Reply With QuoteI doubt Coughlin's done - 65 isn't that old and he'll want to see what else he can get out of Eli in the next few years. Coaches don't walk away unless they have other motives, and even then its very rare.
Could be a trend after La Russa's exit this year, who is 67.Originally Posted by Woolen Horde
I doubt Coughlin's done - 65 isn't that old and he'll want to see what else he can get out of Eli in the next few years. Coaches don't walk away unless they have other motives, and even then its very rare.
Random thoughts from the game:
- I started getting worried about the Giants early when they kept crossing midfield without getting points. They completely dominated the first 1.5 quarters and were still only up 9-3.
- When Weatherford punted that ball out of bounds at the 4, it occurred to me that if the Giants ended up winning the game, aside from Eli, he might be the Giants' postseason MVP. He had one pressure punt after another in the SF game, in sloppy conditions, and set up the the safety in the first quarter. He had an outstanding playoffs.
- The Pats drive/TD at the end of the first half was epic. I thought that early completion to Gronk jumpstarted the entire Pats offense, and I was very worried about them coming out flying to start the second half, which they did.
- I thought the halftime show was ... interesting. Zero props to Madonna for lipsynching the whole thing; medium props for being in impossibly good shape and doing cartwheels in high heels and being able to be the centerpiece of what was essentially a Cirque du Soliel Madonna circus show. I thought the LMFAO mashup was vaguely interesting, but the other guest stars (I wonder how many people even realized that was Nicky Minaj/Mia/CeeLo on stage) were basically wasted.
- Once the Pats went up 17-9, I really thought the shootout was on. I thought Eli was going to start firing all over the field and we were headed for some 31-29 finish. Props to the defenses for not giving up any big plays until Manningham's catch at the end.
- Fiat, who had the worst commercial of the NFL season with that awful and ubiquitous JLo spot, redeemed themselves somewhat with the ridonculously hot brunette in their Super Bowl ad.
- As the whole Blackburn interception unfolded, I thought I was seeing Brady doing his version of Eli-to-Tyree: breaking out of a would-be sack, heaving it downfield, etc. When he chucked that ball, I was waiting for the camera to reveal some wide open receiver catching a game-sealing TD. It was shocking to me how Blackburn got such good position on Gronk, and I'd love to know how much his injury interfered hampered him on Sunday.
- Welker's drop obviously changed the course of the game; if he catches that at the 20 with 4 minutes left, they almost certainly get a FG to go up 5 (and maybe a TD to finish things off). But it seemed the whole team got a case of the dropsies in the last few minutes, similar to what happened to Rodgers in the GB/NYG game. It was shocking to see out of a Belichick team.
- While I thought the game was well-played, I didn't think it became a real thriller until Manningham's catch at midfield. At that point, you knew the Giants were going to move into FG range and we were headed for a fantastic finish.
- Manningham's catch: holy crap. Not in Tyree's league, but an amazing throw and catch that will go down with the best in Super Bowl history.
- I thought we saw a lot of awful clock management in the NFL this year, but I had zero issue with the way both teams managed the end of this game. I'd rather give my Hall of Fame QB a minute to score a TD than 15-20 seconds to move into FG range, and I can't blame Bradshaw for not stopping short of the endzone. Players simply aren't trained to play that way, and if you really want to run the clock down, just take a knee on 2nd and 3rd down.
- Postgame: What the hell was that Lombardi trophy walk-up by Raymond Berry? Did they do that last year? That whole thing looked really creepy.
- I will be completely shocked if Coughlin hangs it up. All the talk out of New York this year is that he wants to keep going for a while.
Looks like a minor halftime show controversy is brewing after guest singer M.I.A. (whoever that is) flipped the bird while on camera. Maybe we're headed for pre-recorded performances, which is really only a step from the lip syncing we get now.
The receiver was clearly open, it's just that Brady had a rusher in his face and couldn't throw it far enough. The defender got burned, he got lucky the ball was so underthrown it was like he caught a punt. At least it sure looked that way to me.
I had my surround sound fired up for the halftime show and it sounded weak. I felt sad to see Madonna that way because I remember when she pushed people's buttons like no one else and now she's as mainstream and white bread as you can get.
Collinsworth is the best color man in NFL broadcasting, is that seriously up for debate here? Whats wrong with some of you? Who do you think is better?
Madonna. I am not a fan but that was a good half time show. She sure as fuck doesnt look 50 or however the fuck old she is.
Great game.
Well, one thing I learned from tonight.
If I buy a ford, I am going to die.
Eli's not even more clutch.(though he is clutch) Sure eli lead the league in 4th quarter comebacks, but guess who is the alltime leader in that stat?
Peyton's way better than eli, but narratives aside, winning(it all) in football has more to do with a TEAM than the quarterback. Look at brady— three rings as an elite game manager with a great defense, two superbowl losses as the leader of a high-powered offense.
I actually feel bad for peyton; he's carried an average to below-averagely managed colts team to consistent contention for his whole career. Every other perennial contender has been built by good management: pittsburgh, eagles, patriots— at least until recently, when theyve become a lot more Brady-dependent. And, as I already pointed, theyve not been able to overcome it either.
