(EDITOR’S NOTE: To access the Ron Jaworski interview, click on the following attachment: Ep 85: Ron Jaworski Joins The Show To Remember Claude Humphrey | Spreaker)
The closer we get to January, the more it looks as if Tampa Bay and the New England Patriots will be among the highest seeds for the playoffs.
As things stand now, the Patriots are the top seed in the AFC and the Bucs second in the NFC. But four weeks are left, which means anything can happen. And what could happen is that both wind up with home-field advantages, dig deep into the playoffs and wind up in Super Bowl LVI.
I said could. Not would.
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Nevertheless, people already are beginning to speculate, and you have to believe the suits at 345 Park Ave. – headquarters of the NFL – are among them. Now the question: How interested do you think the league is in a Bill Belichick-Tom Brady reunion in Los Angeles.?
“Oh,” said former quarterback Ron Jaworski on the latest “Eye Test for Two” podcast, pausing to laugh, “ninety-nine percent.”
He’s probably right. Look at the interest in the Tampa Bay-New England game on Oct. 3. It was a Sunday Night telecast, and it played to approximately 28.5 viewers – Sunday Night’s largest audience since a Dallas-Washington showdown on Dec. 30, 2012. Moreover, it was the second-largest audience in the 15-year history of the NBC franchise.
But that pales in comparison to the 114.44 viewers worldwide who tuned into Super Bowl XLIX. That game involved New England and Seattle, and it included Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Except they were on the same side then. Now they’re on different teams and in different conferences but still share the same success.
The Patriots are 9-4, won their last seven games and are first in the AFC East. Tampa Bay is 10-3, won its last four and is in first in the NFC South. Tell me you don’t want to see what happens when they meet again … because a lot of people out there do.
Including Ron Jaworski.
“C’mon, Brady-Belichick?” he said. “You guys know Bill as well as anybody, right (not exactly, but let’s keep going)? Last year when Tom got all the credit (for winning another Super Bowl), and everybody was talking Brady-Belichick … and all of a sudden, the tide swayed toward Tom … you don’t think Bill was putting that in the back of his brain?”
Probably. OK, definitely.
“I don’t know Bill well enough,” Jaworski said, “but I had to play Bill twice a year when he was running the Giants’ defense. So I know how that man thinks to a certain degree, (and) you know Bill is getting ready for this moment. He is getting ready.
“As a fan and as a guy who loves the game, when you think of two guys who just cerebrally understand this game better than anybody, to see those two going head to head? I couldn’t think of a better Super Bowl and a better couple of weeks prior to that game.”
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