You Didn’t See This Coming Either
Unless you’re a die-hard Giants fan, you didn’t think they’d win. Heck, even most Giants fans, while wanting to win, didn’t think they’d win. Admit it. Sure maybe you were telling people that you hated the way the Patriots strut around. And you’re sick of their cheating ways. But you knew, just knew that they’d win Super Bowl XLII. By a lot. That it would be over before Tom Petty started lip syncing through his hits.
Maybe Brady’s bum ankle was more “bum” than anyone wanted to believe. That’s what happens when you list your starting quarterback as questionable every week of every year; wolf indeed. And you know that every football scribe from Boston to Honolulu had three-quarters of their post-Super Bowl column written before they landed in Phoenix, and TALB is no different. Except that I didn’t have anything written, just some thoughts in my head. So this might be a tad disjointed.
First, let’s give the Giants their due. I’m sure the thrust of most articles this week will focus on what the Patriots did wrong. How they lost the game, rather than how the Giants won the game. The Giants simply pressured the quarterback. With nearly reckless abandon. And they rarely paid for it either, which further emboldened them.
TALB disagrees with awarding the game MVP to Eli Manning. Not for the usual Manning-based reasons you might expect. But, much like last year, the defense was the reason Manning’s team was able to hoist Vince. While Eli performed much better than his brother did last year in terms of managing the game, he still was not the difference. Without the defense putting constant pressure on Brady, stuffing the running game, and keeping every Pats receiver not named Wes Welker in check the game very likely would have turned out as expected.
Amid the Patriots’ run to the record books, it looks like we missed something. Each and every one of us who follow football. Yes, Tom Brady and Randy Moss both set records for touchdowns, and the team’s offense put up more points than any other. But in the end, the Patriots got worse as the season wore on. Their ability to score, and their ability to prevent the opponent from scoring declined. I’ve charted their scoring, with trend lines, to the right (click to embiggen). What you see is that their points declined significantly throughout the season. While we were being wowed by them putting up 52 and 56 points, overall, they weren’t scoring nearly as much as the season wore on. Less dramatically, but equally troubling, is that their defense
began giving up more points. By itself, and given the lower magnitude of the decline, it would have been manageable. But as the offense began to struggle, the holes in the defense were magnified. For comparison purposes, I’ve made a similar chart for the Bucs’ 2007 season (also on the right). If anyone had looked at this, it might have been less surprising that the Patriots would lose this game.
Running Items
Breath of A Salesman: Super Bowl Edition
Planters Cashews won the day at TALB HQ. Cringingly funny.
Super Bowl XLIII
Patriots vs. Packers
Early line says the Pats will fill whatever holes they have in the draft, and through shrewd free agent acquisitions. And if Favre comes back, the Packers are good enough to go deep in the playoffs again.
Next Week: The 2007 season is over. Next week (or the week after) will see the opening of the 2008 TALB Season.
Manning did what he’s done every game since Week 2 - show up where it counts. MVP material? Nah. But you can’t give it to the entire defensive line (even though they should be able to hand it to team units, because, gee, I dunno, they always talk about teamwork in football). I suppose Tuck would be the standout from that group, but then there’s Osi “I’m sorry to tell you that you have an acute case of” Umenyiora as well. They all played well.
And I don’t care about the supposed “collapse” I keep hearing about - there was no real collapse. That miracle catch that Tyree made (which I shall forever after refer to as the “Magic Candy Unicorn Rainbow Catch”) had nothing to do with a flagging Patriot defense, and everything to do with the desire to win.
The Planters ad? Really? I think they were just trying to out-Emerald-Nuts their competition.
Personally, I draw a tie between the FedEx pigeon ad (my love of enormous otherwise ordinary creatures (ala MST) would be the big draw) and the Will Ferrell Bud Light ad. Yes, I know it’s one of the three characters he plays in every movie, but dammit, it’s still funny. (”Bud Light - Suck one!”)
I meant to add that it might have been great to award the MVP to Strahan symbolically. He’s the “old man” on that defense. And giving him that award would have been in the name of the entire defense.
My point regarding the Pats’ performance was that they were, in contrast to the hype, in steady decline as the season wore on. The offense much more so than the defense. But a steady decline that got worse as the post-season neared.