Tuesday Afternoon Linebacker

The major football season is now complete (who watches the Pro Bowl?) and we are now beset with the lonely time until training camp opens. TALB rejoices in the fact that the Eagles, so often left watching some other team hoist the Halas, were able to take the next step and watch someone else hoist the Vince. Did Andy Reid remind anyone else of Santa Claus on Sunday? He had the reading glasses going on, and when he has his play sheet down around his mouth it was almost like a beard. And Randall Gay jokes are still funny. TALB is 13 years old at heart, sue me.

Pat-Trick? Tea-Peat? (Actual headlines on other sites…)
Let me get this out of the way right now. Philly Sucks, now with individual pages monitoring the suckitude of each of the four major Philadelphia sports franchises. The Eagles “lead” the pack with about 16115 days (at the time of this writing) since the last time they hoisted a league trophy.

On to the game itself. It would be fair to say the Patriots were not themselves in the first half. The defense stood up to the Eagles while the offense tried to get it’s act together. Luckily for the Patriots that was good enough. One wonders what the outcome would have been if the offense was playing as well as the defense for the Champs. That the Eagles were even in the game in the fourth quarter, I think, had more to do with the Patriots lack of a spark than the Eagles’ own abilities.

Which isn’t to say that the Eagles were terrible. They made a few good plays on defense, and exploited a weakness or two theTherotted on offense. They just were not prepared for what the Patriots could bring, even when they weren’t playing their A game.

The mood in the COBL must be pretty somber this morning. They finally make it to the Super Bowl and then fall flat in the face of a less than stellar performance by their opponent. TALB laments that the Eagles probably still have one or two more runs in them before they have to re-tool.

And then there was the terrible clock management by Reid and the Eagles. How do you huddle with less than two minutes to go, down by three, inside your own five, and the clock running? Unless you think you can hit that 80-yard pass, you don’t do that and expect to win.

TALB was way off on my prediction of Pats 31 Eagles 19. But it was probably just as good as any other final score prediction you’ve seen.

What has been amusing over the last couple of days have been the media types who are saying that the Patriots’ accomplishments are not as great as those of the Cowboys or 49ers of previous decades. It would seem to me that the opposite is true. The Patriots, in the era of the salary cap, have been able to hold a team together and win time and time again. The 90’s Cowboys and 80’s 49ers did not have to deal with the cap and the kind of free agency we see today. I’m not even that big of a Patriots fan, but a team of this caliber needs to be given their due.

The only thing standing in the way of this team doing it one more time is the need to sign a slew of key free agents. Leading that list would be Tedy Bruschi and Adam Vinatieri.

Wrangled
The five time champion Tampa Bay Storm handled the lowly Austin Wranglers on Sunday. The hometown boys were sloppy, committing ten costly penalties during the course of the game. Though, Tim Marcum notched his 100th regular season victory. So far in two games the Storm have looked excellent and sloppy. Hopefully the excellent team will show up against Orlando next week.

Playing in February
Get used to February Super Bowls, the next three (Detroit XL, Miami XLI, and Arizona XLII) are all scheduled for a first Sunday in February date. I guess teams will have to change their cliché from “we want to be playing in January” to “we want to be playing in February”.

Crap Definition
In the era of HD and widescreen, Fox saw fit to install tiny cameras into the end-zone pylons and the field itself for the Super Bowl. There was more footage shown OF the pylon cam than from the camera itself it seemed. And the one time that I saw a shot from an in-field camera it was of a gentleman’s undercarriage. Hopefully this “innovation” will go the way of CBS’ ill advised “bullet time” system from XXV.

Future Editions of TALB
TALB will probably become more of a monthly or even less frequent item as the off-season progresses. Expect to see an edition around the NFL draft. And probably a round-up of sorts after free agency winds down. It has been kind of cool to try and keep this up all season. I look forward to doing it again this fall.

Running Items
WTF?
Why did Fox spend so much time pimping American Idol? At this point, people know that it is on and if they choose to watch it, will find out when. Maybe they didn’t sell enough ad time this year.

Breath Of A Salesman
Hands-down, Careerbuilder.com wins the Super Bowl commercial competition. Monkeys make me laugh every time. Though, Godaddy.com’s spot was a close second.

Reverse Watch
Second half (I think), the Patriots fake the hand-off to the running back, then fake to a wide-out who was coming around the end. Joe Buck exclaims “…fake reverse…”, shameful.

Super Bowl XL
Let’s get an early start with this one. How about… Steelers versus Vikings. I don’t know. Sounded good.