Matthew Stafford Made It
Super Bowl LVI is in the books and the Los Angeles Rams are champions. Some incredible drafting (Donald, Kupp) and the wild balls to the wall free agency and trade moves paid off and Sean McVay stands tall over his domain. All 500 Rams fans got the dream they’ve been waiting 6 years to witness. Congrats to them.
That was a pretty middle-of-the-road super bowl. It wasn’t a bad game by any stretch but I can’t say it was this thrilling masterpiece up there with the best of the last decade. The defense was mostly the star of the show but a few moments of offensive fun snuck through and the game stayed a one-score affair for pretty much the majority of the runtime. But it had some genuinely dull stretches where I simply zoned out only to realize it was half a quarter later and nothing had changed.
I think part of the problem was that the game basically went as expected. The Bengals offense got destroyed at the line of scrimmage and despite some valiant Joe heroics that made it competitive from Cincy it was simply too much for them to handle and they slogged down after that late first-half/early second-half scoring surge. I think what disappointed me most was the Rams offense. For the second super bowl in a row, McVay seemed to play weirdly cautious and afraid. The Bengals defense is better than they get credit for but it seemed like it took most of the game for them to get Kupp the ball and do…Rams things. Granted, Beckham tore his ACL early after scoring the first TD and the Rams couldn’t run the ball for shit, so they didn’t have the depth they normally do to really play around. Still, it felt like the Rams generally played not to lose the game, even while losing, until that final drive when Stafford finally started finding Kupp. But a single score in the 4th quarter doesn’t make for the most memorable of super bowls.
Also gotta give credit to the officials: they sucked! On the Bengals giant deep score to open the second half Jalen Ramsey got thrown to the ground by his facemask. No flag! Okay. Everyone hates Jalen Ramsey so it was funny but still, it was pretty blatant. They mostly kept their heads down and let the teams play football (good!) but then decided out of the blue that they wanted their time in the sun so out of nowhere a pretty weak holding call on Cooper Kupp suddenly gives the Rams a far better chance of winning on that final drive. A DPI call right after basically handed the Rams the game. The league is not rigged (until we see actual evidence otherwise) but I can’t blame any furious Bengals fan after the refs went full ref right when they shouldn’t go full ref. Felt like a good representation of the season. We can’t have good football without a little ref piss in it. As the NFL continues to partner with sport betting apps this…might come home to roost very badly the next time a call severely impacts a game.
The image that I’m probably going to remember most about this game is Aaron Donald flinging Burrow to the ground on that 4th down as Chase ran free towards the endzone. The Bengals got so close, but that lack of O-line finally, truly came back to bite them at the worst possible moment. Getting to a Super Bowl is hard. Winning one is harder. There is no guarantee that the Bengals will even get to return. But if they can fix that o-line and some holes on defense, this team should be able to compete for the next several years.
I’m very sad for the Cincinnati fans. They waited a long time for this. The Los Angeles Rams are not nearly as beloved by the city and it probably won’t change much even with the win. But the Rams team itself was incredibly full of people I am thrilled to see take home the trophy. Stafford the most. Toiling away in Detroit, keeping a garbage organization on the cusp of relevance for a decade, he finally got a chance to make his dream happen and he did it. Thrilled for the guy.
I’m happy for Aaron Donald, who honestly seems like he might be an asshole, but he’s maybe the best defensive tackle ever and players like that should have at least one ring on their resume.
I’m happy for Eric Weddle, who retired for one final shot at glory and got it.
I’m so happy for Andrew Whitworth, who has been around for so long and finally got his chance on top of being the NFL’s Walter Payton Man of the year.
I’m happy for Cooper Kupp, the greatest white slot receiver Bill Belichick never got to coach.
I’m happy for Von Miller, who got to do his thing again instead of wasting away on a rebuilding Denver squad in his twilight.
I’m happy for Jalen Ramsey, even though he’s kind of a ponce and got his ass kicked in that game
I’m happy for Van Jefferson, who won the championship and then witnessed the birth of his kid an hour later.
I’m happy for Johnny Hekker, who is an awesome punter, an unappreciated position
I’m bittersweet for Robert Woods, who had to watch from the sidelines most of the year
and I’m honestly very happy for OBJ. Winning certainly facilitates redemption arcs but he genuinely seemed to be a major reason why the Rams made it, and I’m happy he got to enjoy the taste of a touchdown catch in the Super Bowl before his special night was ripped from him in a way no player should have to endure. Ride all the boats you want this summer, my man.
