PHILADELPHIA — I don’t know. Maybe it’s me. I’m not feeling the Super Bowl this year. You? Rams-Bengals is this Sunday, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. It’s understandable if you forgot. For the first time in a long time, the big game feels small. There are reasons to be interested in Super Bowl LVI, sure. There always are reasons to be interested in the Super Bowl. There just aren’t as many in this Super Bowl.
Hey, I get it. If you’re a football junkie, someone who digs the sport’s Xs and Os, you’re probably already poring over All-22 film and spreadsheets and algorithms, analyzing the game’s most important matchups, tweeting out all your insights and look-out-for-this-on-third-and-long scenarios: Ja’Marr Chase vs. Jalen Ramsey, Cooper Kupp against the entire Cincinnati secondary, Sean McVay’s tendencies vs. Zac Taylor’s tendencies, etc. But football junkies can geek out over any game, any set of matchups. The Super Bowl is different. The Super Bowl is the most popular TV show in America, and among the factors that compel people to tune in, Xs and Os aren’t so high on the list. Other elements matter, and this game is missing them.
— It’s missing … Tom Brady, both who he has been and what he represents. Brady had played in five of the previous seven Super Bowls, winning four of them, and his presence in the game set up dramatic conflicts and story lines that were attractive to the broader public. Last year, it was Brady vs. Patrick Mahomes: The Best of the Best vs. The Best of Today. In 2018, it was Brady vs. Nick Foles, The Ultimate Favorite vs. The Ultimate Underdog. You watched to see Brady win again, or you watched to see someone beat him. Either way, you watched.
That dynamic — the star power of a particular quarterback or the quarterback position in general — can’t be overemphasized. Of the last 20 Super Bowls, 15 have featured one of the three most famous and familiar QBs over that period: Brady, Peyton Manning, and Aaron Rodgers. Those guys are Subway and Saturday Night Live and State Farm. Compared to that trio, Matthew Stafford and Joe Burrow are anonymous.
— It’s missing … villains, and neither of those quarterbacks qualifies as one. Stafford and Burrow have had terrific seasons, are terrific players, and have terrific stories. The former languished for 13 years with the Lions before joining the Rams and getting his first real chance to compete for a championship. Burrow had, for LSU in 2019, perhaps the greatest season of any college quarterback ever, and he led the Bengals to the Super Bowl in just his second season. What reason is there to root against either of them?
Same with the head coaches. There’s no Bill Belichick here. Heck, before the playoffs began, how many casual football followers could have identified Taylor as the Bengals’ head coach? Granted, the NFL media machine has been touting McVay as a wunderkind for a while, but while the praise has seemed excessive at times (especially since McVay hasn’t won a Super Bowl yet), the hype isn’t his fault. As for the players on both teams, little controversy has bubbled up among them. Even Odell Beckham Jr., now that he is lining up alongside a quarterback willing to throw him the football, has been inoffensive during his short tenure with the Rams.
— It’s missing … a team that is compelling to the entire country. If you’re a long-suffering Bengals fan — is there any other kind of Bengals fan? — or if you grew up with a poster of Jack Youngblood or Eric Dickerson on your bedroom wall, Super Bowl LVI is hitting your sweet spot. The Rams are in their second stint in Los Angeles, and they haven’t won a Super Bowl in either of them. They had to move to St. Louis — and stumble upon a former grocery-bagger to be their quarterback — to win one. The Bengals’ history is even harder. Before this postseason, they hadn’t won a playoff game since January 1990, a year after Joe Montana and the 49ers edged them in a Super Bowl for the second time.
But the Bengals don’t have a convenient and oft-repeated myth to explain why they haven’t won a championship, and they haven’t come close to winning one often enough for anyone outside Cincinnati to pay them much mind. They’re not the Cubs, who had the Curse of the Billy Goat and were lovable losers until the 2016 World Series. They’re not the Red Sox, who had the Curse of the Bambino until the 2004 ALCS and World Series. They’re not the Cowboys or the Knicks or the Flyers — big-market teams who command national attention whenever they’re good but who have gone a generation or more without a championship. The Bengals are just a nondescript franchise that has been mostly bad for the better part of 30 years.
At least they have a loyal local fan base, though. The Rams inspire indifference not only throughout most of the nation, but also in and around Los Angeles. So many 49ers fans filled SoFi Stadium for the NFC championship game that at times it sounded as if the game were being played in Northern California. Four years ago, Philadelphia was awash in happy tears after the Eagles won Super Bowl LII. It would be a shock to see Los Angeles residents react to a Rams victory with the same expulsion of collective joy, and if they don’t care, why would anyone else?
