Hurts So Good
The team you hate the most got crushed by the team you hate the second most. Welcome to what amounts to joy in 2025. OK, I admit it. Without the 49ers in the playoffs this year, the NFL postseason just didn’t have the same meaning for me. But putting my bitterness aside (a first in the history of this newsletter), didn’t this year just feel a little less Super Bowl-ish than usual? Maybe it was the non-competitive game. Maybe it was that Patrick Mahomes was outed as a human being. Maybe it was that in the age of sociopolitical uproar, marketers played it particularly safe with their commercials. Maybe it was the first-time attendance at the game by a sitting president, which added a political undertone during one of the communal moments we were all hoping would provide a brief respite from politics. Maybe it’s that the halftime show, while good, required some backstory and analysis in a year when we probably could have used the simplicity of Left Shark. Maybe it’s that we’re no longer allowed to eat all the carb-heavy snacks that once dominated gamedays. (My 3-layer dip included Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy.) Meh, maybe it’s just that my team wasn’t in the game.
+ “The Eagles are not a dynasty, but they’re building a résumé as this generation’s New York Giants, the spoilers to the teams that everyone hates to see win—but no one else can find a way to beat. They did it to Tom Brady and the Patriots in the 2017 season. And now the Chiefs, in extravagant, dominant fashion in front of a TV audience of 100 million-plus Sunday night, a 40-22 victory that few saw coming. Not a dynasty, but they do build statues for this type of thing. The team that Kansas City sent home in the Super Bowl two years ago, and that just last season got bounced from the wild-card round after imploding down the stretch, managed to defy the anticipated three-peat and scramble the assumed power structure in the NFL.” The Ringer: This Was a Super Bowl for the Haters, and the Eagles Were the Perfect Antagonists.
+ ESPN: How the Eagles dominated the Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes.
+ If there was one factor that decided the game, it was the Eagles’ defensive line. The real Super Bowl MVP for the Eagles? How about the defensive line that pummeled Patrick Mahomes.
+ The game’s official MVP was pretty damn good too. And as he offered after the game, his journey to this point was, “not normal.” Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts named MVP of Super Bowl LIX.
+ During the Kendrick Lamar halftime show, I found myself yelling at the director to pull back the camera shot so we could get a better look at the scope of the choreography. I feel like TV viewers missed too much of the show. What was impossible to miss was yet another chapter in the Lamar/Drake rap feud (which, at this point, is more one-sided than the football game was). When your ex GF dances to the tune of the guy publicly humiliating you, it’s never a good thing. When that GF is Serena Williams and it’s the halftime of the Super Bowl, yikes. The Ringer: Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Was a Master Class in Ass-Whooping. (I mean it’s pretty obvious at this point. We need to figure out a way to get Kendrick Lamar pissed at Elon Musk.)
+ NPR: The best (and worst) Super Bowl commercials this year. (Surprised not to see the Nike So Win ad here, which I thought was good.)
+ And last, but not least (especially for hardcore football fans), damn, that new scorebug was bad in so many ways.
