Super Bowl 2024 updates (2024)

Two days from now, the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers will meet in Las Vegas' Allegiant Stadium to decide this season's NFL champion.

Kansas City is chasing its third Super Bowl victory in five years. San Francisco seeks its first since 1995.

Follow here for news and live coverage from the week's festivities in the lead-up to the game.

The essentials

Game date and time: Sunday, Feb. 11 at 6:30 p.m. ET

How to watch: CBS, Paramount+ (streaming)

Odds: 49ers -2, Total 47.5 (via BetMGM)

Required reading

• Is 49ers’ Brock Purdy the next Drew Brees? We asked an expert — Brees himself
• Why the Chiefs and 49ers are staying in Lake Las Vegas, not on The Strip
• CBS broadcast crew on Super Bowl LVIII, Taylor Swift and Las Vegas: ‘There is nothing that’s bigger’
• Chiefs vs. 49ers Super Bowl 58 expert picks, odds: Early predictions mostly with Kansas City

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Find the best deals on tickets to see your favorite team.

Atlanta Falcons running back Bijan Robinson, who finished fifth in NFL offensive rookie of the year voting and is making the rounds in Las Vegas this week as part of a sponsorship deal with Courtyard by Marriott, thinks the Kansas City Chiefs are on the verge of being back-to-back Super Bowl champions.

“I think the 49ers have a better team, but I think the Chiefs are going to put this one away,” Robinson said Friday. “I feel they are more comfortable in that environment and have looked completely different in the playoffs than they did in the regular season, and I think they’re on a mission to do something special.”

Robinson, who set the Falcons rookie record for scrimmage yardage last season (1,463), presented winners of Marriott’s The Ultimate Upgrade contest with a night in a converted stadium suite Saturday night.

“The cool thing is meeting all the NFL players, the guys that you respect and have seen before and getting to talk to them and them tell you, ‘We love how you play the game,’” Robinson said. “That really does make you happy as a player and continue to work hard.”

Robinson plans to attend Sunday’s game, he said.

“If I’m going to be here, you might as well go to the game and enjoy it and see where you want to be at these next couple years,” he said.

The NFL will host a regular-season game in Madrid during the 2025 season, the league announced Friday.

NFL owners voted in December to expand the number of international games each year from four to eight starting in 2025. The first of those additional games is set to be held at Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Spain.

“As we all know, this is a global city of culture, entertainment arts and definitely a city with a rich sporting history,” Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president of club business, international and league events, said.

“We could not be more excited to bring the best of the best of our teams, our star players to more than 14 million passionate fans in Spain and to partner with one of the greatest global soccer clubs in Real Madrid,” O’Reilly added.

The participating teams are to be determined, but O’Reilly said the designated home team would likely come from the AFC. He noted that the Chicago Bears and Miami Dolphins already are a part of the league’s current global market program in Spain.

O’Reilly also said that although the league is focused on the 2025 game, “we are committed to Madrid,” for a long-term partnership.

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What a complete waste of time and space on The Athletic.

What does Swift have to do with sports? Clickbait.

This is literally the worst thing I have ever read from The Athletic.

These are just a handful of comments from a story I wrote in the spring of 2023. I had the temerity to compare different college football coaches to Taylor Swift songs. On the precipice of pure “Traylor Swelce” pandemonium with the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII, Swifties may be surprised that some pigskin fans are incensed with Swift and the attention she brings to their hallowed game.

Not me.

While it is confounding why anyone would care if a celebrity is featured during a football game (remember when Rob Lowe wore an NFL hat during a playoff game a few years back?), there remains that vocal minority yelling at the clouds.

This is not an admonishment of those who are overly indexed on Swift stories. This article is meant as an olive branch to connect the Swifties and Never Swifters. I’ve combed through Swift’s vast discography to identify lyrics that explain current dilemmas and controversies in the NFL.

For football fans, the comparisons below between Swift songs and situations in the NFL will help reveal the genius in her lyrics. For Swifties, each comparison is an entry point in understanding that drama — feuds, broken hearts, spurned partners — is as much a part of the National Football League as a Netflix teen rom-com.

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LAS VEGAS — Robert Turner Jr., the 49ers’ running backs guru, is 74 years old now. He’s been coaching for 51 years, the last 28 in the NFL. So wasting time just isn’t part of his repertoire. Squandering energy isn’t acceptable.

