Then the Game

For a totally bleh match-up, it was quite a good game. I didn't particularly care who won (I was slightly leaning toward the Giants) but was hopeful that it would be an entertaining game. In this, I was not disappointed.

The Patriots were clearly a little off in the beginning as the nerves about the Giants defensive line was obvious. However, they settled down quickly and the Patriots offensive line handled the Giants defensive line well. Brady was under some pressure, but it never got to the point where you could see him getting happy feet. In fact, more pressure seemed to be applied to Eli, who was sacked more and getting whacked a lot more than Brady was.

In the third quarter and early in the fourth quarter, I though the Patriots were going to pull away and win the game. The Giants weren't getting good pressure and they were consistently giving up the check down pass which the Patriots used to march down the field. Two specific plays cost the Patriots a chance to ice the game. Brady got greedy and threw his deep pass to his injured tight end. If he were healthy, it would have been at worst knocked down and may have even been caught. Instead it was intercepted. The following drive, Wes Welker dropped a pass that was a bit overthrown, but still catchable. Had he caught that, the Patriots would have been at the 20 with less than four minutes to go and up by 2.

The Giants drive that won them the game was impressive but the Patriots secondary had been weak all season and it didn't surprise me that the Giants were able to drive down the field. I was rather amused when the play that Cris Collinsworth mentioned two plays earlier (taking a knee at the one yard line) actually happened. In this case, the running back was so surprised by the parting of the sea, he couldn't stop his momentum.

The praise of Brady was as over the top as I expected. It was quite obvious that since Brady had won his first two Super Bowls on game winning drives, this would be no different. There were two very big differences in those though. In the first two, the game was tied. The game is very different when all you have to do is lead your team into field goal range than when you have to get a touchdown. Second, the Patriots were not operating with the full complement of weapons that they had in previous Super Bowls. They only had two decent wide receivers and one tight who was healthy enough to make the cuts needed. Still, the Patriots did manage to get to mid-field and did come surprisingly close to making the hail mary. The initial receiver was triple covered but the tight end was lurking below and came very close to catching the ball as it was knocked down.

So a good game. Kind of a meh season overall, although at least the Bengals did make the playoffs. Maybe they'll actually manage to be better next year.

I offer no opinions on either the halftime show or the commercials this year. Mrs. X and I were folding laundry during the halftime show and the music was barely registering to me in the background. The commercials were meh at best and all very predictable. I must say that I was slightly amused at the dog bribing the man about his wife's cat with Doritos. I know a few people that could easily bought for that price.