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Super Bowl 54 As a Series of Sports Maxims

When Patrick Mahomes threw his second interception of the game early in the fourth quarter, one of his worst plays of what was then a very bad night, he gave the 49ers the ball to protect their 20-10 lead. I turned to Alice and said, "well, this one's pretty much over."

Turns out I was right, just not the way I thought. The lesson of this Super Bowl is that football, like all other sports, can not be fully explained by examining it as probabilities, ratios and other cold numbers. DVOA, the WAR of newish football stats, was better for the losing 49ers than for the winning Chiefs because San Francisco averaged more yards per play. Fat lot of good that did 'em.

No, football runs hot, as a violent sport must. The Kansas City Chiefs are champions this morning because they don't just run hot, they explode. Twenty-one points in five minutes with six minutes to play in the fourth quarter of the NFL's championship game is not an event susceptible to mathematical scrutiny. We must use our words, or in my case, other people's words, words used to explain other sports, too.

Maxim Number One: "All comebacks start with defense" -- Bill Russell.

Mahomes is on a float with cartoon characters today, and rightly so, but he has no chance to be the hero if the Chiefs' defense, bullied about for three quarters, hadn't responded to that allegedly fatal pick by flipping its switch. From that moment on, the 49er offense was held to two punts, a loss of the ball on downs and an interception in 17 plays. San Francisco quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo completed 17 of his first 20 passes. In the fourth quarter, he went 3 for 11. The 49ers were un able to rip off 10+ yard runs as they had in the opening 45 minutes of the game, either. This isn't calculus-level stuff. A team is only able to score three TDs in five minutes if it gets its hands on the ball three times.

No one has ever compared the 2019 Chiefs' defense to the '85 Bears, or even the 2019 Patriots. What was the root cause of its sudden identity switch to a brilliantly evil twin? For the answer, we consult a noted football authority.

Maxim Number Two: "Football games are determined by who can rush the passer in the fourth quarter" -- Bill Walsh.

For three quarters and two minutes, the 49er pass rushers, particularly Nick Bosa, had their way with the Chiefs' offensive line. Almost every time Mahomes dropped back, at least one San Francisco rusher beat their blocker clean. This had its usual effect on Mahomes' game. He made the quick, inaccurate throws of a man expecting immediately bodily harm. Meanwhile, his opposite number Garoppolo's uniform remained as clean as it was for the national anthem, and prospered accordingly.

When the Chiefs absolutely positively could not surrender another point, their rushers found a second desperate wind. Garoppolo became the quarterback under stress, surrounded if not sacked, unable to see much past the line of scrimmage. We have seen what that did to him down the stretch. Don't say Garoppolo choked. He was choked off.

News flash: Pass rushing is very hard work. Three hours of repeated anaerobic exercise is tough on 300-pound human bodies, chiseled or not. The 49er rushers lost a tiny bit of vim as a result of their stellar early work, and the Chiefs offensive line was able to battle to a draw. That's all that was needed to bring us to our last statement on Super Bowl 54.

Maxim Number Three: "A loaded six-gun beats any hand in the deck" -- poker saying of the Old West.

Mahomes is the Chiefs' loaded Colt .45. Hell, make it an AR-15. He is the reason Kansas City can defy probabilities and analytics to score points in ungodly bunches not seen since the Showtime Lakers on a roll. He is why Andy Reid has designed an offense made for explosions and built on speed. Mahomes is why the Chiefs got better when the time-space-scoreboard continuum and almost all of Super Bowl history said they'd get worse.

Quarterbacks get too much credit when they win and too much blame when they lose is a maxim, too, but I didn't include it in my list because as this Super Bowl showed, it's not always true. There are times, many times, when quarterbacks cannot be given too much credit, and this was one of them.

This was the third straight playoff game in which the Chiefs allowed an opponent AT LEAST a 10 point lead and came to win anyway. It was the fifth time Mahomes had led such a comeback in the 2019 season. That defies any kind of math and all kinds of history.

Consider the following. The all time leader in playoff comebacks from 10 points or more down is one Tom Brady. He's 6-6 in that situation, in a career of 20 years. Mahomes got halfway to Brady's mark in one year, his third in the NFL. Peyton Manning, also considered more than fair, was 2-8. So is Ben Roethlisberger. Kurt Warner, Hall of Famer, was 2-44 in the playoffs and regular season when his team was down by that margin. In the whole league it happens maybe 10 times in 256 games. Mahomes went 3 for 3.

Yeah, it's a team game. Yeah, the Chiefs have frightening speed afoot. Reid and offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy create game plans built for explosions (Kansas City's fourth down conversion in the first quarter was a play Bieniemy copied from Michigan's win in the 1948 Rose Bowl. How cool is that?).  Without Mahomes all of that is nice and gets the Chiefs a divisional round loss.

Some of the best pro football reporters and analysts in the country, men and women whose work has deepened my understanding of the sport, took to various quadrants of the Internet to quibble with Mahomes' MVP award last night. After all, he had a poor game until he won it. Surely running back Damian Williams (excellent for 60 minutes) or defensive end Chris Jones (see passage of Maxim Two) were more deserving.

Stuff and nonsense. It's the quarterbacks who can shrug off stinking up the joint for most of the game and come through when needed who I want. It's the guys who can be the bonafide Hero when only heroics will do. Tom Brady was pretty freaking terrible in the first half of Super Bowl 51 against the Falcons. Who remembers? Who cares?

The Chiefs have a Hero. That's worth more than 10 points in any game. Enjoy meeting Elsa, Mickey, Minnie and the gang today Patrick. Take lots of selfies. Tell them you'll be seeing them again.

Because you will.

posted by Michael Gee @ 10:43 AM