By Jack Gilroy || Contributing Writer
Well, well, well…If you didn’t watch the Super Bowl or aren’t on social media consider this your one stop shop for all the crazy things that happened during this year’s Super Bowl. Don’t worry I PROMISE I am not judging you for not paying attention to probably the most important sporting event that happens every year.
I’ll start with this, Tom Brady is a bad mother******. He and the Tampa Bay Bucs took down the reigning champs, the Kansas City Chiefs, led by the reigning MVP Patrick Mahomes. If you like football, you loved this game for a plethora of reasons. Now, if you didn’t watch, I will illustrate this game for you in a way that would make Michelangelo proud.
It was a weird start to the game from the opening coin toss. Everyone and their mothers know you always call Tails, Tails never fails…, except in the Super Bowl I guess, as the result of the coin toss was heads, sending sports bettors everywhere into an early panic.
The game started with a few three and outs from both sides until KC hit a field goal to start the scoring. What came next was what everyone was hoping for but no one expected…Gronk catches a little swing pass and walks into the endzone untouched. If you told me a year ago that Gronk was going to score in the Super Bowl, I would’ve called you an idiot, but then followed that up with saying how cool that would be. I mean this guy was throwing a beach party at last year’s game, and he had just won a WWE belt as a pro-wrestler. I mean the guy is a known menace to society in the best way possible, and it’s likely that if you’ve ever seen Gronk in person but not on the field, he was drunk. He is the only guy in the NFL who can basically do whatever he wants and people will just be like “Oh, that’s just Gronk, don’t worry about it.”
As the game went on it was clear that Tampa came to play, and the Bucs defense came to play as they have been all playoffs… pressuring Mahomes on 29 of his 56 dropbacks…SHEESH. The Bucs were led by Devin White pacing the defense with 12 tackles, but to only name one guy is a disservice to the rest of the team. The front 7 balled out on the best offense in the league and didn’t allow a single touchdown all game. This was unlike the last time the Bucs and Chiefs played against each other as Tyreek Hill, a Chiefs receiver, went for 200 yards and had 2 TDs in 1 quarter…The guy was literally flipping into the endzone.
It is safe to say that the Bucs defense took it personally after getting torched in the first meeting earlier in the regular season, which explains their lockdown defense in the Super Bowl.
Another crazy thing that happened was Antonio Brown played in this game, and the even crazier thing was that he scored a touchdown. I mean this guy practically bamboozled the NFL, being the worst headcase I have seen in my lifetime, and doing everything he could’ve done to make sure he would never play in the NFL again after his fiasco with the Raiders. But when the greatest QB of all time wants you on his team, you play on his team. Just goes to show the respect and pull Brady gets in the NFL.
I would be doing a disservice to not talk about the greatness of Patrick Mahomes, this guy is special, that’s not up for debate. But the Bucs defense had his number and made it incredibly difficult for him to get anything going. Nonetheless it wouldn’t be a game without ridiculous throws from Mahomes.
I mean come on, this guy is horizontal to the ground and is still getting the ball off. And oh by the way, this pass hit the receiver in the endzone right in the face, but he unfortunately dropped it. Honestly, it’s probably better this way, because if he had caught it, sports fans would’ve had this play shoved down our throats all off season.
If you didn’t think the previous throw was ridiculous enough, here is another one. Mahomes was being spun around, dragged to the ground, and still was able to get the throw off…Oh yeah this throw was on the money too but was unfortunately dropped by the receiver.
Chiefs haters worldwide may have a new favorite player in the Bucs’ Antonio Winfield JR. On the last offensive play for the Chiefs, Mahomes rolled to his right, and had a streaking Tyreek Hill coming back for the ball (a play that works most of the time for the chiefs). As the play was happening, the rookie Winfield came up huge and knocked the ball and Hill down. What happened next was probably the most savage Super Bowl move of all time, and I will let the picture speak for itself.
Hitting Tyreek Hill with his own signature celebration is so cold. If you didn’t know, Tyreek Hill is a speed demon and his signature move is to throw up the peace sign when flying past helpless defenders, but it was Winfield who got the last laugh.
So, Brady and his Bucs go on to end the game, helping Brady claim his 7th championship and cementing him as the greatest of all time in football. I mean the guy himself has more championships than any other franchise in the NFL, pretty impressive if you ask me.
I will end with this, when you come at Tom Brady you better not miss, and when a defense plays that good with Brady at QB, the odds are strongly in their favor. So, congratulations to the 2021 Super Bowl Champs, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Junior Jack Gilroy is a contributing writer. His email is jgilroy@fandm.edu.