A final fuck you to all the crypto ads, and the commercials in general. They get worse every year and crypto can eat my ass. Halftime show was pretty damn good though.
With this season concluded, here are my favorite game bets from the year. It was a pretty great year, honestly, and I was proud of many of them.
Which ones were your favorites?
Mu-Goff-sa, by far. It’s like Manningface but even derp-ier.
As one of those 500 Ram fans since 1971, couldn’t be happier.
I had the impression (from all the way across the country and honestly not based on anything) that the Rams were finally starting to re-establish a fan base in the LA area that would b e stable enough to survive even the inevitable cliff they’re going to fall off in a couple of years once age and all those missing draft picks catch up to them.
The team to feel bad for out there is probably the Chargers. I get the impression LA (and possibly even Southern California’s) NFL fanbase can’t reliably be depended on to sufficiently support two teams through thick and thin. And despite the Chargers having a much more promising future than the Rams with Herbert (and also just barely missing the playoffs) they’re destined to lose out. After the NFL finally has its way and gets the Jaguars in London, I honestly think the Chargers are the most likely team to bolt (yeah pun intended) elsewhere.
I saw an interesting explanation for why refs start making more calls later in games. I don’t know how true it is, but it makes a lot of logical sense, so take this for whatever it’s worth to you…
Basically, they start off “letting them play.” As the game goes on and the players realize they can “play,” they start to pull more crap to see how much they can get away with, until in the 4th quarter it gets bad enough that the refs have to reinsert themselves to ensure it doesn’t go completely off the rails. I’m not saying that’s what happened, but given I don’t have access to the All-11 tape, I can’t confirm it’s not true.
I’m ok with the pace of the game, considering we had fresh teams, fresh players, and no real heels to despise. I think OBJ
letting his daddy step in to get him thrown off the Browns and pretending he wasn’t behind it made him the biggest heel, and that’s nothing compared to past Super Bowl Jerks. I do feel bad for him. Even at his worst, I wouldn’t wish him to go out of the game like that. =(
And everyone got their chance to dunk on Eli Apple for being a chump. He must be the worst teammate ever, because people were lining up around the block to take shots at him afterwards. His mom was going at it with sideline reporters. Crazy stuff.
Bah. I missed my typo… All-22 tape. This is why.I shouldn’t comment via mobile.
Going back and reading some of the comments I’ve left on mobile makes me want to crawl into a hole and die. Maybe one day we’ll get an edit button here!
I think guys commit more penalties at the end of tight games cause they don’t want to be embarrassed. Everyone knew that the Rams driving was going to be their last, and the make or break drive. So when they are in the redzone, the D knew they needed to do whatever and hope they don’t get caught.
The only thing unfortunate to see is Stan Kroenke getting a trophy, and not a trophy for “NFC West’s Most Shittiest Owner” (I was going to say NFL’s Most Shittiest Owner but Dan Snyder’s got that in the bag).
What do you have against crypto? You really seem to hate it…
I’m guessing he’s just tired of being bombarded with the ads. Perhaps he thinks it’s a fad, or a ponzi scheme or whatever, which just goes to show he clearly doesn’t understand it yet.
Bringing people around like this isn’t going to happen if we bombard them and argue with them. The great many benefits crypto has to offer will be here when he’s ready to take it in with an open mind.
You all really do talk like you’re in a fucking cult without realizing it
Ahh yes; an intangible currency created and backed by nothing but memes and computing power. Can’t see how that could possibly ever go wrong.
Dogecoin might be backed by a meme, but the majority of others aren’t. When you say “backed by nothing but computing power”, I wonder how well you know our current system. Sure, there’s allegedly a “gold standard” behind things, but good luck getting that to matter to you in any way. Unless you’re keeping your money under your pillow or buried in your back yard, you already deal in an intangible currency backed by computing power, and if you work for an even medium sized company, so do they. We just call it things like “credit cards” or “purchase orders” if “electronic withdrawals / direct deposits”. Nothing but ones and zeros moving around for years now.
And again, crypto isn’t for me at this point, and I think for most people countries like the USA it’s gonna take awhile for it to really take off. But under some oppressive regimes, or for people who have good reason to hide their transactions (legal or illegal reasons), it’s already a game changer.
Actual currencies are backed by the governments that issue them. No mater what happens today, tomorrow or almost certainly next century the fifty two dollars in my wallet will have value. Clearly there’s not much history upon which to wager, but in a century do you think bitcoin, etherium or dogecoin will still be around? I’d bet hard against all three still being a thing and would not be surprised if all three are gone. That’s ignoring the countless other currencies floating around. Worse yet, every one of them represents wasted CPU cycles. More power is being blown on mining crypto than is consumed by the entire state of California. Are there really that many people mail ordering drugs?
