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04 Feb 2008
Audibles at the Line: Super Bowl XLII
New York Giants 17 "at" New England Patriots 14
Mike Tanier: Best first quarter ever. Two good drives, clock keeps moving. 7:05 p.m. and we are a quarter of the way home. Last year's Super Bowl took three days.
(Eli Manning throws a pick to Ellis Hobbs at the New England 10-yard line with 12 minutes left in the second quarter.)
Sean McCormick: Ellis Hobbs was borrowing Jimmy Hitchcock's eyes on that play. Bad luck for Eli, but even so, the early story is the tremendous job of blitz pickup the Giants' backs are doing.
Aaron Schatz: In the second quarter, do you believe the officials should have thrown a flag on Amani Toomer when he pushed Ellis Hobbs away by the facemask, then made that great catch on the sideline? I think that was clearly offensive pass interference, although I don't take anything away from Toomer's good job getting the feet down in bounds.
Regarding penalties, clearly the officials have swallowed the whistles on holding, just like the rest of the playoffs. Since they are doing it equally for both offenses, it isn't that big a deal.
Sean McCormick: That was offensive pass interference. I would say that if the refs are going to let the players play, then it was reasonable not to call it, because Hobbs was using his hands as well and you can say both players were fighting to locate the ball. But I wouldn't have had a problem with an official throwing a flag on that play.
Ryan Wilson: Well, if it's a penalty against the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL, it should be here, I think. Also, I didn't think that was a delay of game on Eli Manning. The play clock just hit zero and I've never seen it called that early.
Mike Tanier: The Toomer catch should have been OPI. There was mutual contact but its hard to ignore a hand to the facemask.
Aaron Schatz: The Patriots need to stop sending five defenders. It is not working. Manning is fine against five. The Giants pick it up. Either send six, or send the traditional four and make sure guys are covered.
And color me shocked that the Patriots did not throw a challenge flag on the blown handoff to Ahmad Bradshaw, ruling that Pierre Woods recovered the ball and was down by contact. That was a major field position play if the Patriots win that challenge.
Russell Levine: Worse call obviously on the non-fumble recovery. That is New England ball. That is a challengeable play, is it not? Woods was clearly on the ball in possession when he was touched down.
Looked to me early on that Tom Brady was not comfortable. He failed to spot a couple of open guys and misfired a couple times.
(Late in the first half, the Patriots convert a long third down to escape the shadow of their own end zone.)
That first down conversion to Donte Stallworth on third-and-13 could end up being one of the key plays of the game even if New England doesn't score before half.
Sean McCormick: Beautiful play design, and yes, it could well prove to be a crucial play.
(The Patriots didn't score; Brady fumbled with about 15 seconds left in the half, and the ball was recovered by Osi Umenyiora.)
Aaron Schatz: And at halftime, the story of the game is that the Pats offensive line is getting completely destroyed, but the Giants offense has also looked pretty bad except for the first drive.
Doug Farrar: That's been the surprise to me through the first half. New England's line has been a clear liability. The Giants know that not even Tom Brady can get a big play off if he's running for his life all the time. Justin Tuck might earn his entire new $30 million contract in this game alone.
Also, I gained a new level of respect for Ahmad Bradshaw when I saw him carry Ty Warren about five yards. That guy's not just a scatback. I know that winning the physical battle isn't New England's game, but they have to be concerned about the fact that they're really getting pushed around.
Mike Tanier: In the first half, the Giants have been doing it with a mix of really daring blitzes and out-of-the-mind play by their big three pass rushers. But the Patriots are complicit because they are barely using their flats-and-short-crosses game. Their few screens were mostly effective. In the second half they are going to have to run more quick-strike stuff, especially if the Giants are going to send safeties.
Sean McCormick: The second half is probably going to come down to the conditioning of the Giants defensive line. In all of the Patriots comeback games -- against Indy, against Baltimore and the first Giants game -- the offense was able to make big plays in the fourth quarter after the pass rush slowed down. This is the best pass rush in football, and the Giants have the depth to hold up, but they tired down in the regular season game and it sprung Randy Moss for the deep touchdown. The Giants offense is going to continue to move the ball, and they'll probably score points But it's going to come down to the defensive line, I suspect.
Mike Tanier: Clunk. Tom Petty started "Free Fallin'" and I died of boredom. Can we get Air Supply next year?
Doug Farrar: Agreed. Anyone who actually survived the "Five Hours of Frank Caliendo" pregame show deserved better.
Sean McCormick: So, through three quarters, where does this defensive performance rank? If anything, it seems like the Giants have been more dominating than the 1990 team was against Buffalo or the 2001 Pats were against the Rams. Both those offenses moved up and down the field, but the Giants have really tamped down the yardage.
Doug Farrar: The front seven has performed as well as any I've seen in a Super Bowl. Thomas Boswell wrote a wonderful article about Mike Schmidt and Robin Yount many years ago in which he talked about the fact that we sometimes don't really understand true greatness until the player who had it retires. We know Michael Strahan because of the gap-toothed smile and the fact that he's funny and a smooth talker, and we know that he's a future Hall of Famer, but how many 36-year-old defensive ends do you know who can sack a quarterback before the guy blocking him can get out of his stance, then deflect a freakin' screen pass on a different play? Truly amazing.
Bill Belichick is going to hate himself for not taking the three and going for it on fourth down halfway through the third quarter. Aggressiveness index or not. And I wrote this before the David Tyree touchdown drive. They didn't make the Giants pay for the Eli pick, nor did they make them pay for the Chase Blackburn 12-men-on-the-field thing.
(Tom Brady throws a six-yard touchdown to Randy Moss with 2:45 left in the game, putting the Patriots up, 14-10.)
Russell Levine: Brutal decision by the Giants to go man up on Moss with no safety help on the go-ahead touchdown. Hard to fault anything about the defensive effort tonight, but that was a head-scratcher.
And David Tyree etches his name in Giants lore with that catch at the 1:15 mark, converting the third down, extending the drive, and joining Stephen Baker in Giants lore.
(Eli Manning ends the drive that was punctuated by the Tyree catch with a 13-yard touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress. The Giants win Super Bowl XLII, possibly the biggest upset in Super Bowl history.)
Mike Tanier: Well, that was intense.
One of the worst-called games by the Belichick coaching staff that I have seen. The fourth-and-13 was nuts, I hated the first-half offensive game plan, and I hated that single-coverage call at the end against Plaxico.
Absolutely amazing performance by the Giants defensive line. Count not just the sacks but the other plays, like Strahan breaking up that dumpoff to Kevin Faulk and all the times Laurence Maroney got stuffed. Amazing effort by the defensive staff to design that game plan, but a lot of it was just man-on-man dominance.
Brady had little time to throw, but he made some awful passes. Really bad game for him. Awful game for Matt Light. Awful game for Ross Hochstein. Rodney Harrison ... it wasn't just the Tyree catch; there were a lot of places where he was just a step too late or slow.
