The best of times:
Were you not entertained? It's hard to imagine a more engaging game, from start to finish. I was wrung out by the end, and my team wasn't anywhere near Minneapolis. The Eagles put everything on the table, including the legendary call shown on the SI cover at left. And no one who watched last year's game thought it was over until they saw for certain that the ball made contact with the ground on the Hail Mary. We had three generations watching together, and I'm pretty sure that until it was proven otherwise, we thought that New England would figure out some way to pull it out at the end.
A Cinderella story for the ages. The Nick Foles story is why people watch sports in the first place. As recently as Christmas night, he just plain stunk up the joint, and one reason I can say that with authority is that his poor play cost my fantasy team a championship. But why would anyone have expected anything more? I felt good for him after the divisional round victory, just because then he could point to something positive heading towards the future. But not for one second did I think it was possible for him to perform the way he did in the NFC Championship game and the Super Bowl. Even under the worst case scenario, in which he accomplishes nothing notable for the remainder of his career, he merits a paragraph (heck, maybe even a chapter) in the NFL History Book.
Tom Brady. Yeah, I'm tired of him too. But no one has ever played at a level like this, at an age like this. It really is quite remarkable.
The worst of times:
The NFL cannot win the battle against brain injuries. That was illustrated quite well by the play that sent Brandin Cooks packing (warning - not for the faint of heart).
What's scary about this play is that there is absolutely nothing the NFL can do to prevent it, outside of a change to the game so fundamental that it won't be American Football anymore.
As Rodger Sherman noted in The Ringer:
"Cooks spent several minutes motionless on the ground and was almost immediately ruled out for the rest of the game with a head injury. But Jenkins's hit wasn't dirty: he wasn't head-hunting, and he didn't aim to make contact high on Cooks's body. Yet he still hit the living hell out of him, and I can't imagine any rule that would make Jenkins's hit illegal that wouldn't essentially outlaw tacking. The hit on Cooks and his subsequent injury served as a remind that perfectly legal hits can cause the types of terrifying injuries that the NFL claims it can eliminate from the game, and it happened with the largest audience of the year watching."
Malcolm Gladwell is already on record as stating his belief that professional football as we have known it will end at some point during his lifetime. A few years ago, that seemed like a preposterous statement. Not so much anymore.
Defense, where art thou? The statistics all showed that New England's defense wasn't very good, but come on - more yards were gained in this game than ANY GAME IN NFL HISTORY. I have an old book about the early years of the Super Bowl, and there's a part in it that takes place right before Super Bowl III where some elitist NFL nabob is watching the AFL Championship game with some cronies, and makes the comment, "Gentleman, what we are watching here is Mickey Mouse football." Well, in that famous game, Joe Namath and Daryl Lamonica threw 96 passes, and the two teams gained a total of 843 yards. In Super Bowl LII, Tom Brady and Nick Foles threw 91 passes, and the two teams gained a total of 1,151 yards. Reach your own conclusions.
Cris Collinsworth. I'm not even sure why, but boy did I find him annoying.
There's probably an entire post in the issue of what the NFL can do to get past the "kneeling before the flag" issues, so we'll save that for another day.
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