So we have once again arrived at the one night of the year that feels most like a national sports holiday in this country, even if it is a Sunday night. At 6:30 Eastern time, the country goes to a football game, Super Bowl LX, Seahawks vs. Patriots.
These two teams did this 11 years ago in Glendale, Ariz., Russell Wilson throwing it to Malcolm Butler of the Patriots at the end, and one yard from the end zone, one of the craziest and most dramatic Super Bowl endings of them all. Now they are set to do it again.
The Seahawks, who were going for two in a row that night in Glendale, are back, as are the Patriots, who finally stopped being the Patriots, but not for very long. But what both teams show us, in different ways, is that if you do it right in their sport, especially with the right coach and the right quarterback, you don’t have to stay down as long as the Giants and Jets have.
The Seahawks, who never lost faith in John Schneider, one of the very best general managers in the NFL, are back in the big game with Mike Macdonald as the coach the way Pete Carroll was before him in Seattle, and Sam Darnold playing the position that Russell Wilson played twice in Seattle Super Bowls. For the Patriots, Mike Vrabel is there on the sideline where Bill Belichick was, and Drake Maye is out there for his first Super Bowl the way Tom Brady was out there for nine with the Patriots.
And as impressive as both stories are, the Giants right now are more fixed on what Vrabel and Maye have done in New England: Veteran coach Vrabel, first season in New England, paired with a star second-year quarterback in Maye. John Harbaugh, veteran coach, will be a rookie in Jersey in September of ’26, and Jaxson Dart will be in his second year. And guess what? Giants fans have a perfect right to dream that they can do it, even next season, just like the Patriots have done it on their way to Santa Clara.
The Jets? They still don’t know what they have in Aaron Glenn. They also don’t have a quarterback, even though a quarterback they had once, one they selected with the third overall pick of the NFL draft — Darnold — will be playing in Super Bowl LX for the Seahawks.
There have been a lot of tough guys to play quarterback in a Super Bowl, and a lot of comeback stories in this game. You go all the way back to somebody like Joe Kapp, who made it to Super Bowl IV out of the Canadian Football League; and Kurt Warner, who came from the Iowa Barnstormers to play in Super Bowls with both the Rams and the Cardinals. But it is hard to think of many others who got bounced around by the sport the way Darnold did, starting with getting bounced around the way he did by the Jets, and still made it to this last Sunday night.
“You have to embrace failure, and you have to learn from your mistakes. And I think you know learning from my mistakes early in my career, I feel like has gotten me to this point,” Darnold said the other day.
But it is not just quarterbacks who have to learn from their mistakes. The Giants sure are trying to learn from all the mistakes they have made since they last played in the Super Bowl, in Indy, against the Patriots. Sunday night’s game will be the 14th Super Bowl played since then. You can do the math on how many the Jets have played since their one and only in Super Bowl III.
Again: The Seahawks never fell apart the way our teams have fallen apart, the way the Patriots did at the end of Belichick and then the one year they played under Jerod Mayo. In the decade since the Seahawks did lose in the final seconds to the Patriots in Glendale, they had exactly one losing season, 7-10 in 2021. The Giants haven’t won seven games since they went 9-7-1 in Brian Daboll’s rookie year. And it’s reached the point where the kind of 7-10 season the Jets had after Aaron Rodgers got hurt, mostly with Zach Wilson as Rodgers’ replacement, now feels like glory days.
Schneider hasn’t been perfect, by any measure. But in the years since they did lose in the Malcolm Butler game, they still managed to play in eight postseason games and win three of them, even as Wilson began to fade. The Seahawks moved on from Carroll and moved on from Wilson. Not their general manager. Now here they are and here he is. If only Joe Schoen, for as long as he lasts, can be as good at the job as Schneider has been. Of course, it would probably help if he held on to players like Leonard Williams and Julian Love, both of whom will be playing Super Bowl LX for the Seahawks on Sunday night. Or maybe it won’t matter now that Harbaugh is the de facto general manager of the Giants.
