Monday Morning Jerkface: Super Bowl Edition

“I didn’t even have to do anything!”

I remember waking up the morning of week one, I felt like a child on Christmas. That doesn’t seem all that long ago. Yet here we are, at the end of another NFL season. I’m tired, hungover, and somehow living in a world where Joe Flacco has a Super Bowl ring. This is the dystopian future that Ray Bradbury warned you about. 

My apologies to Flacco apologists continue

While I agree with my colleague Nate that Flacco might not have been the MVP of the game (his rant will be forthcoming I’m sure) when you take a step back and look at his playoff performance…it might be one of the best ever. We’re talking about eleven touchdowns to zero interceptions, back to back road wins against Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, and of course the Lombardi Trophy to top it all off. I’m not going to rank all the quarterbacks from best to worst, because I’m not an asshole, but he’s closer to the top of that list than he was a few weeks ago.

It’s hard to rank him accurately at this point because I’m not sure if he is just in the middle of a great stretch of games and will come down to earth eventually, or whether firing Cam Cameron is really going to turn his career around and take him to the next level. We’ll find out next season, I suppose. Oh, and in case you are wondering, Blaine Gabbert getting a new offensive coordinator isn’t going to change anything.

“Something something bad pun about the power outage something something” – Shannon Sharpe

I realize that CBS couldn’t have seen the power outage coming, but you can’t tell me that they couldn’t have been a little more prepared.

I understand that the job of a sideline reporter is typically to tell us things we already know, or don’t care about, but Steve Tasker and Solomon Wilcots took it to the next level on Sunday night. Was it me, or was the sentence “the power is starting to come back on” said about a hundred times during that dreadful half hour? Both sideline reporters took turns looking like a terrified first grader who was just told he had to spell Mississippi in a spelling bee. I joked at the start of it, “No Jim Nantz? It’s a miracle!” but my joy quickly disappeared when I learned that the alternative was going to be, “Let’s just put a camera on Shannon Sharpe and let him say some shit”. I don’t think anyone on the half time team is going to be doing improv anytime soon.

I’m terrified of the 49ers

I am not sure what happened to San Francisco in the first half, but the team that came out after the blackout was legitimately terrifying. Maybe I missed it taking a piss or being fantastically drunk, but I don’t remember one time the entire game where they ran a zone read play and Kaepernick kept the ball. The Ravens did a fantastic job not allowing him to get loose on the outside…and yet San Fran still moved the ball at will in the second half. This is a team that is going to draft well, and coach even better, for the foreseeable future. The NFC is as deep as it has ever been in my lifetime but it wouldn’t surprise me if this team ended up in the Super Bowl for three of the next four seasons. The organization is really run that well.

Random Jerkyness

-It’s easy to blame the loss on the referees not throwing the flag for pass interference late, but the 49ers very likely would not even be in this game if it were not for a key pass interference no call in the conference championship game as well. For the record, I thought both no-calls were complete horse shit. I have no idea what to do about the inconsistency of that particular penalty, and neither does anyone else. It is what it is.

-I have no idea what was going on in that commercial with the goats.

-Frank Gore quietly had an awesome Super Bowl. With teams worrying about Kaepernick’s outside runs, the middle of the field will probably continue to be open for Gore and the other 9er backs going forward.

-Looking something to do at next year’s Super Bowl? Have you considered being a sex slave?

-Fuck Ray Lewis.

-With all the talk of Randy Moss going for his first ring, it was easy to forget about Anquan Boldin. Playing with Larry Fitzgerald for a bulk of your career is an easy way to be underrated. Congrats to one of the best possession receivers of this era.

-Maybe this is just the world’s biggest overreaction, but doesn’t Ray Rice suddenly feel dispensable?

I’m going to lie down. Do the world a favor and put a “Let’s not have the ‘is Flacco elite?’ discussion until my hangover goes away” sign on the water cooler.