JIM LANG’S 10 NFL THINGS: SUPER BOWL LVI PREVIEW
Hi there. Unless you have been there, it is hard to describe how busy it gets in the days leading up to a Super Bowl. For the players, coaches, team personnel, the media and the fans, the entire week is a blur leading up to kick-off. I have been lucky to cover five Super Bowls in my career in five different cities. Each game and each host city were vastly different. With that in mind, here is my preview of this year’s game and a look back at some of my personal memories.
1 – Super Match-up – For the first time since January 22nd, 1989, the Cincinnati Belgas are in the Super Bowl. Back then, the Bengals were led by Boomer Esiason and coached by Sam Wyche. This year, Joe Burrow runs the Bengals offence and Zac Taylor is their coach. The Rams are back in the Super Bowl after losing Super Bowl 53 in Atlanta when they were beat by the Patriots. Jared Goff is long gone, and this is a different Rams team on both sides of the ball. This is also the 2nd year in a row that a team is appearing in a Super Bowl in their home stadium (Buccaneers). Joe Burrow and the Bengals have shocked the NFL the past two months and they will give the Rams all they can handle. More about that later on.
2 – Reporters – Being a reporter at the Super Bowl is a weeklong marathon. You better be ready to get up early, skip lunch and work late every day. It isn’t all bad, the NFL and the host committee always host a Super Bowl media party at the start of the week. If you plan your week properly and do your homework, you can get a lot done during the week. My first Super Bowl in Detroit, one of my more experienced colleagues warned me that if I wanted to get a question answered on media day, I had to be aggressive and yell it out because there are hundreds of reporters crowded around every player and coach. Sure enough, I see a large crowd around then Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren. He is a big man and slightly intimidating. Just as Holmgren finished answering a question from Peter King, I sensed an opening and started yelling my question. Holmgren smiled at me with an odd look on his face. He was very gracious and gave me a great answer. It wasn’t until after I listened back to the tape that at the moment I asked my question, my voice cracked like a 12-year-old boy going through puberty and it must have gone up 10 octaves! I had more enjoyable experiences speaking with the likes of Dallas Clark, Jonathan Vilma, Max Starks, Larry Fitzgerald, Roger Craig, Daryn College and maybe the best player I ever spoke to during a Super Bowl week, Charles Woodson.
3 – Players – Players during Super Bowl week have little or no time to themselves. Usually, every second of every day is mapped out for them. Players are allowed to go out the first couple of days they arrive for Super Bowl. After that, their curfew gets shorter and shorter. Typically, after their Friday practice, the players are cut off from the media. Nobody is allowed to speak to any player until after the game on Sunday. After the team walk-though on Saturday, the players are locked in their hotel until the bus takes them to the stadium. Gone are the days of Joe Namath staying out all night in Miami before beating the Colts in Super Bowl 3. Teams are too afraid something bad is going to happen and they keep a tight control over the players. So much so, that you will see police and security everywhere throughout the city hosting a Super Bowl, just looking for a player trying to break curfew. Not only that, BUT NFL security is also on the lookout for a player who is in a bar or club that he shouldn’t be.
4 – Coaches – Football coaches looked sleep deprived and stressed at the best of times. You can double that during Super Bowl week. For a lot of these coaches, this might be the one and only chance they have at winning a Super Bowl. Aside from some brief family time early in the week, the coaches push themselves to triple check that they are totally prepared for everything that will happen on game day. There is a famous clip in NFL Films where Joe Montana calls an audible, Black 59 Razor during Super Bowl 24 when the 49ers crushed the Broncos. One of the 49ers assistant coaches that year was future Packers coach Mike Holmgren. In the preparation for 31, Holmgren installed the same play, but just changed the name of the audible to 74 Dino. Brett Favre saw the exact same defensive formation that Montana did back in the day and called the audible and threw a game breaking touchdown to Andre Rison. That play was a big reason the Packers beat the Patriots.
5 – Pepsi Only – I am not kidding about this; Pepsi pays huge money to be the official soft drink of the Super Bowl. Pepsi leaves nothing to chance with this investment. It is next to impossible to buy a Coca-Cola in the host city during Super Bowl week. If you don’t like Pepsi, too bad. I swear some hotels feature hot and cold running water and Pepsi out of their faucets. Sponsors pay BIG money to have their name attached to the Super Bowl and the NFL makes sure they are well taken care of.
