Suns’ Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson have differing Super Bowl opinions

[plist name=”suns”][/plist]

Nothing like a little Super Bowl banter to spice up the Phoenix Suns’ camaraderie.

The table is set for Super Bowl LVI after the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams won their respective conference championship games Sunday night.

For Suns forwards Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson, it means watching their favorite football teams duking it out for the Lombardi Trophy.

It’s been well known that Bridges is a unquestioned Rams fan, but until recently, it was discovered that Johnson had a hat in the NFL playoffs ring as an 18-year Bengals supporter despite hailing from Pittsburgh.

For Bridges, it was all about the Greatest Show on Turf.

“I’m a [Philadelphia] fan for every other sport,” Bridges explained to Arizona Sports’ Burns & Gambo earlier this month. “Just because I was a kid growing up playing video games and fell in love with Marshall Faulk, Kurt Warner and them boys. They were in St. Louis. I was a Philly fan in every other sport.”

For Johnson, Chad Ochocinco Johnson and his father’s disdain for the Pittsburgh Steelers were his primary influences growing up after originally routing for AFC North rival Pittsburgh Steelers.

“(At six or seven years old) I was like, ‘Yeah, we don’t like them’ and simultaneously the Bengals had Chad Johnson and they had just gotten new uniforms with tiger stripes on the sleeves,” Johnson told reporters ahead of the game on Friday. “They had the small stripe, they got the big stripe.

“Coach the other day was saying, ‘Oh, you bandwagon.’ I’ve been a diehard Bengals fan for 18 years. It’s all led up to this Sunday.”

So after the Suns’ 115-110 win over the San Antonio Spurs on Sunday night, the duo added a little extra flavor to their postgame interviews.

The big game is set and the Twins are divided 🏈@Bengals | @RamsNFL pic.twitter.com/d4OYtGUHCM

— Phoenix Suns (@Suns) January 31, 2022

“I told ‘Kal, for the next week I can congratulate him and be excited about the Super Bowl … but next week, I’m at him. … Right now, we’re civil,” Johnson said.

“We’re not gonna like each other,” Bridges added.

While Johnson was able to catch parts of the Chiefs-Bengals game ahead of Phoenix’s contest against San Antonio, Bridges was left to play and wonder with the Rams and San Francisco 49ers tilt kicking off later in the afternoon.

Ironically, the Suns started mounting their comeback in Sunday’s matchup right around the same time the Rams closed things out to advance to the Super Bowl.

Coincidence? Bridges thinks not.

“Maybe it was just that power,” Bridges told reporters. “We all came together at the same time. It’s that luck.

“But no, just kept fighting. … It was a great team win.”

As for the pair going all in and attending the game in person, there is a window of opportunity in the team’s schedule.

Phoenix plays at Footprint Center the day before Super Bowl LVI before a three-day break between home games.

Like Lloyd Christmas said, “so you’re telling me there’s a chance?”

Related

Small-ball lineup ignites Phoenix Suns past Spurs for 10th straight winSuns locker room is a house divided ... for the AFC Championship gameMarc Stein: Suns looking for another shooter at trade deadlineSuns GM James Jones likes where roster is at ahead of trade deadlineNFL OL Andrus Peat, brother of Koa, announces retirementSuns reveal 2026 preseason schedule