Super Bowl Thoughts

And so the 2006 football season comes to an end. Hats off to the Indianapolis Colts. They finally got over the hump and it couldn’t happen to a nicer group of guys. Plus, I have no animosity towards them they way I did Pittsburgh last year.

Overall it was a good game. I remember after Devin Hester ran the opening kickoff back, I remarked to Mrs. X that Ohio St. ran the opening kick back against Florida and that didn’t help them too much. Chicago stayed in it longer than they should have, mostly due to sloppy play by the Colts offense and the emotional buoy that Chicago had in the opening quarter. Towards the end of the second quarter and into the third quarter, you started to get the sense that Indy was inevitably grinding the Bears down and that victory was assured.

I think the key moment of the game came about halfway through the third quarter. Chicago finally got the ball back after Indy had gone up 19-14. Grossman lays a nice pass into Muhammad, setting up a second and 1 close to midfield. I was expecting a run and was waiting to see Chicago drive hard into the Colts defense, which was starting to soften against the run. Instead, Grossman drops back (I’m guessing for an attempt at the long bomb) and gets sacked for an 11-yard loss. At that moment, the little bit of momentum that Chicago had been building, died. Third down would have to be a long pass (easy for Indy to defend) and Chicago’s exhausted defense would be out on the field again, vainly trying to stop the Colts from bleeding the rest of the third quarter away.

In that one sack, the Bears lost any real opportunity to rely heavily on the run game and Grossman felt the pressure that the Bears had tried so hard to keep off of him. Result, he panics when the Bears fall behind by 8 and squanders good field position, leaving the Bears with a field goal. Panic rising in the 4th quarter (although they were only down by 5), Grossman throws deep jump balls in a desperate attempt to get the Bears back in the game. Both throws were picked off.

In the end, I enjoyed the game, although I think the MVP award should have been split between Joseph Addai and Dominic Rhodes. They were the true back breakers and I think that if it were a single running back, he would have won the MVP. But since they split very evenly, the voters just gave it to Peyton, which is fine, since no one really cares who the MVP of the game is.

Now to the commercials. Every Super Bowl, the costs go up and the quality of writing goes down. I was deeply disappointed by Fed Ex, who usually has very good commercials. Budweiser did have a decent one at the beginning with the Rock, Paper, Scissors, but the rest of them were not that memorable (although the crab one was a worth a chuckle). The Careerbuilders trilogy was funnier once you saw the concept (I liked the gladiator one best) although the first one was a bit of a headscratcher. The Emerald Nuts one was weird, but funny as well. The Blockbuster Mouse commercial was amusing as well, although it did require the recycling of the rabbit and guinea pig from previous commercials.

Rating my top three, I would go as follows:
1) Careerbuilder.com Gladiator Promotion Pit (second spot)
2) Budweiser Rock/Paper/Scissors
3) Emerald Nuts Robert Goulet attacks