Sunday 12th Feb marked the end of the latest edition of the NFL season and with it brought a high scoring, entertaining game between arguably the two best sides in the league. So why did it feel so anticlimatic?
Let’s get this straight. It was by no means a bad game. Mahomes super-manned the chiefs to their second championship with him at the helm, following up his heroic MVP regular season, Jalen Hurts kept the Eagles in the game and in the lead for most of it using his much improved accuracy and his ability as a runner (apart from the fumble-6) and Harrison Butker kicked the game winner for the second successive game. But it all just felt so… expected. People expect miracles from Mahomes every game so it feels like a let down when he plays at a human level, people expected Hurts to continue his rise from the usurped Alabama QB to Super Bowl calibre QB, people expected a high scoring game. There felt like there was no underdog to root for, no magical storyline to be written because at the end of the game, neither team would have looked out of place hoisting the Lombardi trophy. It just happened to the team wearing red.
I underestimated the power of both of these offenses in my pre-playoff predictions. I assumed the meme of ‘Burrowhead’ would continue and that the Eagles offense would splutter against the best defence in the league. Obviously neither of these things happened. Kansas played extremely well to get themselves to the big game and so did the Eagles, albeit against a Christian-McCaffrey-at-QB-by-the-end 49ers team. There was no shock, no drama, no surprises. This is arguably a difference in itself when you look at past NFL seasons. The Bengals last year defying expectations and having one of the best immediate season turnarounds in recent memory, Tom Brady leading Tampa to a championship and in the process securing himself more rings than any franchise, the Philly special, THAT Patriots comeback against Atlanta, all drama filled, chock full of storylines. There was so much to keep even the most casual of football fans entertained and glued to their screens.
That in particular is why Super Bowl 57 felt like such an anomaly. Casual football fans who, while they probably appreciate good football like the stuff put on display Sunday, had no real reason to care for the whole 4 hours the event spans for on screen. I know the Chiefs were down by 10 and came back to win, but they’ve done that at least 3 other times this year. It felt, again, expected.
It bears repeating that the game was a good one, two squads of players at the absolute peak of the sport, showing the best the sport has to offer and demonstrating just how high the ceiling of performance can be in such a high pressure environment. The Chiefs were deserving winners and the Eagles unfortunate losers, there is no detracting from that. Here’s hoping though, that next year, February 11th, in Las Vegas, there is more to keep an eye on than just the score line. At the end of the day the NFL is an entertainment business as much as a sporting one. They’ve nailed one side of it this past year, it remains to be seen if they can add the other the next time around.
Sports Takes 