So much of this game was field position. The Patriots always had to drive 85 yards. That's why I wondered about the fourth-and-13. The Giants got the ball back and were able to play punt-and-pin again. The Giants touchdown drives were both long, but the first one could have been longer if Hanson had pinned them at the 10 instead of punting through the end zone.
This game was just another reminder of how much this sport is a game of inches and seconds. Eli eluding a sack by the fabric on his jersey. Tyree pinning the ball to his helmet. Bradshaw clawing the ball away from that linebacker in the pile. Jacobs' head and shoulders following through over Rich Seubert's body on that fourth-and-1 at the end. Suddenly we are watching the biggest upset since at least Super Bowl III.
Stuart Fraser: Strahan or Tuck should be MVP, not Eli. You don't give an offensive player the MVP award when his team scored 17 points.
Vince Verhei: I agree with you, but Tom Brady once won Super Bowl MVP for an offense that scored 13 points.
Stuart Fraser: The Any Given Sunday about this one is both really short and really long. The short version is "The Giants D-Line absolutely took the game over."
A slightly longer version notes that the Giants linebackers and secondary tackled very well, limiting the yards after catch on short passes that often kill teams going against the Patriots. After the first Giants game, we talked about how the Patriots were like Tiger Woods, how they could be beaten, but you had to execute to the best of their ability play after play after play, drive after drive. You know what? The Giants' defense did just that tonight. Congratulations to them, and to Steve Spagnuolo for the game plan. I wish him luck as head coach of the Redskins, because I think he just won that job tonight.
Whilst the Giants were playing the perfect game -- at least on one side of the ball -- the New England offense was misfiring on almost all cylinders. Maybe it wasn't 2001 or 1985, but 2005: the AFC Divisional round, where the sixth seed Steelers stopped the AFC's No. 1 Indianapolis offense with a pass rush, and the offense did enough to win out. Brady's stats -- 29 of 48 (60.4 percent) for 266 yards and a touchdown -- echo Manning's 22 of 38 (57.9 percent) for 290 yards and a touchdown, and each was sacked five times. The Patriots almost managed to win anyway -- and if they'd gone to the short passing game with both Moss and Wes Welker in the first half, maybe we'd be talking about Belichick's genius for adjustment again.
But while the offensive game plan for New England (and the call to leave Hobbs man-up on Plaxico Burress for the winning score, because we didn't learn that this was a bad idea on the freaking first series of the previous matchup, not at all) was horrid, the execution was worse. Rushers came unblocked much of the time. Brady handled the pressure poorly -- I mean, he was being hit all the time in the first Giants game, too, but it didn't seem to slow him down all that much. Maybe he was more injured than the Patriots let on.
And where do we put the 2007 Patriots in the sporting pantheon? Now it's easy: Best team not to win the Super Bowl.
Doug Farrar: They are absolutely the 1968 Colts, in my mind. Same "best team ever?" speculation, their quarterback was the NFL MVP, and they were beaten by a team that had weathered some major regular season struggles to win while the "better" team struggled in the big game. That Colts team won their Super Bowl two years later, so we'll just have to see what this means for the Patriots. Of course, Don Shula and Earl Morrall rose from that defeat to find perfection with the '72 Dolphins. But that's the question for the Pats now -- are they the 1968 Colts, with enough left in the tank for another run, or are they the 2001 Rams, where it's all about to go downhill and stay there for a while?
Sean McCormick: Another parallel with 2001: Remember how the Pats played the Rams unexpectedly tough but lost, then went on to not lose another game all year? It's more impressive when you get that loss in Week 8 than Week 17, but you can argue that the same dynamic was in effect. The Giants clearly used that game as a springboard.
Russell Levine: It seems that perhaps an older Pats team wore down at the end of the year. They had to grind out a few over the second half of the season and appeared beatable in all three playoff games. The accusations of running up the score against Washington, et al., seem like a long time ago.
Ridiculously early speculation, part I: You have to wonder how the Pats will bounce back from this. They suddenly look mortal, and the defense is awfully long in the tooth. Asante Samuel could be gone. They're potentially staring at an off-season spent combating more allegations and, if they're proven, further sanctions. They're already missing a No. 1 pick. I can't imagine they won't be huge favorites heading into next season, but watching their psyche next year should be awfully interesting.
Sean McCormick: In Vegas, maybe. Looking at the likely personnel changes, I would give San Diego the best odds of winning next year, followed by Indianapolis. New England would be third. As you said, they looked old and worn out, and they're going to be losing a lot on defense in the offseason.
Mike Tanier: Junior Seau should go. Harrison should go. But they still have a very young core.
Stuart Fraser: They're missing a No. 1 pick. They have San Francisco's, which is substantially higher than the No. 31 they've forfeited.
If they can bring back Randy Moss, then all the key components of the offense remain in place. I'm sure Belichick (assuming he's back and Spygate doesn't become a critical mess) is capable of doing what Tony Dungy has done, and holding together a defense which is good enough despite the roster turnover.
Also, frankly, who else is going to win the AFC East?
Vince Verhei: I'm trying to find a metaphor that describes my surprise.
I feel like I have learned which religion is correct, and it is not my own.
I feel like aliens have been walking among us, and they have chosen to reveal themselves en masse.
I feel like my life has been one great science experiment, and I am not in the control group.
I've got a mini-notebook filled with play-by-play notes and reactions, but ... we all saw the game. The Patriots' pass protection was futile. If the Giants blitzed, the blitzer came through unblocked. If they rushed four, those four got pressure anyway. The Patriots were outschemed (Steve Spagnuolo is a genius) and outmanned.
When Brady did have time, he was highly erratic. One example: He's got Randy Moss open on first-and-goal in the fourth quarter, and throws it way high and outside. Didn't matter much, because he found him on third down, but it was the most notable example of his un-Brady day.
The Patriots got away from their identity for the first 55 minutes of this game. Where were the slants and quick outs? They didn't show up until that last touchdown drive. It seemed like Brady was looking for the home run every play, and some of those sacks came because he held the ball too long.
I still can't believe this, but the Patriots were completely outcoached today.
I'm not sure what exactly to say about the Giants offense vs. the Patriots defense -- that's the only part of this game that went largely as expected. Eli Manning was great again, really going without a turnover (that interception was clearly not his fault, and the Giants recovered both of his fumbles) and leading two go-ahead drives in the fourth quarter. Is that a Super Bowl first?
So, here's what we say about the Giants: They were a very ordinary team for 17 weeks. They then caught absolute fire (Has any team ever beaten three better teams than Dallas/Green Bay/New England in the playoffs?) and won the Super Bowl. Why did that catch us off guard? Because there was no indication this was going to happen. It's unprecedented. It's inexplicable. It defies all rational thought.
Unfortunate advertising note: The NFL Network is doing a replay of the game on Wednesday. The commercial for this replay (which has been running for days) ends with Tedy Bruschi pumping his fist and screaming "That's how you finish!" Oh boy.
