Well Placed Rocket

Digital adventures, sometimes successful.

[wellplacedrocket]

Love, Death & Robots is a Mixed Bag of Thirsty Ultraviolence and a Few Gems

The reason Love, Death & Robots has that title is because it’s pithier than “Graphic Sexuality and Violence in Sci-Fi Contexts,” which is what it is. I’m actually really into the format concept here. Netflix’s new compilation of 18 discrete animated sci-fi shorts are all about 10 - 17 minutes long, except one that’s under 6 minutes. I find that as I age, I have less patience instead of more, at least when it comes to entertainment. I rarely watch an entire movie all in one sitting on Netflix anymore, even if I’m super into it. I’ll stop it on a downbeat and go do something else. I get antsy. So In theory, the shorts should be perfect for bite-sized consumption, which is what I increasingly want.

It’s a pretty tall order to deliver a pulse-pounding moment or a super strong sense of dread or loss or betrayal or love or any super acute emotion or even a joke in such a brief story, which is why Pixar are god damn wizards for pulling that shit off like they do. Like, I texted my mom immediately after watching that short they did with the little dumpling that comes to life. Unfortunately, only one of the Love, Death & Robots shorts really gave me a feel (Lucky 13, fight me). The rest are quirky, kiiiiinda interesting ideas that feel like they’re try-harding visceral above all else, to such an extent that it sucked me out of the one Cinematic Moment each was trying to deliver.

It was never enough to just slash a character with a blade, they had to be gorily beheaded or bisected. It was never enough to clobber them, you had to get a real close-up of an eyeball bulging, danging out of a socket, possibly in bullet time (man, it occurs to me the eyeball thing was a trope among these shorts). It was never enough to have boobs in frame, the woman had to be full-tilt, jump-off-the-screen nude (in one case, stripper dancing), framed in jarring fashion, for long enough that the directorial choice started to feel awkward.

Look, I swear I’m not a prude at all. And there’s a part of me that feels like Love, Death & Robots deserves a pat on the back for doing adult sexuality and violence in Western animation, since it’s only really seen in anime (hentai) or really indie art house sorts of productions. But I dunno, after the third or fourth naked lady, I started feeling like why are they so thirsty for my boner? Discussing the show with a friend of mine, she hit on what I’m pretty sure is the answer: “Over/under on me googling the writers and it's all men?” Turns out of the 6 different people IMDB lists for writer credits among the shorts, only one of them, Janis Robertson, might be a woman. I can’t find any pictures or articles with this person, and other credits to the name are for Visual Effects Coordinator for some Marvel movies (badass!) and production assistant. And the only short where Robertson appears in the credits is the one that is 6 minutes. It’s a comedy goof, adapted from a short story.

My friend’s remark really crystallized how male-gazey a lot of these things are. There’s one where the protagonist is fleeing a pursuer nude through what appears to be a city devoid of any pedestrian street activity. I guess the nudity symbolizes vulnerability and desperation? I’d say that is about as charitable as readings can get for that one. I pointed out to my friend that there actually is male nudity too, and she immediately asked if the “male nudity was a humor scene.” Of the handful of on-screen dicks, one is a senior citizen and for sure played for laughs in a short I thought was really stupid. None of them were handled the way full frontal female nudity was, not even close. And many of the male protagonists fall into the very Video Game Protagonist type of the Gritty Space Marine, in spirit if not literally. However, I did get a smile out of a voice appearance by Fred Tatasciore, who does Soldier: 76 in Overwatch, though. That guy certainly has the crusty soldier thing down.

It’s not all gripes. All of the shorts are quirky in one way or another and some roll more toward quirk than raunch, although there is always, always something very dark or at least mildly grotesque going on. Some of them are very haunting in a Twilight Zone fashion, more creepy than horrifying. And the nice thing was if I wasn’t feeling a short, it didn’t linger for very long, and there was always the next one. I laughed out loud from a cartoony sight gag or two in a couple of the more overtly comedic shorts. And it’s definitely worth mentioning that the animation for every last one of them is absolutely phenomenal. A handful are straight CGI going for as much realism as possible, complete with motion-captured faces doing visually perfect speech. Others have a lush hand-drawn look, others are cartoony CGI with caricaturey sorts of characters, and one has a real trippy surrealist, comic-booky sort of gloss over motion-captured characters. In fact, the visual feast is the best thing that the series as a whole has going for it, and I would encourage them to lean into the style grab bag if they do more seasons.

Love, Death & Robots certainly attempts manufacturing some cinematic moments, but only one of the shorts really landed for me. That’s not a great batting average, but I don’t want criticism to shut down the idea. For as much as I’m rolling my eyes at the horniness and splatter, I absolutely want the producers to iterate more off-beat sci-fi shorts aimed at an adult audience. But “adult” doesn’t have to mean just loading it up with so much splatter and boobs - things I like! - that it stops being arresting and starts being unintentionally funny. Sci-fi can do better. And I’m actually confident this series will.

[wellplacedrocket]

Sidequest Log | Technology is (probably) not gonna replace your bartender, but it’s still pretty damn cool

When I’m at a bar having a beer, the tap handles tease me. They make them so ornate and visually interesting now, and each beer has its own brewery-designed handle. They are works of art unto themselves; it’s like a statue park, except each statue represents something interesting and delicious going into my mouth. I fantasize about being my own bartender, expertly and with flourish pouring out my own glorious nectar of the gods into a tilted pintglass, knowing just when to stop so it doesn’t foam over.

I didn’t know that anyone had ever packaged my longing into a business plan, but this is 2018, so I guess that should have been obvious. On a whim recently, I impulsively stopped in Tap Society on 46th St. and Grand Ave in Minneapolis. I expected a typical burger bar with ESPN on TVs, and instead I spent the next hour or so getting my head around an entirely new (to me) business model: a self-serve bar.

I stuttered out my stupefied captivation with this idea to General Manager Michael Nienaltowski. What wondrous Narnia have I walked into here? He replied “Yeah. So obviously as you said, the tap wall, the self-serve tap wall, is really the star of the show here.”

It was very kind him to coach me up, because even though Tap Society is super simple, I’m so used to the standard bar procedure that I felt like I was fumbling every step of my whole be-my-own-bartender fantasy.

“We were looking up there and when we first came in, I thought that was a bar,” said Josh Peterson of Minneapolis, indicating the long table next to the tap wall. “There was someone over there and we thought that's the bartender. Then I realized. So once we figured it out, it's kind of cool.”

“I like that you pour your own beer, I think it’s fun,” added Tina Dunlap, also of Minneapolis.

When you enter, you “check in” at a station near the door and they scan your debit/credit card, hand it back to you, and you get another card from the bar - your Tap Card. Then you walk up to the tap wall and grab a glass.

Each pair of taps has a small screen above it, and then the beers’ names, styles, ABV, and cost per pint are posted on larger TV screens a few feet above. You insert your Tap Card into a slot, which unlocks the tap, then stick your glass under the spout, and fulfill your self-bartending fantasies. You can see the price of your pour accrue on the small screen above your tap, like you’re at the gas pump. It tallies that charge to your Tap Card. When you’re ready to be done, you turn your Tap Card in to a human or drop it down a box. Your name has already been associated with that Tap Card, so they read it from there and know what to charge your debit/credit card. No cash used at all.

So let’s pros/cons this thing! First of all, you can pour as small a glass as you want, and you’re only charged by how much your pour. They had a Märzen that I wanted to try just a bit of, so I got a pour that was about $1.70 - a few mouthfuls. Anticipating the draw that sampling would be with their tap wall, they have plenty of small glasses available. You can easily make your own flights. “I've had many customers come up with smaller glasses and pour six or seven different beers and it costs less than 10 bucks depending on what you're drinking,” Nienaltowski said.

Secondly, there’s no one to tip. Food is ordered from kiosks, and you’re getting your drinks yourself. Floor staff consists only of a few customer service people to help coach customers up as needed or answer questions, and “food runners” who bring it out to you. I don’t want to get into virtue signalling about my tipping habits, but I’m aware that bars and restaurants have carved out embarrassing minimum wage exceptions and expect their staff to be almost entirely paid in tips. When pressed a little, Nienaltowski said they pay “competitively,” and I wasn’t sure what that meant. I tend to be very skeptical of business posture toward labor, no matter how nice the businessperson is. But later, I was assured by a kitchen guy out on break listening in that he’s pretty happy with his wages. Net result for me was my total tab was noticeably lower than it usually is, thanks to short pours and no tip.

Now I’ll strawman up some downsides. First and foremost, if you’re into cocktails, you’re SOL. There’s no one to make them for you, so they don’t even bother. I suppose they could premix some gin and tonic or something and put it on tap if they really want, but eh. Literally the only time I ever order cocktails at bars is if I’m there because it’s specifically a cocktail bar and I’m splurging on fancy. I will concede that lowball glasses full of lime wedges and rows of weird bottles with pourers in interesting arrangements behind the bar are more visually interesting than Tap Society’s tap wall, which is all digital and kinda antiseptic.

On a related note, if you go to bars specifically for bartenders, Tap Society again strikes out. Bartenders have a romanticized vocation in our culture, and I get it. I’ve had a great time chatting to bartenders, the job tends to attract those who are comfortable schmoozing and multitasking often demands people of quick wit and efficient focus. I’m aware they’re at their job and therefore a captive audience, so I never want to dominate a bartender’s attention. But a good bartender can cheer you up, get a laugh, blow your mind, and make your night.

I wouldn’t want all bars to ditch their bartenders, and they won’t. But I think there’s room in the economy for tap walls, and I was having too much fun playing with the taps to miss the person who’s usually pouring them for me. And if it’s really busy, it’s far more efficient to let each customer come and line up at the tap they want (if there even is a line) than to create the customer service choke point of 25 people mashed against the bar all politely jockeying for elbow space while 4 bartenders hustle with little sense of any queue order.

Bartenders reading might think this tap wall is the enemy, here to put them out of a job. When I texted my dad about what I’d discovered, his response was “No bartenders. More unemployment.” Fair point! Is Tap Society the vanguard of the next wave of the Tech Priests of Silicon Valley, here to sacrifice real human livelihoods at the alter of technological efficiency?

“I think instead of looking at we are saying we have less people, I think it's the way we utilize the staff and when we have them on,” says Nienaltowski. He figured when it’s slow, they probably have the same staff size as they would if it were a normal sitdown bar/restaurant, but fewer staff compared to the standard model during busy hours. “I don't think it's necessarily looking at it as we cut bodies for automation to save a dollar, it's just the way our model works. It doesn't require all those people. And the people that we have, we utilize their strengths in different ways.”

It was unfair of me to try to make him speak for the entire socioeconomic footprint of technological advancement. He’s defending the employer and focusing just on how Tap Society works. But my dad’s grumble still holds, obviously. Tap Society is a medium-sized establishment, and it just isn’t going to hire as many total workers as it would if it were a normal bar. They’re obviously not devoid of the human touch in there. It was slow, and I chatted with humans the whole time I wasn’t taking pictures. I don’t know what the solution is to automation’s effect on the economy. Some kind of national job retraining and relocation assistance program, I guess.

