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Watched the game again. Here are some thoughts.
For the second time, I felt like I was caught in slow motion. Things just never really got started. I guess it had to do with the limited amount of possessions. It was 3 quarters of nothing particularly good and nothing particularly bad happening. We just missed often and it felt like the next chance everything would be fixed, and the game just melted away.
The biggest problem with the offense was not the sacks, but the amount of times Brady was hit WHILE throwing. He had a bunch of open receivers that he would have hit, but the throw was knocked off line by him being hit in his throwing motion. It happened a lot. We left a ton of plays on the field that we would have hit if Brady had a split second longer.
I heard today Brady was seen with a pronounced limp. I thought while watching the game the 2nd time that he was very hesitant to get away from the pressure by moving around. It was the least I saw him move all year, and can only assume he was uncomfortable throwing the ball on the move.
One thing that STOOD OUT LIKE A SORE THUMB was the Giant passing game strategy. It was blatantly obvious to me that 90% of the time, and whenever he needed a play, he would simply drop back and watch whoever either Gay or Harrison was covering and throw to them. Not that he surveyed the field and found them open, but that before or at the snap, he picked one reciever, the guy either one of them were covering, followed him alone, and threw to him. Watch again, and Manning almost never takes his eyes off the guy he throws to and almost every completion was to a guy covered by Gay or Harrison.
MY LAME "THEY SCREWED US" COMPLAINT.
I watched this at least 20 times, forward, reverse, slo mo, etc. On the 4th and 1, Brandon Jacobs DID NOT GET THE FIRST DOWN.
now I will qualify it with the play is almost always called this way, even though it is incorrect, and that it was very, very close, and I probably could not have decided it in the time allotted for a review.
The giants needed to get slightly beyond the yard marker (38, IIRC). Jacobs runs into the pile. If you slow down and freeze, his knee has hit the ground by the point his left (non-ball carrying hand) hits the ground. It hits the ground right on the 38. When it hits the ground he is twisted with his left side forward, and his right--with the ball---behind. When his knee hit the ground his left hand was right on the 38, the ball in his right, which was behind his left side. I went back to see the previous measurement and he had to get at least an inch or 2 beyond the 38. When he was down the ball was not yet to the 38. They spotted the ball where it was when the ball hit the ground, well after when his knee did. Again, this will get called that way 95 times out of 100, but it was the wrong call.
Watching the game the second time, I have 2 opinions of Eli.
First, no way he played well enough to be the MVP. We could have (probably should have) intercepted him 4 times. Hobbs had one. Gay dropped one right in his hands. Samuel dropped one right in his hands. Meriwhether dropped one right in his hands. Those are only the ones I would expect to be held onto 90% of the time, nothing spectacular.
Second, I DONT KNOW WHEN I WILL EVER GET OVER ALLOWING 150 PASSING YARDS IN THE 4TH QUARTER TO THAT GUY, AFTER ALLOWING 100 IN THE FIRST 3.
To anyone who is blaming the offense more than the defense, consider this.
At 14:52 left in the game, the Giants started on their own 20.
At this point our defense had not allowed a TD in 10 quarters. Had held the Giants to 3 points in 45:08. All they had to do was finish for us to be perfect.
They went on to allow 152 passing yards, and 14 points. Perpsective? Our D played for 1 quarter the equivalent of allowing 56 points and 600 passing yards. (Oh and dropped 2 easy ints too).
The entire season came down to 14:52 and our defense played, in its most important quarter as bad as any defense in the NFL did all year.
Those things happen, they happen to good teams, they do not happen to Champions 14:52 away from being crowned the best team ever. Everything else that happened in that game combined doesnt come close to causing the defeat of a Champion than that.
Mankins has gotten ripped, and he was not real good, but Kaczur was worse. Awful day by him.
Could it be that the spaztic KO by Gostkowski after the first TD was the reason BB didn't have him kick the FG?
I disagreed with the decision at the time, and still do, but I am sitting here and BB has 3 rings as a HC, and gets paid 5mill+ to make those decisions so who am I to criticize.