And I do not understand the fourth-and-13 call, particularly because they opted to punt on fourth-and-2 in the same drive before being bailed out by the 12-men penalty. I mean, fourth-and-13? Even if you're worried about a missed field goal moving the ball back eight yards further, well, I'd punt the ball from there before I'd go for it, and no, I'm not kidding. Worst-case scenario if you punt, Giants have the ball at the 20, instead of getting it at the 31, which is what actually happened. Really, that just made no sense at all. Which I guess makes it perfect for this day.
Stuart Fraser: Something else to think about: It's time to re-evaluate Tom Coughlin. He made the expansion Jacksonville Jaguars a winning team from their second year, and gave the franchise an identity it's held onto with Jack Del Rio and would be a widely recognized success story if it weren't stuck in Jacksonville.
He turned Tiki Barber into a great back, much as Barber is loath to admit this. He was smart enough -- and man enough -- to know when a coaching style wasn't working in New York and changed it to suit his players. And now he's won a ring and he's clearly out-coached Bill Belichick in so doing. He's 103-89, which is pretty much the same winning percentage as Jeff Fisher -- and he did most of it with an expansion team. Maybe he's not quite up there with the absolute best, but he's laid down another piece of what's shaping up to be a pretty good legacy.
Aaron Schatz: As far as Coughlin, nobody ever said he was not a good in-game coach. What we said was that his personality wore down his players over a few years, and we all believed we had gotten to that point. Clearly, he dramatically altered the way he interacted with his players this year, and it was very successful come the postseason. He gets a lot of credit for that. It's one thing to change your play-calling strategy. Not everyone can take a step back and say, "Wow, I'm an a**hole and it is hurting my ability to get the most from my employees. I need to change." -- and then actually change, and succeed. It is impressive.
Oh, and Jeff Feagles was swell. Someone should mention that.
Doug Farrar: I'm glad we're talking as much about the Giants as we are, because I think it would be horribly unfair to tell the story of this Super Bowl as the game the Patriots lost, not the game the Giants won. A lot of people are going to do that, and it's just not right.
As much as Brady was off with his passes, the Giants' pass rush was tripping him up all day, and Justin Tuck should have been the MVP, because he stopped Brady from being able to step up and throw when the pressure came from the sides, and Brady finally had the chance to go play action only late in the game when that front four tired out. The New England offensive line played like crap, but that was as good a front seven as you'll ever see in a Super Bowl. Antonio Pierce was a freak with the screens and outside runs. New England couldn't get anything going long because they didn't have time, and they couldn't get consistent short gains because the defense was set up for that as well.
There are a few comparisons that come to mind. Aaron and I had a long phone conversation after the game, and we were gong through the different trends and comparisons. Vince said it best -- there is no historical precedent for this. The 2001 Pats got hot a lot earlier in the season. The 2005 Steelers, who beat the NFL's best offenses on the road on the way to their championship, were rated far higher by FO's numbers -- better in team efficiency than the Seahawks. The 2006 Colts got hot later, but we know that they were good enough to win from what they had done in their previous year. The 2003 Panthers were a bit more decisive in the playoffs, and they didn't beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl.
I don't think there is a Giants comparison, unless we go back through the 12 years of game-by-game DVOA we have and look for trend graphs which indicate teams that got very hot late, so that we can maybe, just maybe, explain why the hell this happened. Aaron mentioned to me the fact that had FO existed in 2001, he would have been all over the Rams to beat the Pats in the Super Bowl, because while there was a perceived chance that New England could win, the Rams were on the tail end of their "greatest of all time" swing.
We like to think that we can use DVOA 5.0 (or 6.0 or 7.0, eventually) to map it all out, but we know we can't cover it all. There are intangibles such as emotion and chemistry and contrasting hot and cold streaks, and the sheer weight of momentum that defines a team either way. I thought that the Pats would win this game by 30, because I didn't think that I'd see the New England team I'd seen over the last six weeks -- the one that has won game after game by the thinnest of margins on borrowed time. In each of those games (except the Baltimore game, which they should have lost and somehow just didn't), glaring vulnerabilities were covered up by excellence in other areas. Well, I was right. I didn't see the team I had seen before. I saw the team with all of those vulnerabilities and none of the compensatory aspects that would have won the game.
And the Giants were a juggernaut. What an unbelievable performance. I want the Seahawks to fire Jim Mora and hire Steve Spagnuolo as Mike Holmgren's replacement. I want Brandon Mebane to play like Justin Tuck and Patrick Kerney to be half as good as Michael Strahan in six years. I want Shaun Alexander to carry Ty Warren on his back for five yards instead of getting tackled for losses by waterboys. I love physical teams, and I'm just jealous.
Aaron Schatz: I don't understand the fourth-and-13 either. Belichick coached horribly tonight, the offensive line was horrible, Brady looked bad -- but at least give Brady credit for leading a game-winning drive. The fact that the defense couldn't hold that lead doesn't make it less impressive, just like the failure of the Carolina defense in 2003 didn't make Jake Delhomme's performance any less impressive. This is two straight years the Patriots have blown the last game in the fourth quarter, and it is time to accept that they need younger linebackers and more depth.
The Giants' defensive line is amazing. The MVP of this game should have been given to Tuck, Strahan, Umenyiora, all together. Eli Manning was impressive again, although giving him the MVP is silly. The interception wasn't even really a bad throw. The Washington Redskins are insane if they do not offer their head coaching job to Steve Spagnuolo after this. I feel very good for Michael Strahan, a sure Hall of Famer who finally got a ring. I feel terrible for Junior Seau, a sure Hall of Famer who did not.
And don't forget Jacksonville when you talk about the teams most likely to knock the Pats off their perch next year.
Pat Laverty: I think one aspect of the defensive scheme that's being overlooked is the Giants' linebackers. The counter to that kind of DLine pressure is screens. The Patriots are the best in the business at running the screen and they tried it many times, but each time they did, it seemed that Maroney/Faulk/Welker just got hit by Mitchell/Pierce/et al as soon as they touched the ball. It seemed the Giants' linebackers had it sniffed out really well and shed the blockers really well.
Tuck/Strahan/Osi can get all the pressure they want on Brady, but if he's dumping off for 15-20 yard screen plays, Tuck doesn't look so good. The play of the linebackers in taking away the screens forced Brady to look a little more downfield and sit in the pocket for another moment or so.
Aaron Schatz: This is definitely a place where Spagnuolo's scheme for the Super Bowl took away what was a clear weakness of the Giants defense in the regular season.
Ned Macey: Analytically, I think an even better comparison for the Pats is the 1999 Rams. That team had an offense come out of nowhere and just throttle teams. By the playoffs, teams had adjusted, and they won two low-scoring defensive struggles to escape with a Super Bowl. Their full-season DVOA and Pythagorean ratings are through the roof because they pounded teams early.
My point is that the Pats' overall metrics were inflated because of the newness of their offense. Once countered, they became merely great rather than otherworldly.
New England's offensive DVOA averaged 51.1% through eight games. The last 8 weeks, it averaged 34.5% which is in line with other great offenses. I think this offense, once figured out, is no better than the Greatest Show on Turf or the great Colts offenses. Those are teams with a history of proving they can lose a playoff game.
