Super Bowl Blunders

Rate The Refs: Super Bowl Blunders - The League at washingtonpost.com The League features Emil Steiner and other National Football League figures in debates on NFL news and issues. Home » NFL » Trump’s big Super Bowl blunder. Trump’s big Super Bowl blunder. Kansas City broke a 50-year drought by pulling off a stunning comeback to defeat the San Francisco 49ers in this year’s Super Bowl. Super Bowl VII - The ultimate football folly The 1972 Dolphins are the only team ever to end the regular season and playoffs unbeaten and untied. However, their kicker stole the show with one of. Normally rock-solid Carolina Panthers kicker Jon Kasay had a costly blunder in Super Bowl XXXVIII against the New England Patriots. After his team tied the score at 29 with 1:04 left, Kasay kicked. Super Bowl Winners and Results: NO. DATE: SITE: RESULT: I: Jan. 15, 1967: Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum: Green Bay 35, Kansas City 10: II: Jan. 14, 1968: Orange Bowl.

TAMPA, Fla. — Run it back?

A better slogan for the Kansas City Chiefs, considering the 31-9 spanking they took from Tom Brady & Co. in Super Bowl 55: Different deal.

There is no repeat Lombardi Trophy. There was no magnificent comeback. And ultimately, no chance.

Just one big Super Meltdown for the team that hoped to become the first repeat Super Bowl champion in 16 years since the New England Patriots — quarterbacked by you-know-who — claimed a second consecutive crown in Super Bowl XXXIX.

Don’t blame it on the refs. The Chiefs committed 11 penalties for 120 yards and you could debate, what, maybe two or three of them?

No, people, the Chiefs embarrassed themselves. It wasn’t on the officials to bail them out.

“I’m not going to sit here and say it was the penalties that cost us the game,” defensive end Frank Clark said. “It’s multiple things.'

What a tough moment and huge stage for Kansas City to have its worst game ever with Patrick Mahomes — and for the man hailed by many as the “next GOAT” to have the worst game of his NFL career. Mahomes, who threw for 313 yards, but didn’t lead his team to a touchdown and had two interceptions to weigh on his career-low 52.3 passer rating. Sure, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense contributed to the woes, with coordinator Todd Bowles mixing the blitzes to keep Mahomes (3 sacks, 8 quarterback hits) out of rhythm with a relentless rush that took advantage of the injuries that left the Chiefs’ O-line without its two starting tackles. But this went sideways in so many ways as the Chiefs lost for just the third time in 28 games.

The omens were there before the Chiefs even arrived in town a little more than 24 hours before kickoff after spending the week practicing at their team headquarters. Britt Reid, the assistant outside linebackers coach and son of Chiefs coach Andy Reid, had a car wreck on Thursday night that is being investigated as an alcohol-influenced incident, which sent two young children to the hospital. Poor kids.

Did the episode suck the air out of the team?

“It’s hard to put into words,” Mahomes said. “It didn’t take the air out of it. Guys were ready to play. But it’s a very tragic situation. I don’t want to say it affected us. But you’re definitely praying for those families.'

The Chiefs began the week with another distraction that left two players, wideout Demarcus Robinson (2 targets, 1 catch) and backup center Daniel Kilgore, on the COVID-19 reserve list after they received haircuts at the team’s facility from a barber who tested positive for the coronavirus. Robinson and Kilgore were cleared late in the week after testing negative for several days. But they missed practice time. And the whole thing could have been avoided if the Chiefs — who like all NFL teams this season operated under stringent pandemic protocols — had merely waited for the results of the barber’s COVID-19 test before allowing him to lay hands on a single strand of hair. Just sloppy.

And a bad sign of things to come.

Turns out the Chiefs, who beat the Bucs here in Week 12 and were favored by 3½ points, just couldn’t do it again.

Shoot, they couldn’t even score a touchdown with the NFL’s most prolific offense. And they were 3-of-13 in converting on third downs. Not good.

Remember how Tyreek Hill burned the Bucs for more than 200 yards in the first quarter the last time? Well, Hill, double-covered extensively, sat on 2 catches for 13 yards until deep into the second half. Different deal.

Hill said he rarely saw the type of single coverage that aided his explosion in the November game. It was pretty much zone coverage with safeties positioned deep to help on the cornerbacks patrolling underneath.

“That’s what we game-planned for,” said Hill, who finished with seven catches for 73 yards. “Todd Bowles, he did his thing tonight. They just had a better game plan.'

Yet the defining impression was left with KC’s self-inflicted blunders. It started bad and got worse. Mecole Hardman, seemingly hearing footsteps, lost focus on a deep third-down throw that might have netted 30 yards on the first drive. A penalty wiped out a booming punt by Tommy Townsend, who shanked the re-kick (29 yards) to set up a Bucs touchdown that might have been a field goal if Antonio Hamilton had not lined up offsides. A 34-yard pass interference call on Bashaud Breeland, who tripped up Mike Evans on a fly pattern, allowed the Bucs to strike for a score with less than a minute on the clock before halftime — just as they did in the NFC title game at Green Bay. Breeland’s faux pas, though, was compounded when Tyrann Mathieu was flagged for DPI, too, in the end zone, which set up the 1-yard TD pass from Brady to Antonio Brown. Mathieu was flagged also for wagging a finger in Brady’s face after the touchdown (unsportsmanlike conduct), which ran the tally to 8 penalties for 95 yards — in the first half.

