Drake Maye injury, Bill Belichick cloud and Cardi B among storylines that hang over Super Bowl 2026 week
SAN FRANCISCO — You wanted fresh blood in the Super Bowl, you got it.No Chiefs band of Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Andy Reid and … Taylor Swift.No Rams head coach Sean McVay for the third time as a 40th birthday present.No Eagles or 49ers making a third appearance of the 2020s.Patriots-Seahawks in Super Bowl LX is familiar only in the basic definition of the word.Here are the 11 storylines that will be dissected every which way over the next week:Drake Maye, 23, is already the second-youngest quarterback (to Dan Marino) to reach a Super Bowl and can become the youngest winner (surpassing Ben Roethlisberger).To do it, he is going to have to play through injury.He threw on a limited basis in Thursday’s practice (shoulder) and did not participate Friday (shoulder/illness).No one expects Maye to miss the game, but there are 100 different ways to ask about pain tolerance and limitations … and you will hear them all.
Perhaps this injury contributed to the MVP candidate being so off the mark (10-of-21 for 86 yards) in the AFC Championship game.File him under “ex-Jet now good.”The Jets will take their lumps for giving up on Darnold — the No.3 pick in the 2018 draft — but the timing entering his fourth season in 2021 and the trade return (from the Panthers) actually made sense.
The bigger issue was replacing Darnold with Zach Wilson.The Vikings (who let Darnold walk after a Pro Bowl season and fired general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah partially because of it) and Raiders (who didn’t believe in him as a free agent) have more egg to clean up.The first Swift-less Super Bowl in three years has rapper Cardi B — girlfriend and co-parent with Patriots receiver Stefon Diggs.She was on the field after the AFC Championship game, yelling “We’re going to the Super Bowl!” but more controversially referred to a 4-year-old girl who picked the Broncos to win as a “b–ch.”Will the NFL give Cardi B as much airtime as Swift received being at Travis Kelce’s ...