To go further, their scoring differential through eight games was 331-127. The second half of the year, it was 258-147. We explained it away, naturally enough, as bad weather or the weight of the undefeated season, but I suspect that these Pats were not as good as we thought they were. Of course, I have free access to write whatever I want and never had the balls to write this until after they were upset in the Super Bowl. Still, hindsight is 20/20, and the Pats were definitively not dominant in the second half of the season.
I think everyone's reaction to Spagnuolo is a little odd. The Giants, to our eyes, were an average team who got on a hot streak. Their defense was an average defense who got on a hot streak (and, per Aaron in the preview, didn't really improve in the playoffs until the Super Bowl.) In the regular season, they were no better than they were the year before.
Then, they have one great game against what I suspect was a wildly overconfident opponent, and we're sure this guy is a coaching legend in the making? I'm not saying he won't be great, but if the Giants win was just "anything can happen in one game," I'm going to hold the same standard to the defensive coordinator. Especially since he got abused by this same team in Week 17; somehow I doubt he was holding plays for an eventual Super Bowl at that time.
Finally, in Super Bowl XXXVI against the Rams, Brady was 16-for-27 for 145 yards with one touchdown, and the offense scored 13 points. Today, he was 29-for-48 for 266 with one touchdown, and the offense scored 14 points. One time he was Super Bowl MVP, and the other time, he had a bad game.
Stuart Fraser: There was, maybe, one indicator from the Week 17 game we might have missed, though I don't know if we even have game charting data on it yet. The Giants had a ton of QB hits and hurries in that game. The Patriots barely got to Eli until the fourth quarter. We think, but haven't shown, that hits/hurries are often a harbinger of sacks to come. Well, certainly happened here. I wonder if in some way the Arizona surface was easier to play on for the Giants' speed rushers over the Patriots larger linemen when compared to the Meadowlands. Maybe New York just played better. Maybe the linemen the Patriots used in the first game are actually better pass protectors than the guys ahead of them on the depth chart, at least against the sort of rush the Giants brought.
This is the third straight year that a team has come from nowhere (or some value of nowhere) to win the Super Bowl. DVOA 5.0 is 1-for-3 on picking these out (it thinks the 2005 Steelers were about 5 percent off the #1 Colts). Unfortunately, the Super Bowl it picked was kind of retrospective.
It seems in general that maybe we're entering a different era here, where regular season performance is, for whatever reason, less indicative of playoff performance. A commenter on the board noted how the wild cards have had greater success since the NFL went to 32 teams, so maybe that's part of the cause. Maybe it's a change in the frequency of injuries - there's no such thing as avoiding injuries in the regular season, but the teams that break out in the playoffs are always pretty healthy.
Obviously we'll have to look at the Giants -- and the Patriots -- to see if there's anything we should have seen. It'd be nice to have DVOA for the run and shoot offenses of the early 1990's, to see if DVOA was systematically overrating the Patriots for some reason - I don't see why it should be, but I'm kind of used to the experimental data confounding expectations. I can't see any way we could have predicted this, but... well, we still have to look.
Aaron Schatz: I should clear up a misconception about the improvements we made to the formula in 2006. I didn't spend a month doing numbers with the express goal of making the 2005 Steelers look better than the 2005 Seahawks. The goal was to make the numbers correlate better to winning and from one year to the next over a 10-year period, not a one-year period. The fact that the changes moved the 2005 Steelers up to third in the league that year are simply a coincidence.
As far as this team, nothing that has happened for the past month changes the fact that the Giants were mediocre during the regular season. The indicators just weren't there. This team gave up 44 points to Tarvaris Jackson and the Minnesota Vikings less than two months ago. That's what makes this accomplishment remarkable. That's why the Giants will go down in history for doing something incredible -- not by luck, but by not accepting their regular-season level of mediocrity, and raising their game for the postseason, and overcoming the hardest schedule of opponents of any Super Bowl champion in history, and taking down the team that had just completed the greatest regular season ever. The proper response to an upset is to celebrate success, not to rejoice in failure.
As for me as a Patriots fan, I'm surprisingly serene about the loss. Obviously, it is a disappointment, but they were outplayed. The better team for five months isn't always the better team over a three-hour period, and you don't get the trophy for being better over five months. We learned that in 2001 when we were on the other end of this. The fact is, we got three championships out of this team. We've had seven years of winning football. This year was an amazing ride. This team added a lot more happiness to my life over the last few years than it did sadness last night. Furthermore, that had to be one of the most exciting Super Bowls ever played. Bummer for my team, but man, it was a really exciting game, especially if you like defense.
Onwards to 2008. In a couple days, we'll start talking about how to rebuild the Atlanta Falcons, and the whole cycle starts anew.
(P.S. We apologize for the problems our hosting company seems to be having today... this time it isn't even our server specifically.)
just a stupid note: end zones don't cast shadows, but goal posts do.
First, congratulations to the New York Football Giants. They outplayed AND outcoached the Patriots and deserved to win.
Some comments:
* First, to the retirees:
Troy Brown -- thanks for a great career. Sorry you didn't have the chance to come on the field once this year for a swan song. I hope the Pats find a place for you in the front office.
Junior Seau -- thanks for two good years and stepping it up this year. Enjoy going back to surfing.
Tedy Bruschi -- thanks for a great career, but please be willing to retire so you won't suffer the indignity of being cut next near.
* Maybe Josh McDaniels should have been more aggressive towards those HC sports earlier. He dimmed his star considerably with an atrocious offensive game plan. Yes, the Giants' front 7 (esp. the front 4) played superbly, but in an ironically Martizan display of hubris (this time you're right, Aaron), the Pats tried nothing to adjust for it.
* Belichick was a poor sport for walking off the field with 0:01 remaining (at least he shook Coughlin's hand).
* A TD will lose the game. So HOW THE HELL can you call a jailbreak blitz and put Hobbs one-on-one against Burress? That really needs to be explained.
* Definitely frustrating to see the Pats D blow two game-ending plays (dropped INT by Samuel on final drive and the missed sack on Tyree's catch).
* And speaking of Tyree's catch -- WOW. That's an all-time Superbowl highlight play.
* Can we all agree that Rich Conley is right about Matt Light and Nick Kazcur?
* I thought the close up of Tom Brady (the play after they showed him yelling at some receiver) was very telling -- he looked totally lost and mentally beaten.
* Moss was right in his comment about not understanding the Pats not matching the Giants' intensity (though I would limit that to the offensive side of the ball -- I thought the Pats D played well all game until the final drive).
* Any Pats fan who complains about officiating costing NE the game is an ass.
* While I agreed with going for it on 4th and 13 from 32 (instead of the FG attempt or a punt), I wish that (given they didn't trust Gostkowski there) they had played for 4 downs and make a better 3rd down playcall.
Comments on the Audibles not on the game (which was the most fun I've had watching a super bowl in ages).
