There are some years when I have my Super Bowl pick locked in about five minutes after the end of the second championship game. That …
There are some years when I have my Super Bowl pick locked in about five minutes after the end of the second championship game. That was not the case for Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI between the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium. This one took the whole play clock. It seemed for every “This!” there was a “What about that?” But at the end of the day (or two weeks), the answers are Bengals +4 and Under 48.5. Here’s why. Let’s start with the home field. Playing at SoFi doesn’t figure to give the Rams quite the edge the Buccaneers had in last year’s Super Bowl in their home stadium against the Chiefs. The Rams are 7-3 straight up at home this season, including double-digit losses to the Cardinals and Titans. They are 5-5 against the spread in those games, and in the two against the 49ers, they shared the crowd support almost evenly, which was stunning. Matthew Stafford had to use silent counts to combat the noise from the road crowd. If I’m trying to get to the five-point edge I’d need to bet the Rams, home-field advantage isn’t adding much to the equation. The major sticking point I had in supporting the Bengals was the pass protection. The Rams’ defense was No.7 in the NFL with 2.8 sacks per game and No.11 in sack rate at 6.89 percent. The Bengals ranked 30th in sacks allowed per game at 3.6 and were 31st in sack rate at 9.17 percent. And that was just the regular season. In the divisional round, Joe Burrow was sacked nine times by the Titans and lived to tell about it. All you have to do is think back to last year and Bucs-Chiefs to remember what can happen when a defensive line completely dominates the opposing offensive line. The great Patrick Mahomes ended up with three field goals and a lot more exasperated gestures. Could that happen here? Could Aaron Donald and his buddies make life so miserable for Burrow that he can never really utilize Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins and Tyler Boyd? This hasn’t been a smooth ride through the postseason for the Bengals.
