Stampede Blue’s Super Bowl Staff Picks

As we slide in to Super Bowl Sunday, there are some mixed emotions being brought to the surface for Indianapolis Colts fans. On one hand, even when your team isn’t playing for a championship it’s still somewhat of a holiday for football fans, yet we still have to watch the Patriots – again. We get an extremely formidable Eagles defense to match up against Tom Brady and his ability to get it done on the largest stage.

The hope was to see Carson Wentz in this spot as a second-year quarterback, yet we’ve seen Nick Foles carry the torch through the finality of the season and into the playoffs maintaining an offense to the tune of scoring over 25 points per game (excluding Week 17).

But, let’s be honest, Josh McDaniels can finally be an official hire for the organization as their next head coach following the game – and that is the real pull as Super Bowl 52 comes and goes. We get to see him against an Eagles defense that has been top-5 in Football Outsiders the last two seasons. Despite being a top-10 unit, both, against the run and the pass this season, they’re also considered to be one of the more inconsistent units (31^st) in relation to the rest of the league.

Against Brady any weakness will eventually be exposed and in order for the Eagles to attain their first Super Bowl victory they really can’t afford to just keep it close and hope to strike late in the game. They, like many others before them who were eventually overcome, have to build an early lead and let that defense go to work.

Teams allow the Patriots to comeback due to changing their approach of attempting to keep everything in front of them once a lead builds. They don’t understand that Brady is more patient than any of them, and will take what they give him and won’t fret over a few field goals, until one defender gets greedy and the Patriots get into the endzone closing their gap quickly and forcing the pressure back to the other squad.

Doug Pederson knows to allow Foles to lead the offense, not hide him all game, so don’t expect some massive meltdown – the second-year coach will have a great gameplan for the biggest game of his career. Bill Belichick will do everything in his power to frustrate Foles which starts with stopping the Eagles stout running game.

Most may not see this as an even matchup simply because of the Foles-factor. I tend to disagree. I want to see a good game. I want to see Foles succeed – after all, it’d be a great story. I also want to see McDaniels pillage this Eagles defense with design, and misdirection. I’ll be watching the matchups he tries to create so that we can get a template of what to expect should he take the Colts to the pinnacle of the sporting world.

But, right now. Today. Josh McDaniels is a Patriot. I hope the Eagles win by a field goal. Apparently, so do the rest of my colleagues as our Stampede Blue staff picks the Super Bowl. Enjoy!

This week the following contributors voted on each game: Brett Mock, Matt Danely, Josh Hudgens, Stephen Reed, Faraz Majid, Chris Shepherd, Chris Blystone, Andrew Aziz, Jared Malott and Jake Arthur. Again, our group voted ‘winners’ which have been bolded, with the vote counts in parenthesis and unanimous predictions were noted by an asterisk (*).

Thus far the staff’s numbers are: Faraz Majid – 68/107 (63.6%) | Brett Mock – 163/253 (64.4%) | Chris Blystone – 136/221 (61.5%) | Matt Danely – 155/253 (61.3%) | Andrew Aziz – 150/238 (63%) | Jake Arthur – 146/225 (64.9%) | Jared Malott – 147/240 (61.3%) | Stephen Reed – 148/241 (61.4%) | Chris Shepherd – 142/240 (59.2%) | Josh Hudgens – 103/161 (64%)

Philadelphia Eagles (8) Vs New England Patriots – Contrarians: Brett Mock, Josh Hudgens

Who you got in Super Bowl 52?