Here’s a definite downside: no happy hour! I feel they could easily program the tap wall to drop the prices during certain hours. Not sure why they don’t.

You also might thinking that it would be super easy for all the local drunks to post up and knock back Miller Lite after Miller Lite with no gatekeeper keeping them from getting shitty. Valid concern. The Tap Cards only allow so much pouring before the card locks and you have to check in with a human to unlock it again. I’m not sure if it keeps track of volume or total tab applied to the card or maybe even alcohol consumed, tracked by ABV. It’s not a big deal to get your card reset, BUT it would be a problem if you were trying to buy a round for your table. I was at about $16.00 when it locked up on me, and I was done anyway, but it would fill up the card quick if there were other people involved.

I don’t think places like Tap Society are ever going to replace all your favorite bars and bartenders. But I stopped myself when I was about to type “I don’t think it’s going to revolutionize the bar/restaurant industry.” I’m not so sure about that, when I think about it. The tech is really, really cool, my friends. And as someone for whom beer accounts for 99% of my bar selections, it’s a simple, fun, interactive, and overall less expensive way to deliver it to me, with plenty of room for a tantalizing selection. If you like going to bars and drinking beers a lot, Tap Society and places like it might be perfect for you. And if you’re worried it’s another digital interloper trying to supplant a sacred analog ritual, that’s probably not going to happen. Probably.

“I think you can have both,” Josh told me. “I don't think this is the way where the world is going to go, but having a couple of these around, I don't think would hurt anything. And it’s cool, it’s a concept.”

“The problem is, you just always need a human,” said Ryan Lagieski, also of Minneapolis. “We’re not to the point where everything can be automated."

[wellplacedrocket]

I Visited the Mormon Temple Square and it Really Reminded Me of BioShock Infinite

I don’t go on a lot of (read: any) religious touristy sort of adventures, so maybe the Mormon Temple Square isn’t all that weird in the grand scheme of things. But I’ll be damned if it didn’t give me hints of Columbia, the city in BioShock Infinite. Hear me out on this.

I want to caveat before I go further that it’s probably gonna seem like I’m really picking on Mormons here. I’m not. Mormonism is absolutely no weirder than any other religion, and there are plenty of Mormons (probably most of them) who are much smarter, more hardworking, successful, and better to their fellow man than I am. If you roll your eyes at scripture of Moroni, but turn around and worship Jesus or Vishnu or Odin or Buddha, and follow the World of God as explained to you by Muhammad, then your cognitive dissonance is so thick, so dense, that it must throw off compasses. I don’t think religious or spiritual people are stupid for being that way.

Anyway.

I was in Salt Lake City with a few hours to kill, and figured the Mormon Temple Square would be the one thing I couldn’t get anywhere else, so why the hell not? Let’s get my Mormon on. Many of the buildings in the Temple Square are made with this gorgeous white granite that pops up nearby, and so to the eye a lot of it looked like the White City of Gondor.

The visitors centers are small museums that lay out the history, scripture highlights, and current tenants of Mormon theology.

As a kid, I was raised Catholic-lite, but I’ve never been to the Vatican, and I wonder if there’s similar stuff anywhere else among worldwide Christian churches. That Noah’s Ark museum in Kentucky, maybe? The tone of much of this stuff seems to be to reassure outsiders that hey, Jesus is still just the best! He’s the best, you guys. We’re not any different from your local bake sale-having church people at all! In fact, there doesn’t seem to be much that explicitly tries to contrast with other Christian sects whatsoever, until you get to the Book of Mormon (the actual Book of Mormon) stuff that takes place in the Western Hemisphere.

A lot of this stuff came across to me as a “here’s how to be” kind of children’s book in museum form. It’s not really propaganda, I guess, because conduct prescriptions are what religions are supposed to do. However, the exhibits and artwork they had showing important people in Mormon scripture and the paramount religious events in their lives started giving me weird, familiar vibes.

A 19th century New Yorker who has some sort of religious awakening, begins to preach, gathers a cadre of like minded true believers, establishes a hyper-ardent offshoot Christian sect in the U.S., insists upon racism as one of the pillars of this new theology, is revered as a prophet to his people, gains power and respect (which he abuses), and begins an exodus of his followers out of American society to found their own civilization which will eventually prove hostile to the U.S.? Oh, you thought I was describing Joseph Smith or Brigham Young? Well, surprise, it’s (also) Zachary Hale Comstock, villain of Bioshock Infinite.

I’m not the first to draw this comparison. Here’s a much better article than I could hope to write from an anonymous blogger who claims to be an ex Mormon. And Bioshock creative head Ken Levine mentioned in a Mother Jones article:

There’s a bit of Joseph Smith in [Comstock], a bit of Teddy Roosevelt…Roosevelt was a very progressive figure in many ways. But he was also what you’d probably call a neoconservative in his view of America’s role in the world. So I have trouble comparing Comstock to him directly. Also, I’d have trouble just comparing Comstock to Joseph Smith or Brigham Young. I mean, the American-centric nature of the religion that he forms has some similarities to Mormonism, but there’s nothing in the Mormon church that approached the level of sinisterness you’d find in a Comstock.

In the game (where the next bunch of linked images are from), Comstock is a religious figure with a hyper-nationalism for his own vociferously racist vision of America, which never actually existed and is more twisted than even our own real history. There’s a part of the game where you play through a museum dedicated to the history of Columbia, the city-state Comstock founded, and it puts a very religious sort of spin on the founding of the United States and points in its history. Abraham Lincoln is called “The Apostate” and is remembered as an insidious Satan figure, while John Wilkes Booth is a saint. The Confederate Army, being the true soul of America to these zealots, is led by the angelic spirit of George Washington. The locals are generally hostile.

All of this stuff is understandably batshit, because they were trying to write a villain in Comstock. I’m not saying Mormons are or were evil like this guy. I’m saying it seems pretty likely that the devs took Mormon lore, cranked the evil and steampunky sci-fi up to 11, and out came Comstock and Columbia.

The American founding fathers appear in Mormon religious works, notably in writings by Wilford Woodruff, fourth president of the LDS Church, describing religious visions:

The spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them ... These were the signers of the Declaration of Independence ... I thought it very singular, that notwithstanding so much work had been done, and yet nothing had been done for them ... I straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon brother McCallister [sic] to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

The LDS Church is extremely PR conscious and has left doctrinal, institutional racism behind, but it’s a poorly kept secret that the early days didn’t look too good. Unlike the populations of other Western Territories (Colorado and California in particular), the Mormons mostly took a pass on the Civil War, though to their credit, there isn’t much evidence to suggest explicit sympathy for the Confederacy. However, here’s Brigham Young:

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so. The nations of the earth have transgressed every law that God has given, they have changed the ordinances and broken every covenant made with the fathers, and they are like a hungry man that dreameth that he eateth, and he awaketh and behold he is empty.

And now here’s Comstock:

What exactly was the Great Emancipator emancipating the Negro from? From his daily bread? From the nobility of honest work? From wealthy patrons who sponsored them from cradle to grave? From clothing and shelter? And what have they done with their freedom? Why, go to Finkton, and you shall find out. No animal is born free, except the white man. And it is our burden to care for the rest of creation.

The Mormons flirted with armed rebellion but eventually backed down when the United States and local native nations made it clear they were not fucking around. Joseph Smith, a 100% legit, honest to God prophet to his people, had some pretty dark things to say about the U.S., especially the godless northeast cities:

Nevertheless, let the bishop go unto the city of New York, also to the city of Albany, and also to the city of Boston, and warn the people of those cities with the sound of the gospel, with a loud voice, of the desolation and utter abolishment which await them if they do reject these things. For if they do reject these things the hour of their judgment is nigh, and their house shall be left unto them desolate.

And here’s Woodruff again, in a prophesy “confirmed” by Young:

While you stand in the towers of the Temple and your eyes survey this glorious valley filled with cities and villages, occupied by tens of thousands of Latter-day Saints, you will then call to mind this visitation of President Young and his company. You will say: That was in the days when Presidents Benson and Maughan presided over us; that was before New York was destroyed by an earthquake. It was before Boston was swept into the sea, by the sea heaving itself beyond its bounds; it was before Albany was destroyed by fire; yea, at that time you will remember the scenes of this day.

Well, here’s a scene in Bioshock Infinite that shows a time-travel flash forward to the future year 1984, what Comstock will do if not stopped. He floats Columbia right over New York and starts bombing:

How the hell do they not get shot down? Sci-fi weapons or shields, I’m guessing. Columbia imagines if a civilization of religious secessionists hadn’t decided to chill out in the end, the way the Mormons did.

If you need any more convincing of the connection here, in BioShock Infinite, one of the protagonists who the player spends a lot of time with and who drives the story is Comstock’s daughter Elizabeth. She is kept a gilded-cage prisoner and wants out of Columbia, and much of the action is about helping her to escape. SPOILER ALERT FOR A 5-YEAR OLD GAME: Elizabeth’s parentage isn’t what it seems, she was actually given the name Anna at birth. Well, there was a famous ex-wife of Brigham Young, one of 55, who decided she wasn’t about that life, alleged domestic abuse against Young and filed for divorce (both a huge deal for their time), and ultimately wrote an autobiographical account called Wife No. 19. This woman’s name? Ann Eliza Webb.

No doubt you could substitute any other religion and find similar parallels to BioShock Infinite in art and lore, but the Americanness of the LDS Church is what sells this idea to me, how both the real life Mormon church and the fictional characters and civilization draw from the cultural fundamentals of this country, as well as our absolute worst elements. The obvious difference is the Mormons wrestle with the racism and violence in their church’s past, and for sure try to do good works in the world today. Not so for Comstock and Columbia. But that’s part of what made them such compelling villains.

[wellplacedrocket]

In Defense of the Controller

Making good on their announcement from September, Microsoft has enabled mouse and keyboard support for a handful of games on the Xbox - a proof of concept for what is certainly a future of the line between console and PC gaming not being blurred but rather completely erased. I get all the technological reasons to do so. Consoles are already essentially streamlined gaming PCs complete with USB ports, and one of them is even made by the same outfit that makes the world’s most popular computer operating system.

Here’s my hot take, god damnit: fuck mouse-and-keyboard controls. Fuck the PC master race! You can pry this controller out of my cold, dead hands.

I was relieved to read that early adopters like Fortnite will split players based upon their inputs so that I don’t have to get by balls kicked in more than I already do by hyper-twitchy sniper aces who all rearranged their living rooms to put a desk in front of their TV (or are happy to move their Xbox to their computer monitor). I’ve played PC shooters. I understand a mouse enables much better, sharper aiming - you can use your whole wrist and hand to manipulate your aim, rather than just your thumb. Even my shitty twitch skills get better with a mouse. Of course it’s an advantage. Maybe I could be a replacement-level McCree on PC. On the Xbox, my McCree is a joke.

Mostly what I’m afraid of is evolution to cater to the market, and the market deciding controllers are for olds. Mouse and keyboard functionality will soon be ubiquitous on the Xbox, and there’s no way Sony won’t follow suit. All the most serious, competitive gamers are going to be using them - will developers want to bother programming input segregation into all their games, or are they eventually going to say “fuck it, our core audience doesn’t care about controllers anyway, let’s forget trying to carve out space for those old things. THROW THEM TO THE MICE.”

