Coverage of the 2018 Super Bowl
The 2018 Super Bowl between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots was one for the ages, as you had two pretty incredible storylines. The quarterback matchup, Tom Brady vs. Nick Foles was an interesting one to say the least, as Brady at age 40 was going for his second consecutive NFL championship, while Nick Foles really had no business playing in the Super Bowl. Tom Brady, who is pretty unanimously referred to as the greatest quarterback in NFL history has had an incredible career where he had won five championships, so it seemed like a slam-dunk that the Belichick-led Pats would coast to their sixth ring under the Brady-Belichick regime, especially with Brady throwing for over 500 years in the championship game. With Carson Wentz, the good, young quarterback for the Eagles getting injured weeks before the start of the NFL playoffs, nobody thought the typically un-spectacular Nick Foles would amount to anything in the pressure-ridden playoff run. However, Foles stepped up as a major part of the Super Bowl, throwing for 373 yards and for three touchdown passes, en route to a Super Bowl MVP award, as the Patriots defense couldn’t contain the Eagles offense. A huge question mark surrounding the game is why Bill Belichick didn’t play Malcolm Butler, a corner who had played over 97% of plays throughout the season, for more than one special teams play. In the end, the game resulted in a 41-33 victory for Philly, their first ever Super Bowl championship.
The commentary duo who covered Super Bowl LII was made up of Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth, who broadcasted the game on NBC. Cris Collinsworth did a poor job in his commentary, as he tended to be very repetitive in what he said, consistently spewing out basic information that didn’t really have any contribution to what was happening in the game. For a guy who spent 8 seasons on the Cincinnati Bengals, he tended to sound uneducated on basic principals involved in the football game, such as the Zach Ertz catch in the fourth quarter to put the Eagles up by 5 points. Collinsworth thought the catch shouldn’t have been a catch, when every facet of it supported the idea of it being a completed pass. Al Michaels wasn’t much better than Collinsworth, as when referring to the best player in Major League Baseball and Eagles super-fan Mike Trout, he incorrectly referred to the Los Angeles as the “California Angels,” a name which the Angels haven’t bore for 22 years. While a minor detail, it makes you question how up-to-date Michaels was on much of the coverage he was producing. He also brought up something about the Berlin Wall in reference to obtaining information on the Malcolm Butler debacle, which I personally thought was in distaste from current events. Finally, in the culminating moments of the game, Michaels had all-but-no passion in his reaction to the Philadelphia Eagles winning their very first Super Bowl title, which is a bit upsetting as even though he was supposed to operate without bias, he could have been a bit more entertaining and excited when broadcasting Philadelphia history.
Finally, the commercials for the Super Bowl, which in recent years haven’t been as good as they once were, were fairly basic once again, with only a couple outliers. Bud Light continued its tradition of great Super Bowl commercials with a great variety of “Dilly, Dilly!” presentations, a slogan that is becoming a staple in comedic, frat culture among young men and women. My personal favorite of these was when a middle-ages style war was to be broken up over the love of Bud Light. Other good commercials included Super Bowl staples Doritos and Mountain Dew, who displayed back-to-back “spit fire” and ice-cold commercials including Peter Dinklage, Busta Rhymes, Morgan Freeman and Missy Elliot to support the new products of Doritos Blaze and Mountain Dew Ice in a comedic manner. Lastly, my personal favorite commercial was the NFL commercial including Odell Beckham Jr. and Eli Manning, where the focus is on touchdown celebrations. I thought it was ironic for the NFL to air an ad with Eli Manning, who for a long time was thought of as the only man who could take down Tom Brady in the Super Bowl, but overall the commercial of Eli and Odell dancing had me laughing and I thought it was quite comedic.
Super Bowl LII was one for the ages, and one that I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.