The Super Bowl is here! Eric Jensen breaks down the Super Bowl matchups. Welcome to the Super Bowl preview
The Big Game
I’m fascinated by what it means to be “American”. It is a fascination that drives what fiction I read, the poetry I browse, and the music and TV I consume. What is it to be American?
The answer is that there are no good answers. The best writers and journalists of our time have explored the topic yet don’t have an answer. It is impossible to grasp, impossible to put into words.
The Super Bowl is uniquely American. An event built for TV, built around excess, built around consumerism, built around a unique sense of self-importance. The Super Bowl is the most important show on television, or at least it views itself that way.
Numbers would back that up, year after year nothing competes for eyes and ad dollars the way the Super Bowl does. The Super Bowl last year grossed over 578 million dollars in ad revenue. To put that in perspective Samoa’s GDP is around 800 million dollars. The Super Bowl quite literally grosses as much as some small islands entire populations.
The game in the end is not about who wins and who loses but who makes money. The answer, is the NFL, and a boatload of it. Super Bowl tickets are unaffordable to the mass population this years average Super Bowl ticket price clocks in at just over 7,000 dollars.
Not to mention the amount of money the NFL makes off the festivities of Super Bowl week alone. The Super Bowl is essentially American. It is catered to pray on the poor of America while lining the pockets of America’s rich.
Football is a meritocracy, the NFL is not. The NFL is a machine that prints money, and as we near the day of the big game it’s important to remember that the end goal of the big game is to generate an enormous amount of revenue.
That’s the cynical view. Today, I’m feeling a bit cynical. The things the Super Bowl does well though, unite. Give a piece of common ground to a deeply divided nation.
Show that with hard work, and with dedication, that anything is possible. That you can climb the mountain, that you can end up with a championship if you find the right pieces.
Football after all is a meritocracy.
Why The Eagles will win the Super Bowl
They boast one of the best pass rushes the big game has ever seen. Four players in the Eagle’s front 7 registered over 10 sacks this year. That sort of production is insane. The best position group in this matchup is the Eagle’s pass rush. Stopping them must remain the Chief’s top priority.
Jalen Hurts has arrived. In the Super Bowl, you need playmakers, in the NFL no better play maker currently exists than Jalen Hurts, and yes that includes Patrick Mahomes. Hurts has the most dynamic offensive skill set the league has seen over the past ten years.
Not only is he a top-five pure passer, but he also boasts a skill most quarterbacks simply do not possess, he has the running ability and instincts of a top-end running back. Those two things paired together create the best dual-threat QB the game has seen since Michael Vick.
Hurts now has a moment on the biggest stage to engrave his name into the history books. If he comes out of Sunday with a ring it is not too early to start discussing him as a first ballot hall of fame player.
The Era Of The Black Quarterback
Hurts ushers in a new era in the NFL. Tom Brady is gone, Aaron Rodgers is fading, the age of the pocket passer is over. In it’s place has emerged the era of the mobile QB, and more importantly to the culture of the NFL and the league in general, the era of the Black quarterback.
By my count four of the top ten QBs in the NFL are Black. If you were to say that ten years ago you would have been laughed out of the room. Now though, the face of the league is the Black quarterback. It only makes sense, the NFL is a Black league slowly the on field product of the NFL is making progress forward. It’s still a white owners club but the players and the voices that now dominate the league are Black. That’s a massive culture shift from where the league was just 10-20 years ago.
It is just important to note the shift that is happening here. It is seismic because Black voices make white owners money, have the power to change the narrative and force the NFL into uncomfortable discussions about the balance of power within the league.
Why The Chiefs Will Win The Super Bowl
They have two of the best players of all time and a third emerging on defense. While Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce will steal the headlines of this Super Bowl, Chris Jones has quietly emerged as the most impactful player on this roster.
Over the past two weeks, Jones has racked up 2 sacks and over 11 pressures. He has become the most dominant interior lineman in the game and on the same level as the greatness of Aaron Donald. Jones is a game breaker and while the Eagles boast the best offensive line in the league that just might not matter, the level of Jone’s dominance is somewhat understated. He absolutely has the resume at this point in his career to be considered amongst the modern era’s best pass rushers. This Super Bowl will give him a moment to showcase that.
Andy Ried has lived for this moment. The moment to show his former employer that in the biggest games, he does still make a difference.
Travis Kelce is always open, that is in large part due to Ried and his offensive prowess. Nick Sirriani is a cute story on the Eagle’s side of the ball but Ried has been here and done that. Sunday serves as a massive moment for one of the greatest coaches of the generation to pad his resume.
The Pick
In August, after months of bloviating over rosters and players and draft moves, you can come to a conclusion. That conclusion will almost always certainly be wrong.
In August, it is excusable to predict against Patrick Mahomes. We tire of the same storylines of the same tired narratives. We long for something new, something better, something that will show us that hope springs eternal and that anyone can win the Super Bowl.
It is excusable to predict against Patrick Mahomes, however, it is inexcusable to pick against him. Once January arrives, and the games have been played and we arrive at the time of trial, Patrick Mahomes is inevitable.
He is the greatest pure passer the game has ever seen. He lacks the trophies to compete with Brady but the conversation can be had, he is in the same tier as the greatest of all time, he breathes rarified air.
A loss Sunday would be catastrophic to Mahomes legacy, 5 AFC title game appearances and only 1 title can be called disappointing, however, two Super Bowl titles before age thirty can put Mahomes into the conversation of chasing Brady.
Pressure makes diamonds though.
It is excusable to predict against Patrick Mahomes, it is inexcusable to pick against him though. Mahomes prevails in the best Super Bowl of the past five years.
Chiefs 33 Eagles 27