Super Bowl LII pits the New England Patriots, a perennial superpower, against the Philadelphia Eagles, a team that hasn’t been to the N.F.L.’s championship game since 2005. Stay here for live updates and analysis from Minneapolis.
• The Super Bowl is advertising’s biggest stage. Get insight on this year’s commercials here.
How to watch: NBC has the broadcast, but you can stream the game here.
Eagles fans outnumber Patriots fans in Minneapolis.
The New England Patriots are officially the home team for Super Bowl LII, but it sure doesn’t feel that way in Minneapolis’s U.S. Bank Stadium. Fans wearing Eagles jerseys dramatically outnumber their counterparts wearing Patriots gear, perhaps 2-to-1 or 3-to-1, and the biggest boos during warm-ups were reserved for Tom Brady.
The roughly 73,000 Super Bowl tickets were distributed in a precise manner. The Patriots and Eagles were each given 17.5 percent; the Vikings, as the host, were given 5 percent; the other 29 N.F.L. teams were given 1.2 percent each; and the remaining 25 percent were kept by the N.F.L. for staff, media, players and corporate sponsors, and to sell as part of expensive hospitality packages.
According to ticket reseller StubHub, on every day in the week leading up to the Super Bowl they sold the most tickets to residents of Pennsylvania, followed by Massachusetts.
Tom Brady sheds the gloves.
Temperatures hovered around 3 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday afternoon, but Tom Brady, who had insisted all week that he was wearing gloves indoors because it was chilly, showed up to U.S. Bank Stadium bare-handed. With his throwing hand — which had been injured prior to the A.F.C. championship game — appearing positively hand-like, it looks like he got the media to talk about a non-issue all week.
Here are the top story lines for Super Bowl LII:
• The game is a matchup of teams that excelled on both sides of the ball. Philadelphia scored the third most points in the N.F.L. and allowed the fourth fewest. New England was second in scoring and allowed the fifth fewest points.
• The injury to Wentz was a blow to the Eagles, but it should not be discounted how much the loss of Jason Peters affects Philadelphia in a game like this. A left tackle selected to nine of the previous 10 Pro Bowls, Peters tore multiple ligaments in his knee in a Week 7 win over Washington and was put on injured reserve. Halapoulivaati Vaitai has done his best to fill in, but he is a downgrade who gives Foles far less time to work than Peters did while protecting his blind side.
• At 40 years 185 days old, Brady will become the oldest quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, supplanting his longtime rival Peyton Manning, who won Super Bowl 50 for the Denver Broncos when he was 39 years 320 days old. The 11-year gap between Brady and Foles is not extreme, but the youngest member of the Eagles, Derek Barnett, was 5 when Brady won his first Super Bowl.
• Nothing looms larger than Philadelphia’s switch at quarterback from Wentz, a mobile passer, to Foles, a pocket passer who initially struggled to move the ball after Wentz was lost for the season. It was a different story in the National Football Conference championship game. Foles, regularly using the run-pass option offense, shredded the Minnesota Vikings’ terrific defense. He cites his experience as a star high school basketball player for his comfort in a system that seems more geared to quarterbacks with foot speed.
• Philadelphia has made it to only three of the N.F.L.’s 52 Super Bowls, and this is the second time it has had to face Brady and the Patriots’ juggernaut. While brushing off the notion that the Eagles are underdogs, Brady said it was fair for him to have become the villain for a fan base still in search of its first championship since 1960. “I’d hate me too if I was in Philadelphia right now,” he said.
• The every-down running back is alive and well in the N.F.L., with young stars like Ezekiel Elliott, Leonard Fournette and Kareem Hunt, but that concept will be absent on Sunday. Philadelphia has a back for every occasion, with LeGarrette Blount taking care of short yardage, Jay Ajayi succeeding more in an open field and Corey Clement filling in the gaps between them. New England’s more modest running game got a little less than half of its rushing yards from Dion Lewis, while typically using James White more as a short yardage receiver than a typical running back.
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• Rob Gronkowski is the best tight end in football and a key element in Brady’s aggressive strategy of throwing into coverage when the situation demands it. He sustained a concussion in the A.F.C. championship game. It will not keep him off the field, but it could limit his effectiveness, especially if he takes another hard hit. New England’s offense is so reliant on the attention that Gronkowski receives that any change in his status during the game could be a crippling blow.
• Brady’s hand, which sustained a severe gash in advance of the American Football Conference championship game, is, by all accounts, fine. He did not appear limited against the Jacksonville Jaguars, and he had the stitches removed this week.
• If the game comes down to a field goal, both teams appear to be sitting pretty. Stephen Gostkowski of the Patriots, in his 12th season, connected on 92.5 percent of his field-goal attempts, and was five for five from 50 or more yards. His counterpart on the Eagles, Jake Elliott, was a rookie this season, but he proved to have a big leg, going five for six from 50 or more yards, including a game-winning 61-yarder in Week 2.
• James Harrison, 39, appeared headed to retirement when the Pittsburgh Steelers cut him this season. But Harrison, a veteran linebacker, caught on with the Patriots and has played surprisingly well. Don’t put him in the category of players who believe a veteran can get by on his knowledge and instincts, though. He believes he is still succeeding because his body is capable of putting up with the punishment he demands of it. “It’s a physical game,” Harrison said. “Coaches are the most mentally prepared people in the world, but why don’t they play? Because they can’t physically do it.”
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