Super Bowl LV Recap: Pure Joy and Disappointment

Super Bowl LV. There are so many word that can described this one game: GOAT, 7th, domination, disappointment, joy, and chaos all come to mind. It will be one of the most forgettable yet most memorable Super Bowls. A QB matchup that should’ve have been one for the ages, but ended up being a lopsided battle. Below, I have 4 one word takeaways that described this game perfectly.

GOAT

Ok, you know I HAD to start off with this. Tom Brady just won his 7th Super Bowl … 7th! He now has more Super Bowls than any NFL franchise. In the past 7 Super Bowls, he has made it to 5 of them and won 4 of them. He now has 4 Super Bowl victories since the “deflategate”, and this is the first time he has beaten a team by more than 10 points in the Super Bowl. If you look on paper, he had a great game with 205 yards and 3 TD. But where he really shined on Sunday was leading the Bucs down the field. He know when to throw the ball, who to throw the ball too, and knew how to handle each situation perfectly. As many experts predicted, Brady was going show his experience in these types of situations, and it was clear Mahomes was panicked at times. Another fun addition of the night, Brady was seen chirping at Tyrann Mathieu, but he later apologized to Mathieu for his actions. To cap off the night, Brady was joined by his children as he hoisted is 7th Lombardi trophy and won his 5th Super Bowl MVP (also an NFL record). To any Brady haters out there: you can hate Brady all you want, but you should have some respect for this guy- he is making history right in front of our eyes! He may not put up the craziest numbers every game, but he knows how to lead a team to victory.

GRONKOWSKI

In a game that lacked highlights, Gronk shared many of the main highlights. After he caught his first TD of the game, all Bucs fans erupted (and I imagine most Pats fans did too). It honestly made me tear up seeing Brady connect with Gronk on that first TD. Non-Patriots fans may say that we are angry, sad, or even feeling betrayed to see Brady and Gronk doing well on another team, but we are actually very proud of their accomplishments on the Bucs. Later in the game we saw Gronk catch another BEAUTY of TD and that made my heart melt even more. Just to see Gronk come back and be able to perform at such a high level, it truly made my eyes light up. Then he caught another pass in the middle of the field, which looked even more like virtual Gronk. He was seen celebrating with Brady after the game, and you could see the type of connection that both of these guy have, it’s truly something special. Gronk ended the night with 6 catches 67 rec yards and 2 TD becoming only the 2nd player ever to score 2 TD in 2 different Super Bowls. Unfortunately for the Gronk, he was on the off limits list of the Lombardi trophy after denting the Patriots Super Bowl LIII trophy.

Penalties

Oh boy did the penalties committed by the Chiefs really kill them during this game. By the 2nd quarter it seemed like every other play had a holding call or a DPI call on the Chiefs. Some of them I will agree are quite questionable, but the major penalties were clearly deserved. However, it was inevitable for this Chiefs defense, they have always had “sticky” coverage meaning they would play physical with the receivers. Brady knew how to exploit these mistakes and drew penalties on the Chief’s secondary. If the Chiefs didn’t commit a DPI late in the second quarter, and an offside penalty on a field goal try, this could have easily been a 1 score game. In big stages like this, every little mistake is going to cost you and it was clear with how the Chiefs played. There is going to be a major debate if the officials beat the Chiefs or if they just beat themselves.

Pressure

This applies in two ways to this game- physical pressure and mental pressure. The first one was the pressure applied by the Bucs defense on Mahomes. It seemed like the Chiefs offensive line couldn’t even block a stick on Sunday night, and Mahomes took all of the pain for that. He was hit, over and over again, but he never gave up on it. He continued to try to bring his team back into the game but he simply didn’t have a team that could perform well on it. From the drops by the receivers and the awful protection by the o-line the Bucs’ offense was under pressure that entire game. It was estimated that Patrick Mahomes ran 497 yards while trying to get away from the Bucs d-line. As I said before it was the little things that get to you in these games, and the loss of Eric Fisher really cost the Chiefs this game. The other type of pressure was what Patrick Mahomes had on him. It was clear as soon as they went down 21 – 3 Mahomes started to panic. He thought he had to make the big play every time but, he didn’t have to. Unlike Brady he lacks the wisdom and experience on situations like this. He doesn’t know to handle something like this and it was clear that he started to force throws late in the game. However I have massive respect for him, coming into this game with Turf-toe and needing surgery on it, he played an outstanding game putting 100% out on the field.

Conclusion

This is game that the Bucs fans will remember for years to come and Chiefs fans will forget soon. It was pure disappointment for most NFL fans as this game had so much hype towards it and ended up being a lopsided battle. Even though I wanted to see Brady win, I wanted it to be a close game and we were robbed of that. On an even broader note, I don’t think we got a single “good” playoff game this year, with nothing ending in a classic. I guess we would be grateful for the NFL to hold and entire regular season, with no canceled games. But to end this off on a good note, the best thing we got from this game is The Weeknd memes.

When you’re a kid and you lost your mom in the grocery store pic.twitter.com/XBF4rw5o4G

— Orli Matlow (@HireMeImFunny) February 8, 2021