One of his favorite words, his running backs will tell you, is precisely. Because for Turner’s modus operandi, precision is foundational. Efficiency, focus, attention to detail are fundamental attributes to success.

Which leads to one of Christian McCaffrey’s favorite Bobby T-isms (that’s what they call his collection of sayings).

“Ahhh man,” McCaffrey said, smiling as he shuffled through his memory. “I like when he says, ‘I ain’t gonna write you a book.'”

Fullback Kyle Juszczyk smiles when reminded of this one, then repeats it, impersonating his coach’s tone and twang.

Turner will for sure spend time with a player. He’ll go over film. He’ll motivate. He’ll correct. But if he’s teaching and getting the sense the focus of the player isn’t where it needs to be, this Bobby T-ism might come out. It’s his way of saying, “Pay close attention.”

“If you get it, you get it,” McCaffrey said. “If you don’t, you don’t.”

McCaffrey and Juszczyk get it. One of the special elements about the 49ers’ offense is their backfield. Their combination of an elite running back and an elite fullback is rare in modern football. Not every team even has a fullback. And few players in the entire league are on the level of McCaffrey.

Arguably, the 49ers’ most glaring advantage resides in the running back room. Turner and his co-running backs coach Anthony Lynn. McCaffrey. Juszczyk. Even Elijah Mitchell. Perhaps the 49ers’ chances of winning the Super Bowl on Sunday hinge on the greatness of McCaffrey. Which means it also hinges on Juszczyk.

Both of them are driven partially to not let down Turner.

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Usher didn’t make any major confessions during his Super Bowl halftime show news conference Thursday, but he did hint that some guests may join him on stage.

“I think I made it easy for myself when I decided to have features on songs that became hit records,” Usher told Apple Music’s Nadeska Alexis, who hosted the news conference, about the prospect of guest performers.

“I went through a lot of ideas of who I would have shared this moment with me. I do feel like the people who are going to share it deserve just as much recognition for what they do in their careers.”

Alexis asked if Usher immediately thought of any guests when he booked the halftime show, and he smiled and simply said, “Of course,” drawing a laugh from the crowd.

Usher has collaborated with many artists throughout his career, including Ludacris, Lil Jon, Alicia Keys and Justin Bieber. Ludacris and Lil Jon filmed an Apple Music video with actress Taraji P. Henson teasing the halftime show, causing fans to speculate if the two rappers will perform with Usher on Sunday.

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LAS VEGAS — It might’ve been the most pivotal defensive snap of the San Francisco 49ers’ season to this point. They led 27-24 midway through the fourth quarter of the NFC Championship Game. But the Detroit Lions were driving, and they decided to gamble on a fourth-and-3 from the 49ers’ 30-yard line.

Leading to that play, the 49ers had spent the entire season working to refine a bevy of coverage disguises implemented by their first-year defensive coordinator, Steve Wilks. The secondary delivered a good season. Wilks’ disguises had generally worked. But this particular one had to work, and the 49ers entrusted the key role to a defensive back who’d just entered the game at nickelback — and hadn’t yet played at that position for the 49ers.

That was 32-year-old Logan Ryan, an 11-year NFL veteran. He pressed up on Detroit’s top receiver, Amon-Ra St. Brown, at the line. The 49ers were running what they call their “Two-Max” defense, which is a Cover 2 zone — but dressed up as man-to-man coverage. It was Ryan’s job to sell the deke, and he did so with some added gusto that wasn’t part of the original plan.

“Before I dropped down into my zone, my Cover 2 curl drop, I wanted to get some hands on him,” Ryan said Wednesday at the 49ers’ team hotel. “So I did a quick jam on him. I wanted to really sell the man-to-man. And it knocked him off balance. It threw the timing of the route off. I was happy I did, because I think he was the target on the play.”

Lions quarterback Jared Goff, flummoxed by Ryan’s disruption and the subsequent realization that St. Brown wasn’t coming open out of his break, bailed the pocket and threw incomplete. The 49ers took over on downs and marched toward a 10-point lead that’d be enough to punch their ticket to Super Bowl LVIII.

