One Time

By: Chad Ruter

One of the most memorable moments from The Little Giants is when everyone is congregated in the locker room when Danny O’Shea (Rick Moranis) tells his team about the one time he beat his older brother Kevin in a race, followed by a couple of the players telling their tales of something great happening just one time. For Eli Manning, his one time was Super Bowl XLII, and by God if he didn’t take his opportunity to the bank.

The best team did not win last night’s game. Far from it. The Patriots were by far the better team on paper. They had it all. A legendary, record-setting quarterback, a running back that could grind out yards, a receiving core that had a deep threat and a possession guy that both could bust a big play. They had the best offensive line in the biz, and a defense that was old, but wily. Good enough to win any game if it came down to it. And with my hands already behind my back in preparation for the cliche police to arrest me, that’s why they play the game. The best team didn’t win, but the team that played the best did. Every game leading up to the Super Bowl is meaningless. Winning the big game is all that matters.

MVP Eli Manning really didn’t deserve that award. Yes, he did throw two touchdown passes in the 4th quarter to lead his team from behind twice, but he really only played mediocre. On that final drive he had three passes (not including “The Play,” that is easily the most unbelievable play in Super Bowl history) that should’ve been picked off to end the game – one on the Rodney Harrison missed tip pass (a play he usually always makes), the ball that went through the hands of All-Pro Asante Samuel, and the floater that Brandon Merriweather just couldn’t coral. If any one of those passes gets intercepted, the game ends, and Eli Manning is the goat once again. But it was one of those fluky nights where everything was just going his way.

The real MVP award should go to Justin Tuck. The defensive line for the Giants dominated the entire night, but it was Tuck’s two sacks and relentless in-your-face pressure that kept Tom Brady from being Tom Brady. I can’t blame a whole lot of what happened on those offensive tackles. The Pats never adjusted to max protect to help them out, Osi Umenyiora and Michael Strahan are just too damn good, and Matt Light is taught to let those guys take the high road to take themselves out of the play. He usually lets those guys go real wide, and Brady steps up to avoid them. Last night, Justin Tuck was getting so much pressure along with the inside blitzes the Giants defense unleashed that Brady had no room to step up, making it tough for him to get off clean throws. Brady’s accuracy was way off because of all of it. His passes normally hit receivers in stride, but that wasn’t so last night. He frequently put his receivers in harms way, and was lucky he didn’t get Moss and Welker hurt. He got outplayed – simple as that.

This next part is the most inconceivable part of the night. Justin mentioned this in his post, but he’ll admit that it’s the first thing I said after the TD pass to Plaxico. Why in God’s name do you only have one guy covering a 6′5” monster inside the 20-yard line?? It makes absolutely no sense! And if you are going to blitz and leave him in one-on-one coverage, then why in God’s name isn’t your All-Pro cornerback making the average of the Top-5 highest paid DB’s in the league covering him? Was Asante Samuel dead? Why didn’t anyone ask this question to Belichick after the game? Damn near everybody dropped the ball in this case…all except for Plaxico Burress. Hell, I could’ve thrown that TD pass. Eli saw the man-to-man coverage and started drooling.

And what in the world was that final drive by the Patriots. You have 35 seconds and three timeouts, and all you can draw up his three plays to go deep, one of which getting Tom Brady absolutely demolished for the final time? Wes Welker catches 11 balls, and the Giants are all playing deep coverage….get him the ball on a screen and let him go! You know they are going to be doubling and tripling Randy Moss. Belichick got completely outcoached the entire game, and the last drive was no different.

Then after the game, Belichick walked off the field with one second left. He took a lot of flack today in the media, but I’ll be one of the ones that gives him a slight pass. Yes, it was classless, but when has he ever been a classy guy? He must not have heard what referee Mike Carey said to him, and he just wanted to congratulate his colleage and get the hell out of there. Imagine your feeling. You’re 12 point Super Bowl favorites sitting on an 18-0 record – 3 minutes away from immortality, and it blows up in your face. I’d be pissed off and furious too. The guys who should be pissed off the most are his players. They give their hearts and souls to Belichick for 6 months out of every year, and when they could use a leader the most, the cameras found him scampering toward the shadows of the locker room. But again, do we expect anything less from the great Bill Belichick?

