Talkin' 'Bout My Generation

For now, Pat-v-Joe is no contest

Will Joe Burrow spend his career chauffeuring Patrick Mahomes around GOAT World?

Will Joe be to Patrick what Aaron, Russell, Drew and Peyton were to Tom?

Saint Joe is a generational quarterback. Mahomes is THE generational QB. Mahomes has won a total of two rings on a combined three legs and he’s but 27 years old, just a year older than Burrow. Who’s your caddie, daddy?

That’s one topic to be taken from about six million of ‘em in the wake of Sunday night’s extravaganza, which yet again held serve in any and all discussions of why the Super Bowl remains the greatest show on Earth.

Yeah, Doc, but can you explain to me the Squarespace ad?

No, son, I cannot.

What about Rhianna?

Fell asleep at halftime. So, no.

What about the turf?

It stunk. I have it on good authority that at the last minute they shipped in the sod from what used to be called Heinz Field. I wouldn’t feed that stuff to my goat. "I’m not going to lie, it’s the worst field I ever played on," Eagles defensive end Haason Reddick said of the slop in the desert Sunday night.

What about the refs? Terrible again. Please don’t tell me they didn’t decide the game.

They didn’t decide the game. Mahomes did. Kadarius Toney did. Isaiah Pacheco running like Michael Myers was in his rearview mirror. Nick Bolton running just as furiously with that Jalen Hurts fumble. They did.

Philly blew a 24-14 lead because it couldn’t handle Mahomes. Not because of a defensive holding call that was. Y’all just stop it with that nonsense.

Blaming officiating for losses has become commonplace in the past several years. It’s endemic to a nation that has forgotten how to lose with grace, be it ballgames or elections.

Is the officiating perfect? Um, well, not exactly. The game has become too fast for the people paid to officiate it. Maybe the solution is full-time refs, though I don’t know how that solves the main problem, which is interpreting rules. I haven’t heard anyone say a ref blew a call because he didn’t know the rule.

Regardless, we all need to resume manning-up, and I don’t mean Eli. When we don’t win, it isn’t because the game was rigged. It was because we lost. Resist the urge to bang your spoon on the highchair. You’re an adult.

To their everlasting credit, the Eagles did not lay their loss on the holding call against their corner, James Bradberry. Even Bradberry said Bradberry held Juju Smith-Schuster.

"I was hoping he would let it go, but of course he's a ref, it was a big game," Bradberry said after the game. "It was a hold, so they called it."

"The receiver went to the inside and he was attempting to release to the outside," referee Carl Cheffers told a pool reporter. "The defender grabbed the jersey with his right hand and restricted him from releasing to the outside. So, therefore, we called defensive holding."

To those who suggest You Don’t Make That Call in That Situation: Sounds good. Can you cite us the sliver of Rule Book that says, “all calls are subject to interpretation, depending on the situation in which they’re made.’’

To bitch about the officiating diminishes the excellence of Mahomes and the game-planning/play-calling of Andy Reid and Eric Bieniemy. Was Mahomes sacked? I don’t recall it. Philly had four rushers with at least 10 sacks apiece. The pass-blocking was a big reason KC won.

If the Eagles had held on, I would have written this: From this night forward, going for it on 4th down will be assumed. Well, not assumed, no one’s that crazy. But the fact an offense has four downs to earn another four downs will be incorporated into every game plan. Philly dominated the game for a half by winning on 4th down.

A Philly win would have made The Race For Generational a three-man sprint, Hurts being added to the Burrow-Mahomes mix. As it stands (wildly subject to change, of course) Joe Burrow could spend a decade looking at Mahomes’ jersey from behind.

Funny, we’d never have even thought that as recently as three-plus weeks ago. Then, it was Joe 3-Pat 0. And it could be again. I’m not Nostradamus. But as of today, it’s KC’s league and Mahomes’ title belt. Everyone else is trying to measure up.

Now, then. . .

MARTIANS WATCHED THE SUPER BOWL. And you thought those balloons came from China.

What they inferred from our civilization:

Cats play keyboards.

Vehicles fly, men destroy themselves for entertainment pleasure, often while eating Doritos. Everyone is a celebrity and all celebrities appear in television advertisements all the time, except when they’re gambling on sports.

And yet, they also love dogs. Very much. But no more than they love Michelob Ultra.

Earth people like explosions. Avocados rule.

IN CASE YOU’RE NOT YET SICK of Mahomes. . .

What’s your nominee for play of the game? I’ll take Mahomes big gallop with three minutes left. It encapsulated everything the guy’s about, and why whoever he plays for will always have a chance to be special.

Mahomes isn’t fast when his right ankle is peachy. When it’s bruised fruit, he moves in glacial time. But there he was, standing at his 47, cloaked in Eagles and taking off like a mobster on parole.

He was like that old joke about two guys in the woods being chased by a bear. “You’re not faster than that bear,’’ one guy says to the other. “I don’t have to be faster than the bear,’’ Guy 2 replies. I just have to be faster than you.’’

The bears of the Iggles D-line didn’t catch Mahomes until he reached the Philly 20. Seven plays later, the Chiefs won the game.

NOT JUST ANOTHER PRETTY FACE. . . It takes me forever to read a book, mainly because my mind has been trained to work in newspaper-column/TML chunks. It’s an ADD thing, I spoze. And occasionally, I get sidetracked by another book. I’ve been known to read three at a time.

That’s a long way of saying I finally finished The Bourbon King, a biography of George Remus, as famous a bootlegger as existed. He spent most of his life in our town, living in opulence in a mansion in Price Hill that featured an indoor swimming pool. Remus murdered his second wife in plain sight one afternoon, as she stood in a gazebo in Eden Park, right near what is now Mirror Lake.

Fascinating stuff. More fascinating was the local public half-saw Remus as a folk hero. Most people didn’t favor Prohibition. Remus had a very large personality, employed more than a few locals in the illicit liquor business and was generally a good citizen, at least around here. And by all accounts, he made good whiskey, full strength, undiluted by water or, yes, poison.

TML sez ckitout.

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . It’s 65 and sunny here in Bradenton, not quite summer but close enough. I was a big Sly Stone fan in my youth. The Family was just different enough to be interesting. This is my favorite Sly number.

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