and forced fumbles are *exciting*. Defended passes usually aren’t. Routine leg tackles usually aren’t. But the Broncos and Panthers played with an incredible intensity. It was one of the best defensive games I’ve ever seen, and easily the best defensive Super Bowl.
From everything I’ve heard, this one was… not that. Just kind of some good defense, but no real high-impact plays (punny or otherwise). And that’s just standard defense vs. bad offense, in that case, and that’s boring as heck.
This season didn’t count
I liked the Superbowl. It was an enjoyable game. It gave me plenty of opportunities to ridicule Brady AND Goff for their terrible play, and that was far more than I expected going into a game where I thought both teams were competent.
Rubbish quality game, but when you’ve got two hate able teams that’s what can be the most satisfying. I was honestly hoping for a 6-3 result and a kicker or something getting MVP.
Kinda the same here but then the Pats scored a touchdown and that went out that’s when I turned the game off.
I never believed the NFL could be rigged because it requires too many inept people to coordinate and execute too many things without leaking information. The league office can’t seam to do any of that. It isn’t the NBA where you can just use different ref groups to influence result (the NBA throughout the Aughts would just use crappy refs when they wanted a home team to win and good refs when they wanted the away team to have a chance so they could extend playoff rounds to 7).
I also felt like this combination of teams was the only one no-one could get excited for. Rams-Chiefs, Saints-Chiefs, and Pats-Saints would’ve been more appealing prior to the game. But Pats-Rams just felt inevitable. I knew the Pats were gonna win and that the moment would be too big for Goff to handle at this point in his career.
Cooks has become the new Reggie Wayne, great in the regular season but average when the game is on the line. It’s never a good sign when Bellicheck gives up on you and it’s a really bad sign when teams with Brees and Brady, who are short on weapons trade you in consecutive years.
I didn’t think the Super Bowl was all that bad. Yes, the offenses were terrible and after the Rams third 3 and out, it was becoming a drag, but that just made any play going for more than 10 yards an exciting play.
On top of that, I felt like the announcing was very good. Jim Nantz and Tony Romo getting excited over a punt, Romo attempting to predict plays, it was great. Them cracking jokes is the only thing I can remember from the first quarter. The punts were more interesting than the actual game.
Also the commercials were booty. The NFL fucked everything up in the Super Bowl, but at least they made up for it in their commercial.
The announcers are there to compliment the game as an accessory. I’ve heard some people say that maybe Romo should have been given the MVP because he was more entertaining than anything that happened on the field. When the guys in the booth become more entertaining than the product they are an accessory to, yeah that’s not a good recipe for a good game. That would be like if you watched America’s Funniest Home Videos just to hear the host talk over every video rather than watch the videos as they are.
I tend to agree that the game had nearly as much offensive ineptitude as defensive skill in it-for the Patriots, for certain, it seemed more ineptitude than a good Rams defense, Brady looked washed for much of the game, but I still enjoyed it. The fact that we went as long as we did without a touchdown gave it a unique tension where the entire game to that point could be completely upended by one blown coverage, a bad fumble, a great punt return. Seeing Zuerlein miss at the end was kind of a bummer (No matter what Tony Romo argued, declining that penalty was a dumb move, pushing the Pats out of field goal range was worth the lost time), but the low-scoring nature and knowing that both teams had the capacity to blow the lid off at any point and change the game made it an exciting watch for me, my favorite from the last few years.
Your favorite? Well, to each his own. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Games like that have the capacity to be extremely good. For many, this one seemed to never really hit 1st gear.
To be fair, it being my favorite of recent times should be heavily qualified by my disliking the last few Super Bowls for reasons that were really more do to often illogical personal factors than the actual quality of the game. 2016 was the first year I skipped the Super Bowl out of a pointless personal boycott out of being PO’d that they ditched the Roman numerals, watching the Falcons just collapse in LI was much more painful than fun for me, and LII came down to some fan factors, my not wanting to see Philly take it, and also wanting Eli to keep his little legacy as the only guy who can beat Brady in the big game.
This was meh Super Bowl, all around
The national anthem was meh
The commercials were meh
The game was meh
The halftime show was meh
I liked the outcome
The only saving grace was the NFL100 commercial
The NFL 100 was awesoms.
Told myself 2 years ago that I would never watch a Super Bowl in which the Patriots played in again.
I feel vindicated this morning.
This was a great game
Points =/= good game.
It was all defense, and every now and then we need that.
But it wasn’t fun defense to watch. The best football games have a strong balance between good D and good O. This game had no balance and became a chore to watch almost instantly. On top of that, it lacked any of those classic Super Bowl moments that the biggest game of the year needs.
