Do any other fans feel cheated by the playoffs and this Giants rematch?

[BradyFTW!]

You make good points and you have a right to your opinion. But here's what I say to all that....fluuuuuuuuuuuuke!!!

They beat teams who crapped their pants. I can best express my opinions and recap the Super Bowl participants playoff wins by using pictures:

Giants win over Atlanta

Giants win over Green Bay

Giants win over 49ers

Patriots win over Broncos

Patriots win over Ravens

Go ahead and explain how the Patriots' win over the Ravens was a decisive knockout punch, whereas the Giants' win over the 49ers was something less than that. The Giants won in overtime by making a field goal. The Patriots advanced in regulation due to the pure luck of watching the opponent shank a 32 yarder. The Patriots' win was, if anything, less convincing than the Giants'

 

[Crazy Patriot Guy]

I'm pretty sure this has been pointed out already but I'll say it again.

I now declare the 2001 Patriots are NOT the Super Bowl champions from that season.

The Rams beat us by 7 points on our field. We only beat them by 3 on a neutral field.

The Rams were cheated, CLEARLY did not face the best team in the Super Bowl (we simply got lucky) and we should be embarrased to call ourselves champions.

 

[guardplay320]

I don't think I have done that at all. Clinging on to your regular season win, while at the same time completely ignoring you beat teams that beat the Giants in the regular season is contradictory to what you re saying and proves nothing. GB beat the Giants so have the 49ers in the regular season. What good did it do them?

Are the Giants somehow invincible to losing in the playoffs? Are they invincible to getting blown out? Not at all.

And yes winning records are important but so is strength of victory.
You have been outscored by a sick amounts of points and finish the season with a point differential of -6.
You have lost football games to mediocre teams who held the Giants offense to as little as 10 points.
You are ranked worse in points scored as well as points allowed than the Patriots
You are ranked worse in turnovers.
No 9-7 team has ever won a Super Bowl
Three teams have won championship games despite a negative turnover margin, which a good indicator of a team's ability to overcome its mistakes and still win. Two of them won the Super Bowl. The Patriots are the third to try and do this.

And most importantly, yards per point is the best predictor of winning in football. It's currently predicting a beat down.

You are ranked 15th on offense and 14th on defense in this most important category. While the Patriots are ranked 4th on offense and 2nd in defense. Patriots are also ranked #2 Special teams while Giants are 19th. And when considering turnover margin, this predicts blow-out!

And on top of that, the 49ers and GB played terrible compared to what I know and watched to for this entire season. I know how they played other teams that were just as good or better than the Giants, and they didn't play as bad as they played against the Giants in the playoffs.

So what exactly is there to fear about the Giants? Superstition? Karma? History? An "appeared" hot streak due to the result of a couple of teams playing below their usual level? Those are all results of the illusion that football can sometimes create.

So why would I act afraid to stand behind something as solid as this? If it turns out different, then so be it. But right now, as things look, I love what I'm seeing and it's not the Patriots or Patriot fans that have anything to be afraid of.

And I have every confidence the Patriots will expose it. Just because GB and the 49ers failed to do what they are supposed to do, doesn't mean the Patriots will fail also.

Did I say ever say that you should be afraid?

You say how bad the 49ers and Packers played, yet both teams beat the Giants by one play in the regular season. The Packers hit a last second field goal and the Giants were inside the 10 yard line attempting to tie the score at the end of the original 49ers game. The Packers clearly were off their game in the playoffs, but the Giants handed it to them either way despite the officials clearly dictating that the game go the other way. The 49ers were only off their game because of two mistakes. Otherwise, their defense was beastly and their offense was influenced by the Giants defense being beastly and never being very good in the first place. Teams almost always need breaks to get into the Superbowl. The Pats certainly needed a break and got one with Cundiff missing that field goal.

Football is a game of match-ups and the Pats-Giants is a very interesting one. Wilfork is a problem for the Giants. Welker, a healthy Gronk and Hernandez are a problem for the Giants. Cruz, Nicks and Manningham are a problem for the Patriots. The Giants having a healthy Osi, Tuck and JPP is a problem for the Patriots. How two very good coaches address those match-up issues and how the players react is how the game will go.

I have no problem with you being very confident in your team. I have a problem with you stating the Giants don't deserve their place in the Superbowl and calling this a factual statement. It's your opinion, period and clearly not a very popular one.

 

[Observer]

Any knockout competition will always be susceptible to the "match-up problem". The team which would rack up more wins when playing all the other teams might still lose all the time to a particular team that creates match-up problems for it. The only way to avoid this is to make the league a complete round-robin format in which the team with the most number of wins at the end is crowned champion just as it is in European soccer domestic leagues.

