By Rick Morris
^ Norv Turner and Philip Rivers are the biggest goats of the day without any doubt whatsoever. Unlike LaDainian Tomlinson, Rivers did not have the good sense to pull himself from the game and Turner did not have the stones to step in and do the job that leaders are paid to execute. How was yesterday's scene any different than Grady Little failing to take the ball out of Pedro Martinez's hands in the 2003 ALCS when his pitcher clearly was gassed? Forget the 2004 baseball postseason, there's your cosmic payback for Boston-area fans yesterday as the shoe was on the other foot. Rivers was in pathetic physical condition, unable to push off at all on his passes. There was so much air underneath his throws that I was half-waiting for the Patriots to signal for a fair catch before making an interception. It is utterly shameful to hold the Pats, the best offense of at least the modern era, to 21 points on their home field and not win the game. Spare me the gaga about Rivers inspiring his team by going out there one leg and not wanting to put the game in the hands of a backup. Phil Simms was just being a homer for the quarterback position when he argued otherwise with no evidence to back up his moronic position. While imperfect, Billy Volek is far better than the average backup and proved his mettle at Indy last week -- and the team wouldn't have folded pathetically in the red zone every time with a quarterback that was physically able to play. I actually like Rivers as a quarterback, but make no mistake that his John Wayne Complex and the gutless non-response of his head coach were primarily responsible for the team's failure to win a game that it should have.
^ Why wasn't the CBS pregame crew on the scene yesterday? Since when is the studio utilized for a Championship Sunday game? CBS doesn't even have the Super Bowl this year -- this was the biggest day of their football season! Fox Sports sent their crew to Lambeau yesterday as they will for the Super Bowl in two weeks. Shame on CBS.
^ Contrary to the final score, the Giants actually dominated the later stages of the game yesterday. How else could Lawrence Tynes miss a game-winning field goal every ninety seconds? Mike McCarthy will have to answer for the fact that he so easily abandoned the ground game. Much like the previous week, you have to give credit to the Giants, but the Cowboys and Packers both made a ton of self-inflicted mistakes. Speaking of which, and my friends watching with me concurred, the game had much more the feel of a routine Week 9 game than a conference title clash. The mistakes, the up-and-down play of so many key performers on both sides -- it just seemed to drain some of the air of urgency out of the contest.
^ Yesterday's game reinforces the notion that even if Brett Favre had pulled off the improbable second Super Bowl win of his career, he still would be no better than a Top Ten quarterback all-time looking in enviously at the Top Five. Few other elite quarterbacks have been great for as long as he has, and few of them have the records that he does -- but few of them have the brutal tendencies that he does to this day of forcing the football and trying too hard to make things happen. You live by being a gunslinger, you die by it also and the flip side of the reality that makes him a folk hero and a legend also makes him somebody that you have to be just a bit conflicted about having at the helm of your team in the clutch.
^ In trying to anticipate the oppressive media crush of manufactured Super Bowl storylines, a few come to mind. Tom Brady will now be carrying on his famous battle with the Manning family against the other brother. Given the fact that New York tends to break down (in large part) with so many fans rooting for the Mets and Jets (the newer franchises in town) and so many fans rooting for the Yankees and Giants (the old-line teams in town), the Super Bowl is going to pit a great many Yankee and Red Sox fans against each other (can we root for Mutually Assured Destruction?). I'm hard-pressed to conjure up a scenario that gives the Giants a serious chance for victory, but I will address the Super Bowl matchup in more detail at a later date.
Showing posts with label Championship Sunday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Championship Sunday. Show all posts
Monday, January 21, 2008
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Championship Sunday preview
By Rick Morris
The inescapable conclusion after last Sunday is that the stunning upsets we witnessed are preventing us from witnessing what could have been a much better Championship Sunday (the thought of this saddens me greatly – it’s one of my favorite days of the year and I love to have my friends over for a daylong feast of gridiron). Indy and
AFC Championship Game: The Patriots delivered a huge 38-14 beatdown back in September, at least momentarily taking the air out of the sails of a Charger franchise itching for a legitimate rivalry with the Team of the Decade after last year’s crushing playoff loss. In fairness, the Chargers were still adjusting to a new system after massive coaching changes coming into 2007 and were not ready to be pronounced as brutal failures under Norv Turner, as I and so many others did. Nevertheless, they still don’t stack up as well against the Pats as the Colts, who probably also would have lost but probably would have kept it closer.
