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Note: This is being published a lot later than I hoped. I met some friends at a bar to eat and watch the game. I got to the place and was surprised it was a Chinese Joint. Who goes to a Chinese Restaurant to watch a game? Anyway the food was great, the TV’s were big, and by the end of the night all the workers had joined us and we spent a lot of time trying to explain what was going on to a bunch Chinese immigrants. 
Then after the game, they couldn't kick us out fast enough so they could go home, I discovered I had left my lights on and had a dead battery. But have no fear, I had cables that someone once gave me in lieu of money they owed. I should have known better. They diddn’t work. Any way to make a long story short (and there is more to tell), about 90 minutes later, AAA arrived and 30 seconds later I was off heading home. I guess there should be a moral to this story. The obvious one is "DON'T watch football games at Chinese Restaurants", but the one with more truth in it, is "DONT'T get old" And we are off.
1. I was on record in 2 Packer/Seahawk threads telling everyone that they should be rooting for Seattle in the 2nd half. I don’t know about you, but I got the match up that I think is most advantageous for the Pats. Later I’ll explain way, but first let’s talk about the game.
2. I know I was very cautionary pregame, but I thought they’d win. I was looking for something like a 31-23 game. I didn’t expect them to blow them out 45-7 It looks bad, but it was actually much worse. Not only did the Pats leave an additional 10-14 points on the table, they themselves were the prime reason for the only 7 points the Colts managed to put up.
3. What I hate most about this blow out is that it will justify the Felgers and CHB’s of the world to think that the Colts were the “tomato cans”, they had predicted.
4. The Colts were better than they looked, we just played very very well. You don’t win 2 playoff games on the road, if you aren’t a good football team, especially going into Denver, The point here is please don’t diminish this win, by diminishing the Colts.
5. This is a Colt DL that not only sacked Manning twice behind one of the better OL’s in the game, they hit and harassed him all game, and did a great job of getting him off his spot. Yet except for the one sack, which was more a function of a funky unbalanced alignment that left only on offensive lineman to the left of the C, Brady might have had the best pass protection he’s had in the last 2 months. Josh Kline has taken a LOT of heat on this board. I would hope his critics might be man enough to step up with some compliments for his play this game, as should the entire OL
6. I saw a couple of plays that almost makes me think that the move of Wendell to C helped the run game a bit. As I have said since TC, Wendell best asset is his quickness off the ball in the run game. For any old timers, think Dwight Stevenson. Its rare for a C to explode off the ball and still snap it. Wendell does it well. What else he does well is to get to the second level. On at least 3 occasions on successful run replays, you can see Wendell be the first lineman off the LOS, initially doubling a DLman, then once he’d been sealed, release an get a hat on a LB on the 2nd level.
Wendell’s kryptonite are the Haloti Ngata’s of the world. Interesting to note, that none of that ilk reside on the Seattle DL
7. I’ve always LIKED LaGarrette Blount, but now I’m beginning to LOVE him. Personally I’ve always preferred the one cut and SLASH kind of RB, like Ridley and Gray, but Blount has won ,ne over. Even more impressive than his 148 yds and 5/ypc average, was the fact that close to a 100 of those yds came AFTER first contact. He makes a LOT of people miss him or are left to try and arm tackle him on virtually every play. Very impressive effort
After watching GB have some success with Eddie Lacy running the ball with some very vanilla scheming, I fully expect Blount to have more than enough success running the ball to allow all our playaction passing game to be effective and move the chains when necessary. It might not match the numbers he had tonight, but it should be enough to provide the kind of balance we need in this final game.
8. We had a very effective and efficient passing game WITHOUT having to rely on Gronk as a focus of the offense. 8 different receivers again, including Hooman. If this keeps up, how long will it be before teams will have to start doubling him.
9. The most important aspect of all these arcane plays and formations, is not only are the Pats executing them so well, it forces ANOTHER group of football situations that Seattle will have to prepare. As the announcers rightly mentioned, no comes close to the number of formations, plays, and personnel groupings each game as the Pats.
10. Tonight we saw a glimpse of just how good our offense potentially can be. Outside of perhaps the first 3 plays of the game, and after the game was 45-7, the only thing that stopped the Pats, WEREs the Pats. 6-7 red zone scores is simply outstanding. Their 3rd down efficiency before garbage time was almost as good Their one redzone failure was, IMHO, simply mind boggling, 3 plays that had to be a brain freeze Josh experienced, that was the exception that proves the game plan excellence that is the general rule.
11. Just a couple of brief comments on the offense as it relates to Seattle.
a. That was simply a HISTORIC gag by GB. Never has a team had more chances to win a game that was their’s for the taking and blew them all. Lots of 3rd and short failures that led to FG's, instead of TD’s. At least 3 dropped picks that I saw to go along with the 4 that occurred. And several rain (perhaps) related drops.
b. Seattle deserves lots of kudos for their mental toughness and hard nose attitude, but they had no business winning that game. That one is going to eat at GB and their fans for a long time. I can’t imagine a worse loss. But on the plus side they exposed a LOT of flaws in the Seahawk game on both sides that have been covered up by the EXTREMELY soft schedule they had played over the last 7 games
c. The Pats may not have the elite brand of receivers GB might has)Cobb, Nelson), but they have more legit targets that a team has to defend. They will be by far the most difficult team Seattle has had to face this year. GB could have easily put up 4o against them.
d. GB has an OL that’s no better than ours and probably worse, and Rodgers had plenty of time to throw the bal, despite the disadvantage of playing in Seattlel.
