Obligatory Super Bowl Thoughts
It's all about line play
I made a run up to Lapland Lake yesterday morning (see photo), where I spent a couple hours cross-country skiing a bit over seven miles. So I was a little out of it by the time the Big Game rolled around. The kids are just interested enough in mass culture to want to see the commercials, though, so I was able to have the game on, and it was Kate’s turn to handle The Pip’s bedtime routine, so I actually got to watch the whole thing.
I’re read and listened to a bunch of commentary about the game, which as usual is too focused on the “skill position” players— quarterbacks, receivers, and running backs— and not nearly enough on the line play. Which I thought was the real story of this— the Rams were weirdly intent on trying to run the ball, but their line just wasn’t doing a good job of blocking the Bengals, so it never went anywhere. And while the Bengals line was never great, the turning point of the game was in the second half when the Rams figured out a scheme that they just couldn’t block at all. Joe Burrow was doing well with quick dump-off passes in the first half-and-a-bit, but for the last quarter, he didn’t even have time for that.
Anyway, it was a close game, with the outcome in doubt until the last minute, which is as much as you can ask for. There was the usual grumbling about the officiating, but I didn’t think the penalty call for grabbing Cooper Kupp on the goal line was that terrible; certainly not as bad as the non-call on the Bengals reciever grabbing a cornerback’s face mask that set up Burrow’s longest completion. It was kind of a grinding defensive game for much of the second half, which wasn’t super exciting, but I’ll take that over the blowout Super Bowls of the mid-90’s.
The Pip really perked up for the halftime show celebrating circa-2000 West Cost rap, but I was never into that scene, so didn’t really recognize any of the songs (it didn’t help that SteelyKid chose that moment to try to discuss homework). I’ve also just never been into the kind of musical performance where 150 dancers do elaborate moves in unison, so these always tend to leave me cold. The main thing I learned from this is that Kendrick Lamar is really small. Also, Dr. Dre is six years older than me, and looked it.
(At one point, I said “Man, Dre is moving like he’s 80.” The Pip immediately said “Well, he might be.” He’s 10, so as far as he’s concerned everybody born before 2000 is a hundred years old.)
The vaunted commercials were mostly pretty forgettable— lots of electric cars, which I suppose could be treated as an important indicator of the cultural moment, if you wanted to write a dollar-store Thomas Friedman column. (I don’t.) If you want input from the all-important 10-year-old demographic, when I was scrolling through a slideshow of the big ads this morning before going out to wait for the bus, the only one The Pip reacted positively to was the obligatory CGI-animal spot:
Make of that what you will.
And that’s as much as I’ve got on the most massive of mass culture events. Here are some buttons:
And if you’d like to argue with me or The Pip at one degree of separation, the comments will be open.
It seems like a rare gift when the in-game commentary mentions the line play; it seems impossible to expect the post-game commentary to care about it. I think there's some reluctance to confront the fact that having smart, thoughtful people in the "smash their heads into each other" positions makes a big difference to the team. There was a time when all that was expected of the line was to be strong and tough, but since the 90s at least, so many of the best line players are great because they are strong and tough AND have a really deep understanding of the game.
Obligatory disclaimer - I'm not saying that the terrible toll it takes to be a line player in the NFL would be OK as long as they're not that smart to begin with. And it's totally possible that there's some other reason that we never talk about how smart you have to be to be an A-level NFL line player. But it definitely feels like most of the time when we talk about "skill" players we talk about individual ability, and when we talk about line players we talk about coaching decisions.
Off topic: what does the bedtime routine look like for your 10yo? I have a 9yo and I'm always interested in how other families do things.
Also the salesforce commercial definitely had me tricked into thinking it was like some environmental initiative or something. I found the coinbase QR code screensaver commercial quite clever.