The Shield: Yes, THAT was a bad Super Bowl.

I'm not sure there's enough whiskey in the world to scrub the game last night fully from our memory but we might want to give it a try.

It was boring.
It was antiseptic.
It was devoid of anything memorable.

The commercials sucked.
Halftime was devoid of anything truly memorable.

It was everything corporate and sanitized about the NFL, complete with rather improbable shots of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell walking arm in arm with Civil Rights Icons. (SEE AMERICA, NO RACIST PROBLEM HERE!!!!!)

The shame of it all is, this was one of the most exciting, fun and unpredictable NFL seasons in quite a few years, it went against recent form, we were finally putting the politics (somewhat) behind us and focusing on the ball game, we were seeing points, and crazy things and good Saturdays.

As bad as the college football season was this year the NFL was our weekend salvation on many occasions.

Then they gave us a mud-fight between an (obviously) aging Tom Brady and an (obviously) not ready for this stage Jared Goff. Both defenses came out and totally befuddled their opponents. Both quarterbacks were inaccurate and (let's face it) bad, while neither team could get a consistent running game going, and we were 3-3 at halftime and there were only 10 points left in this game, but we didn't know it at the time Maroon 5 came out and pretty much underwhelmed everyone.

In defense of the halftime show, I thought Travis Scott's entrance was good, and Big Boi did what he does which is always pretty good.  My wife enjoyed the Adam Levine strip poker game so......


But the game itself was awful.

Borderline unwatchable like so many NFL games were for so many seasons prior. It was like watching the Houston Texans and Tennessee Titans play on loop. It had within it no redeeming qualities.

What it did, was cement the Patriots as the best team in the league, as they have been for many years now. There's no denying what Tom Brady and Bill Belicheck have accomplished together, silly "underdog" memes notwithstanding. The Patriots were -2.5 favorites and were almost universally picked by everyone, including me, to win the game. What this proves is that you can call yourself whatever you want, and no matter how false that may be some teams have a dumb enough fan base that they'll lap it up and make it go viral.

Boston is living in blessed sports times. Yet I doubt any of them understand that and are still living in the 'Curse of the Bambino' era in their minds.  Still, that's better than LA fans, who just don't care.

So we end yet another football season with the wonder of what could have been.

What IF the referees in the NFC Championship hadn't blown that call? What IF Brees hadn't thrown that interception?  What if the Chiefs had a clue how to stop the run?

What if?

Possibly the perfect metaphor for the NFL today.

From that perspective this was the most fitting end.