Re: What the F***..Samari Rolle
Seems to me we got jobbed way worse in Indy than the Ravens can even imagine themselves to have been officiated to death in Baltimore, even if they could point to one definitively bad call, like when the Indy DB was anally raping Randy Moss, giving him a reacharound, and Randy got called for Offensive Pass Interference.
But I'm not chiming in to offer that comparative, I'm chiming in to compare the Pats' (winners) discipline in the face of that, to the Ravens' lack thereof.
1) The calls were almost all good calls.
2) The "point of emphasis" about manhandling receivers apparently doesn't apply to Pats' receivers, until the very end of the game. You benefitted for three quarters. Be happy.
3) MOST IMPORTANTLY - what do we do in the face of adversity? We buckle down. We DID beat the Colts and the Refs. What did the Ravens do? Disintegrated.
4) After the fact, the Ravens players pointed to everything except their own performance to explain the loss.
Look: Samari Rolle's idiotic sidetrack on the black official calling him "boy" is bad enough. But you know who had no business saying anything after that game except "Oh my God, I am so sorry"?
Bart freakin Scott.
Are you kidding me? 44 seconds still left in the game, and he reacts to his frustration how? By dooming the Ravens' final hopes. All the Baltimore fans can say "whaaaah soooo close" about that final hail mary, but news flash, Baltimore: The way we were playing on D, it's likely you'd be playing in overtime, not lamenting bad calls, if Bart Scott doesn't throw a hissy fit, and in the process give away the game.
Baltimore got some bad bounces, and the calls went the Pats way in the 4th. But not inexplicably or unfairly so. Baltimore did not do everything they could to win. And the main culprit, to me, displayed that lack of discipline that lost them the game again in the interview.
Could you see Mike Vrabel pulling that stunt, and then pouting to the national media after costing the Pats a game? No and no.
That's lack of mental toughness and lack of discipline. Playing with intensity got Baltimore's vaunted defense a title in 2000, but since then, it has not been enough. It's a different model, I suppose, but data suggest that it's a high risk, high reward gambit to rely on unpredictable emotionality to carry you through a game or a season.
Look what the Ravens were all about:
- Sean Taylor, "family", win one for the gipper.
- "Wahhh the refs called the game wrong."
- "He called me boy"
- Everything except "What could we have done better?"
If they'd answered that last question at some point in the past, and came up with the answer "be disciplined in the face of adversity," the Pats might not be undefeated today.
Thank God that culture is more easily talked about than created, as it has been created in New England. It gives our boys (oops, our full grown men,) an obvious advantage in a league full of crybabies.
PFnV