Most of what I play is shooters, but I don’t want the controller to become a peripheral that you gotta go buy if you want to play a sports or fighting game, and subsequently become an afterthought to developers. And I don’t want to shooters to all become horrifying hunting grounds for the murderers with mice to relentlessly jump-spin-headshot us poor, shitty controller people. It’s terrifying but kinda thrilling when I’m in a game with someone who’s like that with a controller. If everyone has mouse-and-keyboard but me, suddenly the headshot monster who casually kills the shit out of your whole team in 3 seconds goes from the exception to something closer to the norm.

I like shooters with controllers! I like that I can destroy my back slouching on a couch or chair in front of the TV, or even stand to play. I like how controllers feel in my hands. The best video games have ever felt to me in a tactile sense was with this dinner plate-sized behemoth. I’m a 6’4” dude with large hands! Give me the visceral sensation of a long, springloaded trigger pull with just a little resistance and maybe even some rumble over antiseptic, dispassionate clicking any day. Make me feel something when I’m stupidly going full auto with a gun, more than just a boring-ass mouse click like I’m highlighting text.

No one makes couch co op games anymore (except Nintendo), because the market all has broadband internet and can connect with each other online. These developers and manufacturers, for all the shit they get from the fans, generally know their audience pretty well. I understand the reasons why this shift happened, and still feel like gaming culture has lost something as remote, performing streamers have sucked up space that used to be for looking over at your buddy after he just scored a bullshit TD in Madden or drove you into a deadly blizzard of gunfire in Halo. If controllers take a back seat to mouse-and-keyboard for consoles, it’s going to further shrink one of the best things that video games ever do - gather people in a space. No one is ever going to want to have to put desks in front of the TV for multiple fucking keyboards.

I don’t want to have to set up a LAN party to play video games with people in the same room as them. Fortunately, sports and fighting games should hold the line against the encroachment from the PC Master Race snobs, and hopefully controllers won’t completely vanish anytime soon. Good! I get it, XxXT3hSn1P0rZXxX, you’re a hotshot with a mouse, a much sharper shooter than I am with a controller. But I want to be able to be in the same room as my buddy while we’re freaking out over Cuphead, and controllers do that better. FOH with your mouse, and let me get on the sticks.

[wellplacedrocket]

Existential Crises Can Wait

I was so physiologically accustomed to crippling anxiety at this point that even as the hysterical Eagles rushed the field and jumped into each others’ arms, I didn’t know what to do. I stood and paced back and forth in front of the television, watching the smiles and confetti angels. I could feel the pulse in my neck.

This is the moment, my left brain said. If you’re going to live it up, do it NOW.

What the hell do you do? I looked at my phone and typed in “holy shit” to several people. I was alone - what was supposed to happen now? I hadn’t considered the possibility I might find myself in this moment. I felt my mind getting caught and trapped in the meta-conversation with itself, which seemed like the road to literal insanity, and so I walked to the front door, threw it open, and yelled “E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!” as throat-searingly loud as I could out onto my innocent, silent Minneapolis neighborhood. This isn’t the kind of shit I usually do, but I figured I had to break my paralysis somehow.

I knew I had to get out. I had to get downtown, around the stadium, and catch whatever fan lunacy was happening. “Once in a lifetime,” doesn’t say it here. I was hyper-aware of my own second-by-second mental state, trying to track the upswell of joy, catalogue and remember the feeling for the rest of my life. These unique, ridiculous moments were stolen from a cosmos that hadn’t yet realized what had happened. I fired off messages to Kevin, who I knew was probably still screaming himself to death, and called a Lyft.

It’s hard to overstate what a buzzkill this Lyft guy was. He had no idea what the Super Bowl was or what a big deal this was for me. This was the biggest possible deal, and he was just like “Oh, football! Yes. The Vikings. Yes?” Sigh. The message I was getting from the universe was “keep all of this in proper perspective. Not everyone cares.”

And my response to the universe was my extended middle finger. This was our night.

There weren’t as many ecstatic yellers downtown as I would have thought, but I think that’s because 1.) most of them had cleared out of the stadium by the time I showed up and 2.) it was cold AF and folks were eager to use the skyway and/or hunker down in the first bars they came across. Still, I wanted to get around the stadium where the Eagles made history. Despite the frigid temp, my hands were sweaty, and in my haste to bust out my phone, I rubbed all over the lens. So the picture quality is utter garbage.

I was swimming upstream for the most part. Some of the fans were prepared, like this very cold Eagles fan.

And others were not prepared at all. I ran into a Pats fan who looked very lost. He wanted to know how to get to White Bear Lake, which is a northeast exurb of St. Paul, and seemed confused that there weren’t any public transportation options. It was Sunday night. I told him shit, man, your best bet if you don’t have a ride is probably an Uber or Lyft, but it’s gonna cost you. Poor bastard.

I asked him how he felt about the game. He hesitated a long moment, thinking it over, and responded that he knows he should be fine with it since the Pats have had such a run of historic success in the past 15 years with the best QB to ever play the game - but this moment still hurts. I told him as an Eagles fan that was fair enough, I get it. I gave dap and he told me to enjoy my night. Every story one reads about rival fanbases (on this night, the Pats counted as “rival”) is about what shitbags they were. But I had a moment with this guy.

I made my way East past clumps of fans and throngs waiting outside various bars, and several bunches of Super Bowl volunteers. By the time I reached the stadium, it was weirdly deserted. I was hoping for revelers, but it seemed that the Eagles fans had already made their way to their rooms or the local bars. So I wandered the perimeter of the stadium trying to get a good picture, and kept wiping my phone’s camera lens sweaty hands.

At least you know this shit is authentic.

I spent a weirdly long time down there, trying to glean a moment, but security arrangements had rendered the place more or less fun-free.

I broke off and wandered west, trying to find the nearest bar. On one street corner, I struck up a conversation with a National Guardsman, who I guess had been deployed to...keep the peace? He was from Louisiana but they had given him enough cold weather gear that he said he felt fine. He said it had been a pretty quiet night, actually, which led me to believe that they had deployed the national guard expecting Eagles fans to try to burn the city to the ground if the Eagles pulled off the miracle. Well, SORRY TO DISAPPOINT WE WERE CIVILIZED. And probably cold.

It was the sort of Minnesota night that hurts your face and hands, so as I made my way west on 7th St, I was pretty well determined to stop in the first bar that had room, and that happened to be Dan Kelly’s Pub. It was buzzing in there, maybe 80 - 15 - 5 Eagles to Patriots to Vikings fans (defiantly still with Vikings gear on), with every booth and table filled and the bar two layers deep with people. My glasses fogged up instantly, but I was able to find a corner from which to text Kevin. Eagles fans were boisterous but never obnoxiously so while I was there, and I even saw some Patriots and Vikings fans smiling and laughing with the people they were with. If it had been the Falcons or the Vikings or the Chargers (oh dear) that had just lost the Super Bowl, I’m sure the mood aside from Eagles fans would have been a bit more somber, but if there’s any sports fanbase that can shrug off losing a championship, it’s the Patriots.

I made a quick run to the restroom and when I came out, this is what was happening.

I couldn’t even get choked up at this moment. I was overcome with relief. For literally every other football season as long as I’ve been aware of football, there was a fatalistic relief when the Eagles finally blew it that I didn’t have any more games to sweat bullets over. Reaching the end of the road on a W results in a wholly different sort of relief, and I was basking in it. It has lasted into the offseason and I hope it lasts for the rest of my life. The Eagles aren’t the most decorated team in history, and they probably never will be. But they got one, and the monkey off the city’s back.

I was mulling this over at the bar, when the soundsystem, which had been locked on the standard stuff you’ll hear at a pretty unambitious Irish-American bar in a good location, suddenly started playing a chorus of “Fly Eagles Fly.” The bar swelled up with voices, as the majority of the crowd stopped what they were doing to belt out that stupid, wonderful fight song for what was probably the 50th time that night for everyone, with the same level of give-zero-fucks enthusiasm as had been delivered with the first time. It felt like soldiers in a bar during WW2 singing the national anthem, or during the Civil War singing John Brown’s Body. This was a thing that was not going to get old.

I said to the bartender, “Thanks for somehow playing that.” He smirked, “Someone slipped me a hundred bucks to do it. Hell, I’d have done it for free,” and shrugged.

Kevin showed up and we were a blur of shouts, hugs, laughs, and recounting reaction to the game. His experience in the stadium was obviously way more hype than mine had been alone at home. He recounted stories of the atmosphere at the big moments of the game, hugging and high fiving strangers. Pretty quickly, we were both a few beers in and wanted to adventure further into downtown to take the pulse of the city that just hosted the Super Bowl and would be filled with Eagles fans.

I suggested we head to Pourhouse, mostly because it shares a name with a Manhattan Bar where we’d once spent New Year’s Eve, and I’d never been in the Minneapolis one. They wanted $50 from each of us as a cover. I mean, holy shit. My instinct was to recognize we’d made a mistake and immediately bail, but Kevin is a very natural schmoozer and was able, with the courageous amicability a few beers will get you, to talk the people working the door down to a still-hilariously outrageous $20 cash. He was way more determined than I was to see the inside of this place. We skipped the $10 coat check.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I had kinda hoped the place would be adorned with Eagles shit hastily assembled after the game ended. Instead it was a very dark two-story club kind of joint, but with a pretty good mix of folks. They did have this, which warmed my heart:

That is an oversized plastic pintglass with a little green light in the bottom. I was way too amused by it.

Kevin got to talking to some dude who looked like he was cosplaying Alice Cooper, and a drunk Patriots fan I was talking to was convinced this guy was the lead singer of Poison. I gotta say, I was generally impressed with the Patriots fans who were willing to turn up and party at the various bars we visited. If the Eagles lost, I’d have wanted to crawl under my bed.

I wanted to be sure to get this guy’s Meek Mill Eagles jersey in here.

The city of Minneapolis had passed special legislation that allowed bars to apply to stay open until 4:00 am (bar close is normally at 2:00 am). Not every bar bothered to do so, and so if we wanted to progress somewhere else, we had to pull up a list of bars that would be open. Kevin saw a place on the list that had been recommended to him by somebody: Sneaky Pete’s.

Jesus Christ.

Sneaky Pete’s is a sportsbar/nightclub right at the Warehouse District light rail station, next to a strip club and around the corner from two gay clubs, The Brass Rail and The Gay 90s, both Minneapolis institutions. I’d have rather gone to any of those instead of Sneaky Pete’s. I had been to Sneaky Pete’s several times in the tender years during and soon after college, after having just turned 21. It’s the kind of place that hosts beer pong tournaments, which were a blast for me and my college football teammates, and has platforms for dancers. Waitresses would come around with jello shots or whatever. It’s a place for bros to be their most toxic and bachelorettes to WOOOOO the most obnoxiously.

