Who’s pumped for a Jaguars-Eagles Super Bowl?
This year, like every year, the playoffs will feature one team from the AFC South and another from the somehow even worse NFC East. The chances of those “champions” meeting on 7 February at Levi’s Stadium are incredibly slim, as each and every team in those divisions is an embarrassment. But the chances of a 4-8 team being one game out of a division lead in mid-December were slim, too. Yet here we are, wondering how far Matt Cassel, a guy who got cut by the Buffalo Bills back in September, can take “America’s Team”.
While it’s true that the annual Americapalooza that is the NFL title game is designed to feature the two best teams in each conference, the Super Bowl doesn’t always come down to the two greatest teams in all the land. Recall that in 2003 the Buccaneers and Raiders played for the Lombardi Trophy. Or that 10 years ago the 10-6 wildcard Steelers won it all. And nine years ago Peyton Manning only had to defeat a Rex Grossman-led Bears team to win his ring. And three years ago, as much as you may have tried to forget it, Joe Flacco and Colin Kaepernick were the starting quarterbacks in a real Super Bowl. The electric company tried to shut it down and wipe it from history, but the attempt failed. The game, sadly, still happened.
We’ve had teams with bad records make the playoffs before. Just one year ago, the now unbeatable Carolina Panthers won the NFC South at 7-8-1 and made the postseason. But on the AFC side of last season’s playoff bracket, every team in the bracket had between 10 and 12 wins. We couldn’t have had an all-Subpar Bowl. In 2010, the Seattle Seahawks won the NFC West at 7-9 and even won their Wildcard Round game against the defending Super Bowl champion Saints, but the “worst” team they could have met from the AFC, had they reached the Super Bowl, was a 10-6 division champion. Seeing either the 2014 Panthers or 2010 Saints make the Super Bowl would have been fun for nihilistic reasons, but nothing like what we could experience two months from now.
This year could be the first time in pro football history that two NFL teams with sub-.500 regular season could theoretically meet in the Super Bowl. Why not root for that to happen? Why not watch the sports world burn?
And how fitting would it be if – in the same year the American populace is deciding among Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Ben Carson to face off against the echo of the 1990s that is Hillary Clinton – America’s biggest event also featured two bad options? Very fitting. In fact, as fitting as an NFC East game turning on an idiotic fumble.
So how do we get this hilarious Stink Team-v-Stink Team Super Bowl doomsday scenario to occur? First off, great misfortune must befall all the other teams in the postseason. You know, the teams that are actually good at the sport.
The possibility of the top teams becoming mortal feels much more realistic after the last two weeks. If the Patriots, who many were beginning to fear were a lock for 19-0, can drop two in a row – including suffering the greatest humiliation known to a football team on Sunday: getting blown off the field by an NFC East team – then the Panthers, Cardinals, Broncos and Bengals can slump, too.
Maybe Gronk never returns to form and Tom Brady is forced to continue throwing to his current receiving corps: a collection of trash cans on wheels. Goodbye, Patriots. What if the Andy Dalton we’ve seen all year instantly reverts to playoffs-and-primetime Andy Dalton in the postseason. Would anyone be surprised? Nope. So long, Bengals. Should Manning fail to recover, the Broncos will attempt to win a Super Bowl with a quarterback who will have all of seven career starts under his belt come the playoffs. Seven starts is just enough for opposing defense to get a book on a quarterback, but not enough for the quarterback’s own team to feel comfortable with him under center in the postseason. Down goes Denver? Possibly.
No one is predicting that today’s 10-2 teams in the AFC could all go one-and-done in the postseason, but it’s not impossible either. And that’s right where Blake Bortles, Allen Robinson, Allen Hurns and TJ Yeldon swoop in and coast to the Super Bowl! Ehhhh ... sure. Why not. Thought exercises are fun. Jacksonville’s young offensive core could peak just at the right time! Or maybe it’s the Colts, reinvigorated with the return of Andrew Luck, who finally put it all together in January. Or the Texans, with JJ Watt playing out of his mind, reminding us all again that it’s defense that wins in the postseason.
The NFC is a bit tougher to see breaking right for our fantasy Crap Bowl to happen. The Panthers and Cardinals are playing the best football in the NFL, while the NFC East looks like a division for teams relegated from the AFC South. But, still, we can dream. An undefeated Panthers team could be overconfident in the playoffs, right? Who knows. Or they could just have their first off-day of the season and play for a full game like the team that was down 14 points in the first quarter to the lowly Saints on Sunday. Arizona is dominating teams on both sides of the ball, but they’re just a Carson Palmer knee ligament away from handing all of their hopes and dreams over to Drew Stanton.
If Carolina and Arizona somehow both go down, the NFC is a free-for-all featuring the Vikings, the 7-5 Seahawks, the decidedly mediocre (and lucky) Packers ... and some 7-9 or even 6-10 abomination from the NFC East. The Eagles just beat the Patriots somehow. If they slip into the playoffs, they simply need three more “any given Sundays” (in a row) to reach the Super Bowl. The Cowboys are riding a wave of momentum – or the NFC East equivalent of momentum – after a single win. Washington have yet to win two games in a row all season, but maybe they wait to unlock that achievement in the postseason. And then there’s Eli Manning, Tom Coughlin and the New York Giants. Making, and winning, a Super Bowl after a 6-10 season would be a very Eli-and-Coughlin thing to do.
Dominoes definitely have to fall to achieve our Jags-Eagles, Texans-Cowboys, Indy-Washington (or whichever awful permutation you prefer) Super Bowl. But there will only be five teams in each conference standing in their way. It’s not an impossible dream.
Seeing the Patriots and Panthers play in Super Bowl 50 would be entertaining, no doubt. But we will get to see plenty more Super Bowls between good teams in our lifetime. This year may be our best and only chance to see a Super Bowl of losers. This may be our only shot to have huge corporations drop $5m for 30 seconds on an awful game that would be better suited for a Thursday night on the NFL Network. This way be our only opportunity to see a Super Bowl filled with nothing but punts, interceptions and fumbles, especially with Peyton Manning unlikely to reach another title game.
Give us this one dreadful game, football gods. Please. After all the awful NFC East and AFC South games you’ve subjected us to this season, what would be just one more?
