Instagram Ladies of the Super Bowl, Urban-Belichick At Mar-A-Lago & Clay's Latest Hate Mail
Instant reaction from having your heart ripped out for the second time in life
As if it wasn't hard enough as a kid to see Joe Montana lead a game-winning drive that culminated with a touchdown pass to John Taylor, last night Matthew Stafford found Cooper Kupp for a go-ahead touchdown and it was 1989 all over again.
But this time it's different. The Bengals have McPherson. Burrow will find a way to get the ball within field goal range. They've done this all through the playoffs. They'll figure it out.
And then, as if opening up old wounds, Zac Taylor goes with Samaje Perine on 3rd and 1. Then, with the Rams' defensive line knowing they had one play to end the season, Taylor sends Burrow into a collapsing pocket with an offensive line hanging on by a thread.
That was it -- the wounds were completely ripped open. I'm pretty sure I blacked out for at least three to four minutes as I tried to process how it all ended so quickly. The first three quarters and eight minutes of the game felt like they took five hours. The final 10 minutes on the clock ticked off in what felt like five minutes.
I'm still pretty numb this morning, but life is moving on. The sun is out, the kids are off to school, and the world moves along. If you were to ask me if I'll see the Bengals in the Super Bowl again in the next 20 years, I'd have to say yes to at least one more trip in that span, but then I'm quickly reminded that Aaron Rodgers has been a starter for 14 years and he's played in ONE Super Bowl.
My father called after the game, and I knew how hard he was hurting. Like me, he'd enjoyed the final two months of the NFL season more than he'd enjoyed the previous 32 years of being a Bengals fan. So many haunting memories were being erased, but in the end, the Bengals couldn't put to bed that feeling of being ripped apart at the end of a Super Bowl game.
Even the several thousands of dollars in squares money my dad won when Burrow's flailing pass on 4th down hit the turf couldn't ease the pain of this loss.
Hopefully, it doesn't take three-plus decades to get another chance at redemption.
Super Bowl analysis:
Broadcast:
Cris Collinsworth has this need to say things just to say things. Well, he said things after Stafford connected with Kupp for the game-winner.
I didn't think I was dreaming when I heard Cris say Stafford and Kupp were the best tandem he'd ever seen in pressure situations. What in theee hell is he talking about? Come on, dawg. You've watched thousands of football games, and this is what you come up with? Enough with the recency bias.
####
I'm pretty sure that was a final farewell from Al Michaels at the end of the broadcast when he made it rather clear that it would be the final Super Bowl he'd be calling with Collinsworth. The media insiders seem to believe it'll be Al Michaels and Troy Aikman handling Thursday nights for Amazon with Mike Tirico and Drew Brees assuming new full-time roles. Does that lead to Sean Payton to the NBC pregame show with Dungy, or is that former head coach overload?
####
• Hey NBC, we don't need a fourth-quarter in-game split-screen showing LeBron for no good reason.
• Did we need Maria Taylor reporting from Snoop Dogg's back before the halftime show?
• Michele Tafoya's Super Bowl sideline career is over. This morning, it was announced that she's going to work as campaign co-chair for Kendall Qualls, a Republican who is running for governor in Minnesota.
• There are letdowns like being a Bengals fan and seeing your team lose. And then there are letdowns like being a Bengals fan and NBC flipping to ice dancing after the game. Nothing kills a Super Bowl erection like an NBC executive flipping the switch over to the Olympics so the suits can soak up those primetime eyeballs for their Olympic advertisers.
Halftime show:
• Again, recency bias led to the inevitable, that was the greatest halftime performance in Super Bowl history takes out of the usual suspects. For the most part, it was a bunch of performers in their 50s taking people in their 40s back to the early-to-mid 1990s.
If you're looking for a strong opinion one way or the other out of me, I'm the wrong guy for the job. I was eating and scrolling through my phone.
Odds & Ends...and where were the masks?
• It's absolutely humorous how quickly the political losers lift a mask mandate to coincide with the Super Bowl. Gavin Newsom is expected to announce today that the state will issue new guidance on masks in schools. The school leaders will have to decide whether they'll allow the kids to go maskless. Meanwhile, Uncle Joe isn't letting go of masks. Nope, it's too premature, he says.
Two weeks ago, the politicians were holding their breath for photos. Then Sunday, life was suddenly back to normal. Imagine that.
• I'm convinced there are two different types of people in life: those who can focus on Super Bowl commercials and those who can't believe how well others can focus on Super Bowl commercials.
My wife pointed out that she put down her Nintendo Switch to watch the commercials while I grabbed my phone during commercials.
• I was honoring my Cincinnati/Dayton roots with the mid-day Skyline chili dogs, but it wasn't the best idea to go into the fourth quarter tied up in knots. Don't get me wrong, they were damn good, but the stress on top of the dogs wasn't the right move in the moment.
• Once again, I was shut out on squares. I was holding out hope this would be a Super Bowl with some odd score changes and two-point conversions that would mix up the numbers. Nope.
• The USFL made a brilliant move waiting to start until April. There's absolutely zero chance I'd be pumped up to see minor league football next weekend or the final weekend in February. Give me NASCAR guys turning left for four hours and I'll be fine.
• God bless the hardworking people who spent insane money to attend the Super Bowl festivities and game only to have to deal with this on the way home:
• And finally, thanks to all of you who've been dialed in for this playoff journey. I know you have your own teams and didn't necessarily want to read me ramble on about the Bengals for six straight weeks. It's time to get back to the basics upon which Screencaps was built on.
I will say that I've begun initial Thursday Night Mowing League preseason kickoff party conversations. I should have news very soon.