Here is Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro in a pretty wonderful movie about Michael Jordan and Air Jordan shoes called “Air,” talking about Michael in that movie:
“Once they’ve built you as high as they possibly can, they’re gonna tear you back down — it’s the most predictable pattern.”
It has always been a predictable pattern, and not just in sports. It’s just that in the modern world, which means the world of social media, that pattern is now on steroids. And now everybody outside of the Chiefs fans of this world are coming for the Chiefs, looking to tear them down every chance they get, and diminish the team that has now become the main event in professional sports in this country.
You know who the Dodgers want to be?
They want to be them.
But, of course, you can understand why people outside of Kansas City would be coming for them now, and getting behind the cockeyed notion that the refs like them better than everybody else. After all, these Chiefs did win their first Super Bowl because of a controversial call on the old Tuck Rule.
Then there was Deflategate.
And Spygate, don’t forget that.
Oh, wait, that was the other team everybody loved to hate before the Chiefs started winning too much, and were trying to establish themselves as the kind of great and lasting and historic dynasty that Vince Lombardi had in the ’60s with the Green Bay Packers.
Now even Sean McDermott, coach of the Bills team that lost to the Chiefs last Sunday in the AFC championship games, is running with the crowd and whining that a team having the kind of extraordinary run the Chiefs are having doesn’t get here without the refs.
“I told the team we wouldn’t get the calls,” McDermott says at ProFootballTalk. “But you have to play above it.”
Well, guess what, Coach? If you were so sure you weren’t going to get the calls then why, with all the options you have on offense and with one of the best quarterbacks in the world on your side, did you stubbornly make the fourth-down call you did last Sunday and leave yourself at the mercy of the same refs you’re basically saying were out to get you?
McDermott has Josh Allen, who may or may not end up being the MVP of the whole league this season, and Allen had the ball in his hands and two minutes on the clock and a chance to go down the field and, if not tie the game, knock the Chiefs right out of the ring once and for all. You know who did that one time, against an 18-0 Patriots team? Eli Manning. Allen did not, and now his coach looks small as a jockey talking about the refs after the fact.
When the Chiefs needed to make a first down at the end of the game to close out the Bills once and for all, you know what happened? Patrick Mahomes, who will someday be called the best quarterback to ever play the game if he isn’t there already, threw the ball in the flat and the Chiefs got the first down and that was that.
What stopped the Bills from making that kind of call, instead of running Allen up the middle even though he’d been lucky to get the first down the last time he tried that? And maybe McDermott can explain how the refs were mean to his team when, on the last fourth-down play of his team’s season, they got outflanked and outsmarted by Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.
But Troy Aikman, who must have forgotten what it was like when he was the one getting hit and getting concussed, wrings his hands because he thinks Mahomes got a call from the refs on a late slide against the Texans the week before, like somehow Mahomes was gaming the system in that moment; as if somehow Mahomes’ team being awarded 15 yards after a soft late hit was some threat to the integrity of the game.
Get lost.
People were after Michael Jordan and the Bulls once, just not like this, not in this time when Mahomes is playing like Michael and trying to win three in a row, which is something Michael managed to do twice. That is the kind of air Mahomes is breathing, and Andy Reid is breathing, and Travis Kelce is breathing, and defensive coordinator Spags and even Jake from State Farm.
You know what you do with the Chiefs? You don’t whine about them, or about the refs, or suggest that somehow Mahomes’ dazzling lifetime record in the postseason practically requires an asterisk, he’s getting so many breaks. No. You appreciate what we are seeing. You appreciate the genius of Mahomes, and the greatness of his coach and of this team, whether they get clipped by the Eagles next Sunday in New Orleans or not.
I was sitting with Brian Leetch one time after Wayne Gretzky had come to the Rangers at the end of his career, and mentioned to Brian how lucky he must feel to be getting the chance to play on Gretzky’s team.
