I’m just thankful for a Ped who emails right back on a Sunday night! Worth their weight in gold. They are actually Pediatric Nurse Practitioners and set up their own boutique practice. They are amazing!
FYI, with 20 seconds and one TO, a team does not have three tries to run.
Well . . . water under the bridge now.
Well - trundling off to bed. Even though it doesn’t fee like it the sun actually will come up tomorrow and it’s back to the salt mines. Happy groundhog day
The only thing she didn’t lip sync was “C’mon, make some noise…” Basically, they just played somebody’s iPod for a SuperBowl halftime show.
Perry was Perry. What did you expect? But what about getting those fossils out of the freezer? Missy Whatever a Rapper and Lenny Two Songs. The halftime shows are just excuses for a break. Only Iggy Azalea could be worse.
I’m sad the season is over. Didn’t the Pro Bowl used to be played the week after the Super Bowl? That at least have us one more fix before we had to hang up our cleats for the summer.
I think Pete Carroll explained his call quite well: they had 26 seconds left after the 1st down run and when he saw NE had their goal line defense on the field they called the pass with the intent to run the next down if it was incomplete. Wilson threw the ball slightly high and slightly ahead and Butler made a terrific play. It wasn’t the worst call in Super Bowl history; it was a sensible call on 2nd down when you have 3 downs to score to win.
I also note that on the fluke Kearse reception the safety Duron Harmon jumped over the receiver rather than hit him when the ball was bouncing in the air. A simple mistake that would have cost the game: dive into the receiver and Kearse never catches the ball and Seattle is still 40+ yards away.
This is exactly how NE felt in 2007 and then in 2011. NE lost on one of the flukiest plays in NFL history in 2007, a 4th down pass caught against the top of a guy’s helmet. In 2011, they missed winning by a ball that bounced off Welker’s outstretched hands. An inch more reach and NE wins. I heard Brady say on the NFLNetwork that he felt he didn’t play well enough in those games and he remembers the mistakes for his “entire freaking life”. And I have to remember Buffalo losing on a missed 47 yard FG (not as easy then as it is today). And one year Baltimore lost in the AFC Championship when they missed an easy FG. And so on. This is what happens. NE lost to the Colts in the AFC Championship Game when they failed to convert 4th and 2 after winning in San Diego the week before because they converted on 4th down.
I thought both teams had excellent game plans. Both teams threw away from the top corners. (E.g., Baldwin caught one pass, 3 yards for a TD when Revis was picked off by an official, and NE avoided one-on-one toward Sherman.) What stuck out was the isolation of 3rd and 4th receivers against NE’s 3rd and 4th CB’s and particularly getting those match-ups on the outside; 3rd CB Arrington is an excellent slot CB but not very good outside and Ryan is better at turning and running than on routes in front of him (which is weird for a CB but he’s softer on routes in front of him). On Seattle’s 2nd TD, Ryan backed into the endzone, which I’m sure is not the way he was coached to act on that play. You have to be in front of the receiver, especially a taller one, and he doesn’t do that unless the guy is running down field.
NE ran a lot of crossing routes because they wanted Seattle chasing and, bluntly, that’s a standard way to attack zones because you can hit a guy between people. Seattle did their usual excellent job of maintaining their spacing and keeping eyes front so they could close to the ball.
Seattle mostly did their damage on a few big plays. I mentioned the receiver above - first catch ever is a terrific one! NE had breakdowns at the end of the half on both sides of the ball all season. That continued. Everyone and their mother knew Wilson would run at the end of the half and they blew their coverage. Then they dropped coverage on the next play. It’s like the team had a mental blockage about playing the last 2 minutes of every first half this year.
I note NE had 3 sacks. 1 was a coverage induced run that was more of a running play loss. Seattle had 1 sack. NE had 50 pass attempts, with 37 completions or 74%. On the 1st INT, Brady had all day and then made a truly awful decision when the pressure finally arrived. He did that more than once this season in the red zone. He seemed to pressure himself to score TDs. On the 2nd INT, not under pressure, he again tried to force a ball into Gronkowski. I think over half his INTs this year were forces to Gronk. Didn’t understand that one at all because he wasn’t open. I can’t believe Brady didn’t see the LB. I think the ball didn’t go where he intended, maybe because Gronk stopped instead of continuing to move across. In other words, though there will be plays with pressure on 50 dropbacks, it wasn’t a significant factor in turnovers and didn’t affect the outcome.
NE’s run defense has been iffy all year. I think the coaching decision was to fight it out but not all out commit, as with Baltimore and other games. I also think the coaching staff believed Seattle would score on them and that the game would come down to NE scoring more than Seattle.
Though people will never want to give NE credit, they came back from 10 down after being 14 down twice against Baltimore. By my rough count, Brady now has more playoff wins than 24 franchises, up from 21. Pretty remarkable.