However, we do like the excitement provided by sudden-death playoff matches. The best way to think of it is that we are not trying to rank the teams by their quality but simply trying to identify a team that wins the most playoff games. Like people say, the playoffs is a completely different season with the regular season simply acting as qualifiers. And the winner of the superbowl is NOT necessarily the best football team in the league, just the ones that did what it took to win the cup.

 

[The Brandon Five]

this can't be serious.

The Giants beat the defending champs(15-1) and the 49ers (13-3) BOTH on the road.

So they should have to apologize to you for making the Super Bowl? Parity is what makes the NFL great, you don't have the same teams in the playoffs/championship every season like other sports.

Parity hasn't really been the situation in the AFC. Since 2001 it has been Indy, New England and Pittsburgh. The only exception was Oakland in 2002.

 

[The Brandon Five]

Go ahead and explain how the Patriots' win over the Ravens was a decisive knockout punch, whereas the Giants' win over the 49ers was something less than that. The Giants won in overtime by making a field goal. The Patriots advanced in regulation due to the pure luck of watching the opponent shank a 32 yarder. The Patriots' win was, if anything, less convincing than the Giants'

Happy to help.

This unforced error led to seven points...which was greater than your margin of victory:

To clinch the MVP-of-the-game honors, Williams then coughed up the ball again which put you in range for the winning FG:

If Ted Ginn wasn't inactive I think the 49ers go to the Super Bowl. Their DL was abusing their OL and QB.

 

[guardplay320]

Happy to help.

This unforced error led to seven points...which was greater than your margin of victory:

To clinch the MVP-of-the-game honors, Williams then coughed up the ball again which put you in range for the winning FG:

If Ted Ginn wasn't inactive I think the 49ers go to the Super Bowl. Their DL was abusing their OL and QB.

While the muffed punt helped, the Giants got the ball on the 30, not in the 49errs end zone. They then converted a clutch 3rd and 16 from the 17 yard line to get that touchdown.

The other stripped fumble can be credited to the Giants special teams just as much as it could be looked at as a Ravens error. They stripped the ball and recovered it. That happens every week in pretty much every football game. Even if that had not happened, after the 49ers hit a field goal to tie with about 6 minutes left, the 49ers got 33 net yards on 4 possessions after that and 29 of that was on a play with 4 seconds left in the 4th quarter when the 49ers were clearly just trying to see if they could catch a break. That break was not much different at all from the Cundiff missed field goal. If Cundiff made the field goal and the stripped fumble from Williams never happened, the Giants and Pats both would have been in overtime of a tied game. Most teams get breaks on their way to the Superbowl. Does the "tuck rule" sound familiar? That's football. Both teams are there now and how they got there is meaningless.

 

[Deus Irae]

The Super Bowl isn't about being the best. It's about winning the last NFL playoff game of the year. There's nothing to feel cheated about.

 

[oldskool138]

The Super Bowl isn't about being the best. It's about winning the last NFL playoff game of the year. There's nothing to feel cheated about.

I do feel cheated by the refs calling a PI for faceguarding when no such penalty existed in Indy a few years back.

 

[ishmael]

I totally agree! The NFL should ditch the playoffs and the two teams atop the ESPN power ranking at the end of the regular season should play in the Superbowl.
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On second thought. No.

 

[PatriotSeven]

The Super Bowl isn't about being the best. It's about winning the last NFL playoff game of the year. There's nothing to feel cheated about.

I agree you with completely. But that's not how it's perceived.

The main reason I feel cheated is because we had a bunch of fantastic teams this year that we never got a chance to measure ourselves against and on top of that got completely screwed by a one and done playoff system, leaving a lot of questions up in the air.

 

[TheGodInAGreyHoodie]

Fans of 30 teams feel cheated by this superbowl, but not for the reasons you listed, but b/c their favorite team is watching it on the couch.

Happens every year.

 

[Deus Irae]

I agree you with completely. But that's not how it's perceived.

The main reason I feel cheated is because we had a bunch of fantastic teams this year that we never got a chance to measure ourselves against and on top of that got completely screwed by a one and done playoff system, leaving a lot of questions up in the air.

If you "agree with ... completely", you'd have no reason to feel cheated. The Patriots have faced the teams they had to face. They've beaten them. The Giants have faced the teams they had to face. They've beaten them. They'll now face each other, with the winner getting the Lombardi trophy.

Generally speaking, sports playoffs aren't about finding the best team. The regular seasons usually do a better job of that, almost by default, because they give a greater statistical sample. The playoffs are just about who among the theoretical elite had the best run at the end of the year.

