Super Bowl week is also the Super Bowl for sports talk, sports talk consumption, and consequently the hottest takes you’ll hear all year.
Knowing the most ears and eyes of the year are on them, some radio and TV hosts, or writers, or analysts who serve as their guests, will drop legendarily reckless and unfathomable opinions to of get clicks, build their brand, sell papers (well, website subscriptions), or spike ratings.
No topic has been a dumpster for the hot garbage eruptions of volcanic proportions more than Patrick Mahomes.
LISTEN: KWSN’s “Craig & John” react to these awful, scalding hot takes!
The Top 3 Worst Hot Takes of Super Bowl Week I have read or heard:
1) Skip Bayless (King of Hot Takes) in a tweet:
“Dak > Mahomes”
It was a teaser to a TV segment, which you can watch in full here.
What Bayless meant was that Dak Prescott had a better season than Patrick Mahomes, citing several stats and Prescott’s degree of difficulty being higher than Mahomes based on offensive weapons, which most agree Mahomes has more.
“Ridiculous,” 11-time indoor league champion Sioux Falls Storm and veteran quarterbacks coach Kurtiss Riggs pointed out to me in a text when I told of Bayless’s take.
“Certian times you throw out stats, because they can be skewed by variables (lead changes, offensive line, time in game, philosophy, playing from behind, etc.) As a coach, outsider, etc., you look at who is a winner and who makes others better. Who makes those magical plays. Easy choice.
“For any team, (Mahomes) would be their first choice.”
2) A Tulsa sports radio host, according to Tulsa sportswriter Ben Johnson:
Someone on local radio is drunk. First says Russell Wilson is better than Mahomes. “I also think DeShaun Watson & Kyler Murray may be better than Mahomes.” Go ahead & shut it down today, guy.
This isn’t as reckless as saying Dak is better than Mahomes. Wilson makes a case, considering his resume and some heroics this season, especially the throws he can make in the clutch and under duress. But the topic isn’t who is more accomplished than Mahomes in his career, it is who is better than him right now.
Murray? An admirable and mostly unnoticed strong second half on a bad team that few watched. But he’s not Mahomes. Not right now. And it isn’t close. And you don’t need a thorough breakdown to explain.
Watson? Similarly mobile and dangerous. As accurate and able to lead a team from behind as Mahomes? Did you see Watson respond during the 41 consecutive points the Chiefs posted after the Texans racked up a 24-0 lead in the AFC Divisional playoff, with DeAndre Hopkins at his disposal?
3) Trent Dilfer, who clearly needs scalding hot takes to get noticed as an analyst since his ousting from the “Mother Ship:”
“Go back to when the great 49ers teams played the Miami Dolphins and the Denver Broncos in Super Bowls (in the 1980’s). They were talking about Marino and Elway, just like we’re talking about Mahomes. Those were teams — Marino’s Dolphins, Elway’s Broncos — that the 49ers smashed in those Super Bowls that were quarterback-centric teams ONLY. They didn’t have the full depth of a football team. They weren’t whole. They were carried by one player or an assortment of superstar power.
I think that’s the Chiefs. I like the Chiefs. I want it to be a great Super Bowl, but I’m looking at this thing on tape and the 49ers, this could be one of those 49ers Super Bowl wins against the Dolphins and the Broncos where it gets out of hand early and it’s not even really a game.”
Oh, Trent.
He is right about the Montana-led titans, a complete team whose defense was overshadowed by Montana, Jerry Rice, and Bill Walsh’s offensive brilliance.
His assertion that the 49ers are a more complete team than the Chiefs is also correct, factoring the entire roster beyond the quarterback.
But his assertion that the Chiefs are a one-player team? That seems to fly in the face of any other analyst who has watched tape to conclude Mahomes has the best offensive supporting cast in the NFL, with Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill both being among the top three players at their positions and the spoil of riches in burner receivers Watkins, Hardman, and Robinson, to boot.
And Dilfer clearly doesn’t watch tape of the Chiefs defense in 2019. This isn’t the bottom-five bunch that got defensive coordinator Bob Sutton fired after coming within a Dee Ford offside penalty from the Super Bowl last season.
The Chiefs were 7th in the NFL in the most important defensive statistic that exists: Scoring Defense. They gave up 19.2 points per game, which was fewer than the 49ers (by 0.2 points).
Dilfer may be correct in the outcome because crazier things have happened. The 2013 Broncos under Peyton Manning seemed unstoppable until the Super Bowl, when a Seahawks team built similarly to this year’s 49ers — pound the rock offense and the stifling Legion of Doom defense — shut down Denver, 43-8.
But Dilfer’s rationale for the means to get to the end of a 49ers blowout calls for the New York Fire Department to hose him off.
