Typically this blog is written in asshole fashion but today I'm not going to do that. The Giants won, fair and square. They made plays when they had to more often than the Patriots did, plain and simple. They pounced on fumbles that could have killed drives and their chances of winning and they didn't throw the ball to the other team. The Patriots turned the ball over once, the Giants didn't. Typically you can guess the winner of a football game by looking at the turnover margin and nothing else, and last night was no different. Blame the refs if you want to for calling that intentional grounding on the first drive, but that's a mental mistake by Brady and no one else. Whether there was supposed to be a receiver breaking off his route and heading in that direction or not is irrelevant, the play was called like it was by the best officials in the business. The Super Bowl is the Pro Bowl for referees, with the best officials of the season getting chosen to make the calls. Brady could have thrown a strike to the dirt in front of a receiver like he always does and lived to see another play, but he didn't. 214 days from now the 2012 regular season starts and you can either spend them making excuses and pointing the finger or you can give credit where credit is due. The Giants played a hell of a game and Eli Manning is currently the big swinging dick in the cool-under-fire QB club. Makes me sick to my stomach to write it but it's true.
Here are my non-goats of the game. These guys are going to be catching flack from all angles and I'm going to tell you why they don't deserve it.
Wes Welker - Yeah, he dropped a huge one, probably lost them the game. He also made 122 catches during the year and without him that offense would be pretty bad. Don't be a fair weather little bitch of a fan and kill a guy for one drop. He made no excuses, and he needs to be back on that team next year. An elf of a receiver shouldn't be the guy trying to catch passes like that anyway, but I'll get to that later.
Tom Brady - Bad intentional grounding early after a huge stop for the D, bad pick later in the game. He also went 16/16 at one point for two touchdowns to give the Pats an eight point lead after being down by 9 early. Plus it's Tom Brady, what the fuck would they be without him?
The Defense - They held the Giants to 19 points (the safety goes against the offense, obviously) and the Patriots averaged 32 points a game over the course of the regular season and 34 in the postseason before last nights game. 19 points should get the job done. Pat Chung and Brandon Spikes gave all Pats fans something to smile about yesterday. Spikes was credited with 11 tackles, which is a lot, but his number 55 came out of every pile and he had a nice forced fumble too. I wouldn't be surprised if he had closer to 20 tackles. Bright future with this team. Chung had that monster hit on Nicks up the sideline and showed flashes of Rodney Harrison last night. Sterling Whothefuckissterlingmoore Moore played a great game too, sniffing out some plays in the backfield and making that huge play on 3rd down near the end. That 12 men on the field penalty was BAD, no excuses for that, but one penalty does not a game make or break.
Here are my real goats, but none of them deserve to be crucified.
Bill O'Brien - He called a good game. They had the chance to win at the end and didn't make enough plays. Those two consecutive drives at the end of the first half and beginning of the second were vintage Tom Brady and he deserves credit for that. But, run the football. The Patriots ran 19 times for 83 yards last night. 4.4 yards per rush. The Giants averaged 4.1 but didn't hesitate to run it 28 times, despite being behind on the scoreboard for the entire second half. Running between the tackles and letting the offensive line come off the ball hard and lay their hats on some guys is the only way to wear a speedy pass rushing defense like the Giants down and kills a shit ton of clock in the process. Heath Evans told his father before the Super Bowl in '08 he thought the Patriots were going to run the ball down the Giants throat to win the game. They abandoned that plan and ran the ball 16 times that game. And lost. 19 running plays isn't going to get it done. They played with two tight end sets with Brady under center a TON this year and ran the ball well. Last night looked a lot more like the '07 offense than the '11 one.
Bill Belichick - Take this one lightly. Bill is the best coach in NFL history, hands down. Five Super Bowl rings, three as a head coach, and two of those rings as a defensive coordinator, one of which he gets credit for because his game plan was brilliant. Look up the rest of his stats, he's a stud. This goat tag doesn't go to BB the coach, it goes to BB the GM. Every NFL show you watch you will hear the phrase "quarterback driven league" at least once. Literally. I dare you to find one without it. It's like fucking food TV stars always talking about depth of flavor. Unavoidable. It is a quarterback driven league, and it has been since the birth of the modern passing game in the 1950's and 60's with Sid Gillman of the Browns inventing the idea of timing routes and precision passing and Don "Air" Coryell coaching the Chargers in the late 70's and early 80's to 6 straight passing yardage titles. BB knows this and for that reason Tom Brady is the highest paid player in the league. Shame on Bill for not realizing that it takes wide receivers too. If the quarterback is the driver, then the receivers are the vehicle. The best driver in the world can win a race with an inferior car, Brady did it on his way to three Super Bowl titles, but why force him to do it?
