Blake's Super Bowl XLIX Pick

For those of you who are unaware, Super Bowl XLIX (49) is being played in Glendale, Arizona this Sunday, February 1, 2015. The New England Patriots (14-4) will challenge the defending champion Seattle Seahawks (14-4) for the Lombardi trophy, and in all honesty, I'd rather see the stadium implode than watch either of these two teams. But this is the game we've drawn, so here's my prediction:

FINAL SCORE

           SEAHAWKS  24  PATRIOTS   16

Super Bowl XLIX	1	2	3	4	Final
Patriots	3	3	7	3	16
Seahawks	7	7	3	7	24

    Seahawks defeat Patriots 24-16

Let’s take a look at the play-by-play of what Blake wants predicts to happen:

Seattle wins the toss and elects to kick to start

New England receives the ball to begin the game in quarterback Tom Brady’s sixth Super Bowl start. The Patriots lead a sustained drive into the red zone of Seattle territory, but are forced to settle for a field goal after receiver Brandon “Stone Hands” LaFell has the ball deflected away from him by Seattle safety Kam Chancellor on a 3^rd and 4.

The Seahawks respond on the following drive with the power run game led by Marshawn Lynch. "Beastmode" picks up a family sized bag of Skittles before the game and scores a touchdown on a short screen pass from Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson after a lengthy drive which featured three separate 3^rd down conversions. Seattle leads 7-3 and New England has the ball on a 2^nd and 4 at their own 39 as time expires in the first quarter.

Seattle leads 7-3 at the end of the first quarter

New England stalls on the drive and is forced to punt just beyond midfield, giving the ball back to the Seahawks offense, already in gear. Seattle executes another long drive, featuring a remarkable play in which Wilson fumbles a shotgun snap on a 3^rd and 9, and somehow makes a miraculous recovery before shovel passing the ball to a well-protected Lynch, who is able to rattle off a 35-yard run, stiff arming and flattening Patriots defensive back Devin McCourty in the process. The drive ends with a short rushing touchdown, the second in the game for Lynch, making the score 14-3.

New England responds with a quicker passing attack with shorter passes to Danny Amendola, who makes a remarkably unforeseen contribution to the Patriots passing game in the first half. The long drive again stalls in the red zone deep in Seattle territory as Seahawks linebacker Bruce Irvin plays consistently strong defense against tight end Rob Gronkowski, the premiere weapon the New England passing attack.

Following another New England field goal by Stephen Gostowski, the Seahawks have a dreadful return on the kickoff and are stuck back at their own 12 to start a drive with 2:30 to play. Seattle is able to get a few first downs and make Patriots coach Bill Belichick sweat; however the Seahawks fail to score again before halftime.

Seattle leads 14-6 at halftime

Katy Perry’s skirt is “accidentally” raised by the headstock of Lenny Kravitz’s guitar during the halftime show, and the Seahawks come out distracted entering the third quarter. The Patriots begin the half playing inspired after a rousing halftime speech is delivered by Mark Wahlburg and a living Ted from the movie Ted.

The Patriots hold Seattle to their first three-and-out of the day on their opening drive of the half, and New England follows up the stop with a time-consuming touchdown drive capped off by a diving goal line score from Jonas Gray. The Patriots only trail by a point at 14-13 with 7:00 to play in the third quarter.

Seattle responds with a field goal on their next drive as Doug Baldwin fails to reach the sticks on third down reverse play at the Patriots’ 25-yard line. Seattle kicks a field goal as time expires in the quarter to take a four-point lead with a score of 17-13.

Seattle leads 17-13 at the end of the third quarter

On the first drive of the fourth quarter, Tom Brady throws for an incredible 7/8 completed passes, compiling 51 yards. The Patriots attempt to re-introduce the running game at this point; it stalls at the 10-yard line, leaving New England with the decision of whether to settle for a field goal or to try and execute a first down conversion on 4^th and 5.

The Patriots elect to kick and bring the game within one point once again. Afterwards Tom Brady is seen stamping up and down the sidelines muttering obscenities after having thrown an incompletion in the end zone on 2^nd and 5 on that same set of downs. The score is 17-16 and Seattle starts their next offensive possession on the 20-yard line.

New England’s defensive line begins to fight back late in the game, holding Marshawn Lynch to minimal gains and pressuring Russell Wilson, who is sacked twice on the Seahawks’ first drive of the closing quarter of play. After failing to get past midfield on their drive, Seattle is forced to punt and the Patriots take over at the 24-yard line.

Tom Brady begins picking apart the Seattle defense over a sustained drive into Seahawks territory as the clock strikes 6:00 to play in Super Bowl XLIX. Brady is near perfect on another drive as New England has practically abandoned their run game. The Patriots are within scoring range on a 2^nd and short, looking to make a big strike downfield to tight end Tim Wright.

