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During this past NFL season I have posted a weekly pre-port, a full length story of a Patriots game written before the game was ever played as if I were reporting on the past rather than peering into the future. Even though my beloved New England Patriots are watching this one from the sidelines, I have looked into my crystal ball to report, several days in advance, how the game turned out. Enjoy.
In 2014, when the New England Patriots called quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo’s name in the second round of the draft, they figured that within a few years he would lead his team to a Super Bowl victory. They were right, sort of.
Yesterday, one James Richard Garoppolo was named the MVP of the Super Bowl, the quarterback of the winning team. The only problem with that, for Bill Belichick and the Patriots brain trust, was that the Patriots were sitting at home watching the game on TV as Jimmy G quarterbacked the San Francisco Forty Niners to a 38-34 win over the Kansas City Chiefs.
To a Patriots fan, the focus of Super Bowl LIV has been the back story of the QB more than the game itself. Not anticipating the longevity of Tom Brady and not being able to afford the backup QB, the Pats found themselves like poor Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk, making an awkward trade and getting little in return. They ended up shipping Garoppolo to the Niners for their second round pick, which, after a lot of wheeling and dealing, amounted to little more than a handful of not-so-magic beans.
As for the game itself, the Chiefs, like the Patriots, thought they had a perfect plan, which was to follow the exact blueprint that got them into the Super Bowl. The Tennessee Titans had taken the unlikely route to the AFC Championship game of unveiling a brutal running attack, with Derrick Henry doing all the heavy lifting and quarterback Ryan Tannehill taking on the role of game manager, hitting a few key passes while playing a secondary role.
The Chiefs were betting that if they could shut down the powerful San Francisco ground attack, the game would turn out to be a match between young Jimmy and their star, Patrick Mahomes. And that’s exactly how the game went. Raheem Mostert was stopped cold, running for a total of 32 yards on 15 carries. Which meant that their wish would come true, that the Super Bowl would come down to a battle of the quarterbacks, Mahomes versus Garappolo.
Right so far, Kansas City. But, like the Patriots, they were only sort of right.
In a game of aerial acrobatics, Patrick Mahomes dazzled, as usual, passing for four touchdowns and a near record 470 yards in the air. What they didn’t realize was that he would be harassed all day by the San Francisco front four, and would fumble twice and throw two key picks with the game on the line.
More importantly, however, the Chiefs hadn’t counted on the emergence of Jimmy G on NFL’s biggest stage. Not to be outdone by Mahomes, Garoppolo passed for 471 yards, exactly one more than his counterpart, and was near perfect otherwise. He threw four touchdown passes, three to George Kittle, the 49er counterpart of Rob Gronkowski, with not a single interception. The coup de grace, however, was his 17 yard scramble in the fourth quarter for the winning touchdown. Looking very un-Brady-like, Garoppolo duked cornerback Richard Sherman out of his jock at the 12 and showed off some surprising speed and athleticism, diving into the end zone with 53 seconds left in the game.
Bill Belichick and Andy Reid are two of the greatest football minds of the era. The former wished for a great quarterback when picking in the 2014 NFL draft. The latter wished for a Super Bowl that would come down to a battle of the quarterbacks.
Both of them got their wish, sort of.