No offense to Wes Welker because obviously he's a fantastic player, but plays in the slot and doesn't have the skill set of a typical No. 1 receiver. Think Calvin Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald, Vincent Jackson, Hakeem Nicks, Brandon Marshall (without the drops), Andre Johnson and Sidney Rice. These guys are all over 6-2, with the exception of Nicks, can all jump out of the gym, all specialize in making catches outside the numbers (between the literal yardage numbers painted on the field and the sideline) especially deep down the field and they all go up and get the ball at its highest point. More importantly they run the typical goal line fade (diagonal line right to the back corner of the end zone) and usually come down with the football no matter who's covering. Wes Welker is not that guy. He's 5-8 on a good day and isn't out jumping anyone. Ochocinco was supposed to be that guy but we all know how that turned out. Where does BB fit into all of this? Two of the guys on that list were free agents last season - Sidney Rice and Vincent Jackson. Jackson has some character issues, mostly related to the retards in the office running the Chargers but this is a strong locker room and infinitely better organization and Rice was coming off an injury but both of these guys make big plays when it counts. Jackson is a freak of nature at 6'5'' and 230+ pounds and makes a living catching balls in traffic while making corners look like little children. Rice isn't as big but both of them have been better than Chad Ochocinco in recent years and could have been had for similar money. Jackson's teammate, Malcom Floyd, who's also 6'5'' and around 230 pounds was a free agent too and could have been had for $2 million this season. Ocho made $6 million and cost the team a draft pick in the trade to acquire him. I'm not a scout and for all I know the Pats looked at these guys and they didn't fit the system, but Ocho obviously didn't fit either so who knows. What I do know is last night the reality was that, with Gronkowski clearly a shell of his former self because of the ankle injury, there was not a player on the field for the Patriots who was going to make a catch against good coverage. Gronk does it regularly when hes healthy and Hernandez shows flashes but Hernandez, Welker and Branch all specialize in running great routes and finding the weak spot in the coverage to get open. They are fantastic at it. Sometimes, though, you need a player who can be blanketed by a corner with a safety helping but it doesn't matter because the QB is going to put the ball 11 feet in the air and the guy is going to go up and get it like a basketball player coming down with a rebound. Calvin Johnson has a 42.5" vertical leap, is 6' 5'' and 236 pounds. With his arms extended over his head standing tall, his middle finger reaches 8'8''. Add a 42.5 inch vertical to that and he's dunking on an 11' rim with ease, or coming down with catches in double coverage on a regular basis.
The Pats don't need another Randy Moss. They don't even need a guy who is going to carry the offense or be asked to. They just need a tall, strong, athletic guy who can make a tough catch when everyone is else is covered and force the defense to respect the outside of the field. Gronkowski can't be that guy because of the position he plays and the fact that he will always be covered by linebackers who can come a lot closer to matching his physicality than a DB on a wide receiver who can run like hell and is also a beast in the strength department. I wont kill BB for this because those two tight ends are so good he deserves heaps of credit for getting them, but if you look at all the top offenses of the league, they all have at least one player on the outside who is going to make a huge catch when the offense really needs it.
-New Orleans has Marques Colson who is 6'4'' 225 and Robert Meachem at 6'2'' 210.
-Green Bay has Jordy Nelson at 6'3'' 217 and Greg Jennings who plays like a tall guy but really isn't
-Detroit has Calvin Johnson at 6'5'' 236
-NYG has three receivers who are slightly undersized but are all phenomenal at making plays on the outside
-San Diego has the two 6'5'' monsters on the outside and Antonio Gates in the middle
-Atlanta has Roddy White who is shortish at 6'0'' but is a fantastic player and Julio Jones who at 6'3'' 220 could be the best receiver in the NFL in a few years after watching him play this season
I could keep going but the moral of the story is that the rules in the NFL are so slanted in favor of offenses, especially in regards to making contact with receivers, that it's foolish to not have a big basketball player type on the outside who can take advantage of the soft rules and manhandle defensive backs on a regular basis. Randy Moss was never that guy, he's a freak of nature in other ways, but he was never winning battles of strength. The players are out there, it's time for Bill to go get one.
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