Dear readers: I need to come clean with you.
My prediction for the Ravens-Eagles Super Bowl, published on this site less than two weeks ago, is toast. It was a false idea of ​​a perfect match.
Instead, this timeline is—as usual—a very bad timeline. I saw the light: The Kansas City Chiefs will win Super Bowl LIX. Because it is.
The Chiefs seemed to be rocking, if not fake, all season. They had the third best point differential in their division! Even if that point was diminished by resting the starters in Week 18 and losing 38-0, those 15 wins would have been more had they not all come in by the skin of their teeth.
But when I saw the Chiefs beat the Texans 23-14 in the division (they went 7-0 in games driven by Clay Martin), I understood why that was not important.
When Troy Aikman — a former linebacker who faced 10 tackles in his playing career — says the refs are protecting Patrick Mahomes too much, you know there’s a deep problem here.
Now, the Super Bowl umpire will be Ron Torbert, and not Martin: The Kings are apparently 5-5 with Torbert as their umpire. But you can take that record out of Kansas City’s four-game losing streak; third-and-8, and Mahomes is picked off on the ground in an incomplete.
All those fans booing in the stadium? All those Swifties on social media, starting to look up where you live? He knows that his hand will move once or twice and begin to reach for his flag, as if something deep in his unconscious has entered. It should not be part of a conspiracy to defraud the league to admit that the referees were too disrespectful to this team.
There is also the matter of Travis Kelce. He spent last season filming “Grotesquerie,” “Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?” and at least 90 markets, and lo and behold he was invisible for most of the normal year. Maybe you cheated on a soccer team that isn’t your boyfriend. I am not talking about my experience or anything.
However, after spending four months warming up, Kelce had his best showing of the season in the divisional round with seven catches for 117 yards and a touchdown. He’s back, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
You can throw any number you like in terms of Bills, Eagles or Commanders, and it won’t move me. We’re set for another year of bad talk about how Josh Allen (and Lamar Jackson) can win the big one. Another year of scalding takes on the shortcomings of Jalen Hurts and Nick Sirianni.
The Kansas City Chiefs will win their third consecutive Super Bowl. It won’t sound like a milestone in NFL history, and the celebrations will end in Kansas and Missouri. But the world will continue to turn and we will continue to eat this boring league, dream again next year.