\jeff{krimmel}

My Super Bowl Prediction

Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday. I must say that I’m quite ready for this game. The two week break between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl is exactly that…too weak. I decided I would go ahead and offer my prediction and the reasons for my pick, and then we can all share a laugh when the game goes the _exact_ opposite of the way I think it will. Regardless, here is what I think will happen.

The Patriots win, 24-20. I don’t really have any single particular idea that is pointing me in this direction; I suppose it’s a culmination of how the season has gone. The Eagles have been beating up on poor NFC teams, while the Patriots have been schooling the best teams in the league. Both teams had a first round bye in the playoffs. The week of the divisional round the Eagles beat the Vikings and the Patriots beat the Colts. The Colts are a _much_ better team than the Vikings, and the Patriots dominated the Colts more than the Eagles dominated the Vikings. The next week was the conference championship game, and again neither team really had a problem. The difference was that the Eagles beat the Falcons, who are at best an above average team who took advantage of a terribly weak division and beat a flawed Rams team in the divisional round of the playoffs. The Patriots destroyed the Steelers, the same Steelers who went 15-1 in the regular season and have a completely suffocating defense.

The Eagles will make it close. I like Brian Westbrook coming out of the backfield to catch a few passes to extend some drives. I like Donovan McNabb moving around a little bit to buy some time for something to open up over the middle of the field. But, I like New England’s offense to steadily pound at the Eagles’ defense more, and I think the last six to eight minutes of the game may be very interesting. We’ll see.