I didnt buy the field position reasoning (otherwise just punt) because it was 7 yards of field position. I think the real reason was BB wanted to go for the throat. I think he felt we had a good drive going there, f-ed up 3rd down, and he wanted to take a chance to go up 14-3.
Other observations:
How does Pierre Woods not recover that fumble?
The holding call at about 1 minute of the half probably cost us 3 or 7 points. We were in good shape with the clock and field position, but it set us back about 14 yards, that took us 40 seconds to regain, and then we were short on time, leading to the strip sack when Brady needed to go deep.
Speaking of the clock, maybe I misunderstand, but what happened at the measurement, at 1:28????? Offical timeout for measurement at 1:28, they do NOT measure, theoretically start the clock, AFTER adding 6 seconds back on from 1:22 to 1:28, and call time out AFTER the next play with 1:22 left. Isnt the measurement stop temporary, then when they don't measure, you start it up? It should have run down to about 1:00 or 1:05 by my count. I didnt know yuo get an extra time out when the refs say maybe I should measure, nah, I dont need to.
What is the ref looking at when you throw a deep pass to a 1-on-1 reciever and the receiver shoves his hand into the defenders facemask and pushes off? Toomer made the worst, most out in the open off pi penalty Ive ever seen, and it was missed. (Probably didnt affect outcome but it was 3rd down and probably cost us 20 yards in the end--punt vs Hobbs Int) Even if tis not pi, its hands to face AND face masking. 3 penalties on one play in the wide open where the ball is and none got called.
In the end, I take 3 things from the game:
1) We just fell a little short of executing all day long. We had the plays, we had the chances, and we missed by just a bit. That happens a lot in the NFL, but this time it happened to our offense for an entire game.
2) Gay and Harrison were isolated, picked on and taken advantage of.
3) Our defense played the worst it has or could at the most important time of the entire season.
Had we won, I'd be saying a repeat is imminent. Having lost, I feel no differently that we should get that Lombardi back next year, but seein ghow we lost, the same thing can happen again if we do not improve our ability to defend the entire field in the passing game, and if we do not (probably the same exact way) turn the defense back into one that will not be abused when protecting a lead.
For the second time, I felt like I was caught in slow motion. Things just never really got started. I guess it had to do with the limited amount of possessions. It was 3 quarters of nothing particularly good and nothing particularly bad happening. We just missed often and it felt like the next chance everything would be fixed, and the game just melted away.
The biggest problem with the offense was not the sacks, but the amount of times Brady was hit WHILE throwing. He had a bunch of open receivers that he would have hit, but the throw was knocked off line by him being hit in his throwing motion. It happened a lot. We left a ton of plays on the field that we would have hit if Brady had a split second longer.
I heard today Brady was seen with a pronounced limp. I thought while watching the game the 2nd time that he was very hesitant to get away from the pressure by moving around. It was the least I saw him move all year, and can only assume he was uncomfortable throwing the ball on the move.
One thing that STOOD OUT LIKE A SORE THUMB was the Giant passing game strategy. It was blatantly obvious to me that 90% of the time, and whenever he needed a play, he would simply drop back and watch whoever either Gay or Harrison was covering and throw to them. Not that he surveyed the field and found them open, but that before or at the snap, he picked one reciever, the guy either one of them were covering, followed him alone, and threw to him. Watch again, and Manning almost never takes his eyes off the guy he throws to and almost every completion was to a guy covered by Gay or Harrison.
MY LAME "THEY SCREWED US" COMPLAINT.
I watched this at least 20 times, forward, reverse, slo mo, etc. On the 4th and 1, Brandon Jacobs DID NOT GET THE FIRST DOWN.
now I will qualify it with the play is almost always called this way, even though it is incorrect, and that it was very, very close, and I probably could not have decided it in the time allotted for a review.
The giants needed to get slightly beyond the yard marker (38, IIRC). Jacobs runs into the pile. If you slow down and freeze, his knee has hit the ground by the point his left (non-ball carrying hand) hits the ground. It hits the ground right on the 38. When it hits the ground he is twisted with his left side forward, and his right--with the ball---behind. When his knee hit the ground his left hand was right on the 38, the ball in his right, which was behind his left side. I went back to see the previous measurement and he had to get at least an inch or 2 beyond the 38. When he was down the ball was not yet to the 38. They spotted the ball where it was when the ball hit the ground, well after when his knee did. Again, this will get called that way 95 times out of 100, but it was the wrong call.