Dead on Dave. The Rams needed Gurley, cause Goff showed he can’t carry this team.
Honestly, both Teams should have lost last night. Brady had a bad game. However, Goff had a worse one
The Patriots dynasty was never contingent on Brady playing perfect though. Everything is on ridiculous coaching and game planning two levels above every other team. Part of the reason Brady can have super efficient seasons is because he can play care free, knowing that if just carries the team in a few 4th quarters they have a pretty good shot at a super bowl. The coaching staff eliminates dumb penalties and mistakes, optimize every down and series, and will always make the best in game adjustments. And they never have any weak links on talent except at WR this year and Brandon Browner.
This.
Brady is a great QB, one of the best to ever do it.
But Belichick is just playing 4-D chess with everyone. Without Belichick, the Pats would be nothing.
Yeah – I think Brady is great and deserves tons of credit. I just think Bellicheck is that much better than every coach/GM in the league, and that any Brady GOAT argument should take that into account. The Pats probably wouldn’t drop off if you swapped Brady with any top 8 QB, but if the Pats moved on from BB things might not work out so well.
Yeah gotta disagree on this. That defense was special if you were looking.
The defense that made Goff suddenly and inexplicably be unable to throw a football at an NFL level? This wasn’t defense, it was offensive terribleness.
The secondary did play well but Goff also lost his nerve and looked gun-shy. Brady didn’t look as bad but you can tell his weapons couldn’t get open.
Goff lost his nerve because he got rocked all night. He got hit on something like 40% of his drop backs and pressured on over 70% of them. There aren’t many QBs in the game that can be under that kind of pressure and get hit that much and stay on target all night.
The defense was definitely the cause of Goff missing so many passes and looking rattled all night.
The defense was special for one game. Maybe the difference between this game and the rest of the season was because both teams came in knowing they could go toe to toe on offense and figured it would come down to turnovers and offensive mistakes. If that was the case (and I believe it was), both teams played incredibly conservative compared to the rest of their season. There was good defense. But there was turrible offense.
I don’t know, half of it were more on offensive incompetence by the Rams if anything. Those were some of the worst offensive drives I have ever seen since the ones led by Kerry Collins back in…2001. *shudder*
It’s just sad.
This. I saw a buddy say he deserved to be named MVP for watching the whole game. People can say great defense but if the offenses play so bad that it makes the defenses look good, is that the same thing? Yes there is a difference between defenses playing good to make offenses look and offenses playing bad to make defenses look good. Neither one of these teams were defensive teams in the regular season. In fact, their defenses were the reasons people said they would struggle to win the Super Bowl. They magically learn how to play defense in the last game of the season? HAHAHAHA! No. The offenses sucked balls. Don’t lie to yourself. That was the worst SB since Ravens/Giants, and even that game featured a Ravens team that actually showed up. TRENT FREAKING DILFER threw for more touchdowns (1) than either QB last night COMBINED. Don’t defend that game. You can’t. I like GOOD defense. That was just defense. Not good.
This wasn’t good defense so much as bad offense and opportunism. I love defense, but seeing Goff, on 3rd and 7, bail on the pocket immediately and then run around like a chicken with his head cut off just to take a sack instead of throwing the ball away when he had a defender coming at him from the front was emblematic of the game as a whole.
It was a horrible game.
“I never thought Maroon fucking 5 would be one of the least dull parts of a super bowl”
Couldn’t agree more. Hell, I’m someone who’s all for getting rid of the halftime show and replacing it with anything, even 30 straight minutes of commercials(not happening, I know. In my ideal world, it’d be an NFL-made short documentary about the history of football/the Super Bowl and pivotal moments/plays in them… yeah, right, the Browns have a better chance of winning 10 straight Super Bowls than that happening), and by the time the 2nd quarter was ending I was welcoming whatever was going to happen in halftime.
5 minutes into the game I began looking at TVTropes on the side to distract me from the game’s boredom, and I didn’t miss anything.
Now, I know some people like defensive games. True, there’s value in that. But inevitably, good defensive games are agonizingly boring.
Note that this doesn’t hold for GREAT defensive games. Those are great, games where defenses get multiple sacks, INTs and forced fumbles. Games where the QB and the O-line get so rattled you can actually feel their unease and fear whenever they line up. On the directly opposite spectrum, games which feature bad/inept defenses on both sides result in awesome shootouts, and they’re fun as well.
