Alan Truex: Not so Super, but historic

Super Bowl LIII was going to be one of the highest-scoring ever.   Oddsmakers set the total points at 56. Instead, we got the lowest score in the history of America’s greatest spectacle: 13-3, New England Patriots over Los Angeles Rams.  

“Silence of the Rams,” headline writers quipped.

So what didn’t happen?  

For one — and two — Rams receivers Brandin Cooks and Robert Woods did not complete big-yardage catches they usually hold.

Also, Rams All-Pro running back Todd Gurley could not do much with his left knee, the one that was rebuilt during his final year at the U of Georgia, just 60 miles from where his current team was playing Sunday.  

So the running star of The Game — if you can get excited about 94 yards rushing on 18 carries — was Gurley’s backup at UGA, Sony Michel.  

As irony would have it, Gurley’s blockers were honored on Saturday night as Built Ford Tough Offensive Line of the Year.  But this front end performed Sunday like it was built by Fiat.

Jared Goff was sacked four times, though he too makes my list of Super non-performers.  He will be very good someday, but for now the guy is a punt machine.

Not to say the Patriots provided much in the way of fireworks.  There was more of that in the halftime show, quite the pyrotechnical display from Maroon 5.  Though not everyone was enthralled by what followed the soaring flames: Adam Levine displaying his rippled tattoos while dancing with Travis Scott.  Twitter is in hyperdrive.

It’s not much of a Super Bowl when the halftime show and commercials seize the day.  But the occasion was hard to beat for significance: Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, Coach and QB, winning their sixth ring in their ninth appearance on the biggest stage.  

Any recap must be laden with Belichick.  I wish it were otherwise. Sean McVay is so much more fun to write about: ebullient, loquacious, happy to be interviewed.  

Which, by the way, is a clue to his success: his players can tell he’s truly interested in any and all concerns they may have.  

I remember Belichick in his early 30s being almost as mediacentric as McVay is at 33.  As a rookie head coach, Belichick transformed the Cleveland Browns’ facility into what local media dubbed “Fort Belichick.”  

He was surprisingly willing to talk about it, which was all I cared about.   He was interesting and straightforward in his interviews of 2 ½ decades ago when he was aware of the power of media as well as its dangers.  He could not afford to be dismissive, to go On to Cincinnati.

He’s famously buttoned up now, a classic font of no information.  

Bob Ryan, one of the Boston reporters who knows Belichick about as well as any of them, has pointed out that “he tells you nothing about his own team, but he’s the most informative person you could find talking about any other aspect of the sport.  He has a vast library of books about football.”

The Patriots won the Super Bowl because they had the better coach, the better quarterback, more depth and intelligence just about everywhere.  

Chris Simms, the Pro Football Talk-er, saw the thoroughness of Patriot Way first-hand when he worked for one season on Belichick’s staff.

“He goes back to the routes of people’s origins,” Simms said.  “He studies: ‘OK, McVay, he’s been with Shanahan, been with Gruden, I can understand the base rules of that drop-back pass offense or the Shanahan run game.’”

With two weeks to prepare for one team, Belichick had twice as much video time as usual.  He did not know McVay’s thoughts, but he knew where many of them originated. He could almost complete the sentences McVay was transmitting into Goff’s helmeted ears.

Simms observed how “in the second half, Sean McVay got out of his normal mode of figuring everything out at the line of scrimmage.  He felt like Bill Belichick had cracked the code. . . . We saw the Rams say, ‘Let’s stay in the huddle and break it at 15 seconds and get up to the line off scrimmage and snap the ball quickly to shut off their communications.’  The Patriots were all over some of McVay’s tendencies in the pass game.”  

Belichick and his defensive coordinator, Brian Flores – now head coach of the Miami Dolphins – based their Super Bowl scheme largely on what video revealed from the Rams’ 30-16 victory in Detroit on Dec. 2.  

Lions coach Matt Patricia is a protégé of Belichick, who could study how McVay attacked a defensive scheme that’s almost identical to his own.  Belichick, in his typical counterintuitive genius, told CBS he wanted “to make them run a lot of plays.”

He reasoned that the more plays they ran, the more likelihood of a Rams turnover.  

“And if we got them in third down, we felt we could get them off the field.”

McVay politely conceded he was “definitely outcoached,” and Belichick politely credited his players, his staff, even a sports writer, Rich Gosselin of Dallas, who once advised him to consider drafting an undersized quarterback at Kent State, Julian Edelman.  On Sunday, Edelman was Super Bowl MVP, with his 10 catches for 141 yards.

Without going overly philosophical, Edelman is perhaps a microcosm of the Patriots.  He succeeds less through talent, more through discipline, creativity, relentless work and, occasionally, cheating.  He missed the first four games of this season under suspension by the league (PEDs), just as Brady missed the first quarter of the 2016 season (Deflategate).

The Patriots have lived on the edge, stumbling here and there, but their record of success is unmatched in football history, likely never will be.  Incalculable are the odds of a coach like Belichick and a quarterback like Brady combining again for such duration.