1. Hey FO, stop b*tching about the officiating already. It is beyond boring. You want to complain about Toomer's perhaps-OPI? How about the absolutley ridiculous spot Faulk got on that 2d down screen pass on the Pats 1 scoring drive in the first half? We rewound the DVR and his knee was down with the ball at least 1.5 yards short of the spot, for what would have been 3rd and 1 or 2. We can go on endlessly like this, but how is that interesting? Maybe you should link to another site: official-whining.com
2. And where do we put the 2007 Patriots in the sporting pantheon? Now it’s easy: Best team not to win the Super Bowl. I'll get t-shirts made up for the pats-loving FO writers.
3. How can there be not a single comment on Belichick walking off (and leading his team off) the field with time still left on the clock? The ref is clearly trying to stop him and tell him to go back, and Belichick pushes right past him. How is this not worth mentioning? Like I posted 2 weeks ago, I never gave any credence to complaints about Pats bias here, but the last month or so has made it impossible not to recognize some real bias (different than being a fan -- actual bias).
4. Why does so much of the talk about next year for the pats focus on how old the D is? The Pats lost this game with their O, not their D. You hold an opponent to 17 points, and your D has done its job (long opening drive or not).
A few observations:
* Why doesn't Belichick trust Gostkowski on long FGs? Those seemed like perfect kicking conditions last night, Gostkowski had put an earlier kickoff in the end zone, and I doubt he would have passed up the 49-yarder with the Vinatieri of old.
* 19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England's Unbeatable Patriots is currently the #16 book on Amazon (and has been for at least the last 8 hours). All those sales will be refunded, of course.
* I can't believe how well the majority of Patriot fans are taking this loss. Even Bill Simmons is gracious in defeat.
Hahaha! The pats are the biggest choke artist of our generation. Any Pats fan who says he still happy about the 18 wins is a liar. No Colts fan was happy about 14 wins. The pats made history. They choked harder than any team, ever.
Anyone who says the pats are the best team to not win the superbowl is pathetic. Just like the patriots pathetic choke job.
Did I say choke? Okay, just making sure.
Today is a great day for football fans. Flowers smell better, the sun is shining brighter, and pats fans are calling in sick, trying to hide their tears.
#1 - Can someone restate what Rich Conley said about Matt Light and Nick Kazcur?
#2 - Everyone so far agrees that the Giants outplayed the Patriots, so in that sense the better team won. However, I don't think there is any way of "tweaking" DVOA to see this coming.
#3 - Is it possible that maybe the best predictor of the SB outcome is now playoff HFA-adjusted DVOA? I believe that from 2004 to 2007, this may be true. 2001 is the last year I can think of that the SB winner played markedly worse in the preceding playoff games than the SB loser. Is there any other historical data to support this hypothesis?
I disagree that the Patriots were greatly outcoached last night. I think Belichick took necessary risks in his attempt to win the game. I liked the call to go for it on 4th and 13. For one, there is absolutely no gaurantee that they would pin the Giants with a punt. Second, Gostkowski hasn't even attempted a kick that long this year (as far as I know). Finally, they were in a grey area: close to the EZ, and had a shot at getting a TD against a pass rush that was absolutely abusing them to that point. I think if the converted and eventually scored, we'd be talking about Belichick's brilliance for risk management and a turning point in the game.
As for the lack of adjustments, I'm not sure what adjustments they can make. We've known that the Patriots' heel was the pass rush. You think that's because it takes the deep ball to moss out of the picture, but their entire offense is predicated on the deep ball, or the threat of the deep ball. If you're getting good pressure, you don't have a credible deep threat. If Moss were a better route runner, then you could give him some mid-routes to get favorable coverages, but he can't do that. Without a deep threat, Welker's stupid drag ad infinitum isn't nearly the threat that it is when you're scared of them taking it to the house. Their pass-catching RB was injured, and your other RB has terrible hands. What are they supposed to do? I guess more screens, but the Giants LBs had an excellent game, also. They tried running it and got something like 2 ypc. I understand Belichick's frustration, because not only did the defense identify the root of the Pats' offense and destroy it, the Giants' offense did the unthinkable and started, if the interviews are correct, making plays up in the middle of the game. If your opponent does that, I don't know what you're supposed to do, no matter how good a coach you are.
Just generally a fantastic game. I'm off to watch Tyree's catch over and over and over again.
"Well, if it’s a penalty against the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL, it should be here, I think. "
Maybe one year I'll stop having nightmares about that and playing what if games in my head. Maybe one year...
Well, the officiating *was* wacky. It felt like there was a definite pro-Patriot slant early and a pro-Giant slant late. Except for the delay of game penalty, though, the officiating was pretty consistently hands-off and had minimal impact on the outcome of the game. Which, in the end, is about all that can be asked for.
#3 When you allow an opening drive of 9+ minutes, you fail to stop the QB after it appears 3 players have a piece of him, you miss nearly all the interception opportunities and the entire defense looks tired for most of the 2nd half, it might not be completely wrong to suggest that there may be some work needed on the defense.
There seems to have been something of an over reaction to FO suggesting that the Pats would win. I don't see the bias and I'm reasonably convinced that had the Colts or Chargers had the season the Pats had, they would have been favoured over the Giants as well.
First, congratulations to the Giants fans. I doubted your team had it in them, and they very nearly didn't thanks to some costly nearly lost fumbles and nearly caught interceptions, but your defense pulled it out. Justin Tuck should have been the MVP. In the end, 18-1 was hilarious.
Ringing in my mind right now is a comment Andy Reid made to Angelo Cataldi on 610WIP last year, the sports radio channel in Philly about wideouts and defensive ends. "A good pass rusher is more important than a good pass catcher." Cataldi was of course incredulous since he's been campaigning for a new #1 since Owens left town, but we saw it very clearly last night.
In the poker game of football, 4 Aces beats a Brady and a Moss. 4 Aces also makes Spagnuolo look like a genius, which makes me wonder just how bad the linebacking talent was that he was left to work with here.
People have to remember that Audibles is fans watching a game, not statisticians watching a sample or journalists reporting an event. It does come off as homerish, but really it should.
Evil Bill Gates is a jerk.
And it was nice to see it mentioned that the T-Jack led Vikings are better than the World Champions. :)
4: Yeah, must be tough to swallow only winning three Super Bowls this decade.
Gostkowski must have been hurt on the 4th and 13. Maybe he tweaked something on the opening kickoff; his other kickoff in the first half was awful. I don't care what the sideline reporter said, nobody on the Pats sideline is going to tell him the kicker is gimpy.
As for the game, I have the utmost respect for the Pats. They really gave it their very best effort, hung in there for four quarters and gave the Giants all they could handle. A very worthy opponent.
Before the thread falls to the trolls, thanks FO for another season of intelligent football discussion.
I think the comments about Coughlin were dead on. The guy realized he had to change because the way he was coaching wasn't working - and he was able to do it. That took guts, humility, and determination.
I think what Aaron meant to say is that what happened to the Patriots is referred to as "going full Kotite."
