Super Bowl LX is this weekend. It features the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks in a rematch of Super Bowl XLIX, where then-Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll reignited my USC-based hatred of him by not giving the damn ball* to Marshawn Lynch four times when they were at the goal line that would have effectively sealed the victory. Instead, he handed over the victory to the Fightin’ Deflategates and helped cement the legacies of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.
That’s a lot of sports word, especially if you’re the sort of person that likes to say things like “sports ball” and “threw for a home run” this time of year. (We get it, sports are beneath you.) Nonetheless, the Super Bowl is here, by which I mean it is going to be everywhere. Inescapably in all places at all times. Thus the best way through it is to accept it. Pick a side and root your little heart out; see how the other side lives.
But how do you choose a team? There is the tried and true Choose A Jersey You Like The Best, which would make you a Seahawks fan. But I think there’s a more prescient metric for choosing a team, and it is coffee.
There are a lot of angles in which coffee can help you find your rooting interest. You could simply choose by the cities themselves. Seattle versus Boston, who has the best coffee scene. You could go Starbucks versus Dunkin or lean more toward the city’s specialty institutions like Vivace versus George Howell. Or maybe some lesser known cafes like Homage versus Broadsheet. All fine options. But here’s my suggestion: look at the quarterbacks.
The quarterback is the field general and in a league that heavily tips the scales in favor of the offense, the quarterback is inarguably the most important person on the team. Thus they make sense to be the metric by which you choose a team. On the Seahawks side you’ve got Sam Darnold, and for the Patriots there’s Drake Maye. What’s their coffee sitch?
Here’s what we know. Darnold has in the past actually endorsed a coffee brand. As a rookie quarterback for the tragically awful New York Jets back in 2018, Darnold was a spokesperson for KonaRed, particularly their cold brew. “Whether I am on the beach or heading off to practice, I always have my KonaRed cold brew with me,” Darnold stated in the press release announcing the partnership. He also stated last year that his coffee preference was “hot” so do with that information what you will.
Maye’s coffee proclivities are less known, though he is the subject of a timely blend, Wake With Drake, by Marblehead, MA roaster Bond Coffee. What coffee is in it? The information is as elusive as the second-year QB. One article says it is a “blend of Ethiopian beans.” Maye has no coffee endorsements nor has he made any caffeine habits known. Choose your fighter.
There is of course only one right answer and it is the Seattle Seahawks. This has nothing to do with my colleague and Sprudge co-founder Jordan Michelman being a diehard Seahawks fan. Despite it if anything. He spent the entire season with 12th Man colored glasses talking about Darnold being an elite quarterback, despite all major ratings metrics having him somewhere between 10th and 19th, so you’d think one last shot at I told you so on the largest stage would be of interest to me (as a Cowboys fan it’s really all I have). But no. The larger force at play is the moral imperative to never, ever root for the New England Patriots and their owners the Kraft family. Of Kraft Heinz repute, owners of Maxwell House and their terrible Maxwell Apartment ad campaign in case you need a coffee-focused reason to dislike them. No, never the Patriots. Unless they are playing the Eagles. In which case you pray to any god that will take your call for a tie, but one where both teams lose somehow.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
* Editor’s note: In this feature Zac Cadwalader expresses the popular prevailing sentiment around the events concluding Super Bowl XLIX, in which the New England Patriots defeated the Seattle Seahawks in dramatic fashion. In particular, the notion that “giving the damn ball to Marshawn Lynch four times when they were at the goal line” would have guaranteed Seahawks victory, and that the decision to pass the ball on 2nd down being boneheaded and disastrous. It was one of those things—disastrous—but it was not both of those things, meaning that it was not bonehaded. Let’s recall the exact sequence (complete game tape here): after an outrageous circus catch by Jermaine Kearse gave the Seahawks the ball with goal to go, on around the 5 yard line, Pete Carroll calls a hand-off to Marshawn Lynch, known far and wide as “Beast Mode.” (He is perhaps even more beloved by local Pacific Northwest sports watchers for his ongoing commercial sponsorship deal with Beacon Plumbing, for whom Marshawn delivers the iconic line “Stop freakin’, call Beacon.”) Lynch matriculates the ball forward forcefully to the one, leaving the Seahawks with three plays—and one time-out—to advance the ball into the end zone. On second down, with the clock running, Carroll dials up the infamous quick slant pass to forgotten Seahwaks WR3/WR4 Ricardo Lockette. Lockette is clearly contacted by Patriots CB Malcolm Butler prior to the pass arriving, which should have drawn an illegal contact penalty, yielding an automatic new set of downs and the ball to be placed half the distance to the goal. Instead the penalty is bafflingly not called, and Malcolm comes down with the ball after committing an obvious penalty, ending the game. Carroll’s decision to throw on second down was sound: with three downs remaining, and the Patriots set up for an all-out run blitz to stop the hand-off, throwing at least once in the sequence is sound decision making and absolutely within the bounds of normal red zone playcalling, particularly with a 4-time Pro Bowl QB at the helm**. That the worst possible outcome resulted—one that required an egregious missed penalty call in order to happen in the first place—is just one of Those Football Things you have to shake your head at. Devastating? Yes. Memorable? Of course. But it’s far from being “The Worst Call of All Time” it’s popularly remembered as.
** Writer’s note: Relying on a 4-time Pro Bowl QB sounds like a good strategy, except when you have unstoppable 5-time Pro Bowl RB. In as much as there are sure things in sports, giving the ball to Marshawn Lynch three times from the one-yard line is a guaranteed touchdown. And cornerbacks are allowed to make a play on the ball; Butler’s pick was clean. Thus Carroll lost the game for his team, for all of us really, with a disastrously bad play call.