The challenge intensifies now against the Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, who’s perhaps the NFL’s savviest quarterback. But the 49ers are shrewd on the back end, too, as evidenced by the veteran presences of Ryan and 33-year-old safety Tashaun Gipson Sr. They believe they’re well equipped to make the on-the-fly coverage adjustments necessary to deliver in the biggest game that there is.

Ryan, who has 18 playoff games and two Super Bowl championships with the New England Patriots under his belt, already implemented one of those in the NFC title game.

“Receivers being able to run around through our defense freely, that’s something I don’t believe in,” Ryan said. “It’s something I want to incorporate more of: hitting guys as they run through our defense so they can’t just run through so cleanly. We’re the best at getting back and establishing our zones and playing sound, but I think getting physical and knocking guys off on our way there is something that we could do and something that I did on that play — and it worked out.”

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LAS VEGAS — Tom Brady was visiting a zoo in Brisbane, Australia, a couple of weeks back when he and his friends walked past a goat pen. One of his friends said, “Coming up on the Mahomes exhibit.”

Brady, who shared the video on social media, laughed. But will anybody be laughing Sunday night if Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl for Mahomes’ second straight ring and third by the age of 28? Brady, the undisputed Greatest of All Time, has seven Super Bowl rings and had won his third by age 28 as well.

Mahomes is not even thinking about Brady or GOAT status. Unless you ask him.

“I mean, I’m not even close to halfway, so I haven’t put a lot of thought into it,” Mahomes said at Super Bowl Opening Night on Monday. “I mean, your goal is to be the best player that you can be. I know I’m blessed to be around a lot of great players around me.

“And so, right now, it’s doing whatever I can to beat a great 49ers team and try to get that third ring. And then if you ask me that question in 15 years, and I’ll see if I can get close to seven. But seven seems like a long ways away still.”

Brady played well into his 40s, winning his last two Super Bowls at the ages of 41 and 43. And Mahomes wasn’t just throwing out the “ask me in 15 years line” to brush off reporters.

“That’s the goal. You want to play as long as they’ll let you play,” he said. “It takes a lot of work outside of the building. It takes taking care of your body. It takes eating healthy and (trying) to get rid of the dad bod that I got. But try to do whatever you can just to get healthy and go out there and be the best player that you can be.”

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Chiefs RB Jerick McKinnon (IR), WR Rashee Rice and RB Clyde Edwards-Helaire were limited in practice Thursday.

G Joe Thuney did not practice and is not expected to play in the Super Bowl.

LAS VEGAS — This time, the San Francisco 49ers are playing the Super Bowl in the Pacific time zone, and their fiery defensive line coach Kris Kocurek is very happy about that.

The big game against the Kansas City Chiefs will kick off at about 3:30 p.m. local time. For Kocurek, that’s three hours better than his experience at Super Bowl LIV four years ago in Miami, where the wait until the 6:30 p.m. Eastern time kickoff seemed interminable.

“I can remember opening the blinds and seeing the sun come up,” Kocurek said Wednesday at the 49ers’ team hotel. “It seemed I had to wait three days to go get on the bus and get to the game.”

Once the wait was over, a game that started exceptionally well for the 49ers ended in gut-wrenching fashion. Kansas City erased a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter to win, 31-20. Now, four years later, the 49ers are back on the NFL’s biggest stage and set to face the same opponent — and still in search of that elusive Lombardi Trophy.

Kocurek’s defensive line has been central to the 49ers’ fortunes over the past four seasons, which’ve featured three NFC Championship Game appearances and two trips to the Super Bowl. The unit figures to be a central ingredient if the 49ers are to exact their vengeance against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs on Sunday.

Here’s Kocurek’s conversation with The Athletic, which has been lightly edited for brevity.

Some Super Bowl analysis is mathematical, meticulous and serious. Some of it is just for fun. This is the latter. After all, the Super Bowl is a moment for the “play” of it all to take center stage! This isn’t a scoop or a statistical sports analysis by any means. We have plenty of that going all week. But if you’re ready for a quick break from the numbers, or if you’re a casual viewer just looking for a snazzy conversation topic for your party on Sunday, you’ve come to the right place.

In our quest to cover the Super Bowl from every angle – both serious and less serious – we reached out to a handwriting expert (officially known as a graphologist) to give her professional take on six key figures in Super Bowl 58.