Random thoughts:
Snide Snyder prediction: McDaniels will interview better and get along better with Cousin Vinne and will get the job over Spags.
’68 Colts – big difference between ’07 Pats and them was that Shula had a reputation for losing the big one already (27-0 in ’64 championship game; 13-10 in playoff w/Packers for conference champ, 34-10 in last game of ’67 that put LA in playoffs and knocked Colts out). He left Colts before they finally broke thru in ’70 and meanwhile suffered two more big game losses with the Dolphins. Not until ’72 did he shed the choker label – until that point he was the Marty Schottenheimer of his era. The ’70 Colts (with nice guy McCaffrey) winning it all was as if Norv had taken this year’s Chargers all the way, completing the Marty analogy.
Speaking of Marty, hmmm. Go for iffy 4th down instead of FG or punt. When you’ve won 3 SBs you get some slack. When you haven’t , you get fired.
When a player wrestles a ball away from a Charger, it demonstrates that your team has more heart, want-to, and football sense. When every fumble gets wrestled away from your team, did you suddenly lose those qualities?
Has any team ever beaten three better teams than Dallas/Green Bay/New England in the playoffs?) Best comp for Giants SB run IMO is ’69 Chiefs. Finished 2nd in division. Beat defending champ Jets (10-4) on the road, 13-7. Beat defending conference champs Raiders (12-1-1) on the road, 17-7. Beat NFL champ Vikings 23-7. Were 12 point underdogs in SB. Had dominant front 7 with 3 HoFers (Bell, Buchanan, Lanier) plus HoF CB (Emmitt Thomas). Their playoff opponents were great offensive teams (maybe not quite ’07 Pats) who averaged 26.4 pt/game as a group in the regular season but only scored 21 points TOTAL in three games against the Chiefs despite having HFA in two of the games.
If the game clock was the same as the clock Fox showed on screen, there were some serious problems with the time-keeping down the stretch.
I thought the Pats would win easily. I was wrong. Congratulations to the Giants and their fans.
"Which Super Bowl was the greatest ever?" is now in the running for the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
Friggin amazing game. Giants had just enough toughness, skill, intelligence, and luck to pull out the victory.
I'll be sad to see Spagnuolo go, especially to a division rival, but it looks like a near-certainty now. Has Gregg Williams signed with anybody yet? A DC switcheroo between NY & WAS would be an interesting subplot going into next season...
One other random note - I thought Fox did a nice job covering the game. The focus was almost always on the game - we didn't get 900 shots of Belichick or 500 of Coughlin, or a gazillion celebrity sightings. Buck and Aikman were fine. Just wanted to throw that in there.
#6 -- What Rich Conley said was "I’m not convinced there is a lot of talent. Mankins and Neal are studs, but Light and Kaczur are replacement level, and Koppen is probably average.
Brady’s ability to know exactly when to step up makes the Tackles look a whole lot better than they are."
Click my name for the link to the discussion in context.
One thing that would be interesting to see the charters look into is a breakdown of where blitzes come from. Most teams tend to blitz from the outside with OLB's or overload the blindside of the QB. In this game, it seemed that when the Giants blitzed they sent Kawika Mitchell up the middle or brought their safeties or other linebackers from the defensive left / offensive right, inside of Strahan. They brought the pressure right up to Tom Brady's face and it seemed to rattle him much more than other teams who brought pressure against him. Some of it may had to do with Brady knowing that Strahan and Uminyora were waiting for him if he went backwards or side to side, but I think something might be revealed if you compare Tom Brady's DVOA when facing pressure from outside rushers versus facing pressure from inside the Defensive Ends.
I'll repost my post from the superbowl preview, to laugh at myself and my loonyness
My truthiness tells me that the Giants will win. No i can’t back it up with all these fancy “stats†and “factsâ€. I know in my gut and thats better than whatever numbers you make up.
Peyton Manning is the one who alerted the authorities about spygate, its part of his plan to humilate Tom Brady, he set up the trade for Randy Moss so Brady would be tempted to throw the ball around and set all these records. But he knew Brady would be ready for him in playoffs this year, after he choked away his chance last year. So he ducked him like Ric Flair in his prime, because he knew the ultimate embarrassment was not another lost to Peyton Manning thats actually commendable, he’s a superbowl champ. But to go down in front of millions and millions to his plucky- try -hard little brother, there is no way he comes back from that. The dynasty will die-nasty.
Long live the sons of Manning the Elder
Giants win
Happily Ever After
Re: 13
Gostkowski must have been hurt on the 4th and 13. Maybe he tweaked something on the opening kickoff; his other kickoff in the first half was awful.
But, his final kickoff (with 2:42 left) landed at the 1 and had enough hang time for the gunner to tackle Hixon at the 17.
It seems like a usage issue - the longest attempt he had all year was 48 yards.
4: I can’t believe how well the majority of Patriot fans are taking this loss. Even Bill Simmons is gracious in defeat.
Comments like 13 help a lot, as the Giants fans on this site have been gracious in victory. Congratulations again on a well-earned win.
And 2: PatsFan, looks like we were right about the nailbiter part. I mentioned this in the game thread, but I really see that game yesterday as the flip side of the Pats' wins in 2003-04. The difference was that when NYG was put in an adverse situation (hello, David Tyree), they didn't make the crucial drop like Drew Bennett, or honk the kickoff out of bounds like Kasay.
On a superficial level, this game reminded me of the stunning Giants/Niners NFCCG in 1990. I haven't looked into it more closely, though.
Re #19 -
Gregg Williams interviewed in Dallas. They seem to be putting together an All Star Roster of former DC's and HC's.
Agreed. Steelers should have won the Super Bowl in their 15 win season, not the following season. We got a Super Bowl, but it just feels wrong that it had to come the next year, during the Did you know Jerome is from Detroit season.
A few random thoughts:
1) I thought the officials did a decent job this year. They got off to a bit of a shaky start, but for the most part they "let the players play", which is what everyone seems to want. Also, the bad calls (or non-calls) pretty much evened out - e.g. the OPI non-call was followed by the questionable false start call.
2. I agree with everyone who thought the decision to go for it on 4th-and-13 was ridiculous. I'm generally a big fan of aggressive coaching, but there's a difference between aggressiveness and arrogance. Ironically, this move reminded me a lot of Schottenheimer's decison to go for it on 4th-and-11 last year vs. the Patriots.
3. I know that it was probably not going to matter by that point, but I found Brady/McDaniels' decison to start chucking one Hail Mary after another on the last drive a bit surprising. They still had approximately 30 seconds and all 3 timeouts. They had plenty of time to complete at least 4 or 5 passes, which could have easily gotten them into FG range. However, they acted as if they didn't even have time to complete 2 passes. It was "All or Nothing", an approach which actually seemed to plague Brady's decision-making and McDaniels' playcalling throughout the first half, but which appeared to have vanished during the previous go-ahead drive.
25: Er, I meant Kurt's comment in 14. I swear that it was 13 earlier!
