Having finally stopped giggling like a school girl after Sunday night...
Thank you in advance for listening to my stream of consciousness:
First, I'm tired of people who rooted for the Seahawks (Hey, you can get off the bandwagon now.) telling me that the interception was "lucky." Yeah, right, because that catch that Kearse made was 100% skill. Let's get one of those physics professors who was all over deflategate to tell us about the chances of a ball bouncing off his hands, hitting his knee, rolling up his outstretched leg, bouncing off his right hand and landing on his chest are...
http://deadspin.com/jermaine-kearses-insane-super-bowl-catch-in-extreme-sl-1683234978I'm not taking anything away from the catch. It was amazing. But you can't label one luck and one skill.
author=nickagneta link=topic=75998.msg1819017#msg1819017 date=1422904021]
The Pats are the youngest team to ever win a Super Bowl.
Add that to the legacy of Bill Belichick
And I believe that BB is the third oldest. Take that, young whipper-snappers! He was walking to Schaefer uphill (both ways) in the snow before Gronk was born!
I'm tired of people saying that Tom Brady is the best quarterback of all time. At this point he's the greatest player of all time. A true legend. Football's Michael Jordan.
A bit of an exaggeration, don't you think? Shouldn't it be that Michael Jordan is basketball's Tom Brady?
Neither of them, however, will ever outdo Tedy Bruschi. He went back for the freakin' squeaky toys! (May not load right the first time; you may need to un-mute it.).
http://media.wgr550.com/a/17953440/classic-bits-tedy-bruschi.htm?q=tedy+bruschi
It freaked me out at the time, too, but think about it. It was only 2nd down. If Seattle scores, the Pats have preserved all of their timeouts and only need a FG. The Pats can't win if Seattle scores *and* they don't have enough timeouts to run all of their routes on offense. So you need a stop on 2nd down, then you call the timeout. If they score on 3rd down, you still have multiple timeouts and can run ~3 plays to get 40 yards and kick a FG. If they don't score on 3rd down, you call timeout and have 1 play to win the Super Bowl.
It wouldn't have been crazy to call the timeout of course, but stupid, period? Not in the Pats playbook. There is no football team on the planet more aware of what they are doing at that point in a game.
Here's my take, and maybe I'm just over-estimating BB's abilities: It's 2nd and goal on the 1. You have two choices:
Choice 1: Call the time out, give them a minute to regroup and figure out what they are going to do. If they score, you then have one time out and need to go the length of the field in under a minute. Fortunately, that Pats have never been in that situation before. Oh, wait, they have...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XLVIWhat are the odds that you can get 60 yards or so in that minute against the best defense in the NFL? Not good. I love Brady, but he'd be chucking a lot of short passes over the middle.
Choice 2: Knowing that Seattle has one time out and will let the clock run, it's safe to assume that they will get three shots at the end zone, but one of them is going to have to be a pass to stop the clock if it's incomplete. You're okay with the pass. Russell Wilson is a young quarterback, and you have a history of messing up young QBs. So you decide to leave it to your defense to stop them twice. Risky? Sure, but look at your other option above. Your defense has gotten you here, have faith. I'm guessing he wasn't counting on a pass on the first play, but sometimes you just get lucky.
I was screaming at the TV for Belichick to call the time out, having already accepted defeat (i.e., that the Seahawks score and I have to preserve time). Belichick did not. And that leads me to my final conclusion: There's a reason that one of us is the head coach of the Super Bowl champs and the other is typing away on a sports blog.
Mike