NFC Championship Game: Call it heresy given the copious amounts of respect coming their way, but I’m still not very impressed with the Giants. The alpha and omega of their defense is a pass rush; that’s it. Giant discard Ryan Grant is the real deal, a legitimate superstar who had his first career-defining game last week in the massacre of
Monday, January 14, 2008
NFL divisional round closing thoughts
By Rick Morris
^ It was a strange Sunday in terms of the conventional wisdom regarding quarterbacks and coaches. Philip Rivers and Eli Manning have been routinely castigated as chokers during their short careers, but both are still alive going into Championship Sunday (although I am waiting for FDH Lounge Dignitary Nate Noy to call or email me claiming that Billy Volek's appearance in the game was actually the real reason the Chargers advanced). In terms of retread coaches who are not highly thought of by the media and most fans, Norv Turner pulled off a very surprising win and Wade Phillips will have to suffer through a difficult offseason as his Cowboys looked flat on balance and underachieved big-time.
^ Granted, general manager A.J. Smith is looking a lot smarter in San Diego than he did in September. A word to the wise, however for Mr. Smith: you might not want to strut around puffing out your chest saying, "How you like me now???" until the Chargers prove they can stay within three touchdowns of the Pats on Sunday.
^ The Seahawks were exposed as a fraud that took advantage of a weak, injury-riddled division. They need to retool offensively, starting with the run game, in order to make any kind of legitimate Super Bowl run next year.
^ T.O. is right; the Cowboys did lose as a team. But given the scrutiny that he was under for last year's playoff choke and his fade down the stretch this year, Tony Romo had to know that his Mexico junket with Yoko Romo was going to put him in an unacceptable position and he did it anyway. I have no sympathy for him.
^ What shapes up as the most fascinating and possibly consequential coaching decision of the offseason looms in Dallas, as Jerry Jones will have to turn over the ship right now to heir apparent Jason Garrett in order to avoid losing him. Did Bum's Son lose enough luster down the stretch and in this shameful loss to make a change even remotely feasible?
^ Peyton Manning seemed to have gotten the big-game monkey off his back once and for all last year when he won the Super Bowl. But Sunday's name, notwithstanding the gaudy statistics, was a losing effort in a game the team never should have blown, and is actually more typical of his career than what we saw last year (as past shockers to Pittsburgh and Tennessee at home in the divisional round can also attest). For all the talk in recent years about Peyton and Tom Brady being the "Marino and Montana" of this generation (meaning that one was a stat freak and another was a consummate winner), we had already seen a lot of cross-pollination this year what with Manning winning a Super Bowl and Brady having one of the all-time great statistical years and a league-record 50 touchdowns. But this game, combined with a possible fourth Brady Super Bowl ring in a few weeks, could serve to separate the two once and for all in the public mind with Brady universally considered better as a whole.
^ Jacksonville did everything they could defensively against the Patriots Saturday night, but frankly they were limited by only having 11 defenders. When a team establishes the run and pass to perfection as New England so often does, the other team is just on its heels throughout. The Jags were kept honest defensively for 60 minutes and with the historic array of weapons at Brady's disposal, Jacksonville couldn't get one or two additional stops to have a plausible chance at success.
^ This is a very controversial opinion, but the Pats game proved definitively who the league MVP is and it isn't Tom Brady, even in his moment of greatest one-game statistical glory. David Garrard, with a collection of wide receivers that an Arena League team would be ashamed to field, had another excellent game and got a chance to display his playmaking skills on a national scale. If the Jacksonville front office stops bumbling in its attempts to acquire legitimate wideouts, the Jags could make a run at the Super Bowl next year.
^ I love Championship Sunday. Along with Super Bowl Sunday, it ranks very high on my list of favorite secular holidays annually. But I am less enthusiastic for this year's offerings after Sunday's surprises. I believe Indy would have still lost to New England, but given a much better accounting for itself and I remain very unimpressed by a Giant team with an up-and-down offense and a pathetic secondary. While a Sunday night game in the snow at the Frozen Tundra will admittedly be cool, a Packer/Cowboy rematch now that Green Bay has a legit running game would have been awesome. Some of the storylines (aside from the tired Patriot Perfection one) will be OK, though: the bad blood between San Diego and New England dating back to last year, Ryan Grant going up against his old team for a shot at the Super Bowl, young guns Eli Manning and Philip Rivers (who were traded for one another on Draft Day in '04) having a chance to meet in the Super Bowl if they can pull big upsets. Still, though, the anticipated matchups would likely have been far better than what the NFL is going to dish out to us.
