The Quar­ter­back Whis­perer: Su­per Bowl Sun­day

In the most-watched sport­ing event of the year, all eyes were on third-year quar­ter­back Patrick Ma­homes as the Kansas City Chiefs were once again down by dou­ble dig­its. Ma­homes was tasked with a 10-point come­back with nine min­utes to go in the game against the best de­fense in foot­ball. Ma­homes si­lenced the crit­ics and ce­mented his name in his­tory, lead­ing the Kansas City Chiefs to their first cham­pi­onship in 50 years and win­ning Su­per Bowl MVP.

Through­out the game, it seemed that the game was San Fran­cis­co’s game to lose. The 49ers dom­i­nated the line of scrim­mage and, at times, it even seemed like Patrick Ma­homes was rat­tled, but the Chiefs of­fense ap­peared to be ex­plo­sive. The un­sung hero of the game was right tackle Mitchell Schwartz. Through­out the en­tire play­offs, he only gave up two pres­sures, won ex­actly 100 pass­ing snaps, and gave Patrick Ma­homes a con­sis­tent blocker that he could rely on dur­ing this his­toric win. 

As one of the biggest be­liev­ers in Jimmy Garop­polo, this was a tough game to hang my hat on. Al­though he did not play ter­ri­bly, Garop­polo had an op­por­tu­nity to win the game and si­lence his haters, yet missed two key throws. Garop­polo missed Kit­tle across the mid­dle on 3rd and 5 to ex­tend the drive be­fore giv­ing the ball back to the Chiefs. He also sailed the game-win­ning Touch­down pass to Eman­nuel Sanders on the 49ers game-win­ning drive at­tempt. I am still a be­liever in Jimmy G, but this game did not si­lence the haters as I had an­tic­i­pated.

The fi­nal topic that I would like to ad­dress is the num­ber of hits that both quar­ter­backs re­ceived through­out the game. In the mod­ern NFL, quar­ter­backs be­ing pro­tected is a top pri­or­ity for of­fi­cials. In the most cru­cial game of the year, the of­fi­cials let both teams play and both Ma­homes and Garop­polo were the ones who paid for it. Ma­homes took two or three shots that clearly left him think­ing about it. Garop­polo re­ceived a chance to the head on a third-down that, if it were called, prob­a­bly would have won the game for the 49ers. This is some­thing to keep in mind go­ing for­ward, as this felt like a mid-2000’s game rather than the mod­ern NFL where you can’t even land on a quar­ter­back when in the process of a sack.

I feel that this Su­per Bowl could be the pass­ing of the torch to the next gen­er­a­tion of quar­ter­backs. I am not writ­ing off the all-time greats like Brees, Brady, or Rodgers, but see­ing the new faces of the NFL gives a whole new feel to the Big Game. Ma­homes is a gen­er­a­tional tal­ent, and win­ning his first Su­per Bowl in just his third sea­son puts him on track to po­ten­tially be the Great­est Quar­ter­back of All-Time.