The NFL Told Us the Super Bowl Matchup Eight Months Ago

The NFL freaking told us exactly which teams were going to Super Bowl LX eight months ago. We just weren't paying close enough attention. We didn't squint.

Roger Goodell and company gave us the cheat sheet on Sept. 4, the day the regular season opened with the defending champion Philadelphia Eagles beating the Dallas Cowboys on “Thursday Night Football.”

The league posted a cartoon graphic on X that day featuring members of all 32 teams, backs turned toward us and looking toward Levi’s Stadium and a jumbo-sized Lombardi Trophy, with the sun setting over the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Set aside for a moment that the bridge is 50 miles from Santa Clara, Calif. This isn't a geography lesson, nerds.

Eagles running back Saquon Barkley takes up the most space in the image with a row all to himself. The next tier has quarterbacks Brock Purdy of the 49ers, Joe Burrow of the Bengals and Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs along with Steelers linebacker T.J. Watt. Look a little closer and the next row reveals more preseason favorites like the Lions' Jared Goff, the Cowboys' Dak Prescott, the Bills' Josh Allen and the Ravens' Lamar Jackson.

If you had seen this tweet on your cellphone, there's zero chance you could make out the players in the distance who are the closest to the stadium and the trophy. Crank up the magnification, however, and you see why the hashtags #scripted and #rigged started trending by Sunday night.

Incredibly, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold and New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye are at the front of the pack.

“Chills, man … chills,” NFL writer/insider John Frascella posted on X along with the viral image, hours after Darnold's Seattle Seahawks defeated the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship Game and Maye's New England Patriots upended the Denver Broncos in the AFC title game.

We're not quite ready to put on our tinfoil Guardian caps and fall down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, but the main plot lines for this Super Bowl XLIX rematch do feel a little scripted.

Darnold and Maye were both No. 3 overall draft picks who traveled very different paths to the Santa Clara showdown on Feb. 8.

The 23-year-old Maye is already an MVP finalist and will be the second-youngest quarterback to start the Big Game behind only Miami legend Dan Marino in Super Bowl XIX. Darnold, meanwhile, is playing for his fifth franchise since 2020 and just became the first QB in NFL history to win 30 or more games (including playoffs) in a two-season span with multiple teams.

New England head coach Mike Vrabel was canned by the Tennessee Titans after compiling a 68-48 record from 2018-23 (they are 6-28 without him … oops). The three-time Super Bowl-winning Patriots linebacker inherited a team coming off back-to-back 4-13 seasons and now has a chance to become the first man to win rings as a coach and a player with the same team.

And what are the odds that a team called the Patriots would play in the Super Bowl during the 250th anniversary year of America's patriotic founding? A little too on the nose, don't you think? Or the Seahawks, who took flight in the bicentennial year of 1976, playing for a title in their 50th anniversary season? C'mon, man.

So don't believe them when they tell you it's the most unlikely Super Bowl matchup ever — a 4,800-to-1 long shot, according to Pro Football Reference, surpassing the Rams and Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV (4,500-to-1).

Nonsense. You just had to squint to see it coming.