 

[Wolfpack]

I agree you with completely. But that's not how it's perceived.

The main reason I feel cheated is because we had a bunch of fantastic teams this year that we never got a chance to measure ourselves against and on top of that got completely screwed by a one and done playoff system, leaving a lot of questions up in the air.

Nobody got screwed and the only one having any question here is you. I've seen a lot of complaining, a lot of it pretty absurd, from fans of SF, GB, Baltimore, Pittsburgh over the past month but I haven't seen a single one of them complain about being screwed because the playoff format is lose and you're out.

 

[PatriotSeven]

I don't get the point either. Apparently there's a better way to determine which team is best than to simply have them play each other. Who knew?

No there isn't. But they don't all play each other do they? It's pick and choose.

GB Packers are 5-1 against NFC playoff teams, 1-0 against AFC teams.
49ers are 4-1 against NFC playoff teams, 1-1 against AFC teams
Saints are 5-2 against NFC playoff teams, 1-1 against AFC teams
Giants are 3-3 against NFC playoff teams, 1-0 against AFC teams

Giants have the worst record against playoff teams. They didn't even have the toughest schedule. That would be the Saints, having to play 9 playoff contenders, and they smashed the Giants.

But but but...the playoffs. Right I understand.

 

[Wolfpack]

No there isn't. But they don't all play each other do they? It's pick and choose.

GB Packers are 5-1 against NFC playoff teams, 1-0 against AFC teams.
49ers are 4-1 against NFC playoff teams, 1-1 against AFC teams
Saints are 5-2 against NFC playoff teams, 1-1 against AFC teams
Giants are 3-3 against NFC playoff teams, 1-0 against AFC teams

Giants have the worst record against playoff teams. They didn't even have the toughest schedule. That would be the Saints, having to play 9 playoff contenders, and they smashed the Giants.

But but but...the playoffs. Right I understand.

Yes there's this absurd method of taking the best teams in the league and then having them all play each other to do determine the champion. They shouldn't even have playoffs! They should all just play 20 games and then we can vote on which team is the best!

 

[TheGodInAGreyHoodie]

Yes there's this absurd method of taking the best teams in the league and then having them all play each other to do determine the champion. They shouldn't even have playoffs! They should all just play 20 games and then we can vote on which team is the best!

Hey that is a great idea. Some one should suggest that to the BCS.

 

[PatriotSeven]

Yes there's this absurd method of taking the best teams in the league and then having them all play each other to do determine the champion. They shouldn't even have playoffs! They should all just play 20 games and then we can vote on which team is the best!

You are right there is, and we should implement it. That's not what we have right now.

Right now we have something that basically amounts to everyone agreeing Oliver McCall and Hashim Rahman really should be considered the "best in boxing" because they both beat Lenox Lewis once and got to wear his belt for a few months.


That's satisfactory to you?

 

[strngplyr]

You are right there is, and we should implement it. That's not what we have right now.

Right now we have something that basically amounts to everyone agreeing Oliver McCall and Hashim Rahman really should be considered the "best in boxing" because they both beat Lenox Lewis once and got to wear his belt for a few months.


That's satisfactory to you?

All schedules aren't created equally. We don't get to pick all of last years playoff teams and place them on our schedule.

Could you just admit that your idea is awful? Nobody wants it. It sucks, and I can assure you that no player would want it, they are pretty sternly against even adding two more regular season games and desperate battle it out for a bye in the playoffs. Nobody wants more games added except the big wigs making money off of it, while claiming they are doing everything to make the game safer.

 

[PatriotSeven]

All schedules aren't created equally. We don't get to pick all of last years playoff teams and place them on our schedule.

Could you just admit that your idea is awful? Nobody wants it. It sucks, and I can assure you that no player would want it, they are pretty sternly against even adding two more regular season games and desperate battle it out for a bye in the playoffs. Nobody wants more games added except the big wigs making money off of it, while claiming they are doing everything to make the game safer.

Which is exactly why I'm saying we need a group format playoff system. And why would I admit to such nonsense. The idea is great and it's been implemented on much greater stages than football. It's internationally accepted with just about every other sport that's played. Great teams wouldn't get beat by a lucky scrub team with a group style playoff format. I wanna see the best. Even the Olympics have a better format. They actually test you inside and out before you earn the right to be called the best. Not once or for one round. You have to prove you can do it over and over and over.

Like I said, I understand about me being in the minority. Most people only care about titles, while I happen to a part of the minority who still believes there's something about really being the best.

If I didn't care about that, I wouldn't be a Patriots fan. Frankly the only teams or fans that should be afraid of what I'm talking about are those that know they couldn't replicate their success. The ones that know they got lucky.