It was that kind of night.

“It’s frustrating,” said tight end Travis Kelce, whose game-high 10 catches for 133 yards was undoubtedly half-empty. “It felt like one of those days where anything you did, they had an answer for it.'

We’ve seen the Chiefs rally from deep deficits before in rolling with their championship flow. In the Super Bowl last year, they trailed the 49ers by 10 points in the fourth quarter before scoring three unanswered touchdowns. In the AFC title game, they trailed Buffalo by 9 early … en route to a blowout. Last season, they trailed Houston 24-0 in the divisional playoff and outscored the Texans 51-7 the rest of the way.

So, no, generally there’s no need to panic when the Chiefs fall behind. But none of that Mahomes magic held up this time.

Not against the Bucs defense. And not with Brady on the other side.

The last time a team tried to repeat as Super Bowl champs ran into Brady, too. The Seahawks might have pulled off a repeat crown in XLIX in 2015, but a funny thing happened. Brady’s team won again, thanks to a clutch interception in the final minutes.

This time, there was no such last-minute drama. Just a major reality check for the Chiefs. There’s no such thing as running it back, as the team’s marketing slogan suggested. Each year, each team, each season is a different deal. And a year after basking in confetti, the Chiefs watched as the Bucs celebrated on their home field.

“Very difficult,” summed up D-tackle Chris Jones. “We sacrificed a lot, dealing with COVID. We continued playing as a team. Just about achieved our goal.”

But close can be the worst.

As Jones put it, “It sucks.'

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Opinion: Penalties, blunders, distractions doom Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 55

SPORTS COLUMNIST

Wasn’t the Super Bowl great? Not only did you have another close game decided by a last-second play, not only did you have the longest play in Super Bowl history, not only did you have the two opposing quarterbacks play their hearts out, but you even got a brief glance at Janet Jackson’s right breast. Wow, the Super Bowl is a real treat.

Super Bowl Mistakes

I used to think that people watched the Super Bowl to see a good game, laugh at witty commercials, and just plain have fun. It’s no longer the case with football anymore. At the beginning of the season, I commented on how Pepsi and Britney Spears dominated opening night of the NFL; now at the end of the season, not only has the marketing not improved, but it’s taken a horrific turn for the worse.

This time, instead of overwhelming the audience with a pop idol and a soft drink, it was animal violence and nudity. When you think about the Super Bowl, you used to think of those funny frogs that “Bud,” “Weis,” and “Er”ed their way into our hearts. You remembered the Super Bowl when the beer bottles played throughout the course of the real game. You also remembered the “Wazzup!!” that made us all laugh; well, it at least made half of us laugh while the other half went “Huh?”

I must agree that the Mastercard commercial was quite clever. Not only did it feature Homer Simpson doing Homer Simpson-like things, but it also amused us without being offensive to anyone. The new Bud commercial on the other hand, featured a dog biting a man’s crotch in order for the man to relinquish his alcohol. Another commercial was highlighted by a horse discharging gas into the face of a woman in order to burn her face. On top of that, there is the halftime show that people won’t be forgetting, or be forgetting to download, for a while. In fact, immediately afterwards, there were postings online everywhere of the “greatest peep show on Earth” with pictures and video footage. MTV apologized saying that this was not planned and not intentional. Janet Jackson said that there was a wardrobe failure. But none of that seems to be plausible to me.

Why did she have jewelry on her nipple? Why did only half of her shirt rip off? Why did Justin Timberlake pull her shirt off in the first place? It seems that the higher quality the football, the more horrible the quality the rest of the entertainment. In the last seven years, the Super Bowl has been decided by a touchdown or less four times. In the seven years before that, it’s been decided by a touchdown or less once: the Scott Norwood disaster. In fact, most Super Bowls are blowouts, although we only remember the close ones.

Before, the commercials were the things that kept the audience tuning in and keeping the ratings high. Around the time of the Tennessee and St. Louis Super Bowl, people began tuning in for the game, instead of just the commercials. The Kevin Dyson one-yard reach captivated everyone watching that day despite the lack of quality in commercials. The Adam Vinatieri field goal capped off another great game that kept us in our seats all the way until the post-game.

Perhaps it’s the fear that people won’t be tuning in to the big game that forces the networks to show the crap that they do. They pull all the stops in order to make as much money as they possibly could. Not only is the Super Bowl important, but CBS wanted to keep the audience for the “Survivor All Star” episode.

Super Bowl Mistakes

But if that’s all that CBS cares about, they can continue showing pornography to children at 8:30 p.m. at night. Maybe they didn’t realize that it’s possible to turn the TV off, and that’s just what people will do if things become too offensive.