Assuming this game will finish this way we’ll have a #1 vs. #1 again right? I can’t remember if Denver had the one seed last year
Yes last year was 1v1. Previous years:
Okay saintfan, maybe I don’t…but only because I don’t wear sandals. Always socks, though, but there are plenty of people around here with no fashion sense, whatsoever. Just the way I like it…
Wow, I just realized that somehow we didn’t record the game. And I missed all the good parts. Maybe we did lose power. I think there is a replay on channel 212 tonight. I’m hoping, or my husband will be seriously bummed.
I missed the end of the Pats/Colts game. Unbelievably I didn’t get enough miles in on my fitbit pacing the floor during the first game so I had to take the dog for a run.
^^^^^The end was basically the first quarter.
Thoughts about the games:
- Packers blew it. They blew it early, peed the bed in the middle and then pooped their diapers late. The early problems were twofold: unhealthy Rodgers unable to get into position to throw and stupid play calling near the goal line. If the Packers get even one TD, they win. This kind of redzone dumbness is typical: get conservative the closer you get, move away from your strengths even if you are moving toward the defense's strengths. As for the middle, they appeared to sit on the lead in the 2nd half, which is stupid because that kind of thing invites a comeback. This is exactly why the Patriots keep trying to score: keep the foot on the gas, don't let the other team think they have a shot, keep the other team down, and all those other clichés that coaches seem to forget when they have the lead. As for late, all you need to say is: the hands team, the freaking hands team on the on-side kickoff had the ball go right through the hands and off the facemask. That's a choke pure and simple: he jumped up in perfect position and the ball hit him right in the face as he completely whiffed under the pressure of the moment. Then defense whiffed on a few big plays. And on the game winner: how with the game on the line do you let a guy get past the safety? They can only win on TD so all you need to do is stay behind the receiver and they let him get past. Brain fart and choke and maybe poor coaching all in one.
This said, I think we saw the essence of Seattle in this game: college offense, high energy defense, solid running attack, QB capable of plays but really the beneficiary of what the team does, and never quit. To me, watching Seattle this year, I saw a team with limited offense and a very good secondary whose real defining characteristic was fight: they tend to get better in the 2nd half. Green Bay in this game was a 1st half team that tried to sit on the lead. They should have known from Seattle’s history that they are better in the 2nd half.
- The NE/Indy game is about the power of match-ups. It isn't that Indy is that much worse than NE but that Indy matches up that badly against Indy. Baltimore, for example, isn't on a week to week basis better than Indy - or really as good - but they match-up well against NE because their size puts them at that level when they ramp up to maximum effort. This used to be more true for Baltimore on defense but now it's more true on offense. (I think that if Kubiak goes to Denver, this hurts Baltimore. He brought out a lot in that offense.)
A note about the silly ball tampering thing: the NFL takes control of the balls 2 hours+ before the start of the game and tests them for compliance. Here are is part of the 1st section of Rule 2: “The Referee shall be the sole judge as to whether all balls offered for play comply with these specifications. A pump is to be furnished by the home club, and the balls shall remain under the supervision of the Referee until they are delivered to the ball attendant just prior to the start of the game.” Then the 2nd section gives more detail: “Each team will make 12 primary balls available for testing by the Referee two hours and 15 minutes prior to the starting time of the game to meet League requirements. The home team will also make 12 backup balls available for testing in all stadiums. In addition, the visitors, at their discretion, may bring 12 backup balls to be tested by the Referee for games held in outdoor stadiums. For all games, eight new footballs, sealed in a special box and shipped by the manufacturer to the Referee, will be opened in the officials’ locker room two hours and 15 minutes prior to the starting time of the game. These balls are to be specially marked by the Referee and used exclusively for the kicking game.” In other words, the NFL controls the balls, tests the ball, etc. If a ball is removed because it has issues, that then is reported. I assume that became the issue: that a ball or balls failed somehow during the game and were removed and that then gets reported in a way guaranteed to bring attention.
I’m not surprised by any claims made. Just look at the Patriots stats: this is the 6th Super Bowl in the 13 years that Brady has played. That’s 46% of all of them in that time. The Patriots have played in 9 AFC Championships, which is 70%. Tom Brady has won more playoff games than 21 franchises have ever won, meaning essentially ⅔ of all the teams in the league have won less for their entire histories than Brady has in 13 years. I’d be jealous too. (And since “spygate”, meaning the 1st quarter of the 1st game in 2007, the Patriots’ winning percentage has gone up from 60%+ to 75%+. )
I think the criticism of the Packers is a little overblown. Yes, they made lots of mistakes but so did the Seahawks. The game essentially started over in OT. The momentum was definitely in the Seahawks’ favor but who knows what would have happened if they hadn’t won the coin toss?
What do you think about the Super Bowl teams will be coached by Belichick and the guy he replaced.
Did you see the contempt Rodgers had for McCarthy during the presser?
BTW, I was listening to sports radio and former QB Zolak - 9 years in NFL, mostly as a backup - said this with my additions:
- QB's and kickers want hard balls, not deflated ones. QB's want hard balls so they can spin them. Kickers want hard balls because they rebound more than a deflated one. Especially in bad conditions, it's important to spin the ball. [I think people imagine they're throwing and forget that NFL QB's aren't regular people. There is a literature about QB's and hand size versus height. Some believe bigger hand is better than taller, but this is based on scattered data that dates back for many QB's only back to 2008. Russell Wilson and Drew Brees, for example, have hands over 10" wide, which is above NFL QB average. But Aaron Rodgers has slightly below average hand size. They measure hand size by pressing your spread hand against a ruler attached to a table and check the total distance from tip of thumb to tip of pinky. That means someone who has worked at spreading his fingers more would seem to have a bigger hand, which shows how silly this can be.]
