SOMEONE will make history Sunday in a Super Bowl so filled with storylines it would fill a season of TV programming.
Tom Brady, already the true Game of Thrones king, going for a seventh ring. Patrick Mahomes, the apparent heir to the quarterbacking summit, seeking a second in a row with Kansas City—something no team has done since Brady led New England to the double in the 2003 and ’04 seasons.
Brady, 43 is in his 10th National Football League (NFL) title game, but with a new outfit, the Buccaneers—who happen to call Tampa home. Yes, Tampa, Florida, where the Super Bowl is being played this year. Pirates of the Caribbean make port: No host team has ever played in the big one in its home stadium.
“There’s a lot that comes along with the Super Bowl,” says Rob Gronkowski, the three-time champion tight end who came out of retirement to reunite with Brady. “There’s a lot that comes along with this week. I’ve been there before. I’ve experienced it all before. But just having it at home, cutting out the travel, knowing where you can stay, where your friends can stay, where you family can stay, it just makes it a lot easier to have it at your home stadium, big time.”
Add in two sixty-something head coaches, Kansas City’s Andy Reid and Tampa Bay’s Bruce Arians, both offensive masterminds as comfortable with today’s high-scoring, creative NFL attacks as all those kid coaches who are all the rage.
“There’s nobody that would ever say a bad thing about BA [Arian], he’s just so endearing to everybody and I think everyone wants to win for him,” Brady says of Arians, the kind of praise the quarterback rarely used about his previous head coach.
“He’s got almost like a father figure kind of role in the building and it’s because everyone loves him so much,” Chiefs unanimous All-Pro tight end Travis Kelce says of Reid. “He’s got an unbelievable way of getting the best out of everybody that is relating to all different aspects and all different forms of life.”