Emma Bache discovered her interest in handwriting when she was a child, rooting around drawers trying to find her parents’ letters and, she admits with some trepidation, even reading entries in their diaries. That early curiosity grew into a more appropriate interest in psychology and studying what lies beneath the surface in people’s personalities. At 23, she enrolled in a weekend workshop on graphology, and she’s never looked back.

Now, she’s a leading graphologist in the United Kingdom and a former columnist for The Times and The Financial Times. She has provided handwriting analysis for some of the world’s leading companies, helped resolve complex fraud cases, and even contributed to a documentary investigation about a serial killer. In 2010, in partnership with Sky Sports, she analyzed top Premier League players, including Wayne Rooney and Didier Drogba.

While a lot of Bache’s work is dead serious, she took a chance to have some lighthearted Super Bowl fun with us. We gave her six names and signatures and she provided a few talking points for each player. Should you use this analysis to bet the family farm? Definitely not. But you’ll find some entertaining tidbits about the Super Bowl’s main characters.

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We all knew this was going to happen. Sooner or later the Kansas City Chiefs would make one too many appearances on the NFL’s late January/early February playoff dance card, and that’s when football fans who don’t live within 400 miles of Arrowhead Stadium would scream they’ve had quite enough of Patrick Mahomes, Andy Reid, Travis Kelce and, of course, Taylor Swift.

The Chiefs have played in six consecutive editions of the AFC Championship Game, including their 17-10 victory over the Baltimore Ravens a couple of weeks ago. When they meet the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII Sunday night, it’ll be their fourth appearance in five years in pro football’s Big Game. As such, the Chiefs are closing in on the 21st-century New England Patriots, who won six Super Bowls and at one point made eight consecutive trips to the AFC Championship Game.

And we all know how everyone feels about the New England Patriots.

Everyone hates the Patriots is how everyone feels. The Pats gave us Spygate. They gave us Deflategate. They gave us a coach, Bill Belichick, who for 24 seasons mumbled his way through news conferences and halftime interviews. They gave us a quarterback, Tom Brady, who was perceived as an entitled pretty boy who expected to get all the calls. That the Patriots delivered some of the most electrifying moments in Super Bowl history — the final drive against the St. Louis Rams after Brady opted not to take a knee, Malcolm Butler’s miracle interception against the Seattle Seahawks, the epic comeback from 28-3 against the Atlanta Falcons — is beside the point. Everyone hates the Patriots. It was in this spirit that so many people derived great joy in seeing Belichick fail to land another head coaching gig after “parting ways” with the Patriots last month.

If CNN analyst (and Boston native) John King were to go to the Magic Board and highlight the states whose fans would root for the Pats to win another Super Bowl, only Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island would light up. (And possibly Connecticut, except that many fans south of Hartford root for the Giants. The Jets, a Ralph Nader-like third-party candidate, would pull in about 4 percent of the Connecticut vote.)

Now it’s the Chiefs’ turn to be the team everyone hates … except it’s not true. Oh, we’ll likely see this or that poll revealing that lots of otherwise neutral fans will be rooting for the 49ers and therefore against the Chiefs, but let’s have a grown-up discussion about this. Does anybody really hate the Chiefs, or is this no more than a familiar, time-worn talking point that gets rolled out whenever a team emerges as football’s latest … wait for it, wait for it … dynasty?

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Lamar Jackson didn’t emerge as a Most Valuable Player candidate this season because he led the league in touchdown passes, set rushing records and directed the highest-scoring offense in the NFL. He did all those things in 2019, when he became only the second unanimous MVP in NFL history.

Jackson also didn’t necessarily have his signature MVP moment this season, as he did in 2019 with the spin move and dash to the end zone in Cincinnati or the five touchdown passes in Los Angeles.

What Jackson did produce this season was more evidence that he’s the league’s single most important player to his team’s success. As Hall of Fame quarterback and ESPN analyst Troy Aikman said before a Baltimore Ravens broadcast this past season, there’s no quarterback asked to do more for his team.

In 2023, Jackson delivered. He showed his growth as a passer, decision-maker and leader, all while learning a completely new offense under first-year Ravens coordinator Todd Monken. He stayed healthy and remained as dangerous as ever as a dual-threat quarterback.