I was pretty sure we’d just be too old, which would be driven home by how little I’d want any of the drink specials, and yet how we for sure wouldn’t be the oldest guys there - there would be plenty of guys even older who were there to creep on 20-something women. But what the hell, the Eagles won the Super Bowl, it was a night to get weird.

It was loud and clubby in there and I was kind of hoping to find some more stoked Eagles fans, but if there were groups of them, it was too damn loud to talk to any. “Fly Eagles Fly” happened a few times, piping up over the thumping music. Kevin and I just wanted to drink, not really to dance, so we got beers and made our way to a seating area. For shits and giggles, I got us some shots of whatever sugar and bottom shelf vodka a waitress brought around in tiny plastic cups that one pays for in cash.

There was a drunk Vikings fan who super felt like he had to vent about Eagles fans’ abuse of Millie to us. He was for sure a “did you see what they did to Millie?” guy. We would never be forgiven. There was also a young woman who decided to take her dancing over to us in the seating area, and I am not nearly cool enough to find her act sexy and exciting, just awkward - especially so when it was apparently she was doing it to get a rise out of the dude she was with. Kevin got to see what Sneaky Pete’s is, but we didn’t stick around for very long.

Outside, it was getting late, but the city was still humming with the excited activity of tipsy fans out taking in nightlife. The light rail was disgorging a full train onto the sidewalk, so people were shuffling about and I bumped into a woman who was hysterical that she had lost her phone. She was convinced it was stolen. I’m not being dismissive when I say she was “hysterical,” she was pretty drunk and sobbing, and shouting her words at us which didn’t make much sense. Kevin tried to get a handle on it, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I pulled off into the adjacent parking lot to call the cops, I figured maybe they could at least get a police report? I’ll admit that was more about passing the buck to them, because we would have felt pretty shitty just shrugging and leaving her there.

As I was calling, a fight stumbled into me, between the Sneaky Pete’s bouncer and another guy. The guy fell down and bounced off my hip as I was on the phone. He didn’t have any sports gear on, so I can’t tell you which fan base was to blame. Or maybe the bouncer was being belligerent. Either way, we figured it was time to dip. The cops said they were on their way, and we saw some flashing lights, so we told the woman to stay put and look for them. I wanted to show Kevin something fun and touristy in Minneapolis, so I led us to First Ave, Prince’s legendary home venue. I think it was listed among the places that would be open until 4:00 am, but we didn’t end up stopping in there. I think they had closed up a bit early.

It was cold as hell and the longer we were out in it, the less fun we were having, so we stopped into The Depot Tavern, which was still pretty full with people determined to tie one off until the wee hours when they were kicked out. We drank beers and meshed into the jolly vibe. Even the Patriots fans were in a good mood.

I was honestly bummed when 4:00 rolled around, not because I wanted to stay up and keep drinking (I was pretty done with drinking by then), but because I knew there would never be another one of these for me. There would never be another The First Time the Eagles Won the Superbowl. Minneapolis was as good as it got for party atmosphere, goodwill, and random “Fly Eagles Fly” as there was in the world, outside of Eastern PA and Southern NJ. If the Eagles win another one, there won’t be the same sense of relief, release, and fandom vindication. You never forget your first. And they might never get back.

I often have a tough time “living in the moment,” but I pulled it off that night. Kevin and I hugged when we dropped him off back to his hotel, and when I arrived home, my place in the Powderhorn neighborhood had never seemed so quiet. It seemed out of place for there not to be a party and a song happening there. I wanted to shout-sing that stupid fight song until my throat gave out. But I knew at some point I had to chill and go back to normal, or at least go back to whatever my new normal was now that my favorite team was the Super Bowl champion. I wondered how big a part of my identity this would end up being.

Worrying about the pernicious effects of obnoxious smugness creeping into my personality would have to wait. One of the perks of working on Saturdays is I get off on Mondays. I had nothing better to do the next day than bask in the Eagles’ first Super Bowl championship. The moment doesn’t last forever, but oh my god, the fact sure does, and it has been everything a sports fan could hope for. Birdsong sounds more cheerful, the sun is a bit brighter and more pleasant, beer tastes a little bit better, as do the tears of Cowboys fans. It’s not like it’s turned my life around. But general morale is up, which has been interesting.

In the weeks since, I've begun to confront the existential crisis that winning a championship presents for the Philadelphia fans. The underdog narrative is so woven into the fabric of that city and its sports (quadrupleally so with the Eagles, heretofore championshipless) that I don't know how I'm gonna deal with this. I imagine many other fans will continue to insist on their own virtue scrappy underdoggedness even if the Eagles turn into an epic dynasty, and I worry that will lead to Boston levels of head-in-sand paranoia.

But for once, I don't want to philosophize. The feeling of my favorite sportsball team finally, finally winning their long-sought championship has been so sweet that I want to share it with everyone I care about, all my Vikings and Lions friends. I used to mildly root against MInnesota teams because I am a piece of shit who wanted everyone around me to be as sports-miserable as I am, but God help me, now I want the Vikings to win a Super Bowl, so their fanbase can finally taste this feeling after their long years of failure.

The Eagles have been a fun thing to remind myself of when shit goes South for me. Hey, man, tough break. Bills are piling up, frustrating day at work, you flopped asleep with the car left illegally parked with the windows open and you got a ticket, it rained, and your backpack was stolen? But you know what? The Eagles are champions. THE EAGLES. That’s gotta be worth something.

[wellplacedrocket]

Second Half GIFvalanche: So That Happened

I honestly don’t remember much of the halftime show. I think that’s when I got up to go to the bathroom, refill my water, and pace nervously, awaiting my fate. I know Justin Timberlake played, and there was a Prince element involved as a nod to Minneapolis. If only the Vikings would have been in the game, I’m sure this would have been the Culmination of Being for many of their fans. Sorry, Minneapolis, I had no time for your (our) cultural moment in the national spotlight that night.

The Patriots started the following drive and it sure looked like during halftime they clicked everything into place and solved the Eagles’ defense. And the solution was to Gronk them to death. Hell, the first attempt was a rare miss on a pop route but it was horrifyingly open.

No matter, the next one was a leisurely 15 yard out to him in a very comfortable hole in the Eagles’ zones.

Then another pop for 20 yards, same route as the one they’d missed two plays ago, except the defender was in much better position - but fell over. Then another portent - Brady gets pretty decent protection, but with no one open quickly, he wisely chucks it out of bounds, making all the Eagles fans wish he’d hung onto for literally a quarter-second longer.

Just for funsies, the Patriots then sent Gronkowski wide left from where he easily, almost casually pick up the 3rd and 6, and a couple plays later had him basically box out Ronald Darby (who slipped) for a 5 yard TD.

Slipping and losing your footing is a tough break, so I’m not gonna yell at him. But Jesus H. Christ. But most of the drive just looked so, so easy, like why hadn’t they just been forcing it at Gronk the whole time? Looking at the scoreboard now, all the Eagles’ unlikely heroics in the first half and they were still only up three. My sphincter clenched.

The next sequence is emblematic of Nelson Agholor’s career. I always defend receivers against the slings and arrows of fans who spit angrily at drops, because man...this shit is just way harder than it looks. But he’s still gotta make this catch. And so Agholor, much maligned as a bust last year…

...manages one of the greatest career turnarounds I’ve ever seen a skill position player make, improving his catching ability, but as an added bonus and unexpected twist, he somehow also turned into an outstanding yards-after-catch threat.

Way to go, Agholor.

It’s easy, particularly in football, to get nauseating with fawning cliches about how much of a team game it is, and how credit is due everywhere, but every position group really did have their moment here. The Eagles kept their drive going with blocking that was merely serviceable, but just outstanding rush talent from Blount…

...and Ajayi.

Then I gotta highlight great TE action, because this is a textbook block-to-pop by Ertz, starting from the right wing.

Having expected the Eagles to deflate and lay down softly as soon as the Patriots reasserted themselves in the game, this drive was blowing my mind in all the best ways.

Now I want to contrast a couple plays’ worth of QB action. This first one shows Foles doing something that has always made me squirm and scream in my brain. He’ll look super indecisive with where he wants to go and double clutch on throws. Football is so fast, that if you double clutch even for a half second, your window is probably shut. He hadn’t done this all game and it’s not a good look here…

...although good on him for just chucking it away. Now look at this one, where he’s back to Nick Foles: Unstoppable Football Howitzer.

This wound up being the first of two reviews that made me want to snap my own neck. Much has been made about the review system in sports - particularly football - with many calling for it to be abolished for how it kills the action, and sends everyone down a labyrinth of byzantine rule-parsing. I say technology has made it impossible for sports viewers to tolerate human error that goes against their interests. In earlier days of sports on TV, there weren’t a bajillion camera angles with high-def picture in ultra slow motion that could instantly analyze the action. That genie is out of the bottle now - you think anyone would just let it go when an obviously blown call, revealed by the most advanced video technology in the world, goes against them? Sports would devolve into nothing but judgement about officials’ human imperfections and conspiracy theories, even moreso than it is now.

Still, the emotional limbo that a video review puts you in is excruciating. Do I lose my shit?! Do I lose my shit in a bad way?! Is third RB Corey Clement a god damn hero? Is he an unforgivable putz/traitor?!?!

It was a hell of a run, throw, and catch, another case of the entire roster showing up for their moment. And I was surprised they let it stand. I don’t know that I have ever heard the argument that a ball carrier can be considered to have “control” of the ball if it’s moving around in his grasp, even though it makes intuitive sense. Ball movement is just the visual fulcrum point on which judgement of control sits, for lack of a better one. But the refs, in a rare instance of this, went with the intuitive judgement rather than the driest rule interpretation. And if this had been the Patriots scoring a TD like this, I’m sure I would still be hulked out, speaking in tongues of rage, and fighting gladiator matches on planet Sakaar.

Eagles fans immediately burned effigies of Chris Collinsworth and Al Michaels for being so confident this play would be overturned - I’m a little more forgiving. I would later read about their awful PRO-PATRIOTS BIAS as they continued to harp on how it was called...I was too stressed out to notice much of what they were saying at the time, but I suppose it was a little more airtime than commentators usually give to matters of dubious officiating.

The Eagles defense now had a 10 point lead to protect again, and while their D line depth seemed to be paying dividends by limiting the Patriots to short runs, their pass defense once again struggled. A defensive holding call coughed up a first down (it looked like it was reeeeeaaaaaaally upsold by Gronkowski), and then Brady again just barely beats the rush to get it to Hogan, working against pillow soft coverage once again. You could make a plush bathrobe out of this coverage.

Hogan might have pushed off, at least Darby thinks so. But he might not have even needed to.

Check out this tackle by Malcolm Jenkins, it’s hard to see where the hell he even comes from here. Somewhere, Brian Dawkins sheds a proud tear.

I dunno, I probably shouldn’t be getting super pissed about the soft coverage, because even when they press it, it’s burned.

Tom Brady has a very comfortable pocket there. That one is on the rush as much as the secondary. Jesus, what a collapse of one of the strengths of the team, but you also have to tip your hat to the Patriots O-line, they were a wall.

