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Consider the preposterous challenges Jason Myers was forced to conquer to become the dominant scorer of the 60th Super Bowl.
He grew up in Southern California and attended athletics power Mater Dei High School, but nothing about his significant achievements there warranted a scholarship offer from a major football college. He had to move more than 2,400 miles to Marist University in upstate New York to find a place to continue kicking footballs. Only two Red Foxes players before him had signed an NFL contract.
His professional career began in the Arena Football League, and then the Indoor Football League, and even after he hired a personal coach and worked his way into a contract with the Jaguars, he was released twice in his first four years as a pro. And, even after he established himself as an NFL vet, he was a kicker in the 2020s.
SUPER BOWL 60 HQ: Live score | Full TV guide | Halftime show updates
This is the era in which field goals are endangered, but with the Seahawks under Mike MacDonald, Myers found maybe the last safe space for one who holds his position. No, all that AI you saw advertised throughout the game is not coming for kickers’ jobs, but analytics are.
Or, maybe were, after what Seattle and it's kicker accomplished with Sunday's 29-13 victory over the Patriots.
Myers set a Super Bowl record with his five field goals, and there was cause at that point to wonder if he might become the first of his position to be named the game’s MVP. Even on a weekend when a kicker beat Reggie Wayne, Terrell Suggs and Willie Anderson into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, this always seemed unlikely. A kicker never has won that award. It's OK. His impact might be more lasting and profound.
MORE: The 10 worst Super Bowl MVP whiffs of all-time
Somewhere along the way, the computers got hold of NFL data and fed it to coaches hungry, most of all, to separate themselves from their peers. And the field goal became as popular as stand-up comedy at a funeral service.
Field goals were for the weak. And the stupid. They were for those who didn’t understand math, didn’t understand probability, didn’t understand the importance of showing everyone you were the smartest person in the stadium.
We saw Detroit’s Dan Campbell two years ago and Denver’s Sean Payton two weeks ago quite possibly cost their teams trips to the Super Bowl because of their contempt for “settling for three.”
The thing about the ESPN Analytics world, though, is how much the math in those equations disdains circumstance, opposition and consequence.
Any computer can tell you seven points is more than three points.
Pretty much every first-grader can tell you that, as well.
What too often is overlooked, however, is that three points may be an outsized reward for the accomplishment of arriving at the 30-yard line and converting what has become nearly automatic for the gifted kickers of the 21st century.
And, as was the case with Denver in the AFC Championship game against the Patriots, going for it only meant the Broncos would have needed to accomplish more to cross the goal line. And, because of an injury to their starter, they were playing with a quarterback who hadn’t started a game in two years. And there was a snowstorm on the way. They could have gone ahead 10-0 but instead lost, 10-7.
MacDonald gets it. This season, Myers scored 171 points, the most any NFL player has without registering a touchdown. The Seahawks ranked last in the league in terms of attempting fourth-down conversions. They managed to make it to American sports’ grandest stage, regardless.
And they weren’t even all that geared up to convert third downs as the Super Bowl commenced. They indicated their embrace of the field goal very clearly, choosing to run a give-up play on third-and-12 not quite 3 minutes into the second quarter — after advancing to the New England 19-yard line. Even a sack -- had a pass play been called -- probably wouldn’t have pushed the Seahawks out of field goal range. They valued those three points too much to take the risk.
The Seahawks’ 9-0 halftime lead was entirely constructed of field goals. It wasn’t much of a warm-up act for Bad Bunny, but it put Seattle within a half-hour of their franchise’s second Lombardi Trophy.
It didn’t take long to realize MacDonald believed in his defense as passionately as my granddaughter does Disney princesses. And they affirmed that faith. The Seahawks sacked Drake Maye three times in the first half and held the Patriots to five total yards.
It was fascinating to see the Super Bowl field tilt so heavily, for both teams, toward that side of the line of scrimmage. Patrick Mahomes, Peyton Manning, and of course, Tom Brady had spent most of this century convincing us scoring points was the only way to the trophy stand. And it was obvious the NFL had adopted that message, as this season’s coaching hire cycle produced six out of 10 new hires specializing in offense.
MORE: Full list of Super Bowl MVPs, including Seattle’s Kenneth Walker
Well, they all better hire exceptional DCs.
Did we even see a sideline shot of Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels in the first half? We can assume he was inside Levi’s Stadium, but no one would have blamed him had he stepped out for a cup of coffee. He mattered that little. His men produced a couple of second-half, garbage-time touchdowns.
No field goals, though.
They never got close enough to try.
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