Super Bowl picks 2019: Experts are trying to prepare you for another Patriots championship

Here we are again, staring down another Patriots Super Bowl appearance, an outcome so inevitable that it can serve as a comfort that some things never change or a lament.

Most everyone outside of New England will be cheering for the Rams, not because they necessarily want them to win. They just want the Patriots to lose. That’s less about the Patriots themselves and more about our desire for parity (although it is a little about them). It’s the same reason, when our fandom is agnostic, that we didn’t want another Alabama-Clemson matchup in the College Football Playoff Championship or how we’re hoping the Warriors can sit out the NBA Finals this year.

Dynasticism is a beautiful thing if you’re a fan of those teams. For everyone else it’s, at best, tedious and, at worst, a cruel reminder of the world around us, where good does not always triumph over evil.

When you take the actual game into account, there’s a strong argument for either side. The Rams have been a more consistently dominant team this season. They’ve only lost three games, all to teams that made the playoffs (Saints, Bears, and Eagles), and none of those were blowouts.

The Patriots lost five games this season, their worst showing in nearly a decade. All five losses came to teams that saw their season end on Dec. 30. Only one of those defeats wasn’t by at least a touchdown, and it just so happens that it was the most hilarious one — the Miracle in Miami, where we watched Gronk’s tragic safety career begin and end in 15 seconds.

Not that it mattered one damn difference. In the playoffs, the Patriots have looked predictably, annoyingly unstoppable.

The advanced stats like the Rams. So does the OddsShark computer — by the slimmest of margins (25.7 to 25.1 points).

The coin flip, to no one’s surprise, especially not Patrick Mahomes’, also sided with the Patriots. The 1979 quarter, born two years after Tom Brady, turned up heads for the Patriots. So it goes the Patriots’ way once again.

The rest of us have either accepted we’re in the darkest timeline or our doing our best to try to reverse jinx the outcome. The one Patriots fan on our panel, Christian D’Andrea, is taking the Rams. The remaining five are all trying to prepare for the impending Instagram photo of Brady wearing a sixth Super Bowl ring on his other middle finger.

Personally, I’m picking the Patriots not to try to reverse jinx them — I’ve been trying to do that all season and guess what? IT DOESN’T WORK. No, I’m doing it in protest of their attempts to gaslight us into believing they’re underdogs. (Also, as soon as Alabama lost the national championship, the fate of another Patriots Super Bowl was pretty much sealed.)

Maybe most of us are wrong. After all, a 6-2 majority went with the Patriots over the Eagles last year, and you know how that turned out.

But probably not. So prepare yourselves accordingly.