He smiled and said, “I’m just happy to be living in his time.”
All this winning from the Chiefs isn’t boring, or uninteresting. It is about excellence, and remarkable clutch play, and a legendary coach, and winning one close game after another in the very biggest games. Somebody needs to ask Sean McDermott, now that he diminishes his own team’s effort with this kind of loser talk, what officiating the Bills had to overcome that time when he gave Mahomes and the Chiefs a little too much time — because even 13 seconds is too much time — by not squibbing a kickoff after that looked like another time when the Bills were about to take down the Chiefs.
Guess what? Even if the Bills had gotten that fourth down call on Allen’s sneak, Mahomes probably would have figured out how to take his team down the field as often as he needed to get them to New Orleans. It’s what he does. Who he is. Who they’ve all become. It’s why they get the chance to do something no NFL team has done since Lombardi’s Packers and win three titles in a row; do something no team has done since the NFL-AFL merger and win three Super Bowls in a row.
Michael did win three in a row. Twice. Tiger Woods once won four straight major golf tournaments. And made his sport far more compelling in the process, because we all come to sports looking for this kind of greatness.
Again: Next Sunday’s Super Bowl, going in, is too close to call. The Eagles came close to winning the one Super Bowl these two teams have already played. They didn’t. Oh, wait. Bad defensive holding call at the end. Forgot.
WHEN BORAS GOES BUST, PITINO’S LATEST WINNING SYMPHONY & SPENDING ISN’T THE YANKEES ISSUE …
For the last time, you and I could have negotiated that deal for Juan Soto with the Mets and Yankees both fighting over him and one of the owners involved — Uncle Steve — being the richest one in the sport.
But how many players are watching Scott Boras look like this kind of chopper with both Pete Alonso and Alex Bregman and still think Boras has superpowers other agents don’t.
Maybe what I’m really wondering here is how, when this is all over, and both Alonso and Bregman have finally gotten deals far less than Boras promised them, how Scott and all the Scotties of the world are going to turn it into some kind of triumph.
By the way?
I love the idea that every time the game doesn’t go Boras’ way, it’s baseball’s fault.
Sure, it is.
Thought Aaron Glenn did fine the other day.
Kind of getting tired, though, of hearing how somebody “won” the press conference.
Jets fans just want to win some games.
When I see another Rick Pitino team playing the way this St. John’s team is playing, I’m reminded of my friend, the great Bob Ryan, described Rick as a “basketball Mozart” all the way back to when he was coaching Boston University.
I frankly would like to see a lot more of Jay Bilas working with Mike Breen and not less.
Now that Tommy Kahnle has moved on, I’m still trying to figure out how, if all he throws are changeups, how that actually MAKES them changeups.
Help me out here.
There has never been a free agent in New York sports, at least not one that I can remember, who moved on and then had the kind of season Saquon just had in Philly.
“Law and Order: SVU” continues to be one of the great shows in the history of television.
And not just because my man, Kevin Kane, is a regular.
This is just me, but if I were the Eagles, I wouldn’t just let Travis Kelce run around open in the middle of the field next Sunday.
Trae Young should have been an All-Star.
Starting to think now, despite all the good thoughts I’ve tried to send their way, that couples counseling was never going to work with Coach Riley and Jimmy Butler.
JJ Redick, who got jumped early, and all over the place, is doing a very good job coaching the Los Angeles Lakers.
In the last 15 years — and including the 60-game COVID season of 2020 — the Yankees have spent roughly $3.5 billion on baseball players who haven’t won the World Series.
Nobody would ever suggest that Hal Steinbrenner is cheap, because he’s clearly not, and not with numbers like that.
His team doesn’t need to spend more.
Just better.
If Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman love Aaron Boone as much as they say they do, they absolutely shouldn’t let him go into this season as a lame duck manager.
Jimmy Butler is scheduled to make, what, $50 million next season.
Wow.
What a bargain.
