Super Bowl Takeaways

Photo by AJ Mast from The New York Times

The fantastic postseason continued with a very good Super Bowl, even if it wasn’t as good as it possibly could have been.

Let’s break down the three things I noticed from the Rams Super Bowl victory over the Bengals.

Los Angeles Rams

The Rams passing offense looked really good for the first part of the game.

Despite McVay’s continued attempts to run without any success, the receiving corps of Cooper Kupp, Odell Beckham Jr. and Van Jefferson was giving the Rams success.

And then OBJ suffered a bad knee injury keeping him out the rest of the game.

The Rams offense was never the same after that.

Still, there is a reason the Rams went out and built a super team.

OBJ was out. Didn’t matter.

Cooper Kupp was still clutch when it mattered.

Jalen Ramsey did not have his best game by any means. Didn’t matter.

Von Miller and Aaron Donald were still clutch when it mattered.

And it is no surprise that with the Bengals driving at the end of the game to go and tie it up or win the Super Bowl, the third and fourth down stops were made by Donald.

The best defensive player I’ve ever seen in my lifetime has his Super Bowl ring.

Hopefully he now retires and can leave me and my Seahawks alone…

Cincinnati Bengals

The Bengals were the underdogs in this game, but that didn’t matter.

They were dogs on the road in Tennessee and in Kansas City, and they still pulled off the win.

And I wonder if they could have done it again without the 4th quarter injury to Joe Burrow.

I know he walked around and Zac Taylor hasn’t said anything about his injury, but I also know what I saw.

You don’t grab your knee and scream unless you are in significant amounts of pain, especially as a professional athlete.

Burrow was not 100% at the end of the game, and a large part of that is once again the Bengals complete and utter inability to protect him in the pocket.

The Bengals lost a great chance to win a title, but they do now have a blueprint for the future.

The defense played really well all postseason. You have the skill players available to be a high powered offense.

The Bengals offseason needs to be using a majority of their draft picks and cap space on offensive linemen, because Burrow can’t continue to take hits like this.

It hurt him last year, and it hurt him in the biggest moment of this year.

The Officiating

Now now. Settle down.

I am not going to spew off a bunch of nonsense about how the Rams did not deserve to win and the refs gave it to them. That would be completely untrue and I’m not going to say that.

All I’m going to say is stuff that I noticed in the game.

And one thing that I noticed is that for the first 58 minutes of the game, there were 4 total flags.

In a 3 play span in the final two minutes, the refs threw 4 flags, including a very controversial holding penalty on the Bengals on 3rd down and goal for the Rams that would’ve forced fourth down.

And that play specifically is what needs to be discussed, because every NFL fan just wants consistency from the officiating.

If you’re going to let them play, then let them play.

If you’re going to call it tight, then call it tight.

But the Bengals had a great TD chance taken away by Jalen Ramsey holding Tee Higgins and the refs let it go.

The Bengals then scored a 75 yard TD after Tee Higgins blatantly facemasked Jalen Ramsey, but the refs let it go.

Both looked like clear as day flags to me, but whatever. If the refs are letting them play, then so be it.

But on one of the most important plays of the entire Super Bowl, some light contact drew a flag and gave the Rams an automatic first down.

They would go on to score, and win the Super Bowl.

And that adds up to a Super Bowl that I think summarized the entire NFL regular season despite a fantastic postseason.

This game was setting up to be one for the ages, before injuries and a late game officiating decision made it lesser than what it could have been.

Still, it was much better than the last time the Rams went to the Super Bowl…

Now we get a couple months off before we all gather around the TV on April 28th and watching the hit Kevin Costner film “Draft Day” so we can know more about why none of Bo Callahan’s teammates went to his birthday party.