I sincerely hope that penalties are not a prominent feature of this game, and especially not controversial penalties.
I have this image of Pete hanging up the phone and running back to bed while giggling like a little girl.
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/01/29/patriots-have-another-fire-alarm-wake-up-call/21136707/
[Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!](Surprise-Surprise-Surprise.flv - YouTube)
NFL Head of Officiating Dean Blandino acknowledged at his press conference today that the NFL hadn’t actually recorded any of the PSIs of the Pats or Colts game balls, either pre-game or at halftime.
The Three Stooges investigation. Nyuk. Nyuk. Nyuk.
Think back through all the NFL issues: they’ve been lousy managers who spread stories about how great they are. My feeling is these crisis have revealed the truth, that TV and other media have grown the game and the NFL’s actual management is lousy when it comes to actual management. Go back to Roethlisberger: imagine the furor if that happened today - with the NFL running ads about ending violence against women - with a guy accused twice of rape being suspended for only 6 games and then having that cut to 4 just because. Or the mess in Miami. I don’t even need to go into this year.
So when people say the NFL ran a “sting” on the Patriots, besides that being an idiotic notion, the reality is: they aren’t capable of doing it. Roger Goodell is a lousy CEO.
I did not mean to imply that the Patriots have never been hit or are softies or pretty boys 
A well known component of the Seattle defense is limiting yards after the catch by getting there fast in numbers and wrapping up. When they do it they bend but don’t break and on games like the KC game they don’t do it and get gashed. I’m assuming that we’ll find out pretty quickly what kind of game it will be. We had a period where Maxwell, Lane and Wagner were out and Chancellor was still gimpy. They were noticeably soft over the middle. Whatever happens on Sunday they won’t be soft.
If I had to bet on the first penalty I would put my money on Bennett lining up in the neutral zone.
I will be interested to see how the game of wits goes between Brady and Sherman. Sherman would tell you that he is reading the formations and the QB and anticipating the routes and throws and know where the ball is heading. He would also say that he baits QBs into throwing to a certain place by shading one way or another to make them think that he’s doing one thing then shifting. I don’t know if he does or not but many of his interceptions have the look of a guy who is actually the intended receiver. Some QBs force it his way when the throw isn’t there out of a sort of chest pounding hubris (Kaepernick, Newton). The chess match should be pretty fun to see.
Pat Kirwin on Sirius NFL radio this afternoon suggested an opening play for the Pats:
Split Gronkowski out wide to the right covered by Sherman. Run a quick inside slant, forcing Sherman to make the tackle. Find out how Sherman’s elbow is feeling.
Why wouldn’t KJ and Bobby get that?
Not necessarily. It took 57 minutes to find out what kind of game it would be in the NFC title game. I do hope the Seahawks will bring their best selves a little sooner than that on Sunday. 
Well the D actually played pretty well last game. I am at least feeling good that we will have our starting O line all together for the first time since I think week 5. We’re still out Zach Miller which hurts for blocking but I think the O line as a unit will be much better than it was last game. Peppers pretty much ate Bailey alive filling in at R tackle
I also hope the guards can jump a few less times than they usually do.
I thought for a moment you meant your D played football. I though Wow, pretty interesting that your daughter was allowed to play. Then my brain actually kicked in.
Nope - baseball but no football
I was speaking as a fan there 
Ever stepped into fast pitch softball instead of slow pitch at the batting cages? Ugh. Let alone the baseball. I wouldn’t want to make that mistake.
Oops, football thread, lol.
Well the kid is a rugger now so has moved one step closer to football!
The boy played two years of football but is more of a Ferdinand the Bull type - he was an O lineman while it lasted
Gronk would be split out at the wide receiver position. Sherman jams the wide receiver at the line. He would have Gronk on a quick slant or out from that position. The LB or safety would have him if Gronk were lined up in a normal TE position.
You would want to use Gronk because he’s big and strong enough to give Sherman’s elbow a real good test.
True - I was just thinking that on anything close to the line of scrimmage there will be help pretty quickly.
A jam at the line is also risky because if the receiver is able to elude it he has a step. That’s a big reason for the 5 yard rule: back in the bump and run days, they’d jam and then grab to prevent the receivers from getting away. The idea is you get a small window to disrupt timing and you have to take a risk to do that. Receivers are taught how to attack a jam. For example, I’ve heard David Givens - nice player, injury ended career - describe how they’re taught to chop the forearm with one arm while driving the other arm up, all as a memorized series of karate-like moves. (Givens made my favorite play ever: on a big down, CB came up to chuck him and Givens threw the guy all the way out of bounds and ran up field. Hilarious.) There’s so much technique involved in everything they do. There are websites with lists of the order of steps linemen have to take to perform certain blocks and so on. Everything is coached.
Pete has always been interested in large DB’s. An issue with them is they rarely can turn their hips and burst with a receiver, which is one reason Seattle tends to play with the ball in front of them. He went through this learning period when he drafted big DB’s in NE and they weren’t particularly well suited to the game as it was then. Sherman can turn. Revis is the best I’ve seen at shifting his hips and changing his technique, which is one reason he’s asked to do so much, to play in so many locations on the field.
BTW, the standard Gronk defense is an LB with a safety over because the LB is strong enough to hold him up and the safety can close when he sprints by. A disadvantage of that is he can move laterally just as well and then he has an LB on him. Some teams bring the safety up on him and double with an LB, but that means they have another safety deep and Gronk can eat most safeties. The biggest deterrent is the running game: if he’s blocking, he’s not downfield.