6561

Agreed. I don’t see any assured outcomes next week, although I will say the Niners and Ravens fared pretty well against playoff teams in the regular season. And I just, I dunno, it’s hard to imagine a defense as bad as the Patriots progressing to the Superbowl.

I find the idea of a Harbaugh Bowl rematch as nauseating as anyone, but it wouldn’t shock me.

PS the officiating in the Packers/Giants game was 100% pure unadulterated shit.

6562

Also the year St. Louis won their defense was pretty damn good too. 4th in points against and 6th in yards against. Those teams all had good to great defenses that complemented their excellent offense.

As much as I’m a Niners fan, and like Jim Harbaugh, I don’t think I could take two weeks of Harbaugh Bowl II hype. The 49ers-Giants game should be a good one. The Giants are very well balanced. Amazing how they had all those injuries in the preseason and then mid-season too. This is definitely a different Giants team then has played all season. Again I’ll still give the edge to the Niners in this one just because of them being at home.

6563

Now you are changing the goalpost of what a bad D. is. :)

Pats D is in the lower half in the league with points against, but that is not what the masses considers the measure. They are still stuck on yards given up, which hasn’t been the true metric of a defense in like…well, forever. I don’t think GB D is bad at all, but they are 32nd according to the masses, worse than the Pats. Which I think we can both agree is not true.

Indy D ‘showing up’- you are right, but going by the regular season metric, they sucked. Seems to me like the Pats D has been showing up for a month now, in spurts, and in a full game last night.

6564

If the Patriots are anywhere near as motivated to win a Superbowl as Tom Brady was to shut down the Tebow hype and give Timmy a lesson in quarterbacking yesterday they will beat anyone.

6565

I think it’s hard to judge defenses of high powered offensive teams because of the trash time factor. When teams know they are winning they tend to loosen up defensively, which gives the opposing team(usually their passing game) a chance to pad stats, not to mention score last second meaningless points. How can anyone account for that in an objective way is beyond me.

If a team is slogging out 21-17 type victories their stats are going to look way better than teams winning 34-24, even if out of those 24 points 14 were given up in the 4th quarter when the game was out of reach.

6566

Read what you just wrote there. Do you really think Brady was out to “shut down the Tebow hype”?

6567

At least according to this report on Yahoo! sports, yes he kinda was.

tl;dr version:

While Brady wouldn’t bite on whether this game had become somewhat personal with all the attention placed on Tebow, he politely chided the media and public for focusing so much on one person. Throughout the week, front-page stories on newspapers and media sites around the country and relentless coverage on ESPN (the network did a full hour of coverage on Tebow at one point in the week) were dedicated to the game’s other signal caller.

Never mind that Tebow’s counterpart is one of the greatest to ever play the game.

“A lot of people focused on one player,” Brady said. “We were focused on the entire Denver team because we knew the challenge we were facing.”

6568

To me that says we will beat Denver and Tebow as well. That’s just my take.

6569

It says we will beat Denver and Tebow by making Tebow look like a high school amateur and the Bronco’s front line look like bumbling fools compared to Brady and the ineffable Patriots offensive machine, that’s what it says to me.

I’m probably reading too much into Brady’s body language, I guess.

6570

No, it’s because when I said the Packers didn’t need to take risks like onsides kicks because they were the better team, and you actually said, out loud, in a football thread, that you didn’t think the Packers were a better team. Which is exactly the type of pulled-out-your-ass nonsense I’m tired of in these threads.

The Packers had one of the all-time best regular seasons anyone’s ever had in the NFL. They toyed with teams most of the year, barely trailed in games, their QB had a season for the ages, and with one exception, they steamrolled everyone they played. Meanwhile, the Giants, who suffered a lot of injuries, also didn’t bother showing up some weeks. There were definitely concerns with the GB defense, but any football fan with half a brain understood that the 15-1 Packers were a vastly superior and more talented team than the 9-7 Giants.

Now, that doesn’t mean the Giants didn’t have a chance today. I thought they did, and so did lots of other people. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Packers were still the better team. For you or anyone else to show up now and announce “oh, I always knew they were overrated,” is bullshit of the highest order. It’s not even remotely true. They just had a bad game.

