A dark, ravenous Super Bowl

ESPN is featuring Michael Jordan highlights in it's sportscenters to commemorate his 50-Th birthday.  That's when you know the Super Bowl is over and we are in one of those sports dead-zones on the calendar. ESPN always goes to MJ for help during these challenging times. It was a great Super Bowl to wrap up the football season. Some things in the Super Bowl worked out as expected - the game was close and Beyonce was hot. There were a few surprises - a long power outage and the niners lost. I wanted and expected the niners to win. The interesting thing was, the niners were down but never out. Joe Flacco was on point in the first half and threw for 3 TDs. The vaunted niners defense looked toothless and fell behind 21-6 when Beyonce started dancing at halftime. The niners had made a habit of coming back from large deficits with Kaepernick at the helm and with the Ravens defense being good but not great, everybody assumed it was only a matter of time before the niners made a comeback in the second half. But Jacoby Jones retuned the second half kickoff back for a TD to put the Ravens up 28-6. The niner faithful was worried, but still hopeful. That's when the power went out.

It was ironic that the niners, who suffered through an embarrassing blackout one Monday night last season on national TV against the Steelers at their home at candlestick, were now experiencing a blackout in the middle of the Super Bowl. NFL was caught unawares at the biggest event in all of sports. The delay was more than 30 minutes and something happened to both the teams during that break. The niners started coming back furiously when the game resumed and by the time the 4-Th quarter rolled around, we all had a tight game on our hands. Kap was playing a perfect second half and the Ravens looked lost and confused. If the niners had won the game, the NFL would have been in trouble because the power outage would have been the focus as far as why the ravens lost. Luckily for the NFL, the niners came back but not all the way back. They had a shot at the end to win and it would have been an all-time classic if they had sealed the deal. It was still a great super bowl, but the comeback story fell short. The niners had multiple shots at the goal line at the end, but a ravens blitz on 4-Th down stopped Kap from throwing the go ahead TD. Harbaugh wanted a holding call, but Michael Crabtree didn't get it.

Lot of the niner fans are still upset at that non-call and some others are more bothered by the missed penalty on the kickoff return by Jacoby Jones. Whatever it was, it's nothing more than water under the bridge now and only Flacco and the Ravens are still smiling. There is some talk about Jim Harbaugh's lack of composure during the game. I wonder what the media would have said if he had won. Even the niner fans are now questioning his demeanor. In reality, that was and will continue to be a non-issue. Both Jim and the niners should be good for a few years. It's a young team with a younger QB who looks like a superstar in the making. The real concern is, their defense has been giving up tonnes of points every game since the last couple of games of the regular season. Their secondary is week and the league seems to have figured them out. This league is a copycat league and every team is now ripping them apart. It is now on Trent Baalke and Jim Harbaugh to make some adjustments with free agency and all their draft picks. Flacco had no issues against this defense and earned himself a well-deserved MVP trophy. I have always been a Flacco fan. He is sometimes elite, often unreliable, mostly understated, sporadically arrogant, and definitely clutch. The ravens have to pay him through the nose now that he is a super bowl champion and a free agent. At least they don't have to pay Ray Lewis anymore. The Ray Lewis era is officially over with him going out on top. We can only hope Ray stays retired and doesn't pull a MJ on us.