Schneider saw something in MacDonald, a young assistant with the Ravens. He grabbed Darnold when the Vikings were boneheaded enough to let him go after a 14-3 season. Right coach. Right quarterback. Same with the Patriots. Nobody saw it happening this fast with the Seahawks, coach and quarterback and a brilliant offensive coordinator like Klint Kubiak.
Certainly, nobody saw it happening this fast with the firm of Vrabel and Maye. What they have shown is that it doesn’t have to take forever, even if both Giants and Jets fans feel as if they have been waiting forever for their teams to matter again.
There is no way of knowing what happens to the Jets from here, with another new coach and another new general manager and no idea who the starting quarterback will be in the first game of next season. It feels different now with the Giants, because of Harbaugh and Dart and with Malik Nabers and Cam Skattabo on their way back. Suddenly their fans don’t feel as if the whole thing needs to take forever.
For now, though, another Super Bowl is played without the Giants and Jets. The Jets have managed to miss 59 out of 60. The Giants have won four. But it’s been a minute since the last one, hasn’t it? It’s why Giant fans in particular will watch Super Bowl LX — both teams but mostly the Patriots — and want to paraphrase the iconic line from the lunch scene in “When Harry Met Sally:”
We’ll have what they’re having.
BROOKS CAN’T PRIME YEARS BACK, YOUTH IS SERVED IN TENNIS & WATCH THE ‘MIRACLE’ DOC …
Just because it is Black History Month, and because this is the month in which the Super Bowl is played every year, it is worth noting that only two Black coaches have ever won the big game:
Tony Dungy and Mike Tomlin.
I am watching Brooks Koepka now making his comeback on the PGA Tour and wondering, even after the money that the Saudis threw at him to play on their Member Guest Tour, if he’d like to have the last four years of his prime back.
Something to always remember about Koepka:
He has won the same number of majors that Rory McIlroy has.
Now that Carlos Alcaraz, who is going to break all the records if he is blessed with good health, won in Australia it is worth noting that in any Grand Slam final, men’s or women’s, where there is the kind of age gap there was last Sunday between him and Novak Djokovic, (Djokovic is 38, Alcaraz is 22), the younger player almost always wins.
It’s happened three times already with these two players alone, twice at Wimbledon, once at this Australian Open.
One other thing about Alcaraz, who is now the youngest man to ever win all four majors:
You can’t even tell which is his best surface.
Bo Bichette is about to move to New York and move from shortstop to third base the way that A-Rod did 22 years ago this month.
The Garden is going to love the Christ the King guy, Jose Alvarado.
I just want you to know that I’m not touching that story about Olympic ski jumpers injecting themselves to get, well, bigger down there so they can get an edge wearing roomier clothes with a 10-foot pole.
Who are the Pro Football Hall of Fame voters going to keep out next year?
Seriously?
Who came up with the genius idea of putting Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft in the same category as Roger Craig and L.C. Greenwood and Ken Anderson?
No kidding, these voters act like they’re part of the College of Cardinals.
The Arizona Cardinals.
I hope Lindsey Vonn does it.
If you have not yet watched “Miracle: The Boys of 80,” the Netflix documentary about the Lake Placid Olympic hockey team, I urge you to do it this week once your Super Bowl hangover has ended.
This comes from someone who was there:
“Miracle” will make you feel as if you were.
Finally today:
Next Thursday, Larry Merchant, my dear friend and one of my newspaper heroes, turns 95 years young.
He was first one of the great sports columnists of all time, in Philadelphia and then with the New York Post, before becoming a truly legendary boxing commentator for HBO.
Along the way, he was even way ahead of the curve with sports betting in this country with his best-selling book, The National Football Lottery.
And I can tell you that he is as smart and funny about sports and practically everything else, as he ever was.
It was always a joy to read him, and then follow his fine work on boxing.
It has been much better knowing him.