^ It was a strange Sunday in terms of the conventional wisdom regarding quarterbacks and coaches. Philip Rivers and Eli Manning have been routinely castigated as chokers during their short careers, but both are still alive going into Championship Sunday (although I am waiting for FDH Lounge Dignitary Nate Noy to call or email me claiming that Billy Volek's appearance in the game was actually the real reason the Chargers advanced). In terms of retread coaches who are not highly thought of by the media and most fans, Norv Turner pulled off a very surprising win and Wade Phillips will have to suffer through a difficult offseason as his Cowboys looked flat on balance and underachieved big-time.
^ Granted, general manager A.J. Smith is looking a lot smarter in San Diego than he did in September. A word to the wise, however for Mr. Smith: you might not want to strut around puffing out your chest saying, "How you like me now???" until the Chargers prove they can stay within three touchdowns of the Pats on Sunday.
^ The Seahawks were exposed as a fraud that took advantage of a weak, injury-riddled division. They need to retool offensively, starting with the run game, in order to make any kind of legitimate Super Bowl run next year.
^ T.O. is right; the Cowboys did lose as a team. But given the scrutiny that he was under for last year's playoff choke and his fade down the stretch this year, Tony Romo had to know that his Mexico junket with Yoko Romo was going to put him in an unacceptable position and he did it anyway. I have no sympathy for him.
^ What shapes up as the most fascinating and possibly consequential coaching decision of the offseason looms in Dallas, as Jerry Jones will have to turn over the ship right now to heir apparent Jason Garrett in order to avoid losing him. Did Bum's Son lose enough luster down the stretch and in this shameful loss to make a change even remotely feasible?
^ Peyton Manning seemed to have gotten the big-game monkey off his back once and for all last year when he won the Super Bowl. But Sunday's name, notwithstanding the gaudy statistics, was a losing effort in a game the team never should have blown, and is actually more typical of his career than what we saw last year (as past shockers to Pittsburgh and Tennessee at home in the divisional round can also attest). For all the talk in recent years about Peyton and Tom Brady being the "Marino and Montana" of this generation (meaning that one was a stat freak and another was a consummate winner), we had already seen a lot of cross-pollination this year what with Manning winning a Super Bowl and Brady having one of the all-time great statistical years and a league-record 50 touchdowns. But this game, combined with a possible fourth Brady Super Bowl ring in a few weeks, could serve to separate the two once and for all in the public mind with Brady universally considered better as a whole.
^ Jacksonville did everything they could defensively against the Patriots Saturday night, but frankly they were limited by only having 11 defenders. When a team establishes the run and pass to perfection as New England so often does, the other team is just on its heels throughout. The Jags were kept honest defensively for 60 minutes and with the historic array of weapons at Brady's disposal, Jacksonville couldn't get one or two additional stops to have a plausible chance at success.
^ This is a very controversial opinion, but the Pats game proved definitively who the league MVP is and it isn't Tom Brady, even in his moment of greatest one-game statistical glory. David Garrard, with a collection of wide receivers that an Arena League team would be ashamed to field, had another excellent game and got a chance to display his playmaking skills on a national scale. If the Jacksonville front office stops bumbling in its attempts to acquire legitimate wideouts, the Jags could make a run at the Super Bowl next year.
^ I love Championship Sunday. Along with Super Bowl Sunday, it ranks very high on my list of favorite secular holidays annually. But I am less enthusiastic for this year's offerings after Sunday's surprises. I believe Indy would have still lost to New England, but given a much better accounting for itself and I remain very unimpressed by a Giant team with an up-and-down offense and a pathetic secondary. While a Sunday night game in the snow at the Frozen Tundra will admittedly be cool, a Packer/Cowboy rematch now that Green Bay has a legit running game would have been awesome. Some of the storylines (aside from the tired Patriot Perfection one) will be OK, though: the bad blood between San Diego and New England dating back to last year, Ryan Grant going up against his old team for a shot at the Super Bowl, young guns Eli Manning and Philip Rivers (who were traded for one another on Draft Day in '04) having a chance to meet in the Super Bowl if they can pull big upsets. Still, though, the anticipated matchups would likely have been far better than what the NFL is going to dish out to us.
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