First off, forget Shaun Phillips as my ex-Purdue athlete of the day. I love the guy, and it sucks he had to leave with that groin injury. But my, oh my, how about that Roosevelt Colvin interception (it's small, but that's the picture to the left). Incredible. Which reminds me...... the Patriots had some serious pixie dust going on in that game. Planet Killer will probably pick this observation to shreds because he's smarter than me, but didn't Tom Brady and the Pats do their best impersonation of a typical Manning/Colts playoff debacle... except for the end result? First, the Pats completely--and I mean completely--abandoned the running game. By my count, for the second half stretch before the series where Brady completed that huge dagger of a completion to Caldwell and the Pats started running clock, 30 of 33 plays were pass plays. During that stretch, the Chargers blitzed the hell out of Brady and forced him to fumble once and throw two picks. Brady was constantly rushed into bad decisions, a lot like the Pats have always seemed to be able to force Manning into bad decisions.
If it wasn't for incredibly, incredibly fortuitous plays on defense (Colvin's pick), special teams (the Eric Parker fumble and Pats recovery), and in transition (the most incredible of them all--the Troy Brown forced fumble after a Brady pick), the Patriots wouldn't have even been in this game. At all. Philip Rivers looked really, really good. LT ran the ball like LT always runs the ball. And the Chargers still lost. And I'm sure Pats fans will natter on about how this is just the way Patriots teams play playoff football, they do what it takes to win, and blahblahblah. But sometimes that shit is luck, plain and simple. This is one of those times. If the Colts want a blueprint of how to take down this Pats team this weekend, they need look no further than this game tonight.
Good on the Bears for winning today and ruining a perfect 4-for-4 for trout this weekend. Bastards. I'm not sure they deserved it, but they've been winning games like that all year. That game against New Orleans is going to be a fun one to watch. And really, how fun is the Super Bowl going to be, regardless of who gets there? Three out of the four remaining teams haven't sniffed the big game in a long time, and the other one is the closest thing professional sports has to a dynasty right now. Good stuff.
10 comments:
If the Colts don't beat the Patriots this year, Irsay should trade the franchise to the NFC.
Also, I hate that I have to root against the Cinderella story next week.
Maybe Irsay could trade the Colts to Baltimore. I hear their fans might like that ...
Just for times sake and the late hour I won't rewrite the whole post from the PK site, but yeah, the Chargers should've won, but they didn't because they've yet to either weed out the mentally weak (Parker and Florence come to mind) or toughened them up so they don't make mistakes like they made.
Every team gets lucky at some point, but what sets the great teams apart from the good teams is that the great teams take advantage of their breaks. You can go back to the Snow Bowl against the Raiders - they got lucky on the Tuck Rule, but if Vinatieri doesn't connect on a 45 yard FG in the swirling snowstorm, they don't win.
What worries me is that Peyton has been so awful he's due for a huge game.
I'm not sure, too, if the Colts can replicate SD's gameplan, either, simply because I'm guessing the Pats will attack the Colts' D differently than they attacked the Chargers. I'm guessing we won't see many three and four wide sets, and we'll see a heck of a lot of Dillon and Maroney. Of course, they Colts have been pretty good at stopping the run the last two weeks, so who knows?
Yeah... perhaps I should rephrase my "luck" comment to the effect of the Pats were lucky they were playing a Schottenheimer-coached, non-playoff tested team. Perhaps like they'll be lucky in facing the Colts next week who will have to battle the colossal mindfuck constructed by the Pats over the years. So yes, in a sense, the luck isn't really luck at all in either instance...
Da Bears! Dare I say Bears vs Colts in Super Bowl XLU#27II@W? Feeding the Goat website would explode and I would have so many Colt fan friends to trash talk with for two weeks.
Its going to be hard to root against Drew Brees next week(I once yelled to him across the Cary Quad courtyard that I wanted to have his children) but Drew, the Saints are going down! And ah, you got some shit on the side your face...oh, nevermind.
Sometimes I wish it weren't so easy to hate bears fans.
I think Bob phrased things perfectly, even the XLU#27II@W. The passion of Bears fans proves once again how great Chicago sports fans are. What a great city.
Does Cincinnati have sports teams now? ooh...bratwurst!
How can you possibly hate on bratwurst? You do shame to fat guys everywhere. Go drink your Old Style and go to a Cubs game.
I guess my tone was lost in my comment. I was saying "ooh" in a happy tone. Like if Homer Simpson just found a bratwurst. I love bratwurst. I just had one for breakfast.
The Bear predicts:
Saints--24 Bears--14
Patriots--30 Colts 28
Saints--21 Patriots--20
Remember folks, you heard it here first.
Also, next year:
1. Shottenheimer fired after the 2007 season when he goes fo rit on 4th and 31 from his own goal line on a fullbakc dive while leading by 3 with 22 seconds left.
2. T.O. cut by Cowboys, goes to the Alouettes in the CFL, calls his QB a homo, and tries to kill himself by drinking a quart of yogurt.
3. Rookie Ted Ginn runs back kickoff in first NFL game for TD, but ends up on injured reserve when to celebrate he climbs the goalpost and dives off it onto his head.
4. Eli Manning leads Giants to a disappointing 5-11 season but Coach Coughlin is convinced that he sees improvement.
5. The Falcons hires Mike martz and, in the first minute of his news conference, he burns three time outs and refuses to audible.
6. On the eve of yet another Pats/Colts playoff game, four masked men dressed in Colts unifroms try to rob Tom Brady at gunpoint but are thwarted when Brady calls out a series of numbers and tosses his wallet to a seventh round draft pick across the street who proceeds to elude the robbers.
You've been great--that's all folks.
Post a Comment