It would have been nice if the Eagles Defense didn’t just lay down softly in this game, you know? But here’s where I was hating myself for ever thinking that maybe the Eagles could pull this shit off. I should be more detachedly cynical than that by now. For all the eye-popping limit-breaks that the offense had made happen, there the Patriots were, and their highlights just looked easier.

There was no telling when the universe would catch wise to Nick Foles and the Eagles offense’s historic success and move to correct the error, but those guys looked like they gave zero fucks:

Holy shit.

HOLY SHIT.

What is going on?!

Then it was the fourth quarter, where hopes go to get snuffed out.

The drive would ultimately stall in the red zone thanks to a nice open field play made by the Patriots’ defense, but I wanted to call attention to the play design here. The Eagles had already hit on an Agholor end-around, and they used that motion again…

...but had him stop and go back the other way. It’s interesting, but I would have preferred if they were going to use the end-around as a decoy to decoy all the way - fake to Agholor and have the RB pop out to Foles’s right. As it happened, the Patriots’ OLB didn’t even rush the pass, and Lane Johnson didn’t have anyone to block. His defender just went with Agholor and was on him right away.

Nice job by Jake Elliott to boot the FG through, but I couldn’t help but notice in a game wherein a touchdown almost always gets 7 points, the Eagles were now only up 6.

And the defense wasn’t inspiring much confidence.

I mean, that’s right into the teeth of what the Eagles defense is supposed to be great at. Mighty Fletcher Cox gets into the backfield, but on the wrong side of the play. Vinny Curry might have been doing a stunt here, but he gets turned aside, and then the Patriots’ O-line does a good job of getting second level.

I actually didn’t mind the blitz here. Usually blitzing against Tom Brady is suicide, but it’s not like anything else was working, and the D-line just wasn’t getting it done. The results were pretty predictable, but Defensive Coordinator Jim Schwartz had to have been tearing his hair out like “FUCK IT! SEND ‘EM ALL!”

When two guys in pass coverage end up in the same space, someone has screwed the pooch. I mean, this looks just beautifully textbook, like it’s during practice for the Patriots. I know exactly how this game ends, and this drive still fills me with dread.

I can’t actually blame the defense too much on that play. Darby’s position wasn’t bad, it was just a difficult throw and a very difficult catch in a perfect spot. But everything leading up to that play made me regret the part of my brain that allowed me to believe the Eagles could win the Super Bowl. I felt so stupid to having opened that emotional door. Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, the Scout hurts people, and brother, the Eagles lose in the postseason. Like a force of nature. Of course the Eagles defense would shit the bed this game. It was so obvious. Of course the offense would spend all game lighting it up, and would now come crashing back down to earthbound reality. Of course this would be a record setting game in NFL history for total yards of offense that the Eagles would lose in the 4th quarter.

I flashed forward to the L I’d be chewing on for the rest of my life over this. The immediate sympathy from some friends and coworkers over how close the Eagles were, and the schadenfreude from others. How it would sting when I had to next see people. How years down the line, the pain would be reduced down to a duller ache as I recalled the time the Eagles almost...almost...

It would be internalized and just part of my existence. I would wonder at times what ripple effects it ultimately had on my psyche.

Tom Brady makes fourth quarter comebacks in the Super Bowl like people make eggs for breakfast. The Eagles don’t. Haves and have nots, a tale as old as life.

Ah, yes. This was what I expected. Foles and the offense had been on fire, and now it would cost them as they tried to force increasingly ludicrous miracles.

Hm, a 3rd and 6 converted, down 1 with under 9 minutes to go in the Super Bowl. That’s actually...pretty...clutch?

Another 3rd down…

...and that is a great job on defense. It was actually a pretty good play call, the Patriots blitzed the middle and Foles barely gets it away to the outside. The Patriots blitzed right into a screen, which often burn blitzes, but S Devin McCourty gets around Vaitai, who was after him, and flows out to chase down the play.

It would make for a better story if I said I was surprised they didn’t punt here. But I’d watched the Eagles all season, and going for it on 4th and 1 from their own 45, down 1 with 5:45 left fit their personality. It just seemed like everything was setting up for them to fall on their faces and the Patriots to get the ball back, and burn a few minutes of the clock on their way to another game-sealing “Tom Terrific” touchdown.

The fact that they clutched it out, in the biggest moment of the franchise’s history, demonstrated there was something different going on here. I was in uncharted waters. Looking at that play, it’s a pretty classic pick (a quasi-legal technique executed to perfection by Celek) that is overlooked only because it’s so close to the line of scrimmage. Hell of a backfield dodge under pressure by Foles and a great throw made off his back foot - a posture he has long taken heat for throwing out of too much.

Wha…

How...

What is this?! What is going on here?! You got Foles making Aaron Rodgers throws out here, and Eagles receivers catching them. For all the marbles. EVERY MARBLE. The Eagles do not rise to the occasion! THE EAGLES SHIT THEIR BEDS.

You can argue this was the play of the game, because it got them into reasonable FG range. Vaitai gets beat, but pushes the edge rusher just enough to give Foles the time to get it away. And Foles isn’t taking Ertz in the flat, who is wide open. No, Nick Foles is now Big Dick Nick: Gunslinger and he fires it in a tight window to the slant.

Foles and Agholor have the hot read going on the corner blitz. This is probably just a bad idea by Patriots’ D-coordinator, Matt Patricia. Agholor, a first round pick in 2015, had, after two underwhelming seasons marred by drops, a breakout season and had shown himself to be excellent running with the ball. You don’t want to be putting him in a situation to get the ball quickly with lots of space by drawing away his defender. But maybe the Patriots felt like they had to get weird.

They did a trap block with the LT Vaitai here, and it’s nice to see that in this game, given the context, and despite his previous struggles, they weren’t treating him like a liability with the playcalling. They were featuring him with this call. It’s also very nice to get able to get a few yards and the cloud of dust.

Oh, man. This play.

First of all, I want to snark at McCourty, the S who’s on Ertz 1-on-1 at the top of the screen, but I can’t. It’s a very tough spot he’s put in. This is TE territory, and TEs very much like getting matched up against smaller DBs in tight quarters. McCourty then slips on the break just like Darby had, which made the throw and catch pretty easy.

Then in the biggest moment for this team, which has been around since dirt, from a city that breathes football and in which it has been played since it was a thing, that hadn’t ever won the primary professional football association’s championship - on this play where they take the lead, Al Michaels, of “do you believe in miracles?” fame, says “Zach Ertz for the touchdown! And again, all you can think back to now is the Jesse James play with Pittsburgh. Does he complete the process?”

I’d like to think he’d want to take a mulligan on that one, given the context for Eagles fans. We know the review is coming, god damnit. Just let us have this moment, give us a memory, Michaels. But no.

I don’t know how long the review took, so I’m going to conservatively guess it was 8 months.

This was truly awful, and I get the “down with replay!” crowd here. You lose your shit in those few moments of sports fan glee, before the blood drains from your face because the thing you just saw happen might not have happened. They launch a forensic investigation over whether a knee brushed a blade of grass. Then you wait in trepidation, and if it goes your way, you feel awash in relief more than you feel the ragejoy you were just robbed of. If it doesn’t go your way, you want to crawl under your couch. All if this amplified 10,000x by the Super Bowl.

The fact that this is the first place Michaels goes is, I suppose, not really his fault and mostly just an example of where we’re at with football now. Everyone has to suspend their emotional reaction for however long it takes to reach a conclusion, and when that conclusion is reached, the losers feel shittier and the winners feel about 25% less ecstatic with the loss of immediacy.

Lots of Eagles fans and people rooting against the Patriots had out their torches and pitchforks for what they perceived as favoritism by Michaels and Collinsworth toward the reigning champs that had been going on all night. I didn’t really see what the complaints were about, but I was baffled that these two found this TD controversial. Michaels hit on it right away, the crux of the matter was whether Ertz was ruled a runner with possession of the ball before he broke the plane with it. And look at it. Yeah, he was a runner. He literally runs with possession of the ball. How much is he possessing the ball? Enough to shove it out over the goal line as he makes a desperate dive. The Clement TD was more up in the air than this one, by far.

When the refs finally confirmed the TD after their forensic analysis, this should have been the biggest moment of my sports fan life, but instead...nah. It was more exhaling and unclenching my butt for the first time in 5 minutes than it was “FUCK YEAAAAAAHHHH.” Suggesting we put scrap video review is stupid, but I understand I was emotionally robbed by it.

Going back to that clip for a moment, my favorite reaction is Jeffrey’s (#17). He looks like he wants to jump on Ertz but then doesn’t and instead does this kind of childlike hop with his arms up. It’s a heartwarming moment of pure human joy.

Anyway, if you’re up 5, there’s little reason not to go for 2, but of course it didn’t work out. Good defense.

Now here’s Tom Brady with the ball, a timeout, and 2:21 remaining. Like, it’s supposed to be unlikely they score, right? That’s what makes the legends for those who pull it off. Here was THE BIGGEST LEGEND in the history of the sport. The Eagles Defense was hot garbage that night. “2:21, the two-minute warning, and a time out, he’s got all day,” Michaels remarked with confidence. It just felt so inevitable.

Yes, here was the beginning of the end for all of us Eagles fans. Soft coverage, a quick out to Gronkowski for 7 yards. Soft coverage isn’t actually a bad idea here, but still, if it means you’re going to give up at least 7 yards each play, then the Patriots have plenty of time. The pass rush is actually getting into the backfield alright here, but Brady is able to make the decision quickly to a wide open receiver, so they’re not super close to him.

!

!!

Again, I wish I had a better story of my reaction to this play, but I was as frozen as I would have been if something horrible had happened, if the Eagles defense had all just fallen over and allowed Brady himself to slow-jog the 70 yards for the TD. But truth is stranger than fiction, and the Eagles pass rush had finally - FINALLY, after a game of being at best a step too slow as everyone danced to Brady’s tune - got to the target.

Although they had plenty of time, the Patriots still had to move the ball, and probably felt they had to crisscross the entire field with route patterns, and so couldn’t afford to trade receivers for extra blockers. Once again, the Eagles coverage is soft, they’re sinking back into zones starting at 10 yards. However, the soft coverage came through here - Brady is looking for a deeper throw and climbs the pocket, burning time not finding any targets. He goes to checkdown, but as he turns to dump it, Brandon Graham is in his face, hacking at his throwing arm. The D-line, the rock of this team, which had spent the game unexpectedly and embarrassingly vanishing, had burst back into the story.

Tom Brady doesn’t get strip sacked and force fed a fat L, like a lowly Brandon Weedon or Trevor Semian. Brady dishes out the Ls to other hapless chumps. But there he was, ass on grass. As an Australian football radio guy would shoutcast, “Tom Brady...bereft on the turf!”

By the way, Michaels goes “Derek Barnett comes away with it! Brandon Graham was one of the guys who got in there!”

I mean...holy shit, Michaels. That’s some real godawful play by play there. Boom goes the dynamite.

I suppose I should have been leaping for joy, but with the Eagles in the driver’s seat and 2:09 remaining, I was silent, “leaned-in” as though my focus on the ensuing events would ward off the many ways the Eagles could still manage to find to fuck it all up. First sack of the game, for the Patriots’ only turnover, and it bounced straight to Barnett. That was catching a break.

