Editor’s Observe: Gene Seymour is a critic who has written about music, films and tradition for The New York Instances, Newsday, Leisure Weekly and The Washington Submit. Comply with him on Twitter @GeneSeymour. The opinions expressed on this commentary are his personal. View extra opinion on CNN.
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I stay in Philadelphia and, although I’m not a local, I’ve made my house right here for a few years. So I don’t even should look out the window of the place I’m now to know the way a lot town’s coronary heart is aching.
After their baseball Phillies misplaced the World Collection to the Houston Astros final fall, Philadelphians needed their soccer Eagles to win this Tremendous Bowl. Wished it unhealthy, too.
Successful one 5 years in the past wasn’t sufficient. By frequent consent, this was the perfect all-round version of the Eagles ever: highly effective and cruel at each ends of the ball, a quarterback in Jalen Hurts empowered with the power to throw lengthy and precisely and the stamina to hold the ball himself for giant scores.
With a 16-3 total report, together with the playoffs, the 2022 Philadelphia Eagles had been thought of by pundits, coaches and different specialists to be a juggernaut. To repeat, I stay right here. I’ve lived right here on and off for 40 years. Let me inform you one thing: I can’t bear in mind any Philadelphia workforce being known as a juggernaut. Not even the Phillies workforce that received consecutive pennants in 2008 and 2009 and a championship in that first yr.
In the mean time I’m scripting this down, I don’t know for certain how the results of Tremendous Bowl LVII goes down in neighborhoods like Fishtown, Fairmount, Kensington, Germantown, Queen Village, South Philadelphia, the “Nice Northeast” (sincere, that’s what it’s known as), Manayunk, East Falls… In my very own neighborhood of West Philadelphia proper now, it’s been quiet up to now. There might need been fireworks if the workforce had overwhelmed the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs, who, as different quadrants within the multiverse know by now, outlasted the Eagles 38-35.
In case you watched the motion Sunday evening, what a terrific recreation of American block-and-tackle soccer it was; an immediate traditional whose final result remained unsure till the previous couple of seconds. (It was so engrossing that it made individuals overlook how mediocre many of the multi-million-dollar commercials had been – with one telling exception through which an Eagles superfan practically stole the present.)
Again to the sport. A lot was made by the press and others about this being the primary Tremendous Bowl through which each beginning quarterbacks had been African American. (After the sport was over, veteran ESPN broadcaster Chris Berman even identified that it was Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.) Each Kansas Metropolis quarterback Patrick Mahomes, 27, and his 24-year-old Philadelphia counterpart Hurts performed brilliantly.
Philadelphia could not wish to hear this proper now, however their guys performed with as a lot tenacity, boldness and grit as Kansas Metropolis. The Eagles have, briefly, nothing to be ashamed of.
They only had the misfortune of being overwhelmed final evening by the Depend of Monte Cristo.
After being named Most Priceless Participant in each the common season and the Tremendous Bowl, Patrick Mahomes is now a licensed legend {of professional} sport. Even earlier than this recreation, he was thought of one thing of a unicorn in his occupation, a once-in-a-generation participant who appeared to channel greats like Tom Brady, Joe Montana, John Elway, Roger Staubach and “Slingin’” Sammy Baugh – whereas additionally hearkening again to such out-of-the-box daredevils as Mozart, Elvis, Picasso and iconic take a look at pilot Chuck Yeager.
The legend blew up huge on Sunday, with a hard-fought win towards a high-ankle sprain that Mahomes sustained in the course of the playoffs.
I don’t know whether or not you’ve ever had a high-ankle sprain, however these issues harm! As in not with the ability to put any weight on the ankle with out wincing or hobbling, each of which Mahomes did on the finish of the primary half. And he was nonetheless wincing slightly within the second half, even after he’d managed to scamper and go his workforce right into a place to win the sport.
That form of grace underneath strain transcends the grand and puffy hype of the NFL and its annual spectacle. Mahomes’s gallantry was the type that rises like yeast to mythic glory, the type they used to jot down epic poems about centuries earlier than the movement image digital camera was invented for deepening and widening the proliferation of legend.
It’s simple to overstate such issues, I do know. However that’s what the Tremendous Bowl has been encouraging us to do since LBJ was president. Sunday evening’s recreation was so nice in and of itself, that it made Rihanna’s half-time live performance – an look she spurned in 2019 in solidarity with one-time Tremendous Bowl quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick’s protest of police brutality – nearly an afterthought. It must be stated, nevertheless, that her willingness to carry out on and off elevated platforms in a loud outside enviornment whereas pregnant confirmed comparable derring-do of her personal.
Oh…and in regards to the commercials? The one one which, in an unscientific and arbitrary ballot on social media, linked properly with audiences got here comparatively early within the broadcast. It was a T-Cell advert that includes Bradley Cooper and his mom.
Cooper himself was born and raised in suburban Philadelphia and, as famous, is himself an Eagle fan. His credit embrace a starring function within the 2012 comedy-drama, “Silver Linings Playbook” through which he performed a suburban Philadelphia former schoolteacher being handled for bipolar dysfunction. Cooper’s dad within the film, performed by Robert De Niro, is a serious-as-a-heart-attack Eagles fan and one of many film’s essential scenes is a scuffle within the workforce’s stadium parking zone.
This yr’s business with Cooper and his mom Gloria is a hoot-and-a-half, extra a set of random outtakes with mom and son breaking one another up whereas doing something however sticking to the script.
At one level, mother tells her son he “seems to be like a clam.” Cooper assures her he is aware of what he’s doing as a result of, in spite of everything, he’s been nominated 9 instances for an Oscar. “Yeah,” she says, “however you by no means received something.”
Eagle followers, hold Gloria’s remark in thoughts when making an attempt to get by way of the subsequent a number of days and months. First, as a result of her son laughed as onerous when she stated that as when she muffed the precise script. And second as a result of, properly, your workforce HAS received one thing. And can, once more.
Sometime. Perhaps quickly?