Then after the game, they couldn't kick us out fast enough so they could go home, I discovered I had left my lights on and had a dead battery. But have no fear, I had cables that someone once gave me in lieu of money they owed. I should have known better. They diddn’t work. Any way to make a long story short (and there is more to tell), about 90 minutes later, AAA arrived and 30 seconds later I was off heading home. I guess there should be a moral to this story. The obvious one is "DON'T watch football games at Chinese Restaurants", but the one with more truth in it, is "DONT'T get old"
And we are off.1. I was on record in 2 Packer/Seahawk threads telling everyone that they should be rooting for Seattle in the 2nd half. I don’t know about you, but I got the match up that I think is most advantageous for the Pats. Later I’ll explain way, but first let’s talk about the game.
2. I know I was very cautionary pregame, but I thought they’d win. I was looking for something like a 31-23 game. I didn’t expect them to blow them out 45-7 It looks bad, but it was actually much worse. Not only did the Pats leave an additional 10-14 points on the table, they themselves were the prime reason for the only 7 points the Colts managed to put up.
3. What I hate most about this blow out is that it will justify the Felgers and CHB’s of the world to think that the Colts were the “tomato cans”, they had predicted.
4. The Colts were better than they looked, we just played very very well. You don’t win 2 playoff games on the road, if you aren’t a good football team, especially going into Denver, The point here is please don’t diminish this win, by diminishing the Colts.
5. This is a Colt DL that not only sacked Manning twice behind one of the better OL’s in the game, they hit and harassed him all game, and did a great job of getting him off his spot. Yet except for the one sack, which was more a function of a funky unbalanced alignment that left only on offensive lineman to the left of the C, Brady might have had the best pass protection he’s had in the last 2 months. Josh Kline has taken a LOT of heat on this board. I would hope his critics might be man enough to step up with some compliments for his play this game, as should the entire OL
6. I saw a couple of plays that almost makes me think that the move of Wendell to C helped the run game a bit. As I have said since TC, Wendell best asset is his quickness off the ball in the run game. For any old timers, think Dwight Stevenson. Its rare for a C to explode off the ball and still snap it. Wendell does it well. What else he does well is to get to the second level. On at least 3 occasions on successful run replays, you can see Wendell be the first lineman off the LOS, initially doubling a DLman, then once he’d been sealed, release an get a hat on a LB on the 2nd level.
Wendell’s kryptonite are the Haloti Ngata’s of the world. Interesting to note, that none of that ilk reside on the Seattle DL
7. I’ve always LIKED LaGarrette Blount, but now I’m beginning to LOVE him. Personally I’ve always preferred the one cut and SLASH kind of RB, like Ridley and Gray, but Blount has won ,ne over. Even more impressive than his 148 yds and 5/ypc average, was the fact that close to a 100 of those yds came AFTER first contact. He makes a LOT of people miss him or are left to try and arm tackle him on virtually every play. Very impressive effort
After watching GB have some success with Eddie Lacy running the ball with some very vanilla scheming, I fully expect Blount to have more than enough success running the ball to allow all our playaction passing game to be effective and move the chains when necessary. It might not match the numbers he had tonight, but it should be enough to provide the kind of balance we need in this final game.
8. We had a very effective and efficient passing game WITHOUT having to rely on Gronk as a focus of the offense. 8 different receivers again, including Hooman. If this keeps up, how long will it be before teams will have to start doubling him.
9. The most important aspect of all these arcane plays and formations, is not only are the Pats executing them so well, it forces ANOTHER group of football situations that Seattle will have to prepare. As the announcers rightly mentioned, no comes close to the number of formations, plays, and personnel groupings each game as the Pats.
10. Tonight we saw a glimpse of just how good our offense potentially can be. Outside of perhaps the first 3 plays of the game, and after the game was 45-7, the only thing that stopped the Pats, WEREs the Pats. 6-7 red zone scores is simply outstanding. Their 3rd down efficiency before garbage time was almost as good Their one redzone failure was, IMHO, simply mind boggling, 3 plays that had to be a brain freeze Josh experienced, that was the exception that proves the game plan excellence that is the general rule.
11. Just a couple of brief comments on the offense as it relates to Seattle.
a. That was simply a HISTORIC gag by GB. Never has a team had more chances to win a game that was their’s for the taking and blew them all. Lots of 3rd and short failures that led to FG's, instead of TD’s. At least 3 dropped picks that I saw to go along with the 4 that occurred. And several rain (perhaps) related drops.
b. Seattle deserves lots of kudos for their mental toughness and hard nose attitude, but they had no business winning that game. That one is going to eat at GB and their fans for a long time. I can’t imagine a worse loss. But on the plus side they exposed a LOT of flaws in the Seahawk game on both sides that have been covered up by the EXTREMELY soft schedule they had played over the last 7 games
c. The Pats may not have the elite brand of receivers GB might has)Cobb, Nelson), but they have more legit targets that a team has to defend. They will be by far the most difficult team Seattle has had to face this year. GB could have easily put up 4o against them.
d. GB has an OL that’s no better than ours and probably worse, and Rodgers had plenty of time to throw the bal, despite the disadvantage of playing in Seattlel.
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