My friends, if you believe in the healing, soul-nourishing power of schadenfreude, please feast your eyes.

Even Big Balls Doug wasn’t about to go styling in this situation. The Eagles came out and went with the prescribed heavy package runs, bringing on Seumalo and 2 TEs to try to zone block through all the guys the Patriots would certainly be crowding the line of scrimmage with. Kelce gets blown the hell up here but scrambles and sticks with it. Blount does a nice job extending the play for as long as he could.

The exact same playcall next play was Pederson showing confidence in his kicker for what would be - and I know I’ve beaten this phrase to death - the biggest kick of his life. Jake Elliott, the rookie replacement after starter Caleb Sturgis was injured. Elliott, who got signed off the Bengals practice squad, who had an alarmingly high miss rate for close range kicks, but was somehow money from deep, who had a record-setting walk off 61-yard FG for a win against the Giants at the Linc...go win the game, kid.

Kickers are strange animals. They spend most of their time at practice and during games off to the side, just repeating their one craft over and over again. They get together with teammates to practice special teams execution and how to deal with given scenarios, maybe some trick plays. But by the nature of their job, they don’t get to be all that social with their teammates very much. Then they come in the moments that everyone remembers, sometimes to perform the game winning act after their team has spent the last several hours scrambling with sprained joints and peeing blood to set that kicker up for his shot. All the superstar QBs, WRs, LBs take a backseat, hold their breath, and stand to the side watching the skinniest guy on the team do his thing. Nothing else matters in that moment - not the touchdowns, sacks, clock management. All the egos fade away. Everyone has invested 100% of their emotional selves into this one dude.

If he comes through, he’s the hero. Multimillion dollar superstars storm the field with big goofy, unselfconscious smiles to dogpile him…

...and carry him into legend on their shoulders.

I’m always touched by this scene. Sports does this in a way we don’t get to see much in other walks of life. Everyone loses their god damn minds in hilarious joy and swarms this guy, and each other. It’s a human moment. All the other shitty contexts in life, all the conflict and racism and Steve Bannons vanish because it’s time to scream bliss gibberish at the kicker as they jump on his shoulderpads, for he is their guy.

And if he blows it, you have the Minnesota Vikings.

It’s an exercise in clutch. So on comes Elliott for a midrange FG to put the Eagles up 8 with just over a minute to go in the Super Bowl. No big deal.

It should be noted that rather than the ecstasy of a walk-off W here, Elliott’s teammates give him the usual workmanlike acknowledgements. It was still a one score game.

Failed trick plays always make the attempting team look like goober losers, but I don’t blame the Patriots for getting weird here. They sacrifice the maybe 10 - 15 yards that they’d have likely gotten with a standard return to shoot for the moon with this thing. It went nowhere, mercifully, but it was a solid idea. “That is a really interesting call,” observes Collinsworth. Was it? Seems pretty reasonable and justifiable.

Yesss, yesss, this is where the soft coverage becomes a smothering pillow. At least it should. That is a very tough throw and catch they attempt, but it was possible, god damnit. The zones were swiss cheese.

The pass rush was making its presence known. They were starting to give Brady tickles, which was a better late than never sort of thing. In fact, it was a “if you’re going to do it at all, late is the time to do it” sort of thing.

I mean...come the fuck on. The pass rush certainly was breathing down Brady’s neck here, and I get the secondary is playing waaaaayyy deep, but it’s 4th and 10. Still better safe than sorry by LB Nigel Bradham there, who was in the middle on those sink zones. He just wanted to make sure he was well behind Amendola.

Now let’s take a moment here for football probabilities. In all likelihood, I should have been already celebrating, right? Like there’s no way, right? The Patriots had 26 seconds to get another 78 yards plus a 2 point conversion just to tie it. Even for Tom Brady that’s a steep ask, right? Right?

No, it wasn’t. No, it fucking wasn’t. There was zero chance I was going to cease sweating and unclench my sphincter for even a nanosecond.

See? SEE?! The Eagles were giving the Patriots this kind of quick out for 10 yards, but the Patriots were happy to take it. They hit one of those every 6 - 7 seconds of gameclock, then they only need one (one!) bomb miracle and the Eagles will have LOST, THE SKY WILL OPEN, THE SEVEN TRUMPETS WILL SOUND, AND A MOUNTAIN OF FIRE WILL FALL, AND LAND IN THE OCEAN. THE ANIMALS WILL CRY AND FLEE, AND THERE WILL BE MUCH WAILING AND GNASHING OF TEETH AMONGST HUMANKIND. GREAT C’THULU WILL ADJOIN WITH BEELZEBUB, THEY WILL OPEN ONE OF THEIR 17 SCREECHING MAWS AND SING THE SONG THAT ENDS THIS EARTH.

I’m glad no one was around to make even a single god damn sound as I was watching this. If anyone were to have piped up with “Man, this is getting surprisingly suspenseful, given how 2 minutes ago it looked as if the Eagles were clearly going to win,” I’d have uppercut them to the sun.

Darby makes the right move hugging the sideline after Gronkowski makes the catch, trying to tangle him up inbounds, but the Patriots look like they’ve set up sort of a pick play just for the this purpose. Listen to Collinsworth rooting so hard for Gronkowski to get out of bounds. “There he is!” he exhales in relief as the real life centaur stumbles across the line. OH, THERE HE IS, COLLINSWORTH? THAT SURE IS A LOAD OFF, RIGHT?! HEAVEN FORFEND HE GETS TACKLED IN BOUNDS AND SOMEONE OTHER THAN TAWM FACKIN’ BRADY WINS THE SUPER BOWL.

Good defensive positioning here, but why couldn’t he just reel it in? Can’t we please have an anticlimactic crunch-time INT to put the game away, followed by what would be my favorite victory formation? I love victory formation, partially because I had very few opportunities to run it. All the routine trappings of football execution that you’re having to perform - huddle, line up, get your alignments right, listen for snap count, execute your prescribed action - are 1000% more fun in victory formation because 1. It’s an easy thing to do 2. There’s no pressure 3. Everyone is smiling and someone is probably making a joke and 4. There’s always that tiiiiiny chance someone on the other team is salty and is gonna pull some dickish shit. One of the dark sides of sports for me is that being pissed off is often thrilling. And in victory formation, you hold all the cards. “Scoreboard,” is the unbeatable comeback to any insult. Imagine how fun it would be in the Super Bowl!

But no. No, now we gotta have actual excitement. I didn’t want excitement. I wanted anything but excitement. I wanted a hilarious blowout like the NFCCG. I wanted the game to be over after the first quarter, and the rest of the game to be a joyous victory lap. I wanted to start happy drinking beer, rather than slowly sipping room temperature water. This game had already had miracles. Jeffrey, Blount, Clement, Ertz, the Patriots O-line, Gronkowski’s 2-TD performance, Tom Brady again, the Philly Special, Brandon Graham, Derek Barnett, the world holding Nick Foles’s beer and watching what he did next. 1,152 total yards of offense, the most in any NFL game ever.

You think there was any chance anyone thought a 51 yard heave into the endzone was impossible? Or some crazy never-before-seen hook-and-ladder or whatever Emperor Palpatine on the Patriots sideline cooked up to make use of the best QB, the best TE, and whatever role-player-come-unstoppable-superstar the Patriots have elevated this week?

I didn’t blink as the ball was snapped. Dug my fingers into the couch arm as Brady spun out of the arms of Graham, who was suddenly in pass rush hypermode. Brady found a moment, a platform, and reminded everyone of his weird agelessness as he cannoned the ball downfield. I remember being aware of the crowd roar and wondered how anyone had any juice left to make sound as the ball flew. It sailed upward into the middle air of the stadium, tracked by hundreds of cameras and millions of eyeballs, and then down to a tight bunch of desperately grappling men. It bounced once off the players, and those watching who had the diaphragm strength left to gasp did so. Then it fell to the turf and into history.

[wellplacedrocket]

First Half GIFvalanche: Nick...Foles...?

Right up until game time, I was unsure what I would do to watch. Pete and I were invited to a friend’s Super Bowl party. I could have found a bar downtown full of my fellow Eagles fans who couldn’t score tickets, or found a slightly quieter one closer to home. But as game time grew closer, I started to feel sicker and sicker with anxiety. An hour before kickoff, I didn’t want to be with anybody, even my favorite people. I knew I wanted solitude, and quiet. I didn’t want any chatter or cheers or boos or people asking me what I think or how I feel. Pete left for the party, and I was relieved when he was gone. I stayed home.

I watched my favorite team play in the Super Bowl from our couch, with a glass of water and a single light on. I didn’t even feel like drinking beer.

I did less in-game texting for the Super Bowl than I did for the NFCCG, I think my family, friends, and relatives know how I get when I’m watching sports that are super important to me. I’m not really a boisterous fan in the moment, even when my favorite teams are kicking ass. I’m not a dry, joyless tape eater either, I just concentrate hard on understanding the game, and one can get lost in considering all the machinery in football.

I was still emotionally rollercoastering on the inside. If you don’t care about sports or being a fan of competitions, I can forgive you for being baffled as to why I could care so much about the outcome of this football game that I was having physiological manifestations of anxiety - dry mouth, zero appetite, agitation, thumping heart. I would counter that competitiveness is as human nature as art, love, and politics; sports are just the version that use physics in real space and require athleticism; and the core of being a fan of watching other people compete is empathy as much as it is tribalism. To say “who cares, it’s just a game” is like saying about the Mona Lisa “who cares, it’s just swirls of paint.”

Of course it doesn’t really matter. Of course it still means the world.

And I had watched it all go south before, back in 2005.

The Eagles got the ball first, and Nick Foles - starter turned journeyman turned backup turned guy-in-the-spotlight - took the field. Normally, I’d be giggling at the story everyone was imagining would play out. That shit doesn’t happen in real life, and certainly not with the Eagles. I was prepared for the worst of cynical reality, but emotionally I didn’t have a choice but to silently tell the guy, well...go blow the doors off history, my dude.

I remember nodding my Football Approval at the very first playcall they had, a 5 yard stop to Nelson Agholor, he of the incredible career turnaround. Yes, yes, I thought to myself, as a Wise Football Knower. A simple, easy play to get both Foles and a receiver in the game, get some confidence. Make it routine.

That was about it for my calm, routine football consumption for the day. On the following 3rd & 4, Foles was “flushed,” which is not what Eagles fans want to see since he is about as mobile as an anvil, but the replay showed he wasn’t really in much pass rush danger. He just shuffled to his left to improve the angle from which to throw to an Alshon Jeffery whip route. This is a veteran sort of move, a subtle little thing that turned out to be a good indicator that Foles was going to be no joke that day.

A few plays later, 3rd & 12 on the 45 for your offense on their first drive isn’t great. Jesus fuck, it’s the Super Bowl. Is this the beginning of 3 hours of bed-shitting until they’re finished, and I have the rest of my life to cry about it? I’m not old enough, I can’t expect the sweet embrace of death to sweep it away soon.

