MONDAY COMMENTARY: NO SUBSTITUTE FOR EXPERIENCE

(Listen daily for the RP Commentary on the All New Hits 98 CKHD & LTD Radio)

In the end, there is no substitute for experience.

Let Sunday’s NFL conference championship games be a lesson for us.

Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs are going back to the Super Bowl and they’ll face Brock Purdy and the San Francisco 49ers in a Super Bowl rematch from four years ago, which the Chiefs won.

On Championship Sunday, despite being road underdogs, Mahomes & Company upended the Ravens 17-10 in Baltimore in a game they never lost control of. Today it’s Lamar Jackson and the Ravens who have a lot of explaining to do, but they simply were no match for Andy Reid’s Chiefs who were playing in their sixth straight AFC title game.

They’d been there before, many times, and it showed.

As for the 49ers, they’d lost the last two NFC title games and their 34-31 win over Detroit on Sunday was much more in doubt; tied 24-24 going into the fourth quarter.

However some miraculous plays – literally miracles – plus questionable coaching decisions by Lions coach Dan Campbell sealed it for San Fran.

Again, they’d been there before and had seen these situations firsthand. Detroit had not. Nor really, had Balitmore.

Prior to the games, I spent the morning on the high seas on a professional fishing boat and hauled in my first sailfish. It was a whopper!

I had absolutely no experience on the water, but being in that vessel watching the precision and magnitude of how my friends went about their craft was lesson-learning in itself.

It reminded me all-the-world of farming, and spending the day on the swather, seeder, or any of the range of implements my dad trusted me with. It was a job, not a hobby, and it requires your constant attention.

Just like fishing, at this level.

When that sucker grabbed onto our live bait, one of the guys said, “Rod take the reel!” I offered that no, I was okay just watching.

Nope. “Get on it!” they yelled and just a couple moments later that 40-lb sailfish was in the boat.

Chalk up a little more experience, on another well-spent day.

(The Rod Pedersen Show airs daily at 12 pm & 5 pm on Game+TV, WQEE Radio, Podcast & YouTube Live)