The wait has been tedious, but it’s time. Super Bowl LV, the most anticipated showdown of the season, is here! With more stories than we can tell and all kinds of records at stake, I hope we can all agree that this Super Bowl was worth the wait. We have Tampa Bay Buccaneers facing defending champions Kansas City Chiefs. We have Tyreek Hill and Mike Evans, Travis Kelce and Chris Godwin, Jason Pierre-Paul and Chris Jones, Shaquil Barrett and Tyrann Mathieu – and, of course, Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady. Talk about petty defenses and explosive offenses!
Let’s share it all, but first here’s how you can watch coverage of the Super Bowl LV all day today.
How to watch the Super Bowl LV
Meeting: Sunday, February 7
Time: 6:30 pm ET
Location: Raymond James Stadium (Tampa, Florida)
TV: CBS | Chain: FREE on CBSSports.com and the CBS Sports app.
How to watch coverage before the game
This year, CBS Sports is offering extensive access to Super Bowl LV’s pre-game coverage.
CBS is offering viewers seven hours of Super Bowl pre-game coverage on Sunday, starting with That Other Pregame Show (11:30 am ET); followed by the NFL Films special, Road to the Super Bowl (Noon, ET); Tony goes to the Super Bowl (1 pm Eastern Time), the Super Bowl today (2 pm Eastern Time), and the Super Bowl on the CBS Kick-Off Show (6 pm Eastern Time).
CBS Sports HQ, the sports news network streaming 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, available for free on digital platforms, services and connected devices, will be live in Tampa during the week leading up to the live broadcast of the game from CBS Sports. Starting on Monday, February 1, CBS Sports HQ will deliver on-site programming and reports throughout each day, and on match day will broadcast live coverage before the game, as well as post-game analysis and highlights.
Starting at 2 pm Eastern Time on Sunday, February 7, streaming coverage from CBS Sports will also be available to viewers on an expanded line of platforms and devices, including unauthenticated on CBSSports.com and the app CBS Sports for OTT devices and services, smart TVs and mobile devices.
When the bosses have the ball
On Thursday, we found out exactly what happened in the first confrontation between Chiefs and Bucs, when Patrick Mahomes and Tyreek Hill lit the secondary fire relatively easily. You can read the full story here, but the relevant excerpts are below:
Kansas City defeated the Buccaneers 27-24, in Week 12, behind an explosive performance by Mahomes and Hill. Mahomes completed 37 of 49 passes for 462 yards and three touchdowns. Hill towed 13 of 15 targets in 269 yards and received all three scores from Mahomes.
Simply put, the Bucs had absolutely no answer for any of them, and since they didn’t, they lost the game. If they want to reverse the result this time, they will have to find out something. So it’s worth looking at exactly what happened in that first game, how it happened and what – if anything – Bucs can do about it on Sunday night …
At the beginning of the game, the Bucs tried to use a lot of simple security looks (Cover-1 and Cover-3), and the Chiefs beat them. Later in the game, they went for more Cover-2 and Cover-4, and the Chiefs beat them. Poor Carlton Davis was tasked with following Hill wherever he went on the pitch for most of the game, and was absolutely baked all afternoon. Regardless of the changes made by Tampa, Mahomes and Hill had an answer …
The single-high safety aspect was burned by Hill at the start of the game, so the Bucs changed things up a bit in the second half … They also blitzed much less often after the break. Mahomes lit his blitzes with 5 from 8 to 86 yards and a touchdown in the first half, so Todd Bowles sent only one blitz in the second half. It didn’t matter much. When Tampa settled in soft areas, he continually encountered Travis Kelce on the underground routes. The Chiefs have repeatedly taken advantage of Kelce being placed in a linebacker or space security, where the Bucs simply had no hope of containing him.
No matter how you do it, the Chiefs will have a head start with Hill or Kelce on almost every snap. If the Bucs try to double the two players, they will leave Sammy Watkins (assuming he is fine, as seems unlikely now), Mecole Hardman or one of the running backs one by one, and are likely to be vulnerable to Mahomes taking off and running also. Forcing Chiefs to pursue one of these options is preferable to letting Hill or Kelce burn their secondary, of course, but it is still not ideal. (Especially since Hill and Kelce can win doubles anyway.)
