Football Friday 2/6/26

            The lyrics from Willie Nelson’s song back in the 1970s seem relevant to today’s Football Friday:

“Oh, the days dwindle down
To a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days
I’ll spend with you
These precious days
I’ll spend with you.”

            This collection of Football Fridays ends today; it is a precious day; I shall spend it with you.  The football season that began in the last week of August ends on Sunday; news from and about the NFL will not stop, but there will be no reason for a Football Friday for six months.

 

College Football Commentary:

 

            There really wasn’t any groundbreaking news on the college football front in the last week; so, let me take some oblique items about the NFL which have a “college flavor” to them and include them under this heading…

            This information came to me in an email from a reader – – and a frequent commenter – – about two weeks ago.  Currently there are 5 colleges/universities in the US that have graduated both a Super Bowl winning QB AND a US President:

• Delaware:  Joe Flacco and Joe Biden
• Michigan:  Tom Brady and Gerald Ford
• Navy:  Roger Staubach and Jimmy Carter
• Stanford:  Jim Plunkett/John Elway and Herbert Hoover
• Miami (OH):  Ben Roethlisberger and Benjamin Harrison

            And so, you ask, why does this belong in this particular Football Friday.  Here is the deal:

• If the Pats win on Sunday, the University of North Carolina will join that list with Drake Maye as its Super Bowl winning QB and James K. Polk as its US President.

            Now, I would not want anyone to think that I am biased toward Drake Maye in Sunday’s game for that collegiate tie-in to the game; therefore, I shall include one more college-flavored item about this year’s Super Bowl game featuring Sam Darnold.  Unless he gets run over by a bus between now and game time, Sam Darnold will be the first QB out of USC to start a Super Bowl game.  When I read about that status, I was surprised because USC has produced a lot of highly regarded QBs who were high draftees by NFL teams since the Super Bowl came into being.  Consider:

• Matt Cassel
• Pat Haden
• Rob Johnson
• Matt Leinart
• Carson Palmer
• Rodney Peete
• Mark Sanchez
• Caleb Williams

            There are probably others that did not come to mind as I pondered Sam Darnold’s stature as the first Trojan QB to start a Super Bowl game.

 

NFL Commentary:

 

            Over the last two weeks, I got two emails from the “reader in Houston”.  He is an acquaintance of “Mattress Mack” – – the Houston entrepreneur who owns furniture stores in the area and who offers promotions in those stores related to “Mack’s” gambling on sporting events.  “Mack” often wagers on Houston teams, and I was surprised that he did not have a bet on the Texans at the start of the playoffs.  Nonetheless, here is his promotion for this year:

• “Mack” has bet $2M on the Pats to win the game straight up at +200 odds.
• Any customer who bought a mattress for $4000 or more in a time window prior to the game will be fully reimbursed if the Pats win. 
• If the Pats lose, sleep tight…

            That third entry on the list above is mine; “Mack” would know better than to be that snarky.

            Evidently, “Mack” has not been faring all that well with his large wagers recently; presumably he has ameliorated some of those losses with increased sales in his stores.  The reason I say that is the closing line in one of the emails from the “reader in Houston”:

“Based on Mack’s recent history, bet the house, ranch, and kitchen sink on Seattle SU.”  [SU = Straight Up]

            Speaking of wagering, back in August 2025, the odds on the Pats making it to the Super Bowl were +8000 and the odds on the Seahawks making it to the Super Bowl were +6000.  If you had parlayed those two futures wagers and put $100 on the wager, you would now be looking to collect $494,000.00.  Nope, I did not have that one either…

            Looking back on the NFL season, there were some significant events in the 2025 season; some will be “historic” in the sense that they were a first – – like Sam Darnold’s start in the Super Bowl on Sunday; others will have consequences in future seasons.  Here is my retrospective on some big happenings in no particular order:

• Mike Vrabel turned around the fortunes of the Pats
• Ben Johnson turned around the fortunes of the Bears
• Liam Coen turned around the fortunes of the Jags
• John Harbaugh was fired in Baltimore
• Mike Tomlin stepped down in Pittsburgh
• Tomlin – – with Aaron Rodgers – – produced another winning season in Pittsburgh
• Both coaches of the two NY teams had very bad seasons
• Raiders hired and fired Pete Carroll in the same season.
• Bill Belichick was not elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame
• The Chiefs missed the playoffs this year
• The Cowboys traded Micah Parsons away to the Packers
• Philip Rivers made a cameo appearance as a QB after about 5 years in retirement
• Myles Garrett set a new single-season record for sacks.

            The Pro Bowl as an institution exposed itself once again as a fraud.  There were 3 QBs on each team; here are the three QBs that showed up for the AFC:

1. Joe Burrow – – No problem
2. Joe Flacco – – He was traded in mid-season and then benched around Thanksgiving
3. Shedeur Sanders – – He threw 7 TDs and 10 INTs in 2025.

            And if that list is not sufficiently embarrassing, consider that the Cleveland Browns had two of those three “Pro Bowl QBs” on their roster at the start of the season and posted a record of 5-12-0.

 

The Game:

 

(Sun 6:30 PM ET) Seahawks – 4.5 vs. Pats (45):  The game will take place in Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA – – the home field for the Niners.  The spread for the game has been virtually unchanged for the last two weeks; occasionally, the spread jumped up to 5 points for a short time and this morning there is still one of the sportsbooks that I check offering the game at 5 points. 

The same situation applies to the Total Line; the oddsmakers and the betting public are looking for a low scoring event.

The Money Lines for the game as of this morning are

• Seahawks at minus-230 to minus-245 depending on which sportsbook you use.
• Pats at +195 to +205 depending on which sportsbook you use.
• Again, these numbers have seen only minor fluctuations for the last two weeks.

I will be interested to see how Mike Vrabel and his staff have chosen to work on defense here.  I think Vrabel is a “Belichick disciple” in that he wants to take away from the Seahawks that element of the Seahawks’ offense that is most threatening.  And therein lies the choice:

• Do you try to “take away” Jaxon Smith-Njigba?  Or …
• Do you try to “take away” Kenneth Walker III?

If I were making the choice there, I would “take away” Kenneth Walker III because if the Seahawks cannot run the ball effectively, that will allow the Pats’ Front 7 to pressure Sam Darnold and that is the vulnerability in Darnold’s game – – under pressure he sometimes makes “bad decisions”.  However, Walker is not nearly the big-play threat that Smith-Njigba is and that is why I have a hunch the Pats will try to take him out of the game with Christian Gonzales and some safety assistance.  That could very well work – – but it will give the Seahawks a less predictable offense and some greater comfort for Darnold.

I think both defenses are excellent and that is why I think it is important for each team to get into a situation where their offenses are not predictable.  For the Seahawks, it is the ability to run the football effectively; for the Pats it means keeping the game as a one-score contest all along. 

The Super Bowl is the only time in the season where I predict the exact score of a game and a key element of the contest:

• Final Score:  Seahawks 27  Pats 17
• Key Element:  Seahawks sack Drake Maye 4 – 5 times in the game

            Finally, Vince Lombardi was the winning coach in the first two Super Bowl games back in the mid-60s; I will close out these Football Fridays with some of his thoughts:

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

And …

“We didn’t lose the game, we just ran out of time.”

And …

“If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score.”

And here is Lombardi’s view of college football …

“A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.”

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