I realize it sounds that way, but to me, you sound like this:
“Automobiles will never catch on. They’re too difficult to drive; they require too much specialized knowledge; don’t even get me started on maintenance, or the amount of pollutants they put in the air just running, let alone manufacturing fuel. I’ll stick with my horse and buggy, thank you very much.”
It took about 50 years for the invention of the automobile to change society, and roughly 15-20 years for the internet to begin to change society in a meaningful way. I believe cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology will eventually do the same – it currently has about as many users as the internet did in 1997 and is growing faster.
Hopefully this is the part where I sound less like a cult – if you’re not ready to talk about it, that’s fine. I don’t expect this place to be one where we can have a productive discussion on the topic. But there’s no need to yuck someone else’s yum just because you don’t get it.
Automobiles had obvious uses and benefits from day one as well as the history of similar tech (trains) on which to base its success. Making my computer fill out millions of sudokus so some Kyle can trade his chunk of chain for weed does not seem so useful to me.
The key words in your comment are “to me.” It’s okay if you don’t see the point of it, but you should be able to see a growing number of people (and corporations!) who do. Perhaps at that point you should ask yourself, what am I missing here?
There’s video on YouTube of Bill Gates being interviewed on Letterman back in 1995 where Gates is explaining the internet to him. Look it up, and see Letterman’s skeptical comments on the internet back then. You might find your views on crypto age as well as his comments on the internet did.
The video game industry once added microtransactions into games to great anger. Nobody wanted that. Only the people in power wanted it, because it made them more money. Despite the outcry, they just kept doing it because enough people bought it, and now microtransactions are worse than ever, but everyone just accepts it as part of the industry.
That’s what will make Crypto survive if it does. Not it being an actual good technology that solves problems, because in half a decade it’s already failed at it’s invented purpose of being a currency. It’ll survive because the powerful who could afford to play with it just shoved it down our throats until it was simply too hard to root out.
All I see is a volatile mess of scams and a stock market based around fake money that only makes you real money if you convince more people to buy in so you can sell at a higher market rate for actual money. It’s gross, and no wonder celebrities and finance bros who already have lots of money can afford to buy in and shove it in our faces. The average person who buys in loses money. The system benefits those who can afford to take those losses, aka people who were already well set up.
Opensea just got hacked for like 200mil. Crypto makes our own garbage financial system look like the sturdiest, steadiest rock you’ll ever see.
I guess I can see how you arrived at that take, Dave, but there’s so much more you’re missing.
People tend to forget that currency has two purposes – a medium of exchange (which fiat is good at, and bitcoin is bad at), and as a store of value (which fiat is terrible at, and bitcoin is excellent at).
You mention how the rich and powerful control the system, but that’s inherent in any financial system. What is unique about Bitcoin is the ways in which nobody can control it – its absolutely fixed supply. Over 40% of the world’s currency was printed since the pandemic started. Every time governments print more money, they are stealing value from existing currency holders through inflation. Since the pandemic started, they’ve downplayed just how bad inflation will be, then when firm numbers came out, tried to convince us it wasn’t that big a deal, and then tried to claim that it’s actually good for us (it’s not). The US government will probably be fine, but smaller countries are headed for financial ruin because of all the debasing of their currency their governments have done. Bitcoin is a solution to this problem, particularly for citizens of 3rd world countries.
I don’t know about you, but as a middle class citizen of the first world, I spent some time last year calculating how much I was saving for retirement and how well my mutual funds were doing. I have low expenses and save every penny I can, and I completely lost faith in being able to retire before I reach 100. Inflation keeps making the retirement target harder and harder to calculate and to reach. I can’t keep blindly trusting that if I do what financial experts tell me, I will get there eventually, while those same financial experts are accumulating bitcoin themselves because they know better.
> It’s rife with scams
Everywhere there is money, there are scams. Another property of any financial system. That’s not to say it should be avoided entirely. It just means you should be careful with your money (as usual).
> The average person who buys it loses money
If people are buying it as a get rich quick scheme, they’re in the market for the wrong reasons. The truth is, NOBODY ever in the 12+ year history of bitcoin, has ever bought it, kept it for at least 4 years, and lost money on it. EVER.