6 – Super Parties – When I was covering Super Bowl 40 in Detroit/Windsor, I was lucky enough to work with Jesse Palmer. Jesse grew in Nepean, outside of Ottawa and his dad played in the CFL. Jesse also went to Florida on a scholarship and played for the New York Giants. That wasn’t the big deal, Jesse joined our crew not long after being the Bachelor. As in the hugely popular ABC reality show. Well, we couldn’t go anywhere without Jesse getting mobbed. The upside was that Jesse could get us into Super Bowl parties that we wouldn’t have a chance of even getting close to the entrance without him. The best example of that was the night Jesse got us into the FHM Magazine party in Detroit. When we arrived, there was a huge lineup of people waiting to get in. Out of nowhere, a gentleman with a classic British accent approaches us and asks us to follow him. I look at Jesse and ask him, ‘do you know that guy?’ Jesse looks at me and says, ‘dude, I’ve never seen that guy before.’ No matter, he knew Jesse and he escorted us into the back, VIP entrance. I won’t get into too many details of what happened inside, but it was pretty wild. Wild enough that the Fire Marshal of Detroit shut the party down because it was overcrowded! The bottom line is that if you don’t have a celebrity as your wingman, it is highly unlikely you will ever get into a Super Bowl party. By the way, Jesse is a great guy and took good care of us that week.
7 – Radio Row – All Super Bowls take over a local convention centre and turn it into Super Bowl media central. At the epicentre of this is Radio Row. It is a massive row of radio, TV and internet shows going live during the week. And they are set up a few feet from each other. You walk down Radio Row, and you will see retired players, current players, A-list, B-list, and even C-list celebrities promoting movies and TV shows. I actually saw veteran reporter Michael Silver take a selfie with The Situation from the Jersey Shore. That was a little different. You will see pretty much everyone and anyone you can think of promoting or selling something at Radio Row. One year I was able to convince a busy Michael Irvin to do a quick one-on-one interview with me as he was leaving for his limo to attend a sponsored function. I was in the middle of talking to him when a reporter from ESPN who will remain nameless walked right in the middle of our shot to say hi to Michael! Even though he was rushed for time, Irvin looked at me after this guy left and said, ‘Do you want to do it again?’ He did and at the end of his good interview he said, ‘talk to you later Canada.’
8 – Security – Ever since 9/11, security at the Super Bowl gets tighter and tighter. When you arrive at the stadium on game day, you go through at least three vigorous security checks, two metal detectors and a series of bomb sniffing dogs. If those dogs say no, you can forget about ever getting in that stadium. All media are given a media pass for the week and then you are issued another media pass to only be used on game day. That pass has a series of letters and numbers on it, and it indicates where you can and can not go. At Super Bowl 45 in Dallas, I was walking in the bowels of the stadium with Arash Madani when we passed Harrison Ford, Calista Flockhart, and their son. Ford was trying to ask the security guard to let them on the field so his Steelers loving son could meet Ben Roethlisberger. Security looked at their pass and politely told them that since they didn’t have the proper credentials, there was no way there were getting anywhere near the field. Arash and I looked down on our media pass and laughed, because we could have walked right past them and gone anywhere that we wanted!
9 – Intangibles – You can do all the planning in the world, and you still can’t account for everything. Illness, injuries, and plain bad luck can sink a team’s Super Bowl dreams. Both the Rams and the Bengals suffered injuries to key players during their respective Championship games. The Bengals are dealing with injuries to tight end CJ Uzomah and defensive end Cameron Sample. The Rams are dealing with injuries to tight end Tyler Higbee, receiver Van Jefferson and running back Cam Akers. This is where trainers and the medical staff really earn this money. With the extra week of rest, the teams will do everything possible to get a player ready to play. And yes, that includes giving an athlete a cocktail of painkilling needles to the injured part of their body so they can get cleared to play.
10 – Who wins? – Okay then, it is time to pick a winner for Sunday’s game. I have been impressed how the Rams have overcome adversity in the post-season. The Rams are not just a collection of Pro Bowlers and top draft picks, Sean McVay has a well coached, talented, and disciplined team that is not afraid to play physical. With the combination of Aaron Donald and Von Miller along the defensive line, the Rams will eventually get pressure on the quarterback. The Bengals are young, talented, and utterly fearless. The swagger and fearless attitude of Joe Burrow is the reason why the Bengals will keep this game closer than a lot of people think. You can beat on Burrow all day long, and he will calmly sit back there and make plays. Because of that, this game will surprise a lot of people how close it will be. I still see the Rams winning, but I love the Bengals to cover. They have the Burrow-Chase combo, a kicker in Evan McPherson who just can’t miss right now and a belief in their locker-room that they can win it all. Anyone who thinks the Rams dodged a bullet by facing the Bengals instead of the Chiefs is for a huge shock. Certain athletes have that look about them, they never get rattled by the moment and no matter how physically and mentally they are challenged, they just keep coming at you. Joe Burrow is that kind of athlete. Now if I am the Bengals, I am designing a game plan around stopping Cooper Kupp. That means Matt Stafford will see a lot of one-one-one coverage around Odell Beckham Jr. That will prove to be the difference in a great game.
Rams 30 – Bengals 27
Enjoy the game, I will talk to you after all the smoke clears.
(Jim Lang is Canada’s foremost expert on the NFL. Follow him on Twitter at @JimLangSports)
