- Joined
- Jul 11, 2005
- Messages
- 15,532
- Reaction score
- 27,568
No time for a preamble. Lets just get started. It was that kind of a night. Hard to know where to start, so lets start from the beginning.
1. I stated in my pregame thread that I thought that this would be a 10-17 point Pats win. Well if the team had played their freakin' B game in that first half it should have been a 10-14 point halftime lead.
2. Among the critical mistakes was perhaps the worst pick Brady threw this entire year. I'm still trying to figure out where that ball was going to. Then Seattle sets up their first TD with a typical "Joe Flacco heave it up and hope" throw to the Pats 10. Then finally the Pats played their worst 5 consecutive defensive plays of the year allowing Seattle to score at the half. Do you realize that had the Pats held Seattle to "merely" a 10 yd gain, Seattle would have run the clock out. So instead of a 17-7 lead going into the half, the game is tied and Seattle gets the ball to open the half
3. ......and then things got REALLY BAD. Watching Seattle move down into the red zone, then the Pats give up the pick and have them score, with most of the damage being done by a kid who hadn't caught a pass all year, was hard to believe. Now the Pats are down 10, and the offense couldn't stop self destructing for the rest of that 3rd quarter.
4. How frustrating is this? Well by this time, l I'm kind of apoplectic at the bar I'm at. I was happy I had already consumed my half price pizza, because it wouldn't have gone down if I had had to eat it then.
I mean I have to admit it, I had to go home. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I opted to watch the 4th quarter at home alone. I can't say I was optimistic, so I brought home ice cream to binge if the worst kept occuring.
5. Running the ball was a problem, but moving the ball was never one. The Pats had a plan and stuck to it. I would have gone long a few more times, but Brady remained disciplined and wound up with a record number of completions (37) and 330 yds.
That patience paid off when, without changing a thing in the strategy, despite being down 10 with about 10 to go in the final quarter the Pat mounted 2 HEROIC drives to somehow take the lead again. We'll talk about what they do when we go into details, but right now I'm in narrative mode now.
6. Now this is where God looks like he's just ****ing with us. It's freakin' deja vu. Tom Brady has just led on a game winning TD march for the 3rd time in a row in a superbowl. Once again all we need is ONE stop and we are superbowl champs again. But THIS time, we HAVE the defense we need to make that stop, Right?
It doesn't start well with a 35 throw to Lynch, but then there are a couple of stops before a them barely getting a first down, and a couple of more stops before it HAPPENS.... again. Another perfectly defended play takes a bounce from hell and here we are a-g-a-i-n. I couldn't F'n believe it. How can this be happening again. Did you see that shot on Brady's face after the play? Fate can't possibly be this cruel....and a thousand other similar thoughts. You know them because you felt most of them. 4 more yds from Lynch and as the clock ticks under 30 seconds, and the ball is on the one, the inevitable just keeps ticking forward.
7. .....and THAT's when God showed us he had a sense of humor (though he has rather a perverse and cruel one ), and Butler made the play that will make him a Patriot hero for the rest of his day, no matter what happens in his career. Which I think will be a good one, btw.
8. Now people will make all kinds of noise about how bad a call that was, and you certainly have a case to make that it was a strange one. But what I hope doesn't get lost in the noise of all that media self righteousness, is just how good Butler's play was.
That wasn't a bad route by the receiver, nor was it a bad pass by Wilson. It was right one the money. Butler jumped that route and in going forthe ball literally knocked the receiver out of the play and STILL managed to hang on to the ball. It’s a beautiful play and one I can see over and over again just because how well it was played.
9. I couldn’t help but remember back to those early days of TC when I first mentioned Butler in one of my TC reports. Then he was a no name UDFA who had little chance to make the team, yet you couldn’t help notice how often he wound up close to the ball. A few weeks and pre-season games later and he started to get mentioned as possible guy for the first 53, or someone who mysteriously goes on the IR or a PS guy.
10. In the end he made the he made the roster, and I have to say that anytime he got some snaps with the regular defense, I can NEVER remember seeing him in a play where if he didn’t defend the pass, he very tightly contested it. No one ever ran free on Malcolm Butler…..or at least never that I ever noticed.
11. Some very interesting stats from this game. Wilson completed just TWELVE passes all game. Unfortunately they all seemed to go for 20+ yds. There were some of Wilson’s passes that were very good, but there were a few that were very dangerous that just seemed to work out well
The Pats kept the Seahawks to only 3 of ten on 3rd downs Brady on the other hand was a healthy 57% (8/14)
The 100 yds the Pats allowed Lynch was about 20 yds more than I would have liked, but 20 yds less than the 120+ I feared would be game changing.