Damn good game.
Peyton is better. People are nuts to think otherwise. Peyton's just never had a really good team around him except maybe the year they won the Super Bowl. Maybe.
Also if you do put Eli as better than Peyton, then Eli is in Greatest of All Time contention which is a bit crazy.
I think football fans have a tendency to overrate players based on moments and narrative rather than on consistent play or putting things in a larger context. I think it's because the sport has never had a wayne gretzky or a michael jordan at the quarterback position: someone who combines transcendent statistical dominance with winning 4+ championships.
One of the quarterbacks you most often hear as "greatest ever" is john elway, but by the time he won his two superbowls he wasnt even the best player on the offense. Nothing against him, but think about it— he retires two years earlier, and he's not even considered better than favre or marino.
While we're at it: marino's underrated too. Ive seen advanced statistics that actually show marino to be the clutchest QB of his generation; basically, peyton manning without that one season they gave him a defense.
The crazy thing about the whole Peyton / Eli thing is that Peyton has an impossibly good regular season record, while Eli comes alive in the playoffs. If Eli could put up five or six 12-win seasons, he'd be in better shape for Best Ever discussions down the line.
Peyton has thrown away more big games than Eli's ever played in. Particularly early in his career Peyton had a bit of the Romo in him. That said there is no situation where I'd rather have Eli.
Hopefully Peyton comes back next season and reminds everyone just how good he actually is.
That was my thought too... seemed like a pretty strategic trade to make. Get a few extra guys out there to keep the coverage tight enough to pin the receivers for 10 seconds at a pop, give up 5 yards in response.
To buttress my "great teams win superbowls, quarterbacks get all the credit" argument:
joe montana, 49er offense/defense league ranking for each superbowl victory
1981: offense 7th, defense 2nd
1984: offense 2nd, defense 1st
1988: offense 7th, defense 8th
1989: offense 1st, defense 3rd
Point is, montana was great, but it's more how he won(heroically, or in a blowout) then the fact he did win. Those teams were stacked. On both sides.
I think this has some truth to it very early on(his first couple playoff games), but by his third or fourth season, it's more of a reputation feedback loop than anything real. Peyton has lost some big games, but that's because he's played in so many big games, and the fact that his team isnt usually good enough to win when he has a subpar performance. Did he have problems with the patriots? Yes, when they had the best defense in the league, he did. Plus they were probably cheating.
I feel like peyton gets penalized for situations like in 2009, when he carried a pretty good colts team to a near-perfect record, carried them past teams with more talent, then when he loses to the saints, it's like he's underachieved with the supposed "near-perfect colts." Aaron rodgers' season this year is like a microcosm of peyton manning's career: carries a mediocre team to great heights, masks their weaknesses; then when the other, more complete teams beat them in the playoffs, the whole season is a disappointment.
It wouldve been great if they had sent out 14-15 players, instead of twelve. That would've been real strategic.
Yeah sorry, Best of the generation is Payton and Brady. Eli is not in the conversation.
Break records at a ridiculous pace, something Payton and Tom seem to do every year. Eli holds 4 records. Brady 41. Payton 40. That said, I also think Payton and Brady are the best 2 of all time, we can debate forever on who 1 and 1a are. Marino was amazing, Montana was also, but that 49er team was stacked, and Elway threw harder than anyone. But we all just witnessed the best decade of football with P and T.
The next round will be Rogers and Brees, which has already started. Brady is on the back 9, we saw that tonight in neon lights. Payton if he is smart will never play again.
12 men clock rule...yep boy does that need to be looked at. But that's football the clock does not go backward.
Peyton and Brady are great, no doubt but to rank them as 1a and 1b all time is going a bit overboard. I hate to be the context guy but this past decade and more recently these past couple of years has just seen the game change into a pass heavy, fling it up 60 times a game shootout. Just because they throw for 5,000 yards a season now doesn't leapfrog them above the likes of Montana and Elway. Frankly, I hate rankings altogether and lump guys into groups unless one guy is clearly above the rest ala Jerry Rice.
It's a bit unfair to further put QBs on a higher pedestal then they already are while diminishing the accomplishments of other positions. I know you're not doing that, but as a whole that seems to be the trend the NFL is heading in right now with the pass heavy offenses. But it's a team game, and you need a balanced team if you expect to succeed.
Going back to the HoF, it'll be a damn shame if WRs such as Tim Brown and Cris Carter don't get in to it now because the league has gotten so pass friendly and the numbers they put up don't look so impressive now. While on the other hand we're heaping praise upon the QBs of this generation as being the greatest of all time.
The problem is that this era is quickly making those old number look pretty tame in comparison across the board. For example, Kerry Collins and Vinny Testaverde have more career passing yards then Joe Montana does. They aren't HOFers. John Kitna, a journeyman at best, is 37th all time now. There are five active players in the top 20 of the all-time passing list.
