Super Bowl With a Smirk IV: How we did on our award & Hall predictions; Trump’s weight in prop bet
Super Bowl With a Smirk, a beloved annual staple of the Miami Herald the years we remember to do it, is back! (Although “beloved” may be stretching it.) Smirk Fflies under the banner Make Fun, Not War and delights to needle and tweak the NFL and the gravitas of its Big Game. Welcome back for our fourth of five daily editions:
King Sport celebrates itself with its 14th annual NFL Honors awards show Thursday night at New Orleans’ Saenger Theatre. Snoop Dogg will be the host, if that didn’t go without saying.
Snoop has been ubiquitous ever since his starring role as NBC ambassador at the Summer Olympics in Paris, where he delighted on camera and also surprisingly won gold in the pole vault. Snoop and Tom Brady will star in a Super Bowl ad Sunday. But it’s an anti-hate ad, so not even Smirk is allowed to make fun of it.
Spoiler alert! Here’s who is all-but-certain to win the major awards:
Bills QB Josh Allen (MVP), Eagles RB Saquon Barkley (Offensive Player of Year), Steelers LB T.J. Watt (Defensive POY), Commanders QB Jayden Daniels (Offensive Rookie of Year), Rams LB Jared Verse (Defensive ROY) and the Vikings’ Kevin O’Connell (Coach of Year).
Somebody will also be named NFL Man of the Year for community service, which the league calls its most prestigious honor though even the guys who win it don’t think that.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s 2025 inductees also will be announced at the show. It says here that TE Antonio Gates, LB Luke Kuechly and K Adam Vinatieri are sure to get in, and that close-call maybes are WR Torry Holt and QB Eli Manning.
Eli probably doesn’t deserve to be a first-ballot guy but might be expected to get it due to the Peyton-led Manning Cabal that secretly runs the NFL, steering Hall votes, crafting Roger Goodell’s policies and determining how much the officiating crew may or may not be subtly favoring an unnamed Midwestern team on Sunday.
[Friday postscript: We were 5-for-6 on our major award winners, only missing on Denver CB Patrick Surtain II winning Defensive POY. Alas we were 1-for-3 on our Hall picks, hitting only on TE Antonio Gates.]
▪ The Super Bowl Pregame and Halftime Show Performers Press Conference was Thursday at New Orleans’ convention center, featuring national anthem singer Jon Batiste and of course halftime star Kendrick Lamar. Betting odds for Lamar’s first song are led by 2017’s “Humble” and his most recent hit, “Not Like Us.” During the later, am already looking forward to the TV shot of commissioner Roger Goodell up his his suite, feigning appreciation for the music with an awkward head bob as he uncomfortably anticipating the next lyric he wished had been censored.
▪ Prop bet of the day: Will Eagles QB Jalen Hurts’ total passing yards Sunday be over or under 215, President Donald Trump’s official weight. (Quick aside: Trump weighing only 215 pounds is about as likely as Lamar bringing on Drake as a surprise halftime guest.)
▪ A record 1.47 billion chicken wings are expected to be consumed on Super Bowl Sunday, 20 million more than last season. The intel from National Chicken Council president Harrison Kircher seems credible despite the fact he conveyed it while dressed like a giant chicken.
▪ Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker said he has “no need to apologize” when asked this week about commencement address remarks that were heard as misogynistic and anti-gay. The speech was from 2024 and his comments from 1948. Smirk predicts that if Butker misses a field goal on Sunday, the kick will be extremely wide right.
▪ Super Bowl Party Tip du Jour: Hosts, mute the TV as the second quarter ends and -- in refreshing alternative to Kendrick Lamar — have your elementary school-aged children stage a live halftime performance of their own with dancing and songs from “Moana 2.”
This story was originally published February 6, 2025 at 2:16 PM.
