The Eagles Win The Super Bowl

The Eagles won their first Super Bowl championship yesterday.  As is our custom, my long-suffering wife and I attended an annual Super Bowl party in Philadelphia hosted by the individual who is the Chief Logistics Officer for the annual Las Vegas pilgrimage.  Let me simply say that there was a lot of cheering and a lot of angst that flowed during the game; at the end, the mood was beyond jubilant.

Here are a few brief comments about the game itself:

• Each offense committed one turnover and both turnovers were the result of excellent plays by the defense.  There were no giveaways in the game.
• The Eagles’ 164 yards rushing in the game allowed the Eagles to dominate the time of possession by about 9 minutes and that was a major factor in the game.
• That game should put to rest the silliness associated with the conspiracy theorists who assert that the officials always give the Pats the better end of the calls.  There were 2 Eagles’ TDs that were closely reviewed, and both stood; there was only one penalty called on the Eagles during the game that was a borderline call.  If there is some “grand conspiracy” out there, you would have to imagine that it would display itself in a tightly contested Super Bowl game – – and it did not.
• Why did the Pats keep Malcom Butler in the bench?  Even if it were some sort of disciplinary move, you would think that at halftime when it was clear that the Eagles’ offense had come to play on Sunday that the coaches would have announced that the “punishment time-out” had been served and that Butler would be in the game in the second half.
• “Bettor X” – as he came to be known – had between $4M and $5M on the Eagles on the Money Line at odds of between +160 and +170.  Conservatively, with a $4M wager at +165, he made a tidy profit of $6.6M.  He is probably as happy as any of the Eagles’ players are today.
• If Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski had hooked up on that final Hail Mary pass, it would have meant more than just another Super Bowl win for the Pats.  As he wound up to make that throw, Brady had 505 yards passing.  That completion would have been for more than 50 yards meaning that Brady would have broken the all-time passing record for yards in a game.  I don’t mean in a Super Bowl game or a playoff game; I mean any game ever.  That record has stood since September of 1951 when Norm Van Brocklin (LA Rams) threw for 554 yards in a game against the now-defunct New York Yanks.  Van Brocklin was 27 for 41 in that game and threw 5 TDs.  Note that his average yards per completion was a mere 20.6 yards…
• I do not want to throw shade on Sean McVay and the job he did as the coach of the LA Rams this year; he was the Coach of the Year and he deserved that accolade.  However, the fact that Doug Pederson only got 1 vote in the balloting for Coach of the Year tells me that some of the voters were not paying close attention to what was going on during the season.

Finally, here is a Super Bowl themed comment from Brad Rock in the Deseret News:

“’Tonight Show’ host Jimmy Fallon: ‘Pizza Hut says if either team beats the record for the fastest touchdown in the Super Bowl, it’s giving away free pizza to people in its loyalty program.

“’The only downside is you have to tell people that you’re in the Pizza Hut loyalty program’.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………