Who said anything about not giving NE credit? From the Seattle fans on this thread:
BTW, if Russell had completed that pass for the TD, would you similarly be congratulating the Seahawks? Or would you be expounding on their second consecutive illegitimate Super Bowl victory, this time attributable to "the fluke Kearse reception "?
Thank you LasMas.
I don’t think it would be possible to even begin to explain the anger of the Pats fans over the [witch hunt](She's a witch! - YouTube) of the last 2 weeks a witch hunt that even extended to the play by play call of tonight’s game.
It’s nothing personal. It is what it is.
Just heard Pete say that he called the pass play on the 1 and not Bevell. I don’t like slick Pete but I thought he handled his post-game interview better than most coaches would have under similar circumstances.
One of the Pats players said that exact goal line pass play was the last play the Patriots defense covered in their final practice. They had seen it before from film study.
Interesteddad, victory is vindication, then. I get it. I’m not sure why that precludes being gracious toward the Seahawks, who after all had nothing to do with the witch hunt.
I’m grateful for one thing. The officiating was a non- issue in this game. As bad as this loss feels, it’s even more upsetting to have a championship stolen from your team by the refs.
To answer your question. Until two weeks ago, yes. I know that I, and most Pats fans I know, are very respectful of teams that play good football and beat the Pats. Seattle would certainly be in that category. Excellent football team. Pats fans know excellent football teams when they see them and appreciate how hard it is to beat them.
Now? Sorry. You’ve come to the wrong place for condolences. I have embraced the hate. I hope the Pats inflict as much pain and suffering on the rest of the league as they can. About the most sympathy any other team or fan base is going to get from me (or, I suspect, most Pats fans) now is:
u mad, bro?
Sorry. It is what it is.
So you’d be just as ungracious no matter who the opponent had been today?
Yes.
It is asking a bit much to be “gracious” when your team is in the SuperBowl after a crushing win in their fourth straight AFC Championship game and you can’t watch, read, or listen to a single bit of coverage because it’s wall-to-wall trashing over a completely bogus scandal. Night after night on the network news shows. 24/7 on ESPN. Asking Brady, one of the classiest players in the history of the NFL, what to tell the children now that he’s been convicted by the mob as a cheater. I had to repeatedly turn off the play by play tonight because, even in the dramatic fourth quarter, the announcers could talk about nothing else but the tarnished legacy of Brady and Belichick.
And, you want Pats fans to be gracious? You must be kidding.
It’s not personal. I know what Seahawks fans are going through tonight. Been there. Done that. Try losing one after an 18-0 start to the season. I wish I could muster up some sympathy, but after the last two weeks, my sympathy well has run dry. Maybe Roger Goodell or Peter King or Chris Berman could say something reassuring, I don’t know.
Well alright then . . . Pete definitely took one for the team. He doesn’t do the play calling and didn’t throw the pass. As I said once before, whatever you think about him he doesn’t hang his guys out to dry in public. It is interesting that this Patriots win is seen as a win by the same people who refused to call the Seattle win over Green Bay anything but an epic choke on the part of GB. The Pats kid made an epic play but one could also say it was an epic choke and NE didn’t actually win. I’m not going to say that and I don’t think it works that way but I am surprised at people who will never give any credit where credit is due.
But today is a new day and we are now officially in the sports doldrums. May Sherman’s son be delivered safely into the world, all the injuries heal, and it’s on to real life now. tipping imaginary cap
Lots of bitter Patriots fans… I totally understand it, DeflateGate definitely sucked out some of the enjoyment of the Super Bowl for me, but I am trying not to dwell on the negative. They pulled it out after another helmet-catch type of play almost did them in. It was a great game.
I could see a Seattle fan thinking that they choked it away, I mean, first and goal at the 5 to win the game? But there were a lot of differences between the SB and the NFC championship. First and foremost, Seattle showed up to play. They weren’t in a coma for the first 55 minutes. The Pats didn’t make a ton a dumb mistakes in the last 5 minutes, Seattle pulled off another lucky miracle play but that one was actually a legit play rather than Wilson scrambling around and heaving a desperation ball up without even looking at where it was going for that two-point conversion. The Pats had 20 minutes of game time to come back, Seattle had much less time. Etc.
So I don’t think it will be perceived around the country as a choke, unlike the NFC championship (and I think it is pretty much everyone other than Seattle fans who has that opinion, not just Pats fans).
But if Seattle fans want to see this as a choke, go right ahead. Plenty of room in Bitter Mansion, move right on in, although it’s cold and drafty and in a lousy neighborhood and there’s only one working bathroom we all have to share, so I wouldn’t recommend it. I’m not sure Seattle fans really know what bitter is, though.
Seattle is set up to be really good for a while. They played an excellent game, and really only made one mistake, unfortunately it came at the worst possible time. One mistake doesn’t make it a choke. They’ll be back.
I am curious how Seattle fans view SB XL - excellent win by the Steelers, or stolen by the refs? Maybe you do know bitter. 