Watching the game the second time, I have 2 opinions of Eli.
First, no way he played well enough to be the MVP. We could have (probably should have) intercepted him 4 times. Hobbs had one. Gay dropped one right in his hands. Samuel dropped one right in his hands. Meriwhether dropped one right in his hands. Those are only the ones I would expect to be held onto 90% of the time, nothing spectacular.
Second, I DONT KNOW WHEN I WILL EVER GET OVER ALLOWING 150 PASSING YARDS IN THE 4TH QUARTER TO THAT GUY, AFTER ALLOWING 100 IN THE FIRST 3.
To anyone who is blaming the offense more than the defense, consider this.
At 14:52 left in the game, the Giants started on their own 20.
At this point our defense had not allowed a TD in 10 quarters. Had held the Giants to 3 points in 45:08. All they had to do was finish for us to be perfect.
They went on to allow 152 passing yards, and 14 points. Perpsective? Our D played for 1 quarter the equivalent of allowing 56 points and 600 passing yards. (Oh and dropped 2 easy ints too).
The entire season came down to 14:52 and our defense played, in its most important quarter as bad as any defense in the NFL did all year.
Those things happen, they happen to good teams, they do not happen to Champions 14:52 away from being crowned the best team ever. Everything else that happened in that game combined doesnt come close to causing the defeat of a Champion than that.
Mankins has gotten ripped, and he was not real good, but Kaczur was worse. Awful day by him.
Could it be that the spaztic KO by Gostkowski after the first TD was the reason BB didn't have him kick the FG?
I disagreed with the decision at the time, and still do, but I am sitting here and BB has 3 rings as a HC, and gets paid 5mill+ to make those decisions so who am I to criticize.
I didnt buy the field position reasoning (otherwise just punt) because it was 7 yards of field position. I think the real reason was BB wanted to go for the throat. I think he felt we had a good drive going there, f-ed up 3rd down, and he wanted to take a chance to go up 14-3.
Other observations:
How does Pierre Woods not recover that fumble?
The holding call at about 1 minute of the half probably cost us 3 or 7 points. We were in good shape with the clock and field position, but it set us back about 14 yards, that took us 40 seconds to regain, and then we were short on time, leading to the strip sack when Brady needed to go deep.
Speaking of the clock, maybe I misunderstand, but what happened at the measurement, at 1:28????? Offical timeout for measurement at 1:28, they do NOT measure, theoretically start the clock, AFTER adding 6 seconds back on from 1:22 to 1:28, and call time out AFTER the next play with 1:22 left. Isnt the measurement stop temporary, then when they don't measure, you start it up? It should have run down to about 1:00 or 1:05 by my count. I didnt know yuo get an extra time out when the refs say maybe I should measure, nah, I dont need to.
What is the ref looking at when you throw a deep pass to a 1-on-1 reciever and the receiver shoves his hand into the defenders facemask and pushes off? Toomer made the worst, most out in the open off pi penalty Ive ever seen, and it was missed. (Probably didnt affect outcome but it was 3rd down and probably cost us 20 yards in the end--punt vs Hobbs Int) Even if tis not pi, its hands to face AND face masking. 3 penalties on one play in the wide open where the ball is and none got called.
In the end, I take 3 things from the game:
1) We just fell a little short of executing all day long. We had the plays, we had the chances, and we missed by just a bit. That happens a lot in the NFL, but this time it happened to our offense for an entire game.
2) Gay and Harrison were isolated, picked on and taken advantage of.
3) Our defense played the worst it has or could at the most important time of the entire season.
Had we won, I'd be saying a repeat is imminent. Having lost, I feel no differently that we should get that Lombardi back next year, but seein ghow we lost, the same thing can happen again if we do not improve our ability to defend the entire field in the passing game, and if we do not (probably the same exact way) turn the defense back into one that will not be abused when protecting a lead.