The Oakland Raider's boss, Al Davis, passes away and meets God up in Heaven: "You've been a decent man and brought much excitement to your fans while on Earth so I've prepared a modest home for you Mr. Davis," says God. With that he leads Davis to a small, 3 bedroom bungalow adorned with a Raider's logo on the door and a small flag on the porch. He also shows him his car, a small VW with the Raider's logo on the side.
"Thank you, Lord," says Davis, I appreciate this. God then begins to show Al around the neighborhood and they come upon a huge, four story mansion done up in Blue and white with red trim, two huge Patriot's flags hang from the balcony and a double stretch limo with the Patriot's logo emblazened on both sides.
"Lord," says Davis, I appreciate the house you gave me but why does Bob Kraft have such a huge mansion to live in?"
God smiles at Davis and then says, "Bob Kraft doesn't live there Al, that's MY house."
Hope you enjoyed that...now for the game and some of my observations and comments:
First off...for several years the sports writers have been calling these games "Brady--Manning matchups. Not so. They are Belichick/Manning matchups and Bill has been in Manning's head for years now. As a matter of fact, considering how banged up the Pats are, and having lost six starters as well as not having Gronkowski for the first half of the season, I think Belichick should win coach of the year honors for what he's done with his team so far.
Sunday night he made some masterfull moves, one or two that seemed to escape the average fan's eyes. Choosing to kick at the beginn ing of the game was normal but choosing the wind instead of taking the ball when the Pats won the coin toss in overtime was a genius move and made perfect sense if you weren't afraid of Manning's ability to score a touchdown with the first possession.
Secondly, everyone felt that the best strategy for the Pats was to go to the ground game so as to keep Manning from torching his patchwork defensive backfield. Bill made Manning do that work for him when he put TWO safeties back deep daring Manning to run the ball. As you saw Manning did just that and. although his running back ran for over 230 yards...they never figured in the scoring. It also allowed Brady the luxury of throwing the ball more often because MANNING took the ball out of his own hands by handing off instead of passing for TD's. Sounds strange but you saw it yourself.
Bill also had the defense show "man" coverage most of the night but actual disguised a system of zone play that had his corners making initial contact then passing them off to others, mostly linebackers, thus disrupting their timing. The master, Wes Welker wasn't even a factor this night, at least not FOR the Bronco's. He dropped two third down passes, came up short on another AND, need I say it, blew the game completely by bungling that final punt return giving the game to the Pats. HE was supposed to fair catch the ball instead of what we all saw. Yes, God IS a Patriots fan. I call it poetic justice that is was Welker's blunder that gave the win to the Pats.
Belichick also kept his composure after all those first period giveaways and convinced his players that they still could win this game. THAT'S what a coach has to do in these situations and he did it.
This was a TEAM victory but was made possible by the coach's confidence in his men. This could be what they need after having two games taken from them by poor (inept) refereeing.
Now for the talk shows..."Felger and Mazz" are the worst ever. All they've been doing for two days is bash Belichick for not answering questions the way THEY want them answered. Instead of complimenting him on his choice(a gutsy call) to take the wind in overtime they've spent hours criticizing him for spending 3-4 minutes explaing his decision instead of just saying, "I did what I thought was best for theteam," which they say is his usual answer to THEIR questions. Hey guys, if you can't talk about the playing of the game then, as my Dad used to say whejn somebody didn't
know how to do the job, "Get a broom." Old timers will know what that means.
As far as Tony Massarotti goes, he's a good baseball man but I wish he'd get off the air until his voice changes. Felger...get a broom. All he can do is create dissent. But, I guess that's what he's there for because that gets non sports people calling. Nuf said. Enjoy the victory Pats fans.
Trivia question...What coach has taken his team to the Super Bowl most often?