Even I Know Better Than To Blame James Bradberry For Losing the Super Bowl

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    Unless you're living under a rock, you know that the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl last night. It was a wildly entertaining game, with an equally deflating ending. The penalty heard 'round the world with James Bradberry grabbing JuJu Smith-Schuster's jersey is the talk of the town as the reason Philly lost the Big Game. Say what you want about whether you agree or disagree with the call, that one play was just a deflating moment and nothing more.

    Bradberry doesn't deserve the blame for losing the Super Bowl. Why? Plays like this happen all the time in the NFL. It's not often a grab like that is called because it's so late in the game, and Bradberry had reasonable expectations that the refs would swallow their whistles as they normally do in moments such as that. It was, by letter of the law, a penalty. However, in the spirit of the game, it was pretty weak. Both things can both be true at the same time as hard as that may be to believe. But let's move on from that and think about what really happened in the game.

    The Eagles were in control for a large portion of the game. However, a key mistake in the first half let KC back in the door when Jalen Hurts fumbled and the Chiefs defense ran it back for a touchdown. By the same token, Jalen Hurts also made several incredible plays, including an absolute DIME of a throw to Dallas Goedert to keep the Eagles looking good. 



    If we keep this topic just in the same vein of penalties, the Eagles had several that the officials did not call against them that helped keep drives alive. Lane Johnson starts every play a hair before the ball gets snapped. I don't have a clip to show because I couldn't find a link for it on Twitter, but even the announcers brought it up during the game and called it, "having a Center's mentality," for whatever that's worth. I think we all know that Johnson is just so damn good at timing his jump that the human brain can't process it as a false start in real time. Either way, there's no way he timed every single one perfectly and didn't false start on several occasions.

    So if Bradberry isn't to blame, and there were several missed calls in the game, are the refs to blame for all of this? If you're an Eagles fan you're absolutely saying yes. If you're anybody else, you could go either way in all likelihood. The truth of the matter is that they're not to blame either because again, we're talking about a letter of the law vs. spirit of the moment here.

    If anyone or anything is to blame, it's the game for being so damn good. This was arguably one of, if not the best Super Bowl games we've had of all time. If it were the same kind of drek that we were forced to watch in the Rams/Patriots Super Bowl back in 2019, nobody would care this much because that game sucked. One call like this wouldn't have the same kind of deflating feeling as we had last night. In fact, we probably wouldn't even be talking about it at all.

    So don't go blaming James Bradberry, or the refs, or anyone for that matter. This game was a ton of fun, and it just stinks that a controversial moment like that happened; and, depending on your fandom, you're looking to that moment as blame for your sorrow, or as a small piece of a bigger pie that led to your happines. Either way, just remember that if the game hadn't been as fun and entertaining as it was, nobody would be having this level of visceral reaction. 

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