The morning after

Those damn New England Patriots. There is no end to their chicanery.

Here we thought we'd finally gotten rid of them, and didn't have to spend yet another Super Bowl Sunday watching Darth Hoodie emote over on the sideline (Look! He just went from grimacing to Extreme Grimacing! The man's a CHAMELEON, I tell you!). And then we tune in Super Bowl LV last night, and what do we see?

Brady to Gronk for six.

Brady to Gronk for another six.

Brady to Antonio Brown for yet another six.

Please. Don't try to tell me those were the "Tampa Bay Buccaneers." Those were the stupid Patriots. They were just wearing a clever disguise, like The Weeknd wearing jockstraps on their heads for whatever that was at halftime.

("Well, you weren't the target demographic," you're saying, vis-a-vis the halftime show)

("What was the target demographic? Non-spellers?" is my response)

Anyway ... the Patriots, er, "Buccaneers" won easily, 31-9, and who didn't see that coming? ME. I had the Chiefs winning by 11. I did not have them failing to score a touchdown because not even Patrick Mahomes can catch his own passes. I also did not have Todd Bowles' defense so thoroughly smothering Mahomes Magic, sacking him three times, pressuring him a staggering 29 times and intercepting him twice.

Your Super Bowl MVP? 

Yeah, Tom Brady won it, because quarterbacks always win the Super Bowl MVP unless they're Trent Dilfer, and Brady threw three touchdown passes and is the greatest ever to play the game besides. But it should have gone to the Tampa defensive front. They came through the undermanned Kansas City O-line like a spring breeze through a screen door, sending Mahomes running for his life like Cool Hand Luke on virtually every play.

Twenty-nine pressures? Seriously?

Some other thoughts:

* People you had to be happy for: Tampa coach Bruce Arians, Tom Moore, Clyde Christensen, Joe Haeg, AQ Shipley and defensive coordinator Todd Bowles. Arians because he's one of the best people in the game; Moore, Christensen, Haege and Shipley, because they're former Colts assistants and good folks, too; and Bowles because he so richly deserved this, having served a stretch in Shawshank as head coach of the wretched Jets. 

* My friend and former sportswriting compadre Jim Saturday observed this, because he's much more astute than I am: You have to wonder how much Andy Reid's son being involved in a serious car crash Friday disrupted the Chiefs' pregame Zen. Reid at least tacitly admitted as much by extending his condolences to the victims in his postgame opening statement; Britt Reid, a Chiefs' assistant, is under investigation for the crash, which left a 5-year-old girl in critical condition.

You can "pffft" at that if you like, but the Chiefs clearly were not right from the opening kickoff Sunday, killing themselves with penalties and mistakes of composure that were utterly foreign to them. No other explanation for that seems credible.

* Best call of the night: Kevin Harlan's radio play-by-play of the daring mid-game raid carried out by some bare-assed fool wearing a bra. "Pull up those pants!" just dethroned "Do you believe in miracles?" as the most famous sports call ever.

* Best bare-assed broken-field run in Super Bowl history: Pull Up Those Pants Guy.

* Best suggestion by the Blob, having heard Eric Church and Jazmine Sullivan try to sing the national anthem: Just have Lady Gaga sing it every year from now on.

The end.