I think the mark of your football team’s competence is how confident you feel in these uphill do or die situations when you know they gotta throw it. I’m bringing this up because the story of this game for me was things that I had zero confidence would ever happen...happened. The O-line held up long enough with a nice chip from Jay Ajayi for Torrey Smith to get open right in the middle of the field, and Foles hit him for 14 yards.

Every time the Eagles fucked something up, I was ready to take the big, fat L with a side of ugly crying. They pushed it down to the two yard line on the opening drive, then a false start and two incompletes later, they’re kicking. Points, right? Nah, this was the beginning of the great unraveling that must happen for the Eagles to lose the championship game and order to be restored to the universe.

The Eagles defense...my god. I had been used to them being the strength of the team. They stuffed the first play, a screen, and then just gave up chunk yardage after chunk yardage from there. Much was made about how their pass rush vanished the whole game, but a couple things on that. First, the Patriots were having extra blockers on almost every play. And the pass rush was closer to giving Tom Brady tickles than you might think. Commentators often show a little segment in-game about his throwing mechanics and how quick it is. He might be a fancy dog, but the man is football smart. He knew he had to get that thing outta there.

Secondly, I have a hunch that the secondary was being coached to, at all costs, not get burned deep. I’m not enough of a football nerd to look this up, but were the Patriots even a top-tier bomb threat like the Texans? I think their offense is more about 8, 10, 15 yard route combos that dice up the coverage and let the best QB to ever play put the ball where the holes open up. So a lot of the Patriots offense looked like this:

Look at how soft that coverage is. Jesus! What happens here is a play action pass - two Eagles LBs end up going after the FB, who was just trying to block somebody, and then walked-up safety Malcolm Jenkins attacks the RB. An 8 yard dig for Gronkowski goes over top of them. To be fair, that’s mostly on the LBs and Jenkins - three guys -  for getting fooled by two guys in the backfield. But rarely did they press the coverage, even just to mix things up. That drive ended up with a FG attempt, but the Eagles’ CBs were at least 6 yards off even in 2nd and 3rd & short from near the damn goal line.

The Eagles had the best O-line in the league all year, even without future hall of famer LT and team Mufasa Jason Peters, and their subsequent drive is when it showed. Beleaguered backup LT Halapoulivaati Vaitai, who had been the only serious hole in the line after Peters was hurt, and who also now had a much less escapable QB to protect, had quietly ceased to be a liability in the NFCCG. A well-blocked, big hole for Blount for a big gain on the ground,

then decent protection for Foles to chuck a 30 yard TD to Alshon Jeffery.

This is the kind of miracle play that suddenly no longer seemed like a miracle for Foles and the offense. It was just well executed football, and furthermore, it was a play they had made before. Then Jake Elliott shanked the PAT, and that also was a thing they had done before. And I could just see the Wise Football Knowers all sagely nodding their heads after the Eagles lose by a point.

…and then on the Patriot's drive, the defense’s soft or completely broken coverage gave up the entire field. What actually had me just as concerned was how the run defense, a core strength of the team, was getting schooled by the Patriots’ O-line on this drive. However, despite the comprehensive defensive collapse, this drive ended with one of the coolest tackles of the season to bring it to a halt,

and then the Eagles caught a break with the botched FG. Weird...

Normally, the Eagles’ next drive would have utterly convinced me that the wheels were about to come off them. This was the game’s only punt, and nothing sucks the wind out of your sails like a turnover (on downs, in this case) that results in a god damn punt. However, I did notice something that shot my eyebrows up.

Look at Foles go! This is not a guy known for his escapability, but that was a nice move to evade the pass rush. It looked like Carson Wentz had ahold of a joystick controlling Foles and was sweatily workin’ that thing for all it was worth. The pass was incomplete, but Jesus, is this Nick Foles out there? What is going on with that man?

I considered putting a gif in of the game’s only punt, and then decided to get ahold of myself.

The very next play sums up a few of the points I’m making about this game.

Look at the coverage! It’s 10 yards deep! And what happens is Brady is again dancing on a razor’s edge to get the ball out, but then he does to a guy who is wide open, waaay downfield. In fact, he is so open and the coverage was so soft that he turns around, 30 yards deep, and there’s three defenders still deeper than him. This is an awkward position to be in, as a receiver - usually when you’re that deep and you get the ball, you got to worry about putting a move on just one guy who’s already right next to you, and then getting chased from behind. Here, Eagles CB Ronald Darby is playing very soft and then when Cooks makes his break, Darby is content to just make sure he doesn’t get any further upfield, rather than try to get in the way of the ball (it looks like he was pretty badly burned anyway, so this might not have been a bad idea).

Cooks comes out of his catch with Darby 5 yards deeper than him, and another defender in man-to-man off to his right, and I'm assuming a single high safety who must have been standing on the damn moon. He tries to make moves in all this space, looking at the two guys in his way, and he ends up getting hammered by Malcolm Jenkins coming from behind on a hit that probably should have been penalized. Ugh. Cooks motionless on the field is why I hate myself for loving football.

Then came this gem. My god...it’s beautiful.

The ball was just a little long, and I tend to defend football receivers who take shit for drops from fans who never played football - the shit is harder than it looks, man. Especially catching over your shoulder. But it really looked like Tom Brady should have been able to get that one. That man is the best QB to ever play the game, the most accomplished player, embarrassingly rich, good looking, with a literal supermodel for a wife. It’s nice to see him fail once in a while, because it LOOKS LIKE HE’S HOGGING ALL THE FUCKING SUCCESS. Especially on a catch I’m confident I could have made. Actually, I’m full of shit, the fear of the Super Bowl spotlight and the freaks of nature flying around me would have had me shriveled into a mound of weeping goo. But I’d have caught it in practice!

On 4th and 5, the Patriots went for it, and the Eagles actually played tighter coverage. The ball went to Gronkowski down the sideline and while he had a little space and could have maybe made the play, it would have been very tough even for him.

Now here’s a case where I understand why football nerds love the all 22 video, because it’s hard to tell how Zach Ertz gets so open. It’s 3rd and 7, and the Patriots are playing much tighter coverage than the Eagles have in this game, and it looks like Ertz’s defender is on him pretty well as they pass out of view to the left. When the throw comes and the camera pans, the defender has moved several yards to the sideline - Ertz must have put a hell of a move on him.

Now, a couple plays later, what is this. WHAT IS THIS.

The difficulty level here is batshit blithering bananabonkers. That is a tough, tough throw and catch, people. This is not the kind of play I’m accustomed to seeing the Eagles make, especially not with NICK FOLES. I never thought he was a bad QB, maybe streaky, and QBs tend to get too much credit and blame for team results - but I certainly never thought he had this kind of stuff in him, in the Super Bowl.

Now I gotta highlight the this next play not for LaGarrette Blount, who made a great run, but instead my spirit animal, Brent Celek, the longest tenured Eagle, who many assumed would be gone after this game. He is a TE who saw more action in the passing game in his younger years, but especially ever since Zach Ertz showed up, he had been shifted to being a larger blocking TE, who occasionally gets a ball his way. That was my whole football career, minus the “larger.”

Eagles come out with a heavy Ace wing formation, so Celek is on the left wing, next to Isaac Seumalo, a backup lineman who gets thrown in at TE positions for extra beefy offensive sets. Ertz isn’t even on the field here.

Look at that textbook chip-to-backer that blows open the play for Blount to take it to the house.

I don’t want to get all sportswitery with the “lunchpail”, and “scrappy”, and “working class” stuff for another white role player in pro sports, but this is great work by the old man. Celek didn’t have a catch in this game, but this is an impact play from a guy who’s been around forever, and so a part of Super Bowl 52 is rightly his. Let’s see that again.

Just so tasty. Technically perfect TE blocking there.

The Patriots busted a screen into the red zone on their ensuing drive, but then Eagles the actually got pretty good backfield pressure and rushed some of Brady’s throws. They had to settle for a field goal.

The Eagles got the ball back, and found themselves in 3rd and 4 and did a slightly unusual thing that I always kinda want to see more in football - they ran it. Four yards in a 3rd and mid situation isn’t a huge ask, especially with defenses going to sink zones more than they otherwise would. It's even more attractive on the opponents’ side of the field when if you don't quite make it, you’re gonna go for it on 4th and very short anyway.

LG Stefen Wisniewski pulls through the hole and actually has a tough time finding anyone to block at first. This is more excellent blocking, RG Brandon Brooks chips the NT and gets second level, C Jason Kelce takes that chip and turns the NT away from the hole, and RT Lane Johnson has to actually shift a bit to his left to get the DT and then fool him into the action going right. This is high level stuff, and Ajayi made the most of it. Walked-up S Devin McCourty was the only guy unblocked here, and he had a tough diving tackle to make through traffic. Even if he made it, it would have likely been a first down. As it happened, some shitty tackling by the Patriots' secondary gifted the Eagles quite a bit more.

Then...

Some folks were bitching about Jeffery here - this is just a tough break. Clement had a nice step-up block, but Foles shorted it a bit. It just took a super lucky bounce for the Patriots, it happens. Of course, with the gravity of the moment, as I sat there in silence, I knew the sky was falling, the sun was exploding, and without a doubt I was going to die. And the Eagles were never gonna win the Super Bowl.

Despite a defensive holding reversing a pretty decent defensive stop on 3rd and 6, what concerned me the most about the Patriot’s drive here was again the ease of their run game. It didn’t look like they were blowing the Eagles front 7 off the ball or anything. It just looked like there were always guys in the way of tacklers, and each run was going for at least 4 yards. Then the Patriots hit on this.

The pass protection is pretty good here, but again Brady just barely gets it away. What has got me flummoxed is how CB Jalen Mills can just cough it up after giving Hogan a 10 yard cushion. Again, you can’t see what (if any) moves Hogan busted out there to sucker Mills, but whatever he did completely pantsed him. The single high safety was caught between two routes, and the Eagles D was looking like Swiss god damn cheese.

Man, this is just such a shitting of all the beds. I think the biggest improvement the defense made this year over last year was tackling - but not on this play. Shudder. All season long, the strength of the defense had been its front 7 (and the depth there) handling the opposing run game and wrecking backfields in order to limit pass options against a mediocre-at-best secondary. Now we’re seeing the opposite of what happened to the Vikings - if the front 7 struggles, the Eagles defense is a house of cards.

The Patriots’ ensuing missed PAT wasn’t much comfort, rather it was continuing my bafflement. What a weird game.

When sportswriters talk about a guy “feelin’ it” or “feelin’ himself” (I’ve always thought the latter was funny phrasing), they’re talking about the zone Foles is in here. However, it’s the line that’s truly in hypermode. Look at how far pass rush must be from Foles’s mind on this drive.

Even that incomplete was on the money. Then came a kiss-the-fingers wheel route.

That kind of route is a way harder throw to make than you think. Clement’s defender got burned, and Foles’s throw was absolutely perfect with very friendly, catchable touch - the kind that makes love to your hands as the ball nestles into them, the kind that Aaron Rodgers makes look so easy but is in fact impossible. I’ve never been a QB, but I don’t understand how they don’t howitzer bricks at everyone, with their nerves going nuts in huge moments. And this was the hugest moment for Foles.