Conversely the 60 yds on 15 carries that we managed was about 25 yds and 7 carries less than I would have hoped, but at least it wasn’t Raven-esque. Count those as minor disappointments
Other disappointments were to see Wilson escape for 40 yds on 4 carries. Jones and Collins both whiffed at least once on him. Still it wasn’t horrible. There were times where they held their discipline well. Also Brady’s picks. Like I said the first one was just horrid. The second one was more a great play by Wagner than a bad one by Tom.
12. McCourty had a strangely quiet day. Hard to evaluate, but Wilson made a lot of long passes and none of them seemed to be thrown to guys McCourty was helping out on. It could very well not have been his fault, but I thought it was worth mentioning
13. Can’t help but mention the officials. OK they weren’t sent by Goodell to screw us……but they didn’t help either. Up until the last 12 seconds of the game when the Seahawks got about 4 penalties and 30 yds, the Seahawks definitely got a slight edge in the calls. Mostly in the way of non-calls. They missed the roughing the punter call early that would have been big when it should have been an easy call. There was a period in the 2nd and 3rd quarters where they missed a lot of holding calls on the Seahawks. I though a couple have been called, since they were that blatant. Still in the end, they pretty much stayed out of the game, and it was better for it. They did us no favors, but wouldn’t have been the reason for a loss, had it happened.
14. I hate that the narrative still makes it seem that our “legacy” is still in the hands of the “Welles investigation”. This issue of 1 psi is still being framed as if its an issue upon which the entire league’s integrity is resting on.
The good news is I’m still confident that in the end we will be fully cleared and vindicated. The bad news is, it will be done in such a way that the haters will be able to still question the team and get away with it.
15. Seattle is a very physical football team. They are no more physical that the Pats were. At no time did it look like the Seahawks were bullying the Pats like they have so many other teams.
16. You might call me crazy, but this game was a super exciting, dramatic, and closely competitive game.....that didn't have to be. I still strongly believe that if the same two teams played 10 times the Pats would win 5 of them by 10-17 points
17. OK! this is a start. more to day but I want to start to enjoy some of after game comments from the media and others here before I can't keep my eyes open. CONGRATULATIONS everyone and hope to see everyone at the duck boats
1. I stated in my pregame thread that I thought that this would be a 10-17 point Pats win. Well if the team had played their freakin' B game in that first half it should have been a 10-14 point halftime lead.
2. Among the critical mistakes was perhaps the worst pick Brady threw this entire year. I'm still trying to figure out where that ball was going to. Then Seattle sets up their first TD with a typical "Joe Flacco heave it up and hope" throw to the Pats 10. Then finally the Pats played their worst 5 consecutive defensive plays of the year allowing Seattle to score at the half. Do you realize that had the Pats held Seattle to "merely" a 10 yd gain, Seattle would have run the clock out. So instead of a 17-7 lead going into the half, the game is tied and Seattle gets the ball to open the half
3. ......and then things got REALLY BAD. Watching Seattle move down into the red zone, then the Pats give up the pick and have them score, with most of the damage being done by a kid who hadn't caught a pass all year, was hard to believe. Now the Pats are down 10, and the offense couldn't stop self destructing for the rest of that 3rd quarter.
4. How frustrating is this? Well by this time, l I'm kind of apoplectic at the bar I'm at. I was happy I had already consumed my half price pizza, because it wouldn't have gone down if I had had to eat it then.
I mean I have to admit it, I had to go home. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I opted to watch the 4th quarter at home alone. I can't say I was optimistic, so I brought home ice cream to binge if the worst kept occuring.
5. Running the ball was a problem, but moving the ball was never one. The Pats had a plan and stuck to it. I would have gone long a few more times, but Brady remained disciplined and wound up with a record number of completions (37) and 330 yds.
That patience paid off when, without changing a thing in the strategy, despite being down 10 with about 10 to go in the final quarter the Pat mounted 2 HEROIC drives to somehow take the lead again. We'll talk about what they do when we go into details, but right now I'm in narrative mode now.
6. Now this is where God looks like he's just ****ing with us. It's freakin' deja vu. Tom Brady has just led on a game winning TD march for the 3rd time in a row in a superbowl. Once again all we need is ONE stop and we are superbowl champs again. But THIS time, we HAVE the defense we need to make that stop, Right?
