Nursing a Super Bowl hangover
I have a hangover today. I’m not talking about the after effects of all that beer, though that didn’t help. Rather, I’m talking about the stark reality that football is over, and it is a long time until it rolls around again. The worst part of being a football fan is that the off-season is longer than the season itself. Sure, there are things along the way to break the monotony – signing day this week, the draft and all the chaos around that, spring practices, free agency and the like – but it’s just not the same. Before I figure out how I am going to deal with the withdrawal, though, let’s take a quick look back at the Super Bowl to see if we can make sense of the last four quarters of real, live football we will see for months. Here are my 12 observations from the big game:
1. What the hell was that? I didn’t see that coming, and if you say you did then you are probably lying.
2. I’m not sure Brady has ever been hit like that. Judging by how he reacted to it, I would guess that he hasn’t. The most shocking part wasn’t the number of times he had to pick himself up, it was the number of pretty awful passes he threw as a result of the constant pressure.
3. That non-sack of Manning that essentially sealed the game was one of the sorriest things I have ever seen. There is no excuse for that from the Raiders, never mind an undefeated Super Bowl favorite.
4. Nice catch, David Tyree. Enjoy your 15 seconds.
5. I still hate Eli. I don’t see that changing.
6. How is it that the Patriots didn’t have a way figured out to contain the pass rush when they had two weeks to prepare? That’s the biggest story of the game in my mind. I was watching the game with a couple of people who aren’t even close to football fans, yet by about the second snap they had figured out that the Giants were going to rush Brady every time he touched the ball. It wasn’t a secret.
7. I was interested to see how quickly the Pats gave up on the run. It was working well in the playoffs, but it didn’t start well in the big game, and they moved away from it. As a result, especially with the Kevin Faulk hamstring tweak, the play seemed to be a pass to Welker every time out. It’s not hard to look like a defensive genius when you just have to defend the same play every time out.
8. I keep hearing about how this was one of the all-time great Super Bowls. I’m not buying it. The first half was defensively impressive, but the offenses did little to help themselves out. The third quarter was sloppy. The fourth quarter was entertaining, and the last scoring drives by both teams were impressive, but for me that payoff at the end doesn’t outweigh the disappointment and boredom of early on. As good as the Giants were defensively, a game can’t be great when the teams don’t play like they can, and the Pats were a shadow of themselves. That was partly because of the Giants, but only partly.
9. The Patriots’ decision on what to do with Randy Moss just got much harder.
10. It seems poetic that the biggest total in Super Bowl history resulted in the biggest margin that two teams have gone under the total in Super Bowl history. The teams went under by 24 points.
11. That’s four unders in a row after the games had gone over in six of eight. Trend watchers will have to adjust expectations.
12. Man, do I hate the Mannings.
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