What Went Down In Super Bowl LII

Should have been Britney.

Should have been Janet.

Should have been Prince.

Sure seems like something’s wrong with the halftime sound. I don’t really consider this a problem.

The Lindsey Vonn/Winter Olympics commercial seems like as good a time as any to be a wet blanket and remind everyone that NFL cheerleaders are paid very, very little. (As little as $150 per game, though I don’t know if they get a Super Bowl bonus.

Suggestion for alternative halftime entertainment: Do this or similar to the Eagles fans in your life:

Interesting that for all the pressure the Eagles have gotten on Brady, they didn’t actually bring him down for a sack in that half. He’s getting the ball off and not throwing interceptions. But the most worrisome development for the Pats in that half is the combination of injury to Cooks and the complete absence of Gronk. I don’t know who can step up in this pass game.

But the Eagles are 6-of-9 on third- and fourth-down conversions, including that Foles TD catch. Pats are only 2-of-7.

Patriots have more first downs than the Eagles (13-12), yards (350-323) and fewer turnovers (0-1).

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_obxWdohlCk

I’d say the Sean Payton call was much, much riskier, Perry. Even if they missed on this call, the Eagles had Brady up against his own end zone with 30 seconds to play. He’s Brady, but you have to treat him like any other QB — and they’ve been getting to him today. The Saints were beginning the half trailing 10-6 and only stood to gain possession — kicking into a deficit is a different proposition than going for a touchdown while up.

Even though the Pats have the reputation as an amazing comeback team, this is only the fifth time in the Brady Era they’ve trailed by double-digits at halftime in a playoff game. The only win was, of course, last year’s Super Bowl.

Although I remember Tyreek Hill scoring earlier this year for the Chiefs on that play they just ran, Kyle. Of course, Amendola is not Tyreek Hill.

They countered play action with run blitz before, but Philly’s been running a lot of outside zones and stretches (maybe setting up the throwback?). I’m thinking they use more nickel/dime and send corner/safety blitzes to bring heat from unexpected directions.

There’s only thirty minutes of football between this moment and Sept. 6, so may as well try to enjoy it.

If the Eagles win, that fourth down call from Pederson (the trick play) has to be considered one of the riskiest but best (based on the results) coaching decisions I can remember in a Super Bowl.

We need a way to filter end-of-half/game screen yards, the way NBA stats can filter out end-of-quarter full-court heaves. Those aren’t your yards, Danny!

I wonder how many times the Patriots (or any team) didn’t punt in a half and lost it by 10 points.

Justin Timberlake is about to break a record as the first performer to make three appearances in the Super Bowl (2001 with N’Sync, 2004 with Janet Jackson, and now 2018). This is also his second appearance with the Patriots playing.

Even before that pressure on first down, the Eagles pass rush was coming close enough to Brady to rush throws. Will be important to see how much gas the Philly defense has in the second half against the new gameplan from New England.

Ok Ty, Patriots got their 30 minutes. What adjustments do you think their defense could make in the 2nd half?

Watching Brady run never ceases to be funny.

The real interesting question is why they didn’t use that trick play for the botched two-point conversion earlier. They wanted a touchdown on it. It was too good.

Nick Foles is better than Tom Brady, provided you limit the scope to an extremely specific situation.

They knew that would work, had two weeks to practice. Trick plays in Super Bowl are a lock.

OK, even I (a Patriots fan) can admit that was a masterful troll job.

That’s just disrespectful.

So Foles shows he has better hands than Brady, I guess.

More than 620 combined yards in this half. That has to be close to a record. There’s only been one punt!

That catch and run by Clement was the 5th-longest non-scoring play from scrimmage in Super Bowl history.

Tired: Funny commercial. Wired: Meta commentary on the nature of advertising and subversion of the expectations of the medium with winking acknowledgement of the audience.

Gostkowski just took out some of his missed PAT aggression on the kick return coverage.

Oh man, some really miserable tackling on the end of Lewis TD run. Followed by a missed PAT. This is ugly business.

According to this chart, the combination of 5 and 6 has a 0.15 percent chance of hitting in a box pool.

Unless Gronk gets it going soon, this will be one of his worst first halves of the season. With 9 yards, the only game in which he had fewer in a first half this year was against the Jets in Week 17 (when he went out for 23 first-half routes and didn’t have a catch).

Yeah. And even if a receiver can use his body to ward off his defender and catch an underthrown ball, that hangtime puts it in danger for help defenders.

I’m not blaming Foles, but that pass was underthrown. So was the long pass that he completed to Jeffrey on the last drive. I guess I’m blaming Foles, actually.

And just as I say that, a deflected pick …

Nick Foles now has a 113.1 passer rating in the Super Bowl. So much for turning into a pumpkin.

This has easily been sloppiest, turnover-free game I’ve ever seen.

Geoff, we did ask a stat nerd.

Yeah, someone just lost a staggering amount of money, and someone else just got fired.

Someone in the truck tripped over a wire.

If you ask a bunch of stat nerds whether a team should go for two, the answer will usually be yes.

Agree with the Eagles’ decision to go for 2 there. Going up 14 instead of 12 forces the Patriots to convert two PATs, which apparently is a tall order in this game.

It boggles the mind that teams in these key situations decide to throw the corner fade/jump ball to the receiver in one-on-one coverage. Just feels like such a low percentage option when you only need a couple yards.

That run by Blount gained 21 yards. The Eagles led the league this season with 19 runs of at least 20 yards; the Pats’ defense also gave up the 13th-most runs of 20+ yards.

Another massive lane opened up by the Eagles run game. The Philly line has moved the point of attack on New England all night and are getting yards simply by outnumbering Patriot defenders.

That was a nice catch. The one before, though, was a rare inaccurate pass for Foles in these playoffs. Going into this game, he’d been off-target on only 8.2 percent of his passes, a ridiculously low rate.

The Patriots are making an uncharismatic amount of mistakes in this game. They’ve made at least….two mistakes.