-A couple quick notes before I leave you for tonight. I hate to get off topic, but I need to say what I’m thinking. I want to say thank you to my co-workers at Scoutware. To any of you that read this, you don’t realize what a blessing all of you have been. Change is something I don’t deal with the very well, and moving into the suburbs has been one of the toughest, but at the same time, one of the best things that has happened to me. I love getting up every morning because I love seeing the people that I work with. Despite only being there a month, I can honestly say I’ve found some great friends there. And an extra congratulations to my co-worker Derek – for reasons that he knows.

-Coming up later this week will be posts ranging from Bobby Knight’s sudden retirement (happened just hours ago) to my dream baseball team. Keep reading everyone, and let any sports fans that you talk to about our site. We really need to keep our readership growing!

-CR

A Snow Day For Satan

By: Justin Jacobs

Super Bowl XLII has come and gone and now everything we know has changed. The unbeatable Patriots have been beaten, 17-14 at the hands of (mostly) the Giants defense. You can talk all you want about karma and Eli Manning, but when it comes down to it the Giants won because they put Tom Brady on the turf early and often. Brady got knocked down 18 times in last night’s game, that’s a knockdown for every win the Patriots got this year. Yes Eli got the MVP, but the G-Men’s defensive line deserves most of the credit for this all-timer of an upset. But I’m getting way ahead of myself here, let’s chop this thing up Tarantino style and start at the beginning.

Chad and I both watched the Super Bowl over at our buddy Zach’s house where we had a chance to watch the game on two big screen televisions and have our choice of about fifteen different kinds of food. My thanks to Zach for having us over, it was a great time my friend. If I had to say which team I was rooting for last night it would probably be the Patriots. I picked them to win (see our preview blog) and I would have loved it if the Pats could have shut up those 72′ Dolphins assholes once and for all. I swear to God if I have to see Mercury Morris running his mouth anymore I am going to go on an infant punching rampage, something I haven’t done since the 04′ ALCS. The 72′ Dolphins may be the most petty sports figures in history and I hope at least some of them live just long enough to see their record broken. Although I think we saw our best chance of that happening last night.

The Giants took the ball first and proceeded to drive it down the field at a slow and steady rate, making a FG to take the first lead.. In the first half the Giants did a great job of holding onto the ball thus keeping Brady and that high powered offense off the field. This may have had something to do with the Patriots not getting into a good offensive rhythm in the first half even though they scored on their opening drive. Offensively this was the Giants game plan all night. They wanted to run the ball, which they did pretty well, Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw combined for 90 yards compared to the Patriots’ meager 45 total rushing yards. The Patriots never really gave the running much of a shot, but we’ll get to that later. The Giants were also able to convert on third down half of the time, something that bodes well for a team playing the Pats, you want to keep your offensive on the field if for no other reason then to keep the Pats off of it.

What bugged me about the first half of this game were all the opportunities that the Giants had to grab the lead that were ultimately squandered by stupid penalties. The Giants were able to consistently get the ball down the field, but every time they got into scoring range they’d make some kind of stupid mistake and would have to end up punting. I couldn’t help but wonder when this would come back to haunt them, but it never happened. The Giants defense wouldn’t let it happen.

A lot of people this year have compared the New England Patriots to a great Madden team. You know, the kind of team that you have to turn off fair trades in order to get. A prolific Madden offense is almost impossible to beat. In fact there’s really only one way to beat one. You have to A} control the time of possession, something the Giants did a great job of in the first half and B) get pressure on the QB with the front four. I’ve been over A so let’s talk a little more about B. If you play someone who is good in Madden and you try to send more than four people you are going to get picked apart, something that Brady did with both the Ravens and the Eagles earlier this year. If you can take control of the DE and get to the QB with the four down lineman however you have a great shot at forcing early throws and taking their offense out of rhythm. You didn’t have to be a NFL analyst to see the effect Justin Tuck and company had on Brady. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tom so off his game.

The strange thing is even though the Giants were pretty much dominating the game in the first half they went to the locker room at halftime down 3-7. Again, the Giants missed some opportunities and if it wasn’t for their defense things could have been much worse. Much worse like the halftime show. I mean I really don’t care about Tom Petty anymore and by the look of everyone else who was watching the game with me, I am not alone. These Super Bowl halftime show’s have become increasingly worse in the years since “Nipplegate”. I know they want to keep things rated G, but why not have a good arena band who also happens to be under the age of 50. The Foo Fighters seem like they’d be perfect for a Super Bowl halftime show, they play in arenas all the time, they have a set list that people under the age of 20 would know, and they have shown they can perform well on the big stage (many feel they were the best band to play at Live Earth last summer).

