It was early on Monday evening, in a windowless hall in San Jose, in front of a few hundred school children and a baying mass of media, that the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks lit a fuse that will spit and sizzle for the next six days. All the way until Sunday afternoon, when Super Bowl LX catches fire 15 minutes down the road from here.
The two teams briefly brushed shoulders on a makeshift stage at one end of the San Jose Convention Center. Now the clock is ticking until they come face-to-face at Levi’s Stadium, 40 miles south around the Bay from San Francisco.
Only then will all the talking and all the bedlam give way to football.
It would be easy, over the next few days, to worry about everyone who isn’t in this corner of Northern California this week: No Kansas City Chiefs, no Travis Kelce, no Patrick Mahomes, no Donald Trump, no Taylor Swift.
For the first time in a few years, the NFL has brought a caravan rather than a circus.
But that does not make this matchup any less compelling: New England are back for the first time since 2018. That night, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady won the sixth and final Super Bowl of perhaps the NFL’s greatest ever dynasty.
Stefon Diggs was one of the players swarmed by media at Super Bowl opening night Monday
Rival quarterbacks Drake Maye and Sam Darnold exchanged greetings while on stage together
It was chaos in San Jose as every player and coach from both teams was available to media
They return under a first-year head coach, Mike Vrabel, and a second-year quarterback in Drake Maye who have rebuilt a franchise that went 8-26 over the two seasons before this.
On Sunday, New England is the underdog against a Seattle Seahawks team led by head coach Mike Macdonald and quarterback Sam Darnold, who is on his fourth team in four seasons and has long been stalked by accusations that he lacks the cojones to win football’s biggest prize.
Seattle is chasing a second Super Bowl title and also a slice of revenge. Back in 2014, the last time they reached this end-of-season showpiece, the Seahawks were one yard and one interception away from beating the Patriots.
A decade later, their offense is orchestrated by Klint Kubiak, who is currently being courted by Brady and the Las Vegas Raiders for their vacant head-coaching post.
Plenty for the purists to chew on, then.
And don’t let the absentees fool you: those who prefer chaos won’t go hungry, either.
There is Stefon Diggs, an 11-year veteran who has reached a first Super Bowl amid a wave of legal issues. He denies allegations including strangulation or suffocation, misdemeanor assault and conspiracy to kill. One court appearance has been delayed until the morning after the Super Bowl.
Coaches Mike Vrabel and Mike Macdonald will compete for the Lombardi Trophy on Sunday
A huge crowd gathered to ask Maye about his wife, her baking and his health for the game
Jaxon Smith-Njigba oozed cool as he got a rapturous reception from fans when he arrived
Before then, Diggs’ partner Cardi B will cede center stage to Bad Bunny, who was selected to perform the halftime show – much to the fury of Trump and many in the MAGA movement.
The Puerto Rican fanned the flames at the Grammys, when he criticized ICE agents just days before they, too, descend on the Bay Area.
Super Bowl week rarely passes without a dash of chaos and Monday night suggested this will be no different.
As they huddled around players and coaches in San Jose, some members of the media asked for signatures. Others showered players with gifts. One launched a blow-up hat – shaped like a leg of ham – at Darnold and another stood in front of Vrabel and asked if the Super Bowl is a must-win game. It was always going to be a long week.
