The Super Bowl, the Halftime Fallout, and My Future

Let me start with this: I loved everything about that Super Bowl. Close games are fun and make for great drama, but this was a perfectly-timed domination. It was exactly what the league needed to shut up those insisting the game was already rigged for the Chiefs.

Which is why those people immediately claimed that the NFL backed off the previous script so it would throw off those who were on to the them.

All the eyerolls.

The Super Bowl

The Chiefs had 15 regular season wins and a +59 point differential. That’s an absurd stat. 11 of their 15 wins were by a touchdown or less. Also an absurd stat.

How do you beat a team that always seems to pull it off in the end? You beat them down from the start. Philly came out firing, and even with a 24-0 halftime lead, they didn’t let up for a second.

Jalen Hurts was the MVP, which… fine, okay, he had a pretty good game and he’s the quarterback. But we need to start giving out unit awards, cause the Eagles defensive line directed that game.

They had 6 sacks while showing Patrick Mahomes 0 blitzes. It was a single unit that won every battle in the trenches and blew up the Chiefs gameplan. If there were blown coverages, you wouldn’t know it cause Mahomes would never have a chance to see it.

The significance of that is because Mahomes, and most other great QBs, tend to thrive against blitzes they recognize. If they see it coming, they’re already processing who will be left open and how much time they have to throw it. It’s why so many greats use hard counts… sure, you might get a false start and a free play, but often the real objective is to get the defense to show their blitz.

But if you have a group of pass rushers who can get pressure on the QB without blitzing, now you’ve got 7 guys dropping into coverage and a QB dodging defenders and trying to find the tiniest opening to fit a pass in.

That was the difference in this game. That’s why you’ll often see me talk about defensive lineman like their significance is on par with the quarterback. Their job isn’t as complex, but their output can remove a great QB from the game equation.

Halftime Fallout

I call it fallout because Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show forced a lot of people to show their hand, and once again we all realized how far away we are from true equality.

Oh, you thought it was just a Drake diss halftime show? Pssshhh.

Before I get too deep on this, let me paint you a picture of who I am. If you prompted an AI to design an image of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Dutch 43-year old from rural Wisconsin, they might literally steal my professional headshot. I think that context matters, because I wasn’t the audience that show was written for, and I kinda love that. There’s less pressure when your opinion is irrelevant. But nonetheless, here it is.

Many who’ve been following the Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef saw the halftime show as a resounding victory for the latter. And in some ways, it was, but personally I think it’s for a different reason. Even when Kendrick broke out Euphoria, then teased Not Like Us with an unsubtle dig at Drake’s lawsuit, then finally delivered that hit and literally said Drake’s name while hinting it’s actually Chester, all as part of a crescendo to an entire stadium screaming A minor… even then, to me, this was never about Drake.

Drake was a patsy. A figurehead. A face you put on the dartboard that helps you get better at your real goal of hitting bullseyes. In other words, Kendrick used Drake to make a bigger point, and Drake still thinks it’s about him, and that’s embarrassing. I would rather be straight-up dissed than to later find out I was an unwilling pawn.

I don’t know if I can properly express what I think Kendrick’s real goal was in that performance, but I do know the impact of what happened in that Super Bowl stadium is far more profound than a rap beef. It’s also bigger than surface-level politics, regardless of which President was watching or left early.

But skip past all that for a second. Some people watched that show and felt uncomfortable… there were no white people, the dancing wasn’t familiar, the words weren’t always familiar, the structure of the show from start to finish was too hard to follow all the way through. Damn this 15-second video culture of which I willingly participate.

My point: Oh right, here it is… if you came out of the Super Bowl halftime show feeling uncomfortable, maybe that’s how you’re supposed to feel.

Let that feeling happen. Don’t fight it… explore it. Why does it make you feel uncomfortable. Is it Kendrick’s fault, or is it yours? Is that feeling on the surface or buried deep within you?

These are the feelings we should all examine when race of culture make us uncomfortable. Our bodies are designed to make us uncomfortable as a means to right wrongs. We fight infections with fevers. Fight your unfamiliarity by embracing something that isn’t for you or about you, and see how that feels.

Some felt paranoia, as if the show was taking digs at them but said in an unfamiliar dialect they couldn’t translate. Like being around two people speaking a different language and getting upset because you think they’re not speaking English on purpose so they can talk trash about you.

They’re probably not talking about you. But if you’re paranoid that they are, then they just might be, because they recognize your paranoia as a threat, and that threat might be real. You might be a threat in some way.

A few weeks ago, I said goodbye to my 13-year old pit bull, Mille. She was the sweetest and best girl in the world, and my heart breaks even writing this because she’s been my best friend for so long and now she’s gone.

But to the point, she was part Staffordshire Bull terrier, one of the breeds commonly referred to as a pit bull. To someone new, she looked like a scary beast.

There were days when I would take her on a walk and we would pass by twenty other people and their dogs… she never missed a beat, accepted a few head pats, gave a few licks, sniffed a few butts. But then someone would see her from across the street and their body language gave them away. They were scared.

Did they have a right to be? I don’t know, maybe they have past trauma with a dog that looked like her. And perhaps their fear is justified. Without meeting them, there’s no way her or I could know why they were scared.

Mille recognized their fear, but in her mind, knowing she’s harmless, the only logical explanation to her is that they have a reason to be scared. To her, they must fear her because they have bad intentions.

Here’s the moral of that story: If a stage full of people different than you and speaking in ways you don’t understand is scary to you, then it’s perhaps time to look inward and consider that your feelings are unnecessary paranoia, they read as bad intentions, and perhaps actually are bad intentions. Mammals all the way from mice to men are designed to recognize paranoia as a threat, because that’s what it is.

My Future

When I started this site, it was centered around weekly NFL power rankings throughout the season. I kept that going for 3 years, up until week 16 of this past season when I faltered.

It reached a point where I no longer enjoyed that grind because it took away from the kind of longform writing I love. I enjoy deep dives on more specific topics, and a brief team-by-team overview got in the way of that. When I started doing my podcast, this became crystal clear to me… I was droning on with no depth, and the few moments I took to dig deeper were the moments I heard my voice wake up.

It’s also simply been a difficult year. We lost two dogs, one very quickly, the other a slow decline. In the middle of that, I lost a job I thoroughly enjoyed. I’ve always been very open about mental health, and I knew I needed to address it for myself on multiple levels. One of those levels is this website, a passion project that has brought me much joy and new friends, but became a weekly obligation where I felt like I was saying the same things over and over.

So for the future, this site will take on a new feel. It will be longer, more in-depth football articles from me, starting with the continuation of my series on 1st Round QB draft picks. It will feature an uptick in new recipes added to The Tailgate Corner, cause I’ve been cooking. It will continue to feature scouting reports from contributing author William Yanish III, some of which include potential 1st round QBs who I’ll have to write about again years down the road.

I’m also looking for more contributing authors. If you’d like to write about football and have a knack for seeing the NFL in a fun or unique way that doesn’t include conspiracy theories or blaming refs for everything, and think you could live with me as your editor, email me and let’s talk. A career as a writer starts with a byline, and you’ll get those here.

As always, may all your teams win or your coaches diss Kendrick Lamar.

P.S. See the joke is, dissing Kendrick Lamar is a bad idea. I would rather be fired than for Kendrick to write a diss track about me.