One thing nobody seems to be mentioning here, so I'll throw it out. Did anyone else find it interesting that the Pats didn't try to run when they had 1st and Goal from the 7 with under 3 to play? They were already engineering a pretty solid clock-winding drive, and if they grind another 45 seconds off or force the Giants to take a timeout, they can reasonably assume they'll have the last real drive of the game. Instead, they throw two incompletions and a TD while running just 13 seconds off. Of course, that may just be because I have Maroney in FF, so his stock goes up if he finds the EZ twice in the game :)
Travis - I know; my only guess is that he got some treatment at halftime or something. We'll never know for sure, but I can't believe "usage" would dictate going for it on 4th and 13, especially when the play was a desperation heave - it's not like they had some wonderful "gain 13 yards" play that they pulled out of their hat.
I've never been an Eli fan. I still don't think he's anything more than average-at-best talent wise. But that last last drive earned him my respect.
That ridiculous Tyree catch should go down as one of the greatest plays in NFL history. I have no idea what the nickname for that play will be (although it's already listed in wikipedia as "The Catch II" which is lame), but it should be right there alongside "The Music City Miracle", "The Catch", and "The Immaculate Reception". And that drive should be right up there with "The Drive".
That was possibly the more boring and anticlimactic first half I've ever seen, and easily the most exciting and entertaining second half I've ever seen. As a Philadelphia fan, I've been sick for the past two weeks thinking that I'd have to root for the Giants. But I (and the rest of my Eagles loving family) were genuinely excited and actively cheering for NY as opposed to against NE as I had expected. It was really an odd sensation. But I take solace in the fact that Jeremy Shockey may have gotten his ring, but had to watch the game from the stands. Boss' huge catch must have been particularly bitter.
Giants fans, tomorrow we'll be enemies again (as it should be), but for one night I was truly happy for you. Congratulations!
Mcdaniels was the one who choaked. The Giants pass rush took away the deep ball because it didn't give Brady enough time to execute. Wes Welker had a lot of quick catches underneath but he needed more.
I'd hold off on the Spags is a genius talk. Last year he was the Eagles LB coach that people thought shouldn't have got the job.
I don't blame Bellicheck for being classelss ( honestly, leaving the field of play didn't do anything). Richard Seymour saying " go home" to the Giants offense in the final drive had a lot less class. I am sure if they won he would have at that humble pie.
In the first half Bellicheck had his back turned to the Patriots offense because he was franticly working with the defense. He did his job in holding the Gmen to 17 points. The young Josh Mcdaniels is the one who choaked with only 14 points worth of offense.
I felt this audibles at the line was unsatisfying. The Amani Toomer push off happened, but that sort of stuff always happens and isn't always called. The Pats didn't lose the game because of one call in the first half.
4th & 13: well, if they had gained a few yards on 3rd down with an eye towards going for it on 4th, they would have been in comfortable FG range.
"19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England's Unbeatable Patriots": what i especially love is the link for the combo "Buy this book with New York Giants: 2008 Super Bowl Champions by Sports Publishing today!"
I'll repost this from another thread, before the haters and homers storm in:
"Hey, last week, I stated that it was ridiculous to call the ‘07 Patriots the greatest team ever, because it was evident to me that they had not, were not going to, simply obliterate playoff opponents in the manner that some teams with 15-1, 14-2, or even 13-3 regular season records had done. That got me called a Patriots hater, not for the first time, so I certainly don’t mean to go easy on obnoxious Patriots fans. The obnoxious anti-Pats contingent has really been bad lately, however."
Now, regarding the game, I too was rooting for Tuck to get the MVP, not that I have a huge problem with Manning. The Giants defensive line won this game (and I love big games which are won by defensive lines) however, and I would have liked to see a Giants d-lineman recognized.
This was the 2nd game in a row where the Giants' opponent decided that it was pointless to make more that a cursory effort to run the ball. Maybe it was, given Tuck's play, but the best way to slow down pass rushing ends is to run the ball effectively. I would have preferred it if the Patriots had attempted to do so.
There is little reason at this point to think that Eli Manning's play over the past five or six weeks does not represent a fairly permanent improvement. If that is the case, unless Strahan gets old in a hurry, the Cowboys, Packers, and everyone else in the NFC will have their hands full next year. Steve Smith is likely going to be a productive receiver next year, and if nothing else, Shockey has good trade value. Coughlin's next hire for defensive coordinator will be critical, of course, since it seems pretty certain that Spagnuolo will parlay yesterday's game into a head coaching job.
I think one of the reasons that it's difficult to quantitatively predict the Giants is because they're exceptionally erratic. They have large "hit or miss" elements on both sides of the ball.
If you look at Eli's numbers in aggregate, you see a pretty bad QB. But he's not like the QBs that are in his statistical tier. He's capable of playing at an extremely high level. Not just good. Very very good. Obviously he's also capable of throwing up some massive stinkers. Over the long run that evened out to below average #s, but at any given time you don't know what you're going to get.
The defense also has a large variable element in the pass rush. When the DLs are winning battles, the Giants pass rush can be so good that it will make the rest of the defense almost irrelevant. The Giants DL won a bunch of games for them this year. BUT if the opponent manages to protect the QB, the Giants defense can be awful, as we saw in the regular season Dallas games.
Put it together and you've got a high ceiling/low floor team. The high variability of both units makes their performance very difficult to predict.
Jesus, you guys are really biased towards the Pats. On that Bradshaw fumble check back your tapes, Woods fell on the ball, but he had no possession. Bradshaw had his arm below Woods and could easily pull the ball out. Putting your fat belly on the ball is not possession.
"Best team not to win the Super Bowl."
Now, now, at least my 1990 Bills got within field goal range. And kicked it.
re: that Stallworth escape on 3rd-and-13, did anyone see whether Welker had a crackback block on that play? It looked like it to me.
28(3): That confused me as well. 30 seconds and three timeouts is plenty of time to either hit Moss/Stallworth on the sidelines, Welker on intermediate crossing routes, or even Faulk on a ridiculous 60-yard screen. FG goes to overtime, switches the momentum, and clutch field goal drives are kind of Brady's thing ;)
-Congratulations to the Giants, who deserved to win. Clearly the MVP should not have been Eli, but rather the D-Line, who dominated and shut down the Pats' offense.
-Terrible job coaching by Josh McDaniels. For two weeks we hear that the Giants D-line is going to come with full pressure, and the Pats were completely unprepared to deal with it. Bizarre. The O-line of the Pats looked like a bunch of scrubs out there. It wasn't just the pressures and the sacks: take a look at how many rushing plays didn't even make it back to the line of scrimmage. Disgraceful.
-Even with that in mind, the Pats need to rejuvenate their defense much more than their offense. While the Giants were able to make the Pats' O-line look bad, a lot of mid-tier teams made the Pats' pass defense look bad in the last 8 games. And now their best pass defender is likely to leave via free agency? The Pats might be well advised to see if they can afford what it would take to keep Assante Samuel. The possibility that Ellis Hobbs will be their #1 CB next year is going to give Pats' fans nightmares.
