Da prediction

 Everyone wants to know who I think is going to win the Big Roman Numeral tomorrow, which is what happens when you spend almost 40 years scribbling about sports. People think you know stuff, like there's some secret Sportswriter Vault O' Knowledge we all tap into.

I never have the heart to tell them that, if there is, it's more like Al Capone's vault than an actual vault, full of broken bottles and the faint aroma of flop sweat.

What I tell them instead is this: "I'm picking Door No. 1, so you should definitely drop a bundle on Door No. 2."

"Enough procrastination, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Who ya got?"

Well ... I got the Chiefs. Even though they're not the better team.

The better team is the 49ers, who have been one of the two best teams in football all year. They can run on you all day long with Christian McCaffrey, and Brock Purdy can make plays with both his arm and his legs if you let him, and if he uses the arm guys like Deebo Samuel and George Kittle will be there to catch it.

After that, they send their defense onto the field, and their defense can be scary. Just ask the Lions in the second half a couple weeks ago.

There's one thing they don't have, though.

They don't have Patrick Mahomes. 

Whom you don't ever, ever, ever pick against in these games, no matter what he's done or hasn't done in all the games before. Playoff Mahomes is not Regular Season Mahomes, as the Blob has learned to its chagrin. Playoff Mahomes has magical powers unknown to mere mortals. You can't even explain what they are, except at the end of the day you look up at the scoreboard and he and the Chiefs are on the heavy side of it again, and you're sitting there saying "Wait, what?"

That was me after the Chiefs went on the road and beat the Bills, even though I was sure the Bills finally had 'em where they wanted 'em. And that was also me after Mahomes and Co. went on the road again and beat the Ravens, who were the best team in the AFC and had Lamar Jackson -- whom the Blob confidently predicted was finally going to break through because this was his time.

Well, forget it. Mahomes did Mahomes things. The Chiefs defense, which has carried the team all season, came up big again. Andy Reid and the K.C. braintrust were two steps ahead of John Harbaugh and the Ravens all day, mainly because Harbaugh and the Ravens put together an inexplicable game plan that almost entirely ignored the best running game in the league.

Ran the football just six times, outside of Lamar's scrambles. Six. Times.

And so here the Chiefs are in the Super Bowl again, and I'm picking them because of all of the above, plus the fact they've been there four times in the last five years. They know the drill. They know the routine. And they have Mahomes and Travis Kelce and hard-running Isaiah Pacheco and a wide receiver or two who's finally stopped dropping the football, and a defense that has outperformed the 49ers' D in the playoffs.

In three games, two of them on the road, the Chiefs D has given five touchdowns while facing Tua Tagovailoa, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. Tua threw for 199 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Allen managed 186 yards and one score. And Lamar threw for 272 yards, one touchdown and one pick, and was sacked four times by the blitzing Chiefs' D.

None of the three managed a quarterback rating higher than Allen's pedestrian 86.

And, sure, teams have run on this D, which means McCaffrey likely will have a big day.  But the  Niners D has been remarkably listless on occasion in the playoffs so far, and Purdy has never, been in this situation before, and ... well, it all adds up to your first back-to-back Super Bowl champions in two decades.

Call it Chiefs 31, 49ers 27.

And get your money down on the Niners today.