Da prediction

This coin of mine, it's taken a beating this week. I keep flipping it. It keeps telling me stuff. It's never the right stuff.

I flip it once, and it comes up heads.

Seahawks!

I flip it again, and it comes up tails.

Patriots!

You see my problem.

There's just no reliable way to call Super Bowl XLIX other than to just suck it up and call it, and my inner first grader doesn't want to do it. All week I've been putting it off. All week I've been saying I can't go to school, I have a stomachache or a headache or I feel icky, or there's something wrong with my leg, mom, I can't walk.

You see my problem.

The problem is, these are two teams that do the same things well,  only in different ways. They both have generally unflappable quarterbacks. They both have a robust running game when they choose to call on it. They both have incredibly well-disciplined defenses that stay in their lanes and befuddle offenses and make plays when they are called upon to make plays.

And they're both coached by men who know how to get in an opponent's head, and who count a certain deviousness among their character traits. One a bit more so than the other, clearly.

So who to pick?

I'm tempted to pick the Patriots, even though a victory for the Patriots is a victory for the chronically underhanded. But it's hard for me to see Bill Belichick and Tom Brady losing three straight Super Bowls, too. They've got to win another one eventually, don't they?

And so it's easy to close my eyes and see Belichick almost/sort of/just about crack a smile as he holds the Lombardi Trophy aloft. But, saints preserve us, who wants to see that?

So here's what I think, or what I've decided I think: I think this is gonna come down to defense and the run game, ultimately. I think Julian Edelman will have a big game for the Patriots until he doesn't. I think LaGarrette Blount will be Beast Mode East until the original Beast Mode, Marshawn Lynch, shows him how it's done. I think the Patriots lost their last two Super Bowls because the Giants down seven beat the Patriots O-line, and I think the Seahawks down seven will do the same thing.

They'll get to Brady more than the Patriots will get to Russell Wilson. And if they do, Brady will get frustrated. Because you can frustrate Brady.

I think this is going close -- even though, because everyone thinks that, it probably won't be.

So. Seahawks 24, Patriots 22.

The derision may now commence.


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