It turned out to be a field goal game after all, as the Los Angeles Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 in Super Bowl LVI on their home turf at SoFi Stadium.
Highlights
With 1:25 remaining, first-year Ram Matthew Stafford completed the final chapter of his team’s storybook season by finding NFL Offensive Player of the Year and Super Bowl MVP Cooper Kupp for a touchdown on a 1-yard line play. The receiver reeled in two TDs total, and even netted a grab off an impressive no-look pass for 22 yards, on a day where former New York Giant Odell Beckham, Jr. also scored the game’s first TD for Los Angeles before suffering a torn ACL.
His retirement expectedly looming, three-time Defensive Player of the Year Aaron Donald poetically took down Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow on 4th-and-1 to secure the victory.
Rams Head Coach Sean McVay, 36, in his return to the last game of the season three years after falling to Tom Brady and the last hoorah of the New England Patriots dynasty, became the youngest coach to win it all.
Pepsi Halftime Special
The Interscope/Aftermath heavy lineup of musical performers during Pepsi’s Halftime Show included Dr. Dre joined by many who’ve blossomed on and beyond his coaching tree. Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar, and Mary J. Blige each revived some old Hip-Hop classics of their respective catalogs that span various subsections of the broader millennial generation.
Subtler-than-holographic tributes were paid to Tupac Shakur in the form of the geographically on-brand “California Love,” released in 1996 to coincide with the late rap icon’s pivotal arrival at Death Row Records shortly before Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s departure.
Eminem reportedly knelt knowing the league preferred otherwise, while Dr. Dre and Lamar complied with requests to sanitize lyrics alluding to the hatred of the police force.
Overall, the slate turned out a well-coordinated success. It did, however, lack a certain “X” factor needed to be considered a truly great one. The multimember nostalgia hotbed fell a notch shy of solo headliners of years past like Michael Jackson, Prince, and even The Weeknd just last year.
Teases aside, they completely forgot about “Forgot About Dre” as well. Blasphemy. You never forget about “Forgot About Dre.”
Standout Commercials
Ewan McGregor’s fourth wall-breaking “destinations over possessions” P.S.A. for Expedia flaunted shades of his Trainspotting franchise voiceover commentary. Former NFL linebacker Jerod Mayo emphasized the importance of not letting Hellman’s Mayonnaise go to waste – to which a post-takedown Pete Davidson humorously uttered, “I get it; I’m very hittable.” And Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Robert Iler of The Sopranos reunited in the David Chase-directed Chevy Ford All-Electric Silverado recreation of the iconic HBO series’ opening sequence.
Cut to “Woke Up This Morning” by Alabama 3 and modern day-replicating the drive in from the city to upscale New Jersian suburbia, the commercial serves as in-reference fan service for those still frustrated by Meadow’s faulty parallel parking in the show’s potentially fatal closing moments. This go-around, she sticks the landing while guaranteeing that at least the children of Tony Soprano survived past the cut to bl-
Beyond the Game
Another potential retiree in the swan-sung face of victory, tackle Andrew Whitworth, received the NFL Honors Walter Payton Man of the Year Award on Thursday for his efforts in community improvement.
What’s more, and downright adorable: the four-time Pro-Bowler spoke on Monday’s edition of Today when pressed for comment on his youngest child, daughter Katherine, 7, going viral for being glued to a book rather than the game at hand.
“She’s so cool,” the beaming dad proclaimed. “She’s just her in every moment, and that’s what makes her special. You know what? It’s that fourth one that’s just the strongest, the toughest and who-she-is the most, out of all of them.”
To paraphrase Brad-Pitt-as-Billy Beane in 2011’s Moneyball, how can you not be romantic about football?