It was very kind of the Patriots to return the Eagles' bad-tackling favor. The first missed tackle from behind had Clement feeling like he had a Super Mario invincible star going, and sometimes when you feel like that, you’re going to just run through people, like he did. He then plowed forward another 7 yards on the subsequent 1st and goal.

I don’t have any gripes with Doug Pederson’s playcalling on 2nd and 3rd and goal here. Fullback dive with some fake sweep action, and kind of a cross fade thing. I get triggered when teams do three in a row of 4 x 1 sets with a lobbed fade to the 1. In my college football days, our QB was a 6’5” 250 lb tank machine with a giant man-child’s body. But he was athletic and also played basketball. In goal line situations, we’d put the backup QB in, split the starter out wide, and run the Denny Fade. It would work embarrassingly well, against DIII defenses. In the pros, you’re not gonna be able to get physical matchups that mismatched, like ever.

Here’s something I think won’t age well: the idea that going for it on 4th and goal at the 1 with 38 seconds left is a super controversial decision. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t an emblematic moment for this coach and this team. Anyone who’d watched the Eagles all year knew the balls on Big Balls Doug - the man is fresh out of fucks to give. However, the play they went with…

That deserves its own wing in the football hall of fame. Let’s add some context here! This is 4th and goal in the SUPER BOWL with TAWM FACKIN’ BRADY waiting to take over on the other side, and the defense was shitting the bed. And Nick Foles goes over to the sideline and asks Pederson for this play, and then asks the world to hold his beer and watch this.

If you watch that video of the Philly Special, you see Foles trot over to the sideline during the time out and ask Pederson “you want Philly Philly?” Pederson stares at him for a beat and I’d like to think there’s a few explanations for that. One is that he grasps the gravity of the situation. It’s 4th and goal in the Super Bowl, and the guy who was his backup the whole year - but over the last two weeks has super soldier serumed into a football juggernaut - is asking for a gadget play. The wheels turn a few moments for Pederson before he’s like “fuck it, why not?”

The other possible explanation is that Foles garbled his request. Perhaps a combination of (admirably held-in-check) nerves and the god damn Bud Light ad campaign seeping into everyone’s brain caused him to mix his words in the moment, and Pederson stared at him a long moment wondering what the hell he was saying before it clicked that he wanted Philly Special.

Every time my college team would ever run a trick play, I always had a hard time containing my excitement in the huddle. There’s just nothing else in sports like cheeky football shenanigans. I’d hear the play call and giggle and fidget, and I couldn’t wait to see the defense after we pantsed them in front of God and their fans, and the QB ended up with the ball by himself hustling up the sideline while everyone else was chasing highly manufactured decoys. It always felt like an Ocean’s 11 caper.

A few seconds after Foles trotted back out onto the field, Pederson was approached by Blount, who asked, “What we got, Dougie?” Pederson showed him on the play card and Blount responds with a satisfied smile: “Philly Special.” Then after the play, Malcolm Jenkins, who had probably seen it enough times in practice to get fooled by it himself, pumped a fist on the sideline saying “They brought it out in the Super Bowl.”

Ruses are a big part of the routine action of football, and trick plays turn it up to 11. They’re risky because you’re usually asking people to do a quirky thing they’re not accustomed to doing and rarely practice, but a good trick play can be a huge practical and moral victory for your team. And the Patriots had just botched a similar one a few minutes ago! Not only were the Eagles styling on them and snatching a touchdown at the end of the half, Nick Foles was showing up Tom Brady (HAHA, oh my god, typing that sentence). “We can run this shit, and you can’t.”

There’s a bit of nuance going on with this play. On the sideline a minute later, Eagles TE Trey Burton, who made the throw, asks “Hey, Foles! Why were you so open?”

Foles says, “I sold it! I did some acting. I had a wide 9, I was like ooohhhhhh…”

“Wide 9” refers to “9-technique,” a down lineman (I think in this case it was actually an OLB) split way out to the side of the offensive tackle to give himself a lot of space to work with to try to get past the blocking and get into the backfield. In this case, with Foles ending up on the right wing, a wide 9 guy out there would have a lot of time to see him sneaking out on his route. Foles had to really pretend like he wasn’t doing anything of note on the play and let that wide 9 guy ignore and get past him before hustling out to the flat. When the ball is snapped, Foles straightens up and watches the action that’s all heading left for a beat, letting the wide 9 guy crash inside and get picked up by Ertz’s wham block coming back right.

Ertz has the most important block of the play here, because he’s gonna be one on one with the guy who can muck up all the slow developing stuff going on in the backfield. He has taken a lot of shit for his blocking, but he was much, much better in 2017 and 2018, and blocking one guy with that much space can be tough. In my day, we had a double reverse flea flicker called “Wappy Duck,” which required a very, very long block on an edge rusher who would be reacting to the different directions the ball was going. I had to block him, then pretend to kind of lose him as the play went to one side (I liked to embellish this with a “sssshhhhiiiiit”), then show up with a vengeance again on him when he reacted to the play coming back the other way. It’s tough to do, and was probably the trick play thing I got the most practice at. So props to Ertz for a crucial job well done out of the spotlight there.

And shout out to former QB Trey Burton for the throw. Perfect touch on the ball, made it an easy toss and catch. He even kept his gloves on, so as not to tip the Patriots that something was up. I never got to throw the ball in anything, not even scout team. We didn’t have any trick plays for me :(.

This was a lot of babble about this one play, but it might have been the best thing I’ve ever seen in football. Gun to my head, if I had to get a tattoo, I’d get this:

The Patriots had 34 seconds to try to steal some points before halftime, and given the defense’s struggles against any sort of pass action, the ensuing 45 yard attempt by Brady clenched me up. They would for sure have had a good shot at getting a FG if they’d hit, and so the Eagles’ DBs’ midair collision causing the ball to bounce harmlessly away was certainly good enough for me.

In these few quasi-desperate plays for the Patriots’ offense, you can see rumblings of something that would come back around later - what might happen if the Patriots absolutely had to throw it deep downfield. Suddenly hands were closer to untouchable Brady, and he even had to tuck it and run before being caught inbounds by Brandon Graham around midfield.

The screen to run out the clock was scary in the moment, but ultimately harmless.

So the Eagles went into halftime with a lead. In the Super Bowl. For the first time ever. The offense was at the height of its powers, the line was plowing holes, Pederson was cooking, and Nick Foles (Nick Foles!) was in Hyper Mode. And the defense was generally trash. They’d had a spectacular season, the most awful, stressful, exasperating, fun one I’d ever had watching football. I knew as NBC went to commercial that this was it - this was as good as I’d ever feel as a football fan, because when the game came back, the inevitable Patriots comeback would begin and the Eagles would just be one more footnote in Tom Brady’s legend.

And yet there was an entirely irrational part of my brain that popped up, cleared its throat, and asked quietly “Yeah, but what if they win?”

[wellplacedrocket]

Welcome to WPR's Monday Night Blitz! We'll be simulating each Monday Night Football game of the 2017-18 NFL season, and can predict with 100% accuracy that the results will match.

If your conscience (understandably) can't bear the human toll of real American football, or the game is just too slow and complicated for you, then we have the perfect solution. There's only like 30 plays in a Blitz playbook, barely any run game, and no moral quandary about subjecting cartoonishly polygonal football guys to ultraviolence.

As for this game: UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wellplacedrocket/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/WellPlacedRocke Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wellplacedrocket/

[wellplacedrocket]

Welcome to WPR's Monday Night Blitz! We'll be simulating each Monday Night Football game of the 2017-18 NFL season, and can predict with 100% accuracy that the results will match. 

If your conscience (understandably) can't bear the human toll of real American football, or the game is just too slow and complicated for you, then we have the perfect solution. There's only like 30 plays in a Blitz playbook, barely any run game, and no moral quandary about subjecting cartoonishly polygonal football guys to ultraviolence. 

 We are batting 1.000 with Monday Night Blitz predictions, and going for the trifecta. This week, both of us are playing as divisional rivals of our favorite teams, although it's not super clear to me that the Lions and Pete's Vikings really care about each other. The Giants and Eagles sure do, though.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wellplacedrocket/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/WellPlacedRocke Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wellplacedrocket/

[wellplacedrocket]

Monday Night Blitz 2017-18 | Week 1 (Bonus!): Chargers @ Broncos

Welcome to WPR's Monday Night Blitz! We'll be simulating each Monday Night Football game of the 2017-18 NFL season, and can predict with 100% accuracy that the results will match.

If your conscience (understandably) can't bear the human toll of real American football, or the game is just too slow and complicated for you, then we have the perfect solution. There's only like 30 plays in a Blitz playbook, barely any run game, and no moral quandary about subjecting cartoonishly polygonal football guys to ultraviolence.

Our cup runneth over this week, as the NFL sporteaucrats have sought to foist the Chargers, newly of Los Angeles, upon the national viewing public in a bonus Monday Night game, as if to taunt any remaining San Diego die-hards. They will not be at home (http://bit.ly/2gWDdqW). Tournament edition rules this time, so no game assisted, blue shell rubber banding.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wellplacedrocket/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/WellPlacedRocke Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wellplacedrocket/

[wellplacedrocket]

Monday Night Blitz 2017-18 | Week 1: Saints @ Vikings Welcome to WPR's Monday Night Blitz! We'll be simulating each Monday Night Football game of the 2017-18 NFL season, and can predict with 100% accuracy that the results will match.

If your conscience (understandably) can't bear the human toll of real American football, or the game is just too slow and complicated for you, then we have the perfect solution. There's only like 30 plays in a Blitz playbook, barely any run game, and no moral quandary about subjecting cartoonishly polygonal football guys to ultraviolence.

Week 1 sees the Ditkafied New Orleans Saints take on Gary Anderson and the Minnesota Vikings, fresh off their 1998-99 playoff run. Will resident Vikes fan Pete be able to work through his issues of that NFC Championship game?

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wellplacedrocket/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/WellPlacedRocke Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wellplacedrocket/

[wellplacedrocket]

.@blizzard-games unveils new Overwatch character.

[wellplacedrocket]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPaUQGNKuUE)

[wellplacedrocket]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W07zS-ev9I)

[wellplacedrocket]

As always, turn on the sound for the dialogue. I'm more or less just flailing away, but our Mercy turns it into a fearsome assault on the capture point. It's hard to overstate how much she elevates our game. Twitter: @WellPlacedRocke YouTube: Well Placed Rocket Facebook: Well Placed Rocket #overwatch #mercy #pvp #xbox #xboxone #gamers #gotyourback #gameswithfriends #whatfriendsarefor #clutch #reinhardt

[wellplacedrocket]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plT14lw8DXQ)

[hatrickane-deactivated20201122]

[x]

I fought Adolf Hitler not because America was great, but because it was fragile! I knew that liberty could be snuffed out here as in Nazi Germany! As a people, we were no different than them! When I returned, I saw that you nearly did turn American into nothing! And the only reason you’re not less then nothing —- is that it’s still possible for you to bring freedom back to America!

[wellplacedrocket]

Better quote than what I actually said to the MPR guy.