Jackson, 27, is the favorite to be named the league’s 2023 MVP at the NFL Honors ceremony in Las Vegas on Thursday night. He was already named the first-team All-Pro quarterback, receiving 45 of the 50 first-place votes. He also was tabbed the 2023 MVP by the Pro Football Writers of America.

If he’s named the Associated Press MVP, he’d become just the 11th player in NFL history to win the award multiple times. He’d join Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Jim Brown, Brett Favre, Johnny Unitas, Patrick Mahomes, Joe Montana, Steve Young and Kurt Warner.

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It’s Usher, baby! The living, breathing pillar of charisma and talent that is Usher Raymond IV will be headlining the 2024 Super Bowl, after closing out a dizzyingly popular Las Vegas residency. Usher is one of our most talented musicians – some (me) might say a national treasure – whose decades-spanning career has shaped the face of the music industry. To say nothing of the personal magnetism that has made him such an arresting figure in nearly every clique in entertainment culture, from the 2019 film Hustlers to NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series.

Usher may have closed out his Las Vegas residency in December – after extending it twice thanks to booming sales – but the love in this club will be back in town on Super Bowl Sunday. The mononymous “King of R&B” is helming the Vegas Super Bowl halftime show and, if my group chats and the internet are any indication, it will be a cultural event to rival the best halftime performances of all time.

It’s been nearly 30 years since Usher’s debut album in 1994, and if you somehow don’t already know: He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, a fashion icon, sex symbol, eight-time Grammy award-winner and owner of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – just to name a few of his accolades. In his three-decade career, Usher has released eight studio albums, 10 compilation albums, eight EPs and 81 singles. He has nine Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles.

This Friday, two days before his Super Bowl performance, he’s dropping a new album, “Coming Home,” which features two more singles that are out now. He’s also a Super Bowl veteran after joining The Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am on stage in 2011 to perform their collaboration, “OMG.”

Oh, and did I mention his dancing? GIRL.

The halftime show is always a popular event for betting – whether that’s a real-money wager on a sportsbook or a pick among friends on your party prop sheet. Are these silly bets to wager money on? Absolutely. But props like this are fun, and they’re accessible to Super Bowl super-fans and casual viewers alike. You don’t have to know anything about Christian McCaffrey to wager on Usher. So, let’s dig deep into our play logic and make some picks.

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Usher is dropping his latest album "Coming Home" on Friday ahead of his Super Bowl LVIII performance Sunday.

It'll be his first independent release, and he noted that he's the first independent artist to ever headline the Super Bowl halftime show.

Usher said his performance will last 13 minutes. He said "it's definitely been a challenge to squeeze 30 years into 13 minutes."

He said he aimed to celebrate his past, include his present and look ahead to the future when it came to selecting his set list for the show.

He's going to work in some of his dance routine from his lengthy "My Way" Las Vegas residency — including roller skating — into his halftime performance.

"I wanted to put on a show that would represent my idea of creativity," Usher said. He added that he's aimed to incorporate the culture of his hometown of Atlanta into his performance.

LAS VEGAS — When you look at all the things the Kansas City Chiefs have going for them entering Sunday’s Super Bowl, it would be easy to overlook the contributions of their four former Tampa Bay Buccaneers players.

Offensive tackle Donovan Smith, safety Mike Edwards, wide receiver Justin Watson and backup quarterback Blaine Gabbert were all on the Tampa Bay team that beat the Chiefs in the Super Bowl three years ago, and they have all contributed this season. Gabbert, who has thrown only 35 passes, spoke to the team three weeks ago before the Chiefs’ first road playoff win, over the Buffalo Bills.

Gabbert said he sees “some eerily close comparisons” between the Bucs team that lifted the Lombardi Trophy and this Chiefs crew.

“The ups and downs, the ebbs and flows throughout the year,” Gabbert said. “We knew we were really good but weren’t playing the best in the middle of the year. We got hot at the right time and are riding that wave.

“Momentum plays such a huge role in football, and we just have to keep that thing going on Sunday.”

Smith has started 15 games at left tackle, including the playoffs, while Edwards stepped in for injured safety Bryan Cook and has started eight games with a 97-yard fumble return for a touchdown to his credit. Watson had 27 catches for 460 yards in the regular season, adding six catches for 66 yards in the playoffs, while Gabbert, 34, has appeared in two games in his 12th NFL season.

The four are a tight-knit bunch that has been able to lean on each other this season.

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