-Whose idea was it to have Hobbs on Plaxico 1-on-1 at the goal line with the game on the line? That is the single worst coaching decision I've ever seen, with the exception of Grady Little leaving Pedro Martinez in one inning too many in 2003. Everybody with even a passing familiarity with the game knew Hobbs could not cover Plaxico 1-on-1! I know a lot of people are talking about the FG never attempted, but in my mind this coaching decision was much worse.
I don't think the Pats' run is over. They still have no real competition in the AFC East, and they have a great QB and a lot of good players on offense and on the defensive line. But they had gotten lucky down the stretch with a lot of their wins (esp. against the Ravens) and the luck was bound to turn against them eventually. All sorts of lucky bounces went the Giants' way, and it seemed that every controversial refereeing decision favored the Giants. But that's all part of football, and it doesn't change the fact that the line play, overall, favored the Giants by a lot, and it's damned hard to win a big game when you cede control of the line of scrimmage to the other team.
#34 Will :
As a football analyst you're right on. To all the others from last week's steady stream of NYG minimizers : Hopefully you all will be changed forever by the Giants terrific season of 07/08 and be better analysts in the future--of all things in life. I'm sure the talk of the "mediocre" Giants is now buried. As I pointed out several times, which should have never needed to be pointed out to begin with, mediocre teams in football do not do what the Giants had done going into yesterday. Their run was not a "fluke" and I can only say that those of you who thought it was--have never played the game even at a high school level. Besides their unprecedented, record win streak on the road--you can add this to the list of achievement : They polished off the 3 highest scoring teams of the year in succession--all away from home. Sorry DVOA inventors, you have the best analysis system ever but it could not quantify the REALITY of the New York Giants. Past performance measurement can only give so much. Good luck to all of you in continuing to find an "edge" but there will never, ever be a time when you will know with any degree of certainty ahead of time what is going to happen.
If Spagnuolo left, the favorite to replace him would probably be Ron Rivera, if only because he runs the same scheme.
Still, how ironic would it be if the next NY DC was Gregg Williams?
re: 21
After yesterday, I have to think Matt Light is the most overrated player on the Patriots. I've seen him schooled by Jason Taylor, schooled by Dwight Freeney and now schooled by Osi Umenyiora. At some point I have to stop thinking "well, he's good except for the very best DEs" and think that Pats need to start looking for a real franchise offensive lineman.
Koppen looked bad yesterday simply because he twice let the Giants blitz right up the middle without even thinking about blocking the guy.
I haven't had time to read all the comments yet, but here are a few random thoughts:
1) I thought the officials did a decent job this year. They got off to a bit of a shaky start, but for the most part they "let the players play", which is what everyone seems to want. Also, the bad calls (or non-calls) pretty much evened out - e.g. the OPI non-call was followed by the questionable false start call.
2) I agree with everyone who thought the decision to go for it on 4th-and-13 was ridiculous. I'm generally a big fan of aggressive coaching, but there's a difference between aggressiveness and arrogance. Ironically, this move reminded me a lot of Schottenheimer's decison to go for it on 4th-and-11 last year vs. the Patriots.
3) I know that it was probably not going to matter by that point, but I found Brady/McDaniels' decison to start chucking one Hail Mary after another on the last drive a bit surprising. They still had approximately 30 seconds and all 3 timeouts. They had plenty of time to complete at least 4 or 5 passes, which could have easily gotten them into FG range. However, they acted as if they didn't even have time to complete 2 passes. It was "All or Nothing", an approach which actually seemed to plague Brady's decision-making and McDaniels' playcalling throughout the first half, but which appeared to have vanished during the previous go-ahead drive.
Having said all that, congratulations to the Giants, who played a hell of a game.
Two things I haven't seen brought up yet:
1) Stephen Neal's injury was huge. The Giants abused Hochstein after Neal went out.
2) Randall Gay was awful. We may have to wait until the gamecharting is done to really appreciate how bad he was. At least three of Manning's third down conversions were at his expense.
I think there has to be a connection with Josh McDaniels calling his first SB and the Patriots struggling. Joe Buck or a sideline reporter commented that BB was spending all his time during the offensive series talking to the defense on the sidelines during the majority of the first two quarters. Couple that with a surprising lack of adjustments and it just doesn’t seem like the coaching staff was with it during the game.
Sorry for the double post (#28 & #42). Something's weird's going on with my computer, or with this site, or maybe both.
i'm hoping this game indicates a new dynasty, and that next year brings us a manning showdown. what about the possibility of adding a different manning to the 'best quarterback of all time' argument? could we be seeing the birth of a new manning to dominate, or maybe two mannings to trade rings? i know that's all crazy/wishful thinking, but perhaps we'll look back to this super bowl as the moment everything changed. or not.
Some observations on the game from a Giants fan:
- It is easy to play MMQB and say the Patriots should have went with the short passing game earlier, but I think the Pats were probably trying to attack the Giants' safeties, especially James Butler. He has been toasted numerous times this season.
- I think the Giants' strong defensive performance simply comes down to the fact that their front four dominated their individual matchups against the Pats' O lineman. According to one article I read, Spagnuolo estimated he called blitzes 30-35% of the time. That doesn't strike me as a high percentage and I'd hold off on awarding him "genius" status.
- The Patriots never had possession on the fumbled exchange between Manning and Bradshaw.
- Bucky Brooks of SI.com gave the Giants receivers an A in the game. I thought they were poor through the first three quarters. However, David Tyree's catch on 3rd and 5 made up for all of the previous drops. (I think Russell Levine meant to compare Tyree's catch to Mark Ingram's catch-and-run in Superbowl XXV.)
- I guess the NFL decided that it's important to play the entire 60 minutes in the Super Bowl after two seconds were wiped off the clock after Vinatieri's FG in Super Bowl XXXVI.
- The win that ended SF's bid for a threepeat was sweet, but nothing will ever match this.
re:43
Randall Gay was hurt at the start of the game, which is why many of us are not so critical of his performance. Also, he's just the nickel back, and he did have a crucial pass defense after his injury which resulted in him having to fall on his injured arm.
I don't have a problem with his play, though the thought of Gay and Hobbs being the Pats CBs next season scares the bejeezus out of me.
I think the story of this game was that the Giants defensive line just completely, utterly and in all other wise dominated the Patriots offensive line, to the point that there really was nothing Belichick or McDaniels could do about it. As far as I know, max protect isn't in the Patriots' playbook. Kazcur couldn't handle Strahan by himself, and Light couldn't handle Umenyiora by himself, and you can't give them both help at the same time, not while there's also still Justin Tuck to be addressed. It was just too much to block. The Patriots didn't have an answer, and if you played that game ten times over, I'm not sure that you'd find that there is any answer.
I've been watching Osi Umenyiora closely all through the playoffs, and I must say that if there's a more valuable defensive player in the league than Osi Umenyiora, I don't know who that might be. He dominated the game and should have been named MVP.
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