The pass intended for Wright is picked off by Seahawks defensive back Earl Thomas III near the 10-yard line and returned 79 yards into Patriots territory. Thomas III runs the ball back to the Patriots’ 11 and is tackled by Julian Edelman while showboating on his way toward the end zone, strutting obliviously with an unprotected ball in his hand.

The Seahawks score five plays later on Marshawn Lynch’s second rushing touchdown of the game, making the score 24-16. Lynch scores 18 of Seattle’s 24 points in the game and his 113-yard performance earns him the Super Bowl’s Most Valuable Player award.

New England continues to make an effort with under 3:00 to play and two remaining timeouts, managing their way down to the Seahawks 44-yard line before stalling and finding themselves in a 4^th and 11 situation. On the Patriots’ final offensive play of the season, Tom Brady is hit by Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett as he dumps off a pass to Stevon Ridley, who is tackled after some nifty footwork nets him a nine yard gain.

Seattle takes over on downs, and calls two kneel-down plays to finish off Super Bowl XLIX. The Seahawks win the game by a final score of 24-16 and they are the first franchise to win back-to-back titles since Tom Brady led the Patriots to consecutive championships in 2003 and 2004.

Seahawks defeat the Patriots 24-16

Will I be 100% right? The likely answer is no, because my prediction was intensely detailed. I do however believe that Seattle will win the game by six or more points. Russell Wilson is the most impressive young playmaker since, well, Tom Brady. The Seahawks have a defensive unit that continues to play exceptionally and I simply do not see any way that the Patriots can stop this dynasty in the making. The Patriots were the top team of the last decade, and there is no denying that, but I believe that we will be watching the team of this decade assume its title on super Sunday when Seattle defeats New England in Super Bowl XLIX.

The 2015 NFL Pro Bowl

This Sunday the National Football League held its annual Pro Bowl at the site of the upcoming championship game, Super Bowl XLIX in Glendale, Arizona. For those that don’t know, the Pro Bowl is an All-Star game played at the end of every NFL season, where the league’s most popular players participate in a pass-happy game that penalizes defenses for play calling designs as fundamental to the sport as blitzes.

Historically the Pro Bowl has drawn poor numbers of viewers, and with good reason. The game used to be played on the weekend following the Super Bowl until very recently when the NFL recognized how few people retained interest in watching football after end of the season. Now the game is played during the bye week between the conference championship games and super Sunday. The Pro Bowl, like any All-Star event, is merely a front for shameless promotions, and it provides additional airtime fodder for hype-machine networks like ESPN and the NFL Network before the sports-world lull that encompasses the month of February.

For decades the Pro Bowl would feature match-ups of the best players selected in the National Football Conference against the best players selected in the American Football Conference. The NFC wore blue and the AFC wore red; certain players would be on the same team as rivals, and it made everything interesting… but not quite enough for the younger fans. More recently, the Pro Bowl has adopted elements of fantasy in which two NFL Hall of Fame members (Michael Irvin and Cris Carter in 2015) draft teams from a pool of over a hundred players selected by the fans as Pro Bowlers. This system churns out two hodgepodge teams that make it far more difficult to know who to cheer for. At the end of the day, fans end up rooting for clothes, as is the case in almost any game where the outcome is inconsequential to the viewer.

The NFL has made drastic and hideous alterations to their uniforms worn in the last two Pro Bowl games. Gone are the days of the classic matchup of red versus blue; the uniforms in the 2015 Pro Bowl featured jarring combinations of white and neon yellow versus gray and a vibrant orange. The players sure looked ridiculous, but considering the endgame is selling jerseys to young kids, those bright colors are clearly working for the NFL. This is just more evidence of the sporting world evolving constantly, and modified uniforms are hardly groundbreaking. However, other changes implemented by the league in this year's Pro Bowl turned out to have an actual impact on the final score.

One phase of the game that the shield has been trying to complicate for years now is the kicking game, and provided with the playful atmosphere of the Pro Bowl, the NFL has decided to use this matchup as its proving ground. In the 2015 Pro Bowl, some of the changes the NFL sought to experiment with involved lengthening the distance of extra-point kick attempts as well as shrinking the width of the goalposts. The impact on the game was two missed extra points and a missed field goal, which raises the question of whether or not fans want to compromise points for their team in exchange for an overhaul of the entire kicking phase of football? It will be interesting to see if and when any changes are implemented to regular NFL games, and if so, how many more of these missed kicks will be seen in future NFL seasons.

As the dust settled in the desert this weekend, Team Irvin defeated Team Carter by a count of 32-28, which means nothing really; it means I wasted an evening watching a silly exhibition football game with less actual competition than a wrestling match. It means that the Super Bowl is less than a week away, and that's plenty to be excited about. My three big takeaways from the 2015 Pro Bowl were that the uniforms are silly, kicking a football is hard enough already, and that the only All-Star game worth watching is played in July. God, I miss baseball.