The same holds true for affiliated positions, like wide receiver. Tony Gonzalez, Hines Ward, and Derrick Mason are on in the top 20 all-time receiving yards. Sure, Gonzalez is a HOFer, but Ward is less of a sure-fire choice and Mason probably isn't going to top anyone's list. So the numbers don't mean what they used to.
As for Eli, while I'm not going to say he's better then Peyton at this point, or better then Brady or Brees for that matter, he is turning into a better QB then we thought he was in 2007. Don't forget that his regular season numbers were pretty good this year and that it certainly wasn't the Giants defense or running game they relied in most games. All I know is that when he said he considered himself one of the top QBs prior to the season a lot of people snickered, but here we are and he's won another Superbowl and another Superbowl MVP. That has to count for something, if not everything in a league where winning it all is supposed to be the only acceptable outcome.
Regarding Peyton in the clutch, he was criticized for losing games in the playoffs early in his career (if I remember correctly, 3-4 defenses were brutal on him) but around 04 or so, it's been clearly his team losing them, not him. Take his last game, against the Jets. They lost, but he only had like three incomplete passes. They lost because the Jets played the pass every play and rightfully so (the Colts had no running game to speak of). You can't blame Manning for that.
And the AFC Championships the year they won the Championship. How clutch was that? He has a bunch of clutch comebacks in the regular season because his team could compete at that level. Come playoff time, the rest of his team could not.
I think you have to divide the greatest ever stuff into eras and positions. Being a QB now is much different than even a few years ago). The most impressive season I've ever seen by a player was Manning's 49 touchdown season. I know those stats have been topped, but I don't think anyone was ever more dominant than that. Of course, the Colts receivers were mauled in the playoffs (and the rules then changed to highly benefit the QB and WR). Those records would probably not be broken without the rule changes since that season.
I think Peyton is the greatest ever but that isn't fair to the much older players. It's more of a personal favorite than anything. The only person that's really the undisputed best at their position (for all of time) is Jerry Rice and because of the rule changes after his career, I think he always will be.
that seems like a bad saying in the post Vicks era ;)
Personally I thought Pierre-Paul should have gotten MVP, rather than Manning, but defensive players never get it, so no surprise there.
His performance in the first half kept the Pats off the scoreboard for almost the entire half.
Good Superbowl and an entertaining game, but how many memorable plays were there? There were very few big plays. It was an odd game that way. It was a lot of four yard runs and six yard passes.
I think the Giants have the core of a very good team. They have good receivers and Manning, and they have that front four on defense. It's not a stretch to see both the offense and defense playing even better next year. They could be tough. Of course they play in a tough division. They need to be tough.
I agree that JPP should have been given a good look for MVP of this game. The scary thing is that he is only just learning how to play his position. He has only scratched the surface of his true potential if he keeps working at it.
Good game, though lower scoring than I anticipated. I really enjoyed how it was close all the way to the very end. I don't care about either team yet I was still on the edge of my seat when Brady chucked up that Hail Mary to end it. I also disagreed with the announcers that Bradshaw should have stopped on the 1-yard-line. You get a chance to score points, you SCORE F-ING POINTS, especially when you're behind and the game is winding down. You stop on the 1 and run down clock, then fail to punch it in or the FG attempt gets blocked and you are a goat of legendary proportions for years to come. You can't play football worried about what the other team might do, you score and then you put the defense on the field and ask them to hold the line.
As for the commercials, outside of the M&M's one and the three or four that featured dogs, they pretty much sucked this year. I was even disappointed in the VW commercial, as while the dog part was entertaining, the tie in with Star Wars was completely lame given the build-up from the previous dogs barking the Imperial Theme commercial.
Uhh Brady set a record for completions in a row for a Super Bowl(15 I think) that's not ordinary. He also had receivers drop balls like Hernandez and Welker at the end. He played very well. Eli Finished with 75% completion and no INT's in a Super Bowl. That's not ordinary. Give these guys credit. Just because they weren't 400+ yards and 5 TD's doesn't mean they didn't play well.
Regular season yea but in the postseason? Nope, Eli is consistently clutch and Peyton has regularly struggled to produce. People may call me crazy but I'd take Eli in the playoffs over Peyton any day, and I would of said that before this current playoff run.
Agreed. But I'm really getting sick of the announcers calling him the 'calmest man on the field' or 'he has ice in his veins' in every fucking playoff game. We get it. He's clutch and he brought my Giants to another victory. I had Phil Simms to thank for some great memories, my son has Eli Manning.
It was an enjoyable but odd game. With both QBs completing a high percentage, it never really felt like the classic defensive struggle the score would suggest. All the dinking and dunking with few big plays didn't really feel like a great offensive game either. I suppose we've been spoiled by some of the ridiculous stuff seen in the regular season with the Arena League offenses.
Going into the 4th quarter, I was somewhat expecting a wild quarter a la SB 38, where the Pats and Panthers had done the defensive struggle thing all game aside from a flurry at the end of the half, only to score 37 points combined in the 4th with big plays on both sides. Obviously that didn't happen.
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