February 1st, 2015. Super Bowl XLIX, University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Arizona. A game that will be remembered for all the right...and wrong...reasons. It was a game that will live forever in history, with an old champ returning to his throne after 10 years and dethroning the former champ in the process.
Oh wait, I almost forgot to say hello. Back with another blog post, and how can I not be after what transpired in Arizona yesterday?
So, about that game yesterday, let's be real and get straight to the point: Seattle had the game, and Carroll fumbled it away with that atrocious second down play call. There were other factors in the game, such as Seattle's defense not being able to stop anyone the entire fourth quarter, and Brady basically doing what he does best in crunch time. No, Seattle's defense is not completely exonerated.
But let's get it straight, what it comes down to is that Seattle was on the one yardline, second and goal, with the best running back in the game, and the Patriots weren't going to stop him.
And then Seattle called THAT play.
Thing is, it wasn't even the pass so much. It's who they threw the ball to. They threw the ball to a guy named Ricardo Lockette, who was not even close to being the best receiver on the field for Seattle that night. Unheralded Chris Matthews had gone over 100 yards for the night, and Jermaine Kearse had just made that ridiculously spectacular catch to put the Seahawks in position to win in the first place (and a guy who made the winning touchdown catch for Seattle in each of the last two conference title games). If they tried to match Kearse on Malcolm Butler, who just got burned, I could maybe understand.
But in the end, why even bother to do that when you have that freak #24 in the backfield? With three more tries to get it in, as determined as he was, there was no way he was going to be denied if they gave him the ball. Carroll has been trying to defend that play to the media since the game was over, but I think in his heart of hearts he knows he screwed up. His players were pissed too; there was a guest who came on the Jim Rome show earlier today and said the Seahawks defenders were visibly pissed walking off the field. They know what that meant.
Honestly, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that Carroll made such a rash decision. Carroll was a riverboat gambler type at USC and he still is today. This is the same guy who, in the very same game, went for a pass on the goal line with six seconds to go, knowing that he might lose his chance at points. They scored, but he rolls the dice quite often. That said, there is a fine line between being a riverboat gambler and utter stupidity and I think Carroll crossed that proverbial line here. This was common sense.
Make no mistake about it though, this is a franchise crushing loss for Seattle and it is so because they had the game all but locked up. One yardline, for back to back championships with the best back in the league and they let it slip through their grasp. Now they are going to have to deal with the aftermath of a physical playoff run that took its toll on a lot of players.
Richard Sherman will have to reportedly undergo Tommy John surgery on his elbow that hampered him throughout the postseason. Jeremy Lane, who picked off Brady last night, will have to recover from a broken arm. There will be a hangover effect too, and Seattle has played a lot of football since this run started back in 2012. They played in back to back Super Bowls and played in the second round of the playoffs the year before that.
They have a very young nucleus (only a few players over the age of 30), but this is a franchise damaging defeat. It would have been that way for whichever team lost that game, but now Seattle has to start all over when they were so close to going back-to-back.
It's not that it can't be done; however, I am also interested to see how they handle things when they face a little adversity, and I didn't like what I saw at the end of the game last night with that fight. They might end up being the type of front-running team that feeds off success when things go well, but maybe they aren't so good at handling things after a loss.
By the way, this would have been a damaging loss for New England too had Seattle ended up winning, but for opposite reasons; because of the closing window for Brady to win another ring, because it would have been another heart-wrenching loss in a Super Bowl's closing seconds and for as great as Bill Belichick has been over his career, we would have raked him over the coals for not calling his timeouts before Seattle scored, if they had done so. And we would have been right to do that.
However, I think we'd be remiss not to give credit to Tom Brady for putting the Pats in position to win in the first place. Down 10 and staring down the Legion of Boom, Brady took them right down the field twice and made it look easy. The game really changed on that third and 14 conversion on the drive where the Patriots cut it to 24-21; that's when Brady started doing what he does best, basically clutch up and perform his best when the stakes are the highest.
I think on the Patriots side of things, they exorcised a lot of demons last night because it's been 10 years since they've been on top, and since then they've gotten close but haven't gotten over the hump until last night; in that span, they've lost twice to the Giants in Super Bowls and lost three other conference title games in that span. They not only finally got back on top but they beat the defending champs, with the most fearsome defense in the league to get it done.
One final note on the Super Bowl, this Patriots championship continues an incredible run for Boston's four major professional sports franchises, which have combined for nine world championships in the past 13 calendar years with the Patriots leading the way with four (MLB's Red Sox have three, the NBA's Celtics have one, and the NHL's Bruins have one as well). Not to mention that Boston is in the running to potentially host the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Couple of quick college basketball notes; I'll be interested to see what happens in both major Big Monday matchups. No. 3 Virginia is at No. 12 North Carolina, which is important in the sense that both of these teams lost tough games this past weekend to Duke and Louisville, respectively. Whoever loses tonight will be 0-2 on the weekend, and even though it can happen against good teams, 0-2 can be awfully difficult to overcome in the context of a conference title race.
In the Big 12, No. 11 Iowa State and No. 8 Kansas is very important as well; if Iowa State wants to at least share a conference crown, a win at Allen Fieldhouse, however unlikely, would go a long way towards doing so.
Until next time....
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