It doesn't start well with a 35 throw to Lynch, but then there are a couple of stops before a them barely getting a first down, and a couple of more stops before it HAPPENS.... again. Another perfectly defended play takes a bounce from hell and here we are a-g-a-i-n. I couldn't F'n believe it. How can this be happening again. Did you see that shot on Brady's face after the play? Fate can't possibly be this cruel....and a thousand other similar thoughts. You know them because you felt most of them. 4 more yds from Lynch and as the clock ticks under 30 seconds, and the ball is on the one, the inevitable just keeps ticking forward.
7. .....and THAT's when God showed us he had a sense of humor (though he has rather a perverse and cruel one
), and Butler made the play that will make him a Patriot hero for the rest of his day, no matter what happens in his career. Which I think will be a good one, btw.8. Now people will make all kinds of noise about how bad a call that was, and you certainly have a case to make that it was a strange one. But what I hope doesn't get lost in the noise of all that media self righteousness, is just how good Butler's play was.
That wasn't a bad route by the receiver, nor was it a bad pass by Wilson. It was right one the money. Butler jumped that route and in going forthe ball literally knocked the receiver out of the play and STILL managed to hang on to the ball. It’s a beautiful play and one I can see over and over again just because how well it was played.
9. I couldn’t help but remember back to those early days of TC when I first mentioned Butler in one of my TC reports. Then he was a no name UDFA who had little chance to make the team, yet you couldn’t help notice how often he wound up close to the ball. A few weeks and pre-season games later and he started to get mentioned as possible guy for the first 53, or someone who mysteriously goes on the IR or a PS guy.
10. In the end he made the he made the roster, and I have to say that anytime he got some snaps with the regular defense, I can NEVER remember seeing him in a play where if he didn’t defend the pass, he very tightly contested it. No one ever ran free on Malcolm Butler…..or at least never that I ever noticed.
11. Some very interesting stats from this game. Wilson completed just TWELVE passes all game. Unfortunately they all seemed to go for 20+ yds. There were some of Wilson’s passes that were very good, but there were a few that were very dangerous that just seemed to work out well
The Pats kept the Seahawks to only 3 of ten on 3rd downs Brady on the other hand was a healthy 57% (8/14)
The 100 yds the Pats allowed Lynch was about 20 yds more than I would have liked, but 20 yds less than the 120+ I feared would be game changing.
Conversely the 60 yds on 15 carries that we managed was about 25 yds and 7 carries less than I would have hoped, but at least it wasn’t Raven-esque. Count those as minor disappointments
Other disappointments were to see Wilson escape for 40 yds on 4 carries. Jones and Collins both whiffed at least once on him. Still it wasn’t horrible. There were times where they held their discipline well. Also Brady’s picks. Like I said the first one was just horrid. The second one was more a great play by Wagner than a bad one by Tom.
12. McCourty had a strangely quiet day. Hard to evaluate, but Wilson made a lot of long passes and none of them seemed to be thrown to guys McCourty was helping out on. It could very well not have been his fault, but I thought it was worth mentioning
13. Can’t help but mention the officials. OK they weren’t sent by Goodell to screw us……but they didn’t help either. Up until the last 12 seconds of the game when the Seahawks got about 4 penalties and 30 yds, the Seahawks definitely got a slight edge in the calls. Mostly in the way of non-calls. They missed the roughing the punter call early that would have been big when it should have been an easy call. There was a period in the 2nd and 3rd quarters where they missed a lot of holding calls on the Seahawks. I though a couple have been called, since they were that blatant. Still in the end, they pretty much stayed out of the game, and it was better for it. They did us no favors, but wouldn’t have been the reason for a loss, had it happened.
14. I hate that the narrative still makes it seem that our “legacy” is still in the hands of the “Welles investigation”. This issue of 1 psi is still being framed as if its an issue upon which the entire league’s integrity is resting on.
The good news is I’m still confident that in the end we will be fully cleared and vindicated. The bad news is, it will be done in such a way that the haters will be able to still question the team and get away with it.
15. Seattle is a very physical football team. They are no more physical that the Pats were. At no time did it look like the Seahawks were bullying the Pats like they have so many other teams.
16. You might call me crazy, but this game was a super exciting, dramatic, and closely competitive game.....that didn't have to be. I still strongly believe that if the same two teams played 10 times the Pats would win 5 of them by 10-17 points
17. OK! this is a start. more to day but I want to start to enjoy some of after game comments from the media and others here before I can't keep my eyes open. CONGRATULATIONS everyone and hope to see everyone at the duck boats
Last edited:
