- The two most unlikable teams in the league met for a crazy Super Bowl that was nearly decided by a Bill Belichick gaffe, but was ultimately decided by a Pete Carroll gaffe.
- I’ll just go ahead and say what everyone in the country said in unison on Sunday night: “Why do you throw there?!?!?!”
- Yes, I understand the arguments for that call, but they still don’t make sense. No matter what defense the New England Patriots showed on the play, the Seattle Seahawks’ decision to throw instead of run is mind-boggling. You have Marshawn Lynch. You’re on the one-yard line. You probably want to run the most time possible off the clock (i.e. run the ball). And you have Marshawn Lynch. I don’t care about Lynch’s stats this year on runs from the one-yard line. If he doesn’t get it, the Seahawks still had a timeout and two more downs to go one yard with the most punishing back in the league.
- Speaking of timeouts, why didn’t the Patriots use a timeout prior to the play that led to the interception on the goal line?? This, to me, is more mystifying than Carroll’s (slash offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell’s) decision to throw the ball. If Belichick calls a timeout immediately after the Pats stopped the Seahawks on the one-yard line, there’s 58 seconds on the clock. They could have let the Seahawks score and gotten the ball back with about 50 seconds left and two timeouts. Instead, the Seahawks are able to run the clock down to about 30 seconds before snapping the ball and throwing the ill-fated pass. WHAT on earth could have Belichick’s motivation for not calling the timeout could have been??
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| I smell another conspiracy theory in the works!! |
- It felt for sure like Seattle was going to have another one of their incredible, B.S., fairy tale endings after this absurd play:
- But the NFC karma train continued to roll. The Dallas Cowboys beat the Detroit Lions on a controversial no-call, the Green Bay Packers’ victory over the Cowboys included the enforcement of a controversial rule, and the Seahawks beat the Packers in a shocking series of last minute Green Bay mistakes. And it finally caught up to the Seahawks when they looked like they were going to take the lead with under a minute left.
- Perhaps the football gods smote Seattle because they were displeased with Doug Baldwin deciding to celebrate his Super Bowl touchdown by pretending to poop out the football. Or perhaps they were peeved by perpetual loudmouth Richard Sherman mocking New England cornerback Darrelle Revis after Revis was “beat” on the touchdown.
- Sherman's taunting didn’t make a whole lot of sense, as Revis was never in a position to make a play on the ball because Baldwin used the ref to set a pick and get open.
- The Seahawks had a rough time with injuries. Safety Earl Thomas and Sherman came into the game with injuries (shoulder and elbow, respectively), then they lost cornerback Jeremy Lane to an awful arm injury, and defensive end Cliff Avril to a concussion.
- The Patriots lost wide receiver Julian Edelman to a concussion late in the game -- oh, wait. Never mind. Despite the fact that Edelman took a huge hit from the monster Kam Chancellor and got up literally staggering, Edelman was back in the game on the next drive. He’ll probably lose several years off his life, but, hey, he was instrumental in the Patriots’ win.
- Edelman was seemingly never evaluated for a concussion, since he was allowed to talk to the media after the game, which players going through concussion protocol can’t do. Don't know if having his brain put in a helmet blender affected him though.
- After the game-ending interception, Seattle handled the gut-wrenching disappointment as you might expect: by starting a brawl the next play, leading to Seattle linebacker Bruce Irvin’s ejection.
- The best part of Seattle losing the Super Bowl is the fact that frequency of gloating gum chewing in the Pacific Northwest will plummet.
- Another perk of New England winning is there will probably be less “Deflate Gate” nonsense. Nothing is any clearer, except that the NFL (and the media) has handled this really badly. The league failed to mention for the first week-and-a-half that the refs didn’t log the exact PSI of the balls; they didn’t contradict the widely-circulated report that 11 of the 12 New England footballs were significantly under-inflated, and now another report claims that only one was significantly under-inflated and the rest were only very slightly below the requirement; they let all the fingers point at some ball boy whom they declared a “person of interest”; they allowed rampant speculation about who requested the ball measurement from the refs -- first it was Indianapolis linebacker D’Qwell Jackson, then Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh, then rumors that the league had set up some sort of sting. All in all, it’s been a stupid mess and everyone has known since the beginning what the end result will be: there won’t be enough evidence to prove that the Patriots intentionally altered the footballs.
- In more important and exciting news, Clay Matthews answered a burning question of mine:
- JJ Watt was the first ever unanimous Defensive Player of the Year.
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| Yay, JJ! Your second DPOY award will look so good on our mantel! |
