Michael Zabkowski
Staff Writer
If you watched the Super Bowl this weekend, and have been following The Kansas City Chiefs all season long, the result of Sunday’s game may have been surprising. Rather than a Chiefs victory, The Tampa Bay Buccaneers easily won the Super Bowl 31-9. You may be asking yourself: “What happened? How could such an explosive team be beaten by a 43-year-old quarterback?” Though there is not one particular answer to those questions, there are few reasons that point to why the Chiefs looked like a flag football team.
First off, Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes was suffering from a concussion and turf toe injury. These injuries occurred in a game three weeks ago against Cleveland. A turf toe injury is like a yippy dog, it will keep bothering and nipping at you until something is done about it. Though Mahomes had been running all season, there was definitely something off in regard to his movement on Sunday. Give him credit, he was doing everything he could to keep each play alive. Nonetheless the ailing toe injury was one thing that slowed him down enough for the Buccaneers to feast upon Mahomes.
On that note, another issue with the Chiefs going into the big game was their offensive line. In the AFC Championship game, they lost Eric Fisher to injury. Earlier in the season, Kansas City had lost Laurent Duvernay-Tardif (opted out), Kelechi Osemele (knee injury), and Mitchell Schwartz (back injury). However those three starting offensive linemen were lost in weeks five and six of the regular season, therefore they had played plenty of games with backup offensive linemen.
On top of that, the terrible incident with Chiefs’ assistant coach Britt Reid being in a horrific car accident only made things worse. That is one of those situations that a team will keep in house, but one can only imagine how the accident affected the team from both an emotional and strategic standpoint.
It should be mentioned that Kansas City had a somewhat easy schedule down the stretch of the season. It was only a matter of time until a team took advantage of the weak Kansas City offensive line, and the phenomenal Buccaneers defense did exactly that. With an awesome game plan from Defensive Coordinator Todd Bowles, the Buccaneers were able to do whatever they wanted. Their defense seemed unstoppable.
Though the Chiefs defense held strong during the majority of the season, there is only so much a defense can do when playing against Tom Brady (arguably the greatest quarterback of all time). Furthermore Brady’s offense already played the Chiefs earlier this season, which gave head coach Bruce Arians plenty of time to put together a relentless game plan.
Early in the first quarter it looked a little shaky for Tampa Bay, but Tom Brady would not be kept quite for an entire Super Bowl. The man should never be counted out of a game, especially when it is the biggest game of the year. This statement needs no further proof than the record breaking seven Super Bowl wins he now has under his belt.
Additionally Tom Brady is far from done, and Bruce Arians is the next best thing to Bill Belichick. Tom brady may be 43 years old, but he has a tank the size of a Jaguar, and an engine efficient as a Prius. Though Brady is approaching his mid-40s, he showed the entire NFL that he is not quite ready to pass the torch. The reign of Brady is not over yet football fans.
Had the Chiefs won, it would have been a great story when taking into consideration all the things they had to overcome. However, it was the perfect storm for the Buccaneers to avenge their regular season loss to the Chiefs.