I also want to push back against the idea it’s for the rich. A lot of people don’t know you can buy fractions of bitcoin, making it possible to get in at any financial level.
And this isn’t even to say how blockchain technology is going to change the internet in ways you don’t even understand yet. There are countries (China being one) that are going to be rolling out their own CBDC. The stock market will be entirely tokenized by the end of the decade. Web services can be hosted on chain for fractions of the cost.
I don’t tell you all of this because I’m looking for more people to get in on the “greater fool theory” as you say. I tell you this because I care about people and I want to help them avoid the inevitable financial ruin that staying on the fiat rails will get you.
The Derek Car one is so funny and so creepy at the same time…
makes you wonder what megatron couldve done if also had a rams team to play on
Kwisatz Mahomeserach and Walrus Shai-Hulud is my favorite thing on the internet.
Aaron Donald was one of the only draft picks in St. Louis that made it appear like they wanted to win. Johnny Hekker was great to the fans in St. Louis. Those are the candidates for the last St. Louis Rams.
The game was fine, but unfortunately it was another case of the officials deciding to insert themselves at the worst possible moment. Rams still won fair, but it does leave behind a sour taste. Ah well… onto the worst part of the year; mock draft season. Excuse me while I hole up and die.
The reason I watched it on the BBC? No ads.
Sloppy game, I thought. Happy for the Rams, particularly Stafford, but for Cincinnati to effectively puke it up almost the same way they did back at XXIII has got to sting. To hang in as long as they did and come up empty… Such a shame that their only weakness was what bit them on the ass – their boiled-tofu offensive line. Their last drive and the flurry of defensive penalties they got hit with at the end hurt to watch.
i get theres a difference between bad offense on one hand and good defense on the other (the two are not mutually exclusive but nor does one imply the other) but this still feels like yet another “the game wasnt a shootout so it was boring” take
mcvay was way too conservative on average but i thought defensively this game was as exciting as weve had in a long time
Remarkably reminiscent of the last Super Bowl the Bengals played in. Clinging to and then failing to keep the lead in a close game where they were generally outmatched but managed to largely control.
Derek Car remains an amazing piece of artwork.
“That is a DISGUSTING ACT by Prince” – in Joe Buck’s voice on Prince rubbing his ass on Starbucks logo.
Even as a Seahawks fan, I like this one for some reason…..
Let’s face it: that mermaid got so wet, the sea level rose 6″.
Regarding your alt-text Dave, I agree. It’s crazy to see people argue that while also saying Eli doesn’t deserve to get in. It feels like Twitter is in a universe where everything more than 2 years old is either offensive or not relevant. Everything within the last 2 years is the best.
What do you expect? It is for 15 year-olds.
The Bengals better shore up their offensive line or Burrow is gonna get Couched. Or possibly Carred.
Wait, why do I care? I hate the Bengals. I hope they never get him a line to work behind so Myles Garrett and TJ Watt can chase him down in his sleep for the next ten years.
Actually, I thought about RG3. Just keep putting him out there. Why lean on a solid running game, just keep giving Joey the ball. Oh he got banged up? Have him drop back and get hammered another dozen times. I could tell Taylor was from the McVay coaching tree because in the Super Bowl, with a fighting chance, he refused to even think about changing to something that was working and preferred to keep doing something that wasn’t.
I grew up in Cleveland and was in college in Houston in 2002, so Couch and Carr are my benchmarks for QBs who are afraid of their lines.
I’m disliking the bengals less, now that Burfict isn’t there injuring my guys with dirty hits.
Worst SB ending of all time, NFL gave the Rams the winning TD. Funny to see Eli Apple get cooked once again however, and awesome to see Odell get a ring (and be the first TD scorer to win me money).
The Holding call was iffy, but the Personal Foul and PI calls were fair.
It wasn’t a bad ending, the Holding call was questionable
Personally, I was a big fan of your updated version of “the Packers’ Decade of Playoff Failure.” Complete with flowing locks Rodgers lol
Mac Jones shitting on draft experts is a satisfying cartoon pick, if you ask me. Nice to see those idiots take a steamy one right to the kisser.
I have to wonder, did Mac Jones really shit on draft experts? I thought the general consensus before the draft was that he was the most “pro-ready” with the best chance of having a good rookie year but not developing very far past that. Obviously there’s still plenty of time for him to prove that narrative wrong and this season was very promising for him, but I wouldn’t jump the gun just yet.
Remember the Super Bowl where half the ads were for dot-com startups?
Yeah, RIP Pets.com. What an explosion that bubble burst with