Thoughts From Super Sunday

Photo by Matt Slocum (AP)

Super Sunday delivered once again. We had a great game with some spectacular plays, and a phenomenal finish. Congratulations to the New England Patriots on their fourth quarter comeback and fourth Super Bowl title.

In the midst of all the chaos, I wanted to do a rundown of the best and worst of Super Sunday. I had the day off of work because of the North Central-Wheaton doubleheader on Saturday, though given the giant snowfall we had in Chicago, I wouldn't have made it in anyway. I got to prep for the game, watch it in its entirety, and got to spend the whole day with my wonderful wife and our two cats. So below, here are the best and worst moments from yesterday.


Prop Bet Results
In addition to picking the results of the game (I got the winner right, but Adam and I both missed on the spread and the over/under), we also ran through 23 prop bets with point totals. You can view our bets at the given link, but here are the quick results.

Lucas: 1614.00 points won
Adam: 1005.81 points won

Basically, Adam beat me in all of the even ones, and I won because my long shot Gatorade pick turned out right. Overall, we ended up trading off on the offensive numbers, got nothing on defense or touchdowns scored, while Adam scored quite a few points on some of the random props. Texting him this morning, he mentioned that the Gatorade prop is "such a crap shoot", which is completely right. Credit him though for kicking butt in just about everything else. This season was a lot of fun picking games with him against the spread, and I'm hoping we can do it again next year.

Best Pregame Ritual

Kitten Bowl. Easily. Kristen and I were looking for stuff to watch during the day since we were cooped up inside, and found Kitten Bowl II, so we put it on. She got really into it, especially since the team of black cats ended up winning. Also it drew an unexpected fan. Rascal was fascinated by it. We ended up leaving it on for the replay the second time through, and while I was outside shoveling snow and trying to brush off my car, Rascal ended up on top of our TV stand trying to play. It was adorable.

Photo by Kristen Mitzel

Seriously. Take a look at this. How is this not the greatest thing ever? I love this cat... even though he gets into everything and is the worst beggar... other than maybe Rory, who spent most of the day sleeping, though she was begging for treats when she was awake.

I don't know what would have happened had we not been snowed in. Might have run some errands, but instead, we had a nice day in. Good times.


Best Commercial
Epic. Liam. Neeson. Manuever.

With all due respect to the Budweiser puppy commercial... you can't beat Liam Neeson.

Best Play of the Game
Ultimately, you have to go with the long pass to Jermaine Kearse.

I consider it the poor man's Antonio Freeman catch. Kearse did this in the Super Bowl, so it's going to receive more attention and probably be considered "better", but the Freeman pass was a play where he dove, had it tipped onto his shoulder for him to somehow roll over and catch it, then get up and score. Kearse was able to see this most of the way. Either way, fantastic play.

Worst Play of the Game

Just about every pundit has already weighed in on this, so I'm just going to add my voice to the masses. You have like 40 seconds left and have a timeout to spare. You're half a yard away from the likely game-winning touchdown. So what should you do? This isn't 20/20 hindsight; I was confused when the Seahawks came out in shotgun and spreading it out. Again, you need half a yard... AND YOU HAVE MARSHAWN FREAKING LYNCH. Great play by Malcolm Butler, so from New England's perspective, this was the Best Play of the Game. But from an objective football standpoint... this was dumb. Good on Pete Carroll to take responsibility for the play call, and good on Russell Wilson to take the blame for the throw. Good leaders, but they made a mistake here, and New England made them pay.

Most Fun Fact
The transference of losses was just amazing. Take a look at this.

• Detroit: Loses to Dallas on bad flag pickup/Jim Caldwell being a coward
• Dallas: Loses to Green Bay on the Calvin Johnson Rule
• Green Bay: Loses to Seattle on Mike McCarthy being a coward
• Seattle: Loses to New England on Darrel Bevell/Pete Carroll being an idiot

Other than Dallas, all these losses can be pinned on bad coaching decisions. It's just amazing how it shifted from one winner to the next.

Super Bowl MVP

Yeah, Brady led a comeback from down 10 in the fourth quarter, finished with four touchdown passes, passing Joe Montana for the most in Super Bowl history while winning his fourth Lombardi Trophy... but Kristen is the real MVP.

I was on record here with my prediction, which was pretty close to the final score, but not exact (Steelers 27, Cardinals 23 remains my lone moment of perfection). When we woke up yesterday morning, she told me that she had a dream that the Patriots would win, and there would be a big play involved. Sure enough... she was right. I'm not saying my wife is psychic... but my wife may be psychic.

I've mentioned on here that, other than hockey, Kristen isn't much of a sports fan. Yet she was willing to let me have the Super Bowl on for the entire game without an issue. Not only that, but she also made dinner and drinks, let us pull out the TV trays to eat dinner in the living room, she washed the dishes... you won't find a better MVP performance than that. Gentlemen, if your girlfriend is as awesome as that... marry her.

This will do it for football-related posts for the 2014 season. If you want to follow up on offseason news, go check out UKEndzone. We've finished up our offseason outlooks for all 32 teams in the league. I do all the stuff for the NFC North teams, and you can read all of my pieces for them here. We'll see you again in August!