Seriously, if you can show me some other post where you proclaimed the Packers were some kind of mirage who’d fooled us all, I’ll retract all of this and apologize. But you didn’t even post a pick in the pick’em thread, so I’m not sure where you “picked them correctly”. You just showed up today spouting nonsense about how the Packers weren’t really that good, which is way too common in the sports threads, and I’m tired of it.

6571

This is Brady we’re talking about. He always has a chip on his shoulder. I wouldn’t doubt it he took Tebowmania personally a bit. Ten years and 3 Super Bowls after getting picked in the 6th round he still gets emotional about being rejected by all those teams. It wasn’t as if the media was covering Denver and their chances, it was all Tebow all the time. Except maybe a break when they talked about the Giants trash talking Green Bay somewhere in there.

6572

On the plus side, we no longer have a clear favorite to win the Super Bowl. It’s totally up for grabs. If the Giants make it, we’ve got rematches either way. And Pats / SF is pretty interesting as well.

As others have mentioned, please, don’t give us a Harbowl. We already watched that on Thanksgiving. It wasn’t that interesting.

I think Brady must be absolutely licking his chops right now, because I’m sure he thinks the two teams he was most afraid of meeting in the Super Bowl got knocked off this weekend. Who knows what big plays the Pats will give up next week, but I think Brady comes out next week absolutely looking for blood.

6573

One exception? They lost to the Chiefs, nearly lost to the very same Giants, and if I recall correctly, had a tight game against the Saints. I’m remembering those off the top of my head; I imagine there are more I’m not immediately recalling.

The Packers were a good team this year, but from the standpoint of someone who watched every game (being a life long Packers fan), it was quite obvious they had a reasonable chance of getting beat in the playoffs. Defense that weak eventually don’t come through for the needed stop, or the offense occasionally may have a bad game.

I’m not going to go in the other direction and suggest I’m some type of prophet. They were a really good team, and still my favorite to win. But to suggest that they were by a good distance head and shoulders above every other team is going too far in my opinion.

6574

Talk about ‘better teams having a bad day’ is mostly crap anyway. The Giants played better football today than the Packers did. There are no second chances in the playoffs; the only history that matters (from the final whistle) is the previous 60 minutes off the game clock.

6575

Ya know what? I’d take that as a great call. If it wasn’t after the fucking fact.

6576

So we agree. You are a fucking asshole that doesn’t know how to communicate with reasonable people on the internet. I didn’t know you were one of those guys, but I know now.

Jackass.

6577

If you watched the Saints and Giants games, at no point in either game were you seriously worried the Packers were going to lose. The Saints would score to cut the lead to 7 or even 4, and then the Pack would score right back to make it 10 or 14 or 17, and made it look ridiculously easy. The Giants had to scratch and claw to get a TD and a 2pt conversion in the final minute to tie, and before you have a chance to refill your drink, the Packers moved down the field in 20 seconds like it was a scrimmage. It was freaky.

With the exception of the Chiefs game, any time the Packers needed to make a play this year, they made it. Even that wacky San Diego game, where they were getting onsides kicks, you were never worried they were going to lose. There’s barely been anything like it in the last 30 years. I think it’s hilarious that people are already writing them off as overrated.

6578

So I actually go to the trouble of explaining my perspective to you, and this is your extent of your response, to call me names and insult me? Yeah, I’m the guy with communication problems.

6579

I expected the Saints to beat the Niners and the Packers to beat the Giants. I whiffed on the NFC but I got the AFC right.

Now I think the Pats will beat the Ravens – just a bit too much offense for the Pats and too much Flacco for the Ravens to outscore the Pats, but I remember two years ago, so you never know.

I like the Giants over the Niners because I like Eli over Alex and I rate the defenses as close.

Whatever happens, Coughlin keeps his job as Giants coach. The Giants have a habit of turning up big in the playoffs.

This is a year when the “defense wins” has come true. Three of the four teams are defensive-minded teams.

6580

Oh yes I was. The Packers were a great team (though they really did fade down the last handful of games – Rodgers fell out of whatever trance he was in and started playing like a mortal), but there are no guarantees in close games.