This game was neither. Both defenses were just good enough to stop the offenses all the time and force punts, but not good enough to get meaningful numbers of turnovers. Not to mention that both teams’ offenses did jack squat about any turnovers the defenses actually got. The high-water-mark of my excitement was when Brady threw an INT with his very first pass, I thought we were in for something potentially fun. Fun, my ass. Neighborhood kids playing touch football would’ve been more entertaining.
I’m not even annoyed at the Pats winning yet another one and continuing the Boring Age because honestly, Brady at least still played like a QB, even if mediocre. So he deserves the win. Goff was downright horrendous and considering this Pats D wasn’t some earthshaking juggernaut that kind of play is simply inexcusable. This loss is squarely on his shoulders.
I’ve seen a lot of people predicting that the Rams are going to crash and burn worse than this season’s Jags in the 2019 season, and even considering recency bias, I would say that’s a fair expectation to make.
But at least we have a new post-season award:
M.V.P.E.D.
You know…Josh Gordon’s getting a ring.
The punting by both Hekker and Allen was legitimately great (and probably took a FG or two off the board for both squads). Not that punting redeems a game or is especially memorable to the average person, but if you do like punts this was a good game to watch. I suspect Belichek will re-watch it a lot…
If the Rams had won I think a real argument could have been made to give Hekker the MVP.
>I suspect Belichek will re-watch it a lot…
HA!
The last QB to throw a TD in the Super Bowl is Nick Foles. Let that one sink in.
The Patriots winning is Nick Saban’s fault. Just wanted to throw that out there.
fuck i hate to admit you might be right
Dave has pointed it out a few times before. When Saban doesn’t win a National Championship, the Patriots tend to win the Super Bowl.
Even the “record setting” punt was possibly the most boring one of all time, with it basically being a lame duck that just happened to roll and bounce for 20+ yards. The new spot for Avengers:End Game, which pretty much said absolutely nothing at all, had more content than the actual game.
We turned it off early in the 2Q to play some games with the kids, and managed to turn it back on just in time for the offensive explosion that made it 3-3 before the end of the 3Q. We only bothered to leave it on for the rest because we were busy doing a bunch of other stuff around the house, and it made good background noise.
At least they weren’t stupid enough to give Brady the MVP when he clearly didn’t deserve it.
This WAS a good defensive game, Dave, because it saw two defensed beating the tar out of the two teams that most deserve it. Neither NE or LA deserve another trophy, so at least we got to watch both Brady and Goff eat tire rubber.
And this was by far not the worst game. It’ll go down in the exact middle of history, compared to for instance, SB50 where two inept offenses were multiplied by equally inept referees.
It wasn’t a good defensive game because neither defense made plays that were meaningful or memorable. No strip sacks and the picks were easy reads on bad throws that didn’t amount to points.
How can you say Gilmore’s pick near the end zone or McCourty’s sprinting pass defense deep in the end zone weren’t meaningful? The pick may not have been pretty, but it did more of less seal the game and McCourty running in from who the hell knows where to make a play no one else could have was pretty fantastic no matter how you slice it.
Ohh and didn’t that Brady fumble go down as a strip sack?
I don’t know about that, the Rams offensive drives looked as if Goff lacked a spine if anything.
I think it was Michael Irvin who came up with a stat last week (from where, who knows, is it right, who knows) that when a team is gifted a win on a mistake like the Rams were in the NFCCG, they are 5-21 in their next game, because they sub-consciously know they didn’t deserve to win the week before, so they play like dog-crap.
Sounds about right for how the Rams played.
Simple fact is: the Pats were due for a ‘dud’ super bowl. As a fan of them, I’m almost in tears to see how great my team has been for this long… but it was a shit game that probably did nothing but infuriate neutral fans.
Rams (and particularly Goff) choked away every opportunity they had. McVay got outcoached, and the Pats capitalized the way they always do. I agree with the big wave of apathy this game has left everyone with, it was boring.
Yeah, and we’re pretty jaded at this point. In a room full of New Englanders, people were openly bored during the game and at the end people were questioning whether this was the worst Patriots Super Bowl, worse even then some of our losses. I just think about my friends in DC, who would have torn all their hair out then cried with joy if the Skins won the Super Bowl 13-3.
We’ve been to half the Super Bowls in the last 18 years and won 1/3 of them. Just incredible. And every year, they find a new way to torture their fans haha.
Travis Scott without autotune was f#%king awful and was still the best part of the whole f#%king game
The Sweet Victory fake out was actually the worst part of the game, which is truly impressive all things considered
Honestly, the punters were the MVPs in my opinion. No one else did their job consistently and well.