Back to the game.

The 3^rd quarter was a bit of a bore-fest. The G-men held onto the ball for almost 12 of the 15 minutes but couldn’t get the ball in the endzone. Meanwhile the Giants defense continued to get to Brady and stuff the Patriots run… that was basically all that happened. Don’t believe me check out this link.

In the 4^th quarter things got good, historically good. I’m not one of those people who are ready to coronate Eli Manning as one of the best players in the league, I’ll leave those kinds of assertions to the “experts’ at ESPN, but god damn if he didn’t have himself a great 4^th quarter. He started things off by driving the Giants down the field and throwing a laser to David Tyree on a slant to take the lead 10-7. After both teams fail to score on subsequent possessions there is 7:54 left on the clock, the Patriots have the ball, and Tom Brady did what he does best. In what was the Patriots best looking drive of the night Brady hooked up with Wes Welker three times, Kevin Faulk once and Randy Moss twice, including the six yard touchdown pass. It was the first time all game we saw the Pats move the ball down the field in that quick and precise manner that we’d became accustomed to seeing this year.

14-10 Patriots

We’ve seen this before. No matter how bad a game Brady is having he’ll always find a way to get the job done when it matters the most. Now Eli Manning had to come out and lead his team down the field with 2:39 left and score the game winning touchdown. I had my doubts that Eli could be come up in the clutch, but who didn’t? I mean this is Eli Manning we’re talking about, the guy who just “doesn’t care.” The guy who has had to live in big brothers shadow his whole life and just couldn’t measure up with the expectations. It didn’t matter that he had lead his team past the best competition in the NFC, this was the big stage and he was playing the unbeatable Patriots. And what does he do? He single handedly leads his team to the game wining score in the most viewed Super Bowl of alltime.. What a crazy world we live in.

I’m not going to re-cap the whole drive but by now you’ve seen “The Great Escape” or Manning’s improbable elusion of the Patriot’s pass rush and the impossible catch that David Tyree made with one hand and his helmet. He caught the ball with his f***ing helmet! I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a bigger play made when it was most necessary in a Super Bowl. Interesting though, what people aren’t talking about today is that this play would never have happened if either Rodney Harrison or Brandon Meriweather could have intercepted two errant passes Eli threw up for grabs. If that ball get’s picked there is no “Great Escape” and we are talking about the Pats being the greatest NFL team of all time.

The rest is history.

Eli finds a (much too) wide-open Plexico Burress to take the lead with less then a minute left.

Brady get’s sacked on the ensuing possession, then is off the mark on a couple of deep bombs to Moss.

The Giants take a knee on the last snap of the season….

Ball Game.

Here are a couple of more general thoughts I had on the game:

1. Why was Ellis Hobbs 1-on-1 with Plex on that last touchdown grab? I understand that the Patriots were blitzing Manning, but don’t put a 5′8″ corner on 6′5″ receiver with big play ability, especially when the offense is in scoring range with the Super Bowl on the line.

2. Overall I enjoyed the overpriced/overproduced commercials. My favorite was probably the Life Water ad where the geckos break out into the thriller dance Although the Doritios ad where the mouse beats the crap out of the random dude was pretty good as well .

3. Is Eli Manning still wearing his championship T-Shirt over his shoulder pads? Aren’t there PR people who are supposed to tell Eli that maybe it’s not a good idea to accept the Lombardi trophy looking like an idiot?.

To wrap this bad boy up I have these thoughts on the Patriots blowing the 19-0 season. In a historical context them losing to the Giants won’t be as big of a deal as it now seems. The Patriots will still be known as the dominate team from this decade, and people will be talking about the scoring records that this team broke long after the talk of this upset dies down. (Although as a Yankees fan it was nice to see a Boston team “lose” on such a big stage.) It was a great win for the Giants, and they deserve to have their time in the sun, but next year is going to come and the Patriots will retool and be ready to contend for another title. I hate to compare a Boston team to the Yankees but eventually Patriots fans are going to come to the same realization that I made about six months after the 04′ ALCS. That realization is that the Patriots are one of the greatest teams in NFL history and one moment can no longer define them. Eli Manning will probably be defined by last nights game in the annals of history, and he deserves it, but last night’s game will only be a page in the book that is the Patriots reign at the top of the NFL.

Is the book closing on the Pats? We’ll have to wait for next year to find out.

-JJ