Vito Stellino

Don’t count on the Seahawks to repeat

The 60th Super Bowl lived down to its expectations.

It was expected to be a one sided game dominated by Seattle. And it was. The Patriots had the easiest schedule in the league and couldn’t handle the the Seattle defense, which blanked the Patriots the first three quarters and won 29-13 in a game that wasn’t as close as the score sounded.

Seattle had 19 pressures, 14 allowed by rookie left tackle Will Campbell and sacked Drake Maye six times. And they forced three turnovers, one a Pick Six that looked a sack strip at the beginning. Maye’s shoulder wasn’t 100 per cent and he got a shot before the game but it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if he was 100 per cent the way the Seahawks dominated the Patriots.

The only surprise was the way the Seahawks played their defense. As Bill Barnwell explained on ESPN, they only blitzed 20.7 percent of the time during the regular season because they can rush with their front four. But the Seahawks blitzed 33.3 percent of the time in the first half before dropping to eight per cent in the second half when they had the game under control. They also used a corner blitz by Devon Witherspoon seven times even he hadn’t blitzed the last four games. Although one was nullified by a penalty, one of them turned into a Pick Six when it bounced into the air into the arms of Uchemma Nwosu.

The tone was set on his first blitz when the Patriots got into the Seattle side of the field on third and nine and Maye was forced to throw it away. Maye never got into a rhythm and the Pats didn’t get back into Seattle territory until the final quarter.

The Patriot defense kept it close by limiting the Seahawks to four field goals in their first four scoring drives. But they couldn’t stop Kenneth Walker, who ran 27 times for 135 yards and added 26 yards on two receptions to win MVP honors. Quarterback Sam Darnold didn’t torch the Patriot defense as he completed 19 of 38 for 202 yards and a touchdown. The key was he didn’t commit any turnovers and ended the talk that he couldn’t handle big games.

The NFC has now won the last two Super Bowls and this could be the beginning of an era dominated by the NFC. It is not likely any other AFC team would have beaten the Seahawks but the Bills with Josh Allen might have kept it closer. Just winning their division next year will be the major challenge because the Rams and 49ers will put up a stiff fight while the Bears, Eagles and Packers can’t be counted out.

Meanwhile, Super Bowl losers don’t tend to win the following year. It has only happened once since the 1972 perfect season and that was by the Patriots when they had Tom Brady. With a much tougher schedule in 2026, the Patriots still have more rebuilding to do. But coach Mike Vrabel said he is sticking with Campbell at left tackle, so he hasn’t given up on him.

One thing the Patriots have in common with the Seahawks is that winning their division again won’t be easy because Josh Allen will be healthy again after playing the last few games with a broken bone in his foot.

Jackson just the latest to prove that no one can compare to Auerbach

The lack of a sense of history in sports – and in real life – is one of my pet gripes.

Everything that happens today is always the greatest or the best ever. The past tends to be overlooked or forgotten.

That brings me to the firing of Phil Jackson by the New York Knicks after a three-year reign of error.

Jackson showed that, for all his coaching skills when he had Hall of Fame players and won 11 titles, he wasn’t cut out to run a team.

To put it bluntly, Jackson is no Red Auerbach.

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Leftwich faces impossible task grooming Gabbert into legit quarterback

Imagine an NFL team drafting a quarterback with a top-ten pick twice in nine drafts.

Imagine that both of them are busts.

And imagine that one of them winds up coaching the other one.

Sounds a bit far-fetched, but that’s happening with the Arizona Cardinals this year.

Byron Leftwich, the seventh pick in the 2003 draft by the Jaguars, was hired as Arizona’s quarterbacks coach by Bruce Arians in the offseason.

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Reid’s hands look like they were all over Dorsey’s abrupt firing

Clark Hunt was, as they say, to the manor born.

He’s the grandson of flamboyant oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, who was once one of the richest men in the world – if not the richest – and had 15 children with three wives. The J.R. Ewing character in the TV series “Dallas’’ was loosely based on his life.

Clark also is the son of late Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, who changed pro football by co-founding the American Football League, which led to the merger with the NFL and the creation of the Super Bowl. He even named the game after a kid’s toy called the Super Ball. Lamar was very down to earth, always wearing a blue blazer and gray slacks and never showing the trappings of wealth.

Clark, now 52, was No. 1 in his class at SMU and took over running the Chiefs when his father died in 2006.

Clark, though, is showing that being smart and rich doesn’t always translate into being a good owner. Or from doing dumb things. In a family run business, the third generation is often the one that has problems keeping things on the right track.

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Bashing of Kaepernick continues to know no bounds

Colin Kaepernick is like the guy at the county fair who sits above a tub of water while fair goers throw balls attempting to dunk him in the water.

Trying to dunk Kaepernick remains a popular sport in the NFL and the media these days.

In what amounts to blaming the victim, Kaepernick gets bashed for teams not signing him after he refused to stand for the national anthem. He doesn’t get saluted for standing on principle.

The latest bashing was by Albert Breer of The MMQB, who quoted a 49ers employee – it wasn’t clear if the employee is still with the team – bashing Kaepernick’s work habits. Kaepernick is gone, but the 49ers can’t stop taking shots at him.

Breer said the employee told him Kaepernick wouldn’t stay late at the facility, saying he would take the work home instead.

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The real reason Elway ended up in Denver? Frank Kush

When Frank Kush died Thursday at age 88, his obituaries featured his role in transforming Arizona State into a national football power and a university during his two decades there.’

He then had his Woody Hayes moment and punched punter Jeff Rutledge on the sidelines and was fired a year later in 1979. His players carried him off the field after his last game.

The way his career ended was obscured over the years by the memories of how he built Arizona State with his hard-nosed style of coaching.

Also overlooked was the fact that Kush leaving Arizona State wound up starting a series of events that helped lead to John Elway spending his career in Denver and ending up as the team’s general manager.

Kush was coaching the Baltimore Colts in 1983 when they had the first pick in the draft, and Elway was the obvious choice. But he let it be known he didn’t want to play in Baltimore.

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O’Callaghan’s story shows NFL may finally be gay friendly

The macho culture of the NFL hasn’t been noted for being welcoming to gay players in the past.

But that may be changing.

When retired offensive lineman Ryan O’Callaghan told Outsports that he is gay this week, he was only the 11^th NFL player to publicly come out according to the website. Only Michael Sam did it as an active player.

O’Callaghan hid the fact he is gay so well that nobody knew it, not anybody in the NFL or even his family. Not even his mother.

In fact, playing in the NFL was one of the ways he hid it. And he planned to commit suicide once his playing days were over because he was so conflicted that he didn’t feel he could live openly as a gay man.

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Sapp latest victim in NFL concussion crisis

Add one more name to the list of NFL players who are paying the price for the brain damage they suffered playing in the NFL.

Hall of Fame defensive lineman Warren Sapp posted a video on The Players Tribune Tuesday saying he’s losing his memory at the age of 44 and will donate his brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation after he dies.

“I wanted this game to be better when I left than when I got into it,’’ he said.

Looking at the video, you would never guess Sapp has a problem. He sounds the same way he did as a player, when he could always talk a good game even if some of his off-field actions were problematic.

Now he is very candid about the problems he is dealing with.

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Would Goodell’s father support NFL’s de facto Kaepernick ban?

I wonder what Charles Goodell would think of the NFL’s de facto Colin Kaepernick ban.

If you don’t recognize the name, he was named a U.S. Senator from New York in 1968 by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to replace Bobby Kennedy after Kennedy was assassinated.

A Republican, Goodell alienated President Richard Nixon and conservative voters by coming out against the Vietnam War. He came in third in the 1970 election, as a conservative was elected in a three-way race. He also happens to be the father of current NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

“That was a valuable lesson to me – taking that position he did would be the end of his political career,’’ Goodell told the New York Times in 2010. “He was hoping people would see it was the right thing to do, but against the president’s weight, the weight of the Republican party, it would be difficult, but he did it.’’

Would Roger Goodell have done the same thing his father did?

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Secondary is latest source of injury woes for Jaguars

A rash of injuries at the same position is always a red flag for a team.

That is why there were a lot of questions about the Jaguars secondary as the team ended its offseason program and started its summer vacation this past week.

Three of the top five players in their secondary, safeties Barry Church and Tashuan Gibson and cornerback Aaron Colvin, all missed the offseason program, and coach Doug Marrone declined to say if he thinks they’ll be ready for the start of camp on July 26.

Then on Friday, cornerback Jalen Ramsey announced on social media that he underwent surgery Thursday for a core muscle injury he suffered during an OTA workout.

Ramsey said in a statement that it was a minor injury and that the surgery was successful.

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