Patriots 13
Maroon 5
Rams 3
Rams couldn’t even beat the half-time entertainment.
finally a 10/10 hot take on the superb owl
Zing! Stealing this.
This should be stolen more often, it’s gold!
Seems appropriate for a team that’s given the middle finger to the league for years by blatantly cheating and getting away with it; and for a team whose owner gave the middle finger to the city they were in for TV money. Glad the Rams didn’t win, but at least Brady didn’t throw another SB TD.
Although, the Rams clearly tampered with the refs two weeks ago, so they might be just as bad.
I can get why there would be hate for this SB. However, I’m concerned for the future of the NFL because of it. Roger Goodell and the NFL is anti-defense. There’s no question about that. So, for them to hear of low rating and cries of the game being boring, what route do you think they’ll go? Exactly. More rules that’ll handcuff the defense and hide behind the “safety” word to mask things. That way, everybody will get nothing but 54-51 games, and defenses will no longer be a threat to ratings by actually being allowed to play. Fuck ratings killers like Bosa in the draft. Right?
Again. I get the criticisms. I like games that has defense in it, but I also like games that has better offense than this. Even if the score still ended 13-3, but was more because of defensive play than offense ineptitude, it wouldn’t be crapped on as much. And to be honest, because the NFL is so anti-defense, inept offenses is the only way a game can end 13-3 anymore. I don’t like the future of the NFL.
I’m not sure the rules have impacted the rise in scoring as much as some other trends. First, the CBA limiting practice is huge. Zone defense instantly becomes harder to run, and it takes longer for defenses to gel. Not to mention how the rookie payscales means fewer veterans playing.
Spread offense schemes are becoming more common, and while it’s my own personal opinion that NFL defenses are catching up, it does mean that college QBs can adapt to the pros better.
The safety rules like targeting are more for the long term health of defenders than offensive players. It does make “punishing people over the middle” less of a viable option, but I think less players leading with their heads the better.
Two things that could help the defenses that I think the NFL needs to address, which are just enforcing illegal blocking downfield and pick plays more consistently. They only happen because teams know they can get away with it. Lastly I think NFL defenses are adapting it’s just harder for bad defenses to keep up.
At least we went Sicko Mode
And yeah I’d rather have watched a jags titans Thursday night game rather than this years super bowl. I don’t mind defensive games but this was just shitty offense for both teams. Gurley is a fraud and Goff isn’t ready yet. Both teams will be back next year, at least the pats will be for sure. They just won’t ever go away.
the game of thrones ad was great, and Tony Romo continued to sement his place as my favorite announcer
My two favorite ad moments are still beetloaf and watching the Giants get beat by little girls, but yeah, that was a good Game of Thrones ad.
OK, I think most points about the game have been made, so…
Can anyone explain why Coldplay was the halftime show again? Didn’t they just do it like 3 years or so ago? And how many more times are they going to send out someone who “needs no introduction” that I sure as hell can’t name. Way to go, Pepsi. Maybe you should hand the halftime show over to Coke so it could actually be good.
I didn’t like SB 50 very much
HAHAHA! Sorry it’s not funny but the comment and your name seriously made me laugh.
After the first quarter of the game, I decided I wasn’t rooting for either team, I was rooting for the two punters. There were some quality punts in that game. That MASSIVE bounce on Hekker’s kick that put him in the record books for longest punt. Punts. Yeah.
Ratings down by 20 million on the Glorious win last season by the Eagles.
Sure theres the New Orleans boycott factor, but lets face it, the ratings fell hour by hour as this game became the epitomy of the phrase “One for the Purists”.
That’s a hefty drop. I know NO had half the rating it did last year but still…serves em right I think.
Good.
Good game, where the good guys won.
Found this on Yahoo. I’m not sure what it is. But it sounds better than what we got.
https://sports.yahoo.com/super-bowl-liii-orleans-saints-165327708.html
In the Trump era it reminds us the people who least deserve to win get to win because this is the worst timeline.
Brady hasn’t done anything spectacular except beat up on the AFC East, no major feat. Bellichek won’t do anything interesting – safe and effective, not entertaining.
LA doesn’t have any fans, a stadium, or any roots, but they got a lot of fast merch cash from moving so they were able to buy themselves to a Super Bowl. Once. I don’t think it’ll happen again.
And next year? It’ll happen again. I watched maybe 2 games all season and I’m glad I skipped this one- Kingdom Hearts 3 combined with wings and sausage sandwiches were a much better use of a day off.
Wahhhh wahhhhh wahhhhh fuckin baby