The competition is ending, and there’s no competition whatsoever as to our final selections of the year.
Chris Simms and I both agree on the winner of Super Bowl LVIII: Kansas City Chiefs.
The picks were made at the live joint podcast from the Mandalay Bay sportsbook on Wednesday night. If you haven’t seen it, you should. If only to witness how well Chris performed while admittedly in the aftermath of the a little smoky-smoke and more than a little drinky-drink.
Sorry to everyone who believes the game will be rigged to deliver a victory to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Sorry to those who actually believe Swift and Kelce are part of a deep-state effort to rig the election. Sorry, most importantly, to 49ers fans who saw five Super Bowl wins in the first 29 installments of the game and are hoping for just one to cap the second 29 editions of it.
Last year, I believed that the Eagles were the better team, but that the Chiefs had Patrick Mahomes. So I picked the Chiefs.
This year, it’s the same feeling, except it’s not clear whether the 49ers are currently better. At one point in the season, it seemed as if the 49ers would steamroll anyone/everyone as long as their nucleus of key players remained healthy. The 49ers got their rude awakening on Christmas night at home against the Ravens, when Baltimore did to San Francisco what many (Mike Flores/Florist included) thought San Francisco would do to Baltimore.
The Chiefs also lost at home that day, to the Raiders. For Kansas City, it was a wake-up call that sparked an ascension. They beat the Bengals six days later and just kept getting better and better and better.
The 49ers, while able to gut out home playoff wins in dramatic, come-from-behind fashion, are still dog-paddling toward possibly being what they were, earlier in the year.
Can they get it back by Sunday? That’s the question.
Even if they can, will it be enough to overcome Mahomes, who is fixated (even if he won’t admit it) on catching Tom Brady’s seven Super Bowl wins?
On Friday’s PFT Live, Devin McCourty explained the very real feeling that emerges for a defense when attempting to cling to a late lead against someone like Mahomes. It’s a tangible, yet intangible, aspect of competitive sports. One team knows things are going to break for them, and the other team knows that they’re about to be broken.
The San Francisco defense will need to devise and implement an epic game plan, especially since there’s no way to plan for Mahomes improvising and players like Kelce simply finding the spots where defenders aren’t. The Kansas City defense also needs to be ready to account for the possibility of quarterback Brock Purdy running with the ball. (McCourty was great when explaining how Bill Belichick and the Patriots would have dealt with that.)
There’s also a chance for something we don’t see very often in Super Bowls — a lopsided game. If the 49ers fall behind by three scores in Las Vegas, like they did at home against the Lions, the Chiefs will be far less likely to give San Francisco a chance to get back into the game.
Chris has the final score at 23-20, Chiefs. (It looks like an emotional hedge to me, since he’s rooting for the 49ers and his buddy Kyle Shanahan.) I had a dream this week that the Chiefs will win by 10, so I went with Chiefs, 30-20.
For the year, Chris won the ATS competition by four games. I won the straight-up contest by four. And I narrowly won the “best bets” back-and-forth by one game.
Thanks to all who watched the weekly Joint Mega Picks Podcast, and who read the weekly posts with our game picks. Please don’t rely on us when betting, and please, please, please never treat betting as anything other than a form of entertainment for which you use discretionary income that otherwise would be used to purchase the stuff Chris was smoking and drinking before (and during) Wednesday’s show.