There are a lot of arguments nowadays about whether or not we live in a simulation. Prior to that, philosophers and theologists alike have been making their case for why things happen the way they do. Is it chance? Is it fate? Is everything already mapped out for us, making our decisions less a matter of free-will and more a matter of following our predetermined path? Or do the ramifications of each choice we made change the future? Is the rest really still unwritten? Trying to find a reason for the way things are is an enticing and complicated venture that has never gone out of style.
The NFL is another beast entirely. The question of whether or not it is rigged is a microcosm of this centuries-long debate. Does it matter how badly a team wants it, or is in unavoidable that a certain team will win?
Really, you can see it all across sports. The Astros winning the world series after the hurricane left the city devastated. The Red Sox getting the trophy the year of the Boston bombing. The Saints winning the Super Bowl after Katrina. Does tragedy simply motivate communities and teams? Or is there something more going on?
Maybe it’s the superstitious sports fan in me, but instead of looking at this as a form of “fixing” a certain game or season, I tend to see it as a pattern.
I blame my family for my sports superstitions. We often discuss where we were sitting during Patriots games, what we were wearing and what we ate. If we took the dogs for a walk at halftime or changed our jersey between quarters. We already had this issue as a group, but the Super Bowl comeback over the Falcons really didn’t help things. I moved seats at halftime, my brother changed venues, and my mom changed her shirt. So when we pulled it off and won, the superstition was reinforced.
Yes, it’s just as embarrassing a thing to type as it is to read.
In an effort to dull the pain of my own embarrassment, I will spin this in a different way: I look for patterns and when I see a pattern, I buy into it and often expect it to continue.
And as someone who looks for patterns, let me tell you, this post-season has be overflowing with them.
It’s really easy to get frustrated with the one and done format of playoff football.
Think about it in comparison to hockey, for example. In the 2019 Stanley Cup series, the Boston Bruins and the St. Louis Blues were tied at one game a piece going into game three. Everything was even, it was like the series was starting over. In this “series restart” the Bruins crushed the Blues, 7-2. They had to pull their goalie, in a championship game. It was the type of game you don’t typically see in the finals. These two teams had battled it out through three best of seven series up to this point, you would think the games would be close.
As it turned out, the Blues came back and won the series. One bad game did not strip them of the championship that they earned. But if this had been football, one bad showing can be the end of the road. It’s both exciting and infuriating all at once.
This year’s divisional round got things off to a hot start with four games all decided by one score. It’s the kind of slate that restores your faith in the system and reassures you that these were the teams who were supposed to be here battling it out. Though I think some teams – namely the Packers – wouldn’t mind a second shot.
With all these down-to-the-wire games, there emerged some very intriguing patterns.
Three out of the four games played were decided by a last-minute field goal. All three of said field goal’s were struck by the foot of the visiting team’s kicker. That’s a pattern. While Sunday night’s face-off between the Chiefs and the Bills did break that pattern, it kept another one going. In the divisional round we had four games and four walk-off scores.
Miraculously, this pattern made it all the way to the NFC Championship game before it ended. But in amidst the continuation of this pattern, a couple more very interesting one’s emerged in honor of Championship Weekend.
The first game of the weekend saw the Bengals traveling to Arrowhead to face off with the Chiefs. Both teams were coming off emotional victories the week before and their previous match-up was a regular season highlight. This game had all the makings of an epic showdown. So it was disappointing when the Bengals were getting trampled by the Chiefs for half the game.
For nearly two quarters I found myself asking the Bengals got here in the first place. What it a fluke? Did they just get lucky, twice and somehow end up in the AFC Championship game? And if they were so deserving of being here, when was the switch going to flip? The answer came in the final seconds of the first half with a fantastic defensive stop that took advantage of the Chiefs tendency to get greedy and get very cute with their game plan. Just before the half, the power dynamic began to switch.
In the end the Chiefs scored only three more points in the second half, and the Bengals mounted a heroic comeback at the hands of Joe Cool and their lights out defense. A comeback win solidified by a walk-off score.
At 6:30pm ET, the buzz of an overtime victory still in the air, they kicked things off at SoFi. It was another match-up with a lot of promise. Unfortunately, if you looked at this historical pattern, all of that promise was going the way of the 49ers. Maintaining an impressive 6-0 streak of victories over their divisional opponent was the secondary goal of their evening, the first was to join the Bengals in the Super Bowl.
The game started off slowly. Two evenly matched teams who are very familiar with one another. So familiar that no one scored a single point in the first quarter. One might even go as far as to say the game was getting off to a boring start. But then Tyler Higbee went down. Not only did this create a wrinkle in the offensive roster for the Rams, but it was an opportunity for them to create a pattern.
In the midst of the Chief’s first-half smack down, the Bengals lost their Tight End CJ Uzomah to injury. He limped off the field into the blue medical tent and a sense of disaster crept in. This was not something the Bengals could afford right now, a veteran talent they were not prepared to lose. Especially the way the Chiefs were playing. But we all know how that turned out, don’t we?
So when Higbee went down it wasn’t ludicrous to think that, similar to the Bengals who lost their tight end early, this could be a good thing for the Rams.
As the game rolled on, the inevitable seemed to be knocking on the door. The football viewing public – myself included – was starting to resign to the belief that somehow Kyle Shanahan had the Rams all figured out. As if he should be a consultant brought in by teams on weeks when they were matched up against the Rams to help them claim victory. We could call him, Kyle “Ram Slayer” Shanahan, and it wouldn’t be inaccurate.
Suddenly though, in an eerily similar manner to the earlier game, things began to shift. At the hands of Cooper Kupp and a realizing-it-was-crunch-time-and-they-have-to-give-it-their-all Rams defense, they crawled back into it. Though, it might have had more to do with a missed interception than anything else.
Two games, two teams stamping their ticket to the Super Bowl, two comebacks, and two injured tight ends. Patterns!!
Before I completely drop this whole “pattern” thing – because I know it feels like it might be stretched a bit thin right now – I want to highlight two more facts. Two more potential patterns, if you will:
- This is the second year in a row that a team will be playing at home in the Super Bowl.
- This is the second year in a row that a quarterback, in their first year with a new team following a long-running stint with the team that drafted them, has made it to the Super Bowl.
Maybe it’s the superstitious sports fan in me, but if kind of feels like it’s written in the stars for the Rams to win it all. Or maybe that’s just one girl’s opinion.
Either way, we have two more weeks before we see if it all continues. Two more weeks of waiting before the season’s grand finale under the star-making lights of Los Angeles. Two more weeks to see which team will be referred to as the “reigning Super Bowl champions” next year. Two more weeks and just four quarters away from a moment that changes lives.
Let’s just hope for an exciting game, because these seem like the two teams who were meant to be here.
Just One Girl's Opinion 
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