I couldn’t help comparing this game to the Seahawks’ championship game against the Broncos a few years ago: awesome offensive team from the AFC West going up against the well-rounded, strong defensive team from the NFC West. When push comes to shove, always bet on the better defense, right?

Well, we learned a couple things. The 49ers defense was nowhere NEAR as loaded as the Seahawks from 2013; and clearly Patrick Mahomes is leaps and bounds more talented than Peyton Manning in his last great season.

I had a legitimately great weekend, all things considered! We flipped the calendar to February – putting Dry January in the rearview mirror – and I got to totally blow it out. Went to see Dusty Slay perform comedy on Friday night, followed that up with a lazy Saturday morning at the diner with my newspaper. Took in Leslie Jones’ Netflix special, then coasted on into the afternoon with bowling on TV and beer pong in our hearts. A Sunday hangover is a small price to pay, especially when my Super Bowl menu consisted of two different pizza establishments – Papa Murphy’s & Round Table – with wings and a fruit platter on the side.

And, as a bonus, the game was pretty good! Certainly a huge step up in entertainment value compared to the snooze that was Patriots/Rams.

Hot take: I thought the halftime show was just okay. Listen man, if you want J-Lo doing gymnastics on a stripper pole and shaking her ass to good music, go rent Hustlers and proceed to spend the next five years thanking me, because that movie is fun as hell. No one will ever top Prince’s halftime show and I can’t believe this is still up for debate.

Getting back to the game, this was GREAT as a Seahawks fan. The next-best thing to actually being there and winning the whole thing is for a rival to be there and completely gag it away in the closing minutes. Instead of the coronation of Kyle Shanahan as the next great head coach, we’ve got Kyle Shanahan: The Guy Who Keeps Blowing 4th Quarter Leads In The Big Game.

On top of that, we’re saved the ignominy of Richard Sherman throwing it in our faces yet again for letting him leave Seattle. We get to slow the roll of George Kittle being Gronk 2.0. And, we hopefully get to look forward to a nice, quiet Super Bowl Hangover season next year for the losing 49ers. Won’t that be fun? Of course, the Rams are still lurking, but no one said it would ever be easy.

My biggest takeaway is this whole Jimmy G plotline. All week, the talk from the 49ers camp is that Jimmy G Isn’t A Burden. Look For Jimmy G To Step Up & Shock A Lot Of Haters. Their confidence in their guy didn’t stop the national pundits from continuing to hammer that point home: Jimmy G Is The 49ers’ Weakest Link, and now those pundits get to feel pretty smart about themselves.

While I wouldn’t say he was having a whale of a game, through three quarters I think he was something like 17/20 passing with only that terrible first half interception as his blemish. He nevertheless didn’t keep the 49ers from taking a 20-10 lead into the 4th quarter.

I’ve consistently struggled with how good he really is. He looked great with the Patriots, particularly when he took over for a suspended Brady in 2016. The last thing I wanted was for them to trade him to the NFC West, so of course that’s exactly what happened, and when the 49ers finally let him take the wheel, he played like a superstar in his first six games there. At least, that was my recollection; his numbers might not be so sterling now that I actually look at ’em. Then, in 2018, he only participated in three games before tearing his ACL.

I was prepared for a somewhat mediocre 2019 out of him, but that’s based on a history of quarterbacks returning from ACL surgery and usually taking a full season before returning to their former glories. In that sense, Jimmy G throttled my expectations. But, the 49ers clearly took a lot of the load off of his shoulders; with that elite running game, it’s easy to see why.

He’s still good. His best days are likely still ahead of him. But, there’s no chance he’ll ever be the best QB in the NFC West as long as Russell Wilson is around. We all wondered how Jimmy G would play if the game was on the line and he needed to drive them down for a score, and we saw all we needed to see. He’ll go on to win a lot of games in his career, but he’ll never be elite. There’s a ceiling for Jimmy G – just as there’s a ceiling for Jared Goff with the Rams – and it’s a lot lower than we thought a couple years ago. This bodes well for the Seahawks to eventually re-take control of this division in the near future. The Rams & 49ers aren’t as imposing as they looked to be, and the Seahawks haven’t gone anywhere. We’ve taken their best punches, and now (God willing) we’ll be ready to respond in 2020.

The scary thing we’ve all got to worry about is: are the Kansas City Chiefs a new Death Star?

I hate going to these extremes, recency bias what it is, but Patrick Mahomes MIGHT BE the greatest quarterback to ever walk the Earth. I know he’s a few more championships away from Tom Brady, so we all have to pretend like he’s still the GOAT, but this was Mahomes’ second year starting in the NFL. He’s aligned with one of the best head coaches in the league, and Andy Reid will only be 62 in a couple months, so he’s got plenty of good years ahead. And he’s in a division with the walking disaster that are the Raiders, an Elway-helmed Broncos team that continuously misfires on their quarterback prospects, and a nothing Chargers team that’s effectively wasted an entire career with a Hall of Fame quarterback in Rivers by never actually putting a team around him. With the Patriots aging into obscurity, it feels like the Chiefs can rip off back-to-back-to-back-to-back Super Bowl appearances as long as Mahomes is healthy. If all they have to do is survive Baltimore, that doesn’t feel like a big ask.

I’m just glad he’s in the AFC. I’ve gone back and forth when I think about how the Seahawks were forced to switch conferences. It’s certainly been a blessing at times when the NFC West has been terrible. But, for the last almost-decade, it’s consistently been among the toughest divisions in football. Nevertheless, I’m glad I don’t have to go up against Mahomes twice a year (plus the playoffs). Let them have their Chargers, they make much better whipping boys.