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Chris BermanNFL studio host SportsCenter Anchor, baseball commentator
Chris Berman returns to his NFL Swami Sez squad for the Super Bowl LV between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday.
Probably courtesy of Caesars Sportsbook by William Hill.
Kansas City Chiefs (-3, 56) vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Needless to say, the stories are as juicy as they are for this 55th edition of the Super Bowl. My favorite is that Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs try to repeat as champions and join this exclusive club, and the guy who guards the castle to make sure they don’t pass is the last one to do so, GOAT himself, Tom Brady, with the 2003-04 New England Patriots.
Brady will be here for the tenth time; we’ll probably never see him again, unless it happens to the guy he’s playing against. This game is the bearer of past and present standards versus the present and possible future standard of the best quarterbacks who have ever played the game.
When we look at the Chiefs, it’s a team with unquestionable talent. In this year’s two playoff games, Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill have about 40 catches and 400 yards combined, which is ridiculous. In addition to the talent, this is a team that has fun playing, which comes from its head coach, Andy Reid. Sometimes, this season, they had so much fun that they took their foot off the gas and, as in the previous win in Tampa, they could have won more than 20 points, but they had to kill the clock by three.
Until the Buffalo game, the Chiefs hadn’t played a full 60-minute game since early November. If they can do it again, play the 60 minutes, and I think it might be too much for Tampa Bay to handle, despite the magic of the great Tom Brady.
Tampa Bay, with the captivating core of Chris Godwin, Mike Evans and Rob Gronkowski, is one of the few teams to have about as many headliners as the Chiefs. Plus, you have Leonard Fournette, who ran the best he had all year against the Green Bay Packers in the NFC championship game, an added dynamic that gives the offense the feeling that maybe, just maybe, he can change points. with the Chiefs, which very few teams can say they can. The Ships could.
The defeat against the Chiefs over the Thanksgiving weekend put the Bucs up 7-5 entering the final goodbye of the season. For a veteran team having a goodbye that at the end of the season was perfect, and he responded. I told Primetime, this will be the most important farewell of the 32 teams. Here, Swami got it right. The Ships have not lost since. The new pieces got excited and the team put it all together. You don’t usually rest in week 13 and that paid off. This cannot be overlooked.
KC has three creators of differences in defense to Chris Jones, Frank Clark and Honey Badger, Tyrann Mathieu. Can they put enough pressure on Brady to make him feel a little uncomfortable? I’ll see if they do it in the first quarter, which could set the tone for the game. If Brady is comfortable, the Bucs can exchange points with the Chiefs. But don’t underestimate defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, the timing of sending a defender or a corner can be perfect. He already won Brady in a Super Bowl once. It can keep you out of balance.
The Tampa Bay forward set is very good. Jason Pierre-Paul had a great year and defenders Devin White and Shaq Barrett faced a team without their first two attacks. Ndamukong Suh and Lavonte David can also play big. Will the Seven Ships strikers be able to dictate the game on their own? Leaders should feel that if Muhammad gets some time, he can beat the high school, just as he did in the first game.
Another observation of the whole season: in the same way that the doctor ordered the late dismissal of the Ships, the chiefs also obtained an unexpected rest. Sure, they were the preseason favorites to repeat and get attention, but the Las Vegas Raiders ’early loss was a disguised blessing. The whole talk of going undefeated was for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who started 11-0. Add to that Brady being in another Super Bowl, and that’s at least as important as the bosses trying to repeat. A little less focus than expected never hurts.
In this first Super Bowl played at the local stadium of a conference champion, if the Bucs run out of the locker room 30 minutes before the release of the Creamsicle uniforms, it’s all over … Tampa wins and Tom gets his seventh ring. But they are not allowed to, even if they want to. Seeing as this won’t happen, I’m going to repeat with the champions, and Andy Reid and his team will join this elite repeat group. You know them: the Packers, Dolphins, Steelers (twice), Niners, Cowboys, Broncos and Tom’s Patriots. Every decade has had at least one repeated champion: in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s. Then the Chiefs won it in 2019, so we will also call it that decade and the trend continues.
Swami Sez: Chiefs 30, Bucs 20