- Before the NFL took control of the balls, the backup QB's and the kickers would take the game balls and rough them up - like the umpires do with baseballs - to remove the slippery sheen as much as they could. They'd put the balls in the dryer to bang them around and then would rub them against a strip of astroturf. The kickers want balls as round as possible, so they'd push the points into a table top.
- He said the real difference between balls is the laces: some feel better to you than others. The starting QB decides what balls he wants by testing each one. The kicker gets to work with the leftovers and would choose the "roundest" ball, which was marked with an x. The differences, despite the mythology, weren't that big.
All this stopped when the NFL changed the ball rules. Teams wouldn’t deflate kicker balls - which has been reported - but would put them in a freezer or chiller to make them stiffer. They were trying to increase the rebound effect and I guess believed that more stiffness was better than a warmer ball. I have no idea if they were right about that.
I don’t agree, because mistakes made at the end of the game are worse than mistakes made at the beginning, since you have less time to recover from them.
And GB made at three three killer mistakes in the last few minutes:
- Burnett went to the ground after the last interception. I get that he wants to avoid a turnover, but with that much time left it is the wrong thing to do. Poor situational awareness. If he gains an extra 10 or 15 yards, Seattle might have needed an extra play to score, which would have taken the clock below two minutes or forced Seattle to use their last time out. Either of these may have prevented the last TD from being scored.
- The hands team muffed the on-side kick. On-side kicks are only successful 20% of the time overall, and probably much less when a team is expecting it. You just cannot have the ball go through your hands in this case.
- The two-point conversion was busted wide open, and Wilson just chucked it up hoping something would happen. GB had a defender right there, and the ball didn't even make it to the goal line. It was just a horrible play by the defender.
This doesn’t even consider running the ball three times up the middle in an attempt to burn clock with 5 minutes left - a first down wins the game! Or leaving 14 seconds on the clock after the tying field goal (although that one didn’t hurt them). Or running the least creative, most conservative plays possible on your opponents’ one yard line. Make one of these and you win the game.
And their defense in overtime… yikes.
Seattle was terrible for 55 minutes, and then GB wrapped up the game with a pretty bow and handed it to Seattle.
Seattle gets credit for never giving up, and making plays when it counted. But GB lost this game much more than Seattle won it.
ive never heard of this before.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/01/19/league-confirms-ball-deflation-investigation/
I feel for Packers fans, to a shutout at halftime, to losing.
But from what I saw of the players on the sidelines after the Hawks pulled ahead, they looked pretty dejected.
It’s not how you start, but how you finish.
Or if you win the coin toss. 
Of course they looked dejected! Wouldn’t expect anything less!
This loss can’t be pinned to any one thing of course.
I could not agree more. The lack of return after the interception exemplifies the mindset of the Packers at that moment. They really thought there were a couple of plays away from winning the game. The ensuing decisions were even worse: feeble attempts at running the ball and running the clock out followed by weak efforts on defense. There was no urgency on the sidelines and I think they were already in celebrating mode as they looked at the moribund Seattle. They missed the type of vengeance and effort displayed by Lynch who moved the entire pile time after time and run like a leading receiver. The Packers just mailed it in during the last crucial moments.
Fwiw, both teams did show an unexpected lack of discipline throughout the game. The personal fouls, the false starts, and the broken plays, the lack of preparation for a trick play. Name it! It might have been a battle that pleases the fans of this type of games, but it was a sloppy mess poorly executed by the players and extremely poorly coached on both sides.
This is pretty comical. The difference in weight between a properly inflated ball and a completely deflated ball is about 1/3 of an ounce.
The rules require the football to weigh between 14 and 15 ounces. In other words, the legal variation of the weight of a football is 3x the weight of the air. So the idea that they are going to “weigh” anything to tell anything is silly.
Maybe they meant “check the pressure” and the reporter is too dumb to figure it out.
If Burnett had continued running and then gotten the ball knocked loose and recovered by Seattle, we would probably be saying he should have just secured the ball and gone down (like he did). I’m glad the two no. 1 seeds are in the Super Bowl. That’s the ideal scenario, unless of course you are a fan of the other team.
You can blame Buffalo for that!
I think the Patriots’ jersey is better for the rain.
Hindsight is perfect of course. but I think it is fairly unusual to fumble a ball back on a turnover. Particularly if the defensive players have been properly coached about securing the ball. It happens once in a while but not that often. The broadcasters couldn’t figure out why he went down. Xiggi is right - they thought the game was over.
I forgot about the fake field goal. GB got caught with their pants down on that one, too. There was a defender there, and he released the receiver to chase after the holder. Not sure if that is the right play or not. If it is, there was a breakdown somewhere else because the receiver had no one near him. The replay shows three other Packers chasing the holder, so I’m guessing the right play would have been to stay in coverage.
“This is pretty comical. The difference in weight between a properly inflated ball and a completely deflated ball is about 1/3 of an ounce.”
I actually started doing the calculation, but someone has already done it for us!
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/o/oldenburgj/ENGR1A/NFLFootballWtCalc.pdf
I assume there is going to be a reasonable explanation for the discrepancy, but there was a time when my daughters weight was measured in grams, not ounces, and 1/3oz, would have been a pretty big deal!