It still should've been enough to win. What's the percentage of successfully killing the clock on those 4-minute situations? And what is it against the Ravens?
It was pretty obvious that the Patriots weren't attempting to kill the clock at that point. They were trying to score.
Again, the Patriots have failed to convert those situations plenty of times before and won the game, and deserved to win the game. You're taking it as a given that they should've been able to kill the clock. It's not.
No I wasn't. I'm saying that they were attempting to score to put the game away because the defense hadn't showed that it could stop Baltimore in the second half and that they simply couldn't execute.
Should the Patriots hand back their SB39 rings because the offense couldn't kill the clock vs. the Eagles? Were they undeserving of victory because of it?
This is, again, irrelevant to the topic at hand. However, since you mention it, the Patriots were up in the game. They were in the right coverage and McNabb threw a pick. The Patriots out executed the Eagles down the stretch. On the same token, there are games where the Pats have been out executed down the stretch and still won. Hence my "glad to get the win, but we need to tighten up on..." stance.
I can't think of three bad calls against the Ravens OTOH. Ngata is a maybe. The Welker/Webb illegal contact call was the right one (though, frankly, it could've been PI and given us more yardage). The Mankins-Pollard play was clearcut. I don't know what else of consequence there was. The Harbaugh/bench call was total bush-league, though I think he was totally full of it that he was trying to call a timeout, because there was no visual evidence that he was. Still, it wasn't worth calling, nor was it of real significance, as unlike all the calls in the Ravens favor, it was not a dramatic drive-extending call like the Ravens had in their favor - all night.
The non-call on Mankins was not clear cut. That was a late hit that should have been flagged for unnecessary roughness and all the refs got was the retailiation.
You are completely marginalizing what I'm saying. I'm not blaming the game on the officials 100%.
Sure you are. This thread's whole premise has been to blame the officials and extempt the team itself from any fault. While I agree that the officials were horrible and deserve their fair share of the blame for the game, the team shouldn't be exempt from not out-executing their opponents when they needed to.
The Patriots played well enough to win against a team with a similar level of talent that executed to a similar level, and officiating swung the balance. Either team could've won that game. The team that had an overwhelming number of calls in their favor did. That's really all there is to it.
1. The Ravens incurred more total penalties and more total penalty yardage while losing the T.O.P. battle.
2. The team with more total yards, more yards on the ground, and less sacks given up won the game. Coincidence?
Again, no matter what game, no matter the outcome, you can point to things the team did and say they could've done it better. That's a given. When the team loses, we point to those things and say that's why they lost. When they win in spite of these things, we never mention them and pretend they never happened.
Not true. Quite a few of us usually bring up things the team could have done better, execution-wise, even after a victory. You included. We're typically met with "SCOREBOARDZ!!1" type responses.
This debate sounds familiar, doesn't it? In the interest of not getting carpal tunnel, I'm going to go ahead and yield the last word to you. I let it go with Deus in the other thread as well even though I fundementally disagree with him (and you, for that matter) that the team shouldn't be faulted for allowing drives after bad calls that didn't go their way. You have the floor, I'll read your rebuttal, and then you'll be able to find me in the threads criticizing the coaches and play callers for the loss last night.