The key to the Bucs, then, will be to speed up the Chiefs. They have to make Mahomes launch short and fast, instead of at the bottom of the field. The game plan needs to be very similar to that of the NFC title game, where Jason Pierre-Paul and Shaquil Barrett dominated their fights to the limit, putting Aaron Rodgers in his pocket. Crucially, they didn’t just reach the limit; they rounded the corner and reached Rodgers before he could escape to make something happen. It is not enough to just press a QB like Rodgers or Mahomes. You have to put them on the floor. JPP and Barrett have more confrontations with Mike Remmers and Andrew Wylie, and if the Bucs want to win the game, it will probably be due to the strength of this pair performing as well or better than in the game for the conference title.
The way Tampa performs his defense encourages the opponent’s attack to launch the ball. Bucs stack the box with extra defenders more often than most teams in the league, relying on their internal attackers (Ndamukong Suh and Vita Vea) to connect the middle of the line and their defenders (Lavonte David and Devin White) to flow the side line. to the sideline and sweep the ball carriers before they enter the open field. Since that quartet of players is so good at these roles, the defenders passed the ball against the Bucs much more often than expected based on descent, distance, time and score. The Chiefs – as we have seen throughout the year – are incredibly willing to challenge opponents to throw the ball as often as possible. They are likely to do so on Sunday night as well. In the field, Chiefs have advantages. Bucs need to reverse them by winning ahead.
When the buccaneers have the ball
Although the two main players in the Tampa defense are JPP and Barrett, there are three keys to the Kansas City defense: Chris Jones, L’Jarius Sneed and Charvarius Ward.
Why Jones? Because, as everyone knows, the best way to stop an offense led by Tom Brady is to put pressure on the front four and be able to keep seven on the cover. This is obvious. It is the key against almost all defenders. But with Brady specifically, the key is to put pressure in the middle.
Brady is great at many things, but escaping the pressure out and taking action is not one of them. He wants to advance in his pocket, compose himself and then deliver the ball to the field. Against edge pressure, he can do this. But if the pocket collapses in the middle, it is much more difficult. That’s where Jones comes in. The Bucs are without Alex Cappa for the Super Bowl, leaving Aaron Stinnie in place of the right guard. The Bucs can help him, but Jones should have ample opportunity to outdo Stinnie and make things difficult for Brady. If he dominates the match, it will cause a lot of problems for Tampa’s attack.
Why Sneed? Because he spends most of his time on the slot machine, lining up there in 53% of his snaps, according to Pro Football Focus. That means he must see more of Chris Godwin than any other Chiefs corner. Godwin lined up in on 66 percent of his pops and caused a lot of damage there. Sneed had an excellent debut season despite the interruption due to an injury, but he is also coming out of a concussion suffered during the game for the AFC title. It is hard work to protect Godwin, and having been limited in practice in the past few weeks will only make him even more so.
Why Ward? Mainly because he is not Bashaud Breeland. The Chiefs play sides with their corners, using Breeland on the right and Ward on the left. This allows opponents to choose which of the two they want to attack. Ward is a good player, but Breeland is better. So it is likely that if the Bucs want to give Mike Evans or Antonio Brown or Rob Gronkowski an isolation fight, they will try to work in Ward. He has proven himself up to the task for most of the past two seasons, but he will certainly be tested again on Sunday.
It will be tempting for the Bucs to pursue a strategy of slowing down, running the ball down their throats against the Kansas City defense. They must resist this temptation. First of all, Tampa’s attack pass is the team’s strength – far more than Leonard Fournette and Ronald Jones running the ball. Second, the Chiefs lost only 10 games during the Mahomes era. In just two of those 10 games did the winning team score less than 30 points – and in one of them, they scored 29. The 10 teams that won the Chiefs averaged 36.4 points per game. This means that you need to score five touchdowns if you want to have a good chance of winning. You don’t do that by relying on Fournette and Jones. You do this with Brady, Evans, Godwin, Brown and Gronk. This is Tampa’s best chance.
Most recent odds:
Tampa Bay Buccaneers +3
Prediction: Chiefs 33, Buccaneers 27