Okay, in response to thunderously absent popular demand, here’s one more bit on the Superbowl.
It’s the last. I promise. Really.
The real story was how the New York Giants defense just bulldozed the Patriots’ secret (or at least seldom-acknowledged) weapon: possibly the best offensive line in history. Sure, much as it pains me to admit it, Perfect Tommy is a great quarterback. Having Randy Moss (and the previously unsung Wes Welker) to throw to doesn’t hurt your offense either.
But I think the main reason the Patriots put up record offensive numbers this year was its first-line defenders of the “skill” (or at least the headline) players. Time and again throughout the season Brady had jaw-dropping amounts of time to stand back and wait for one of his receivers to get clear. And with receivers such as he had, they did.
But for the first time all year we saw defenders running through the Patriot O-line as if they were the 2006 Raiders. Brady seemed to get knocked on his kiester every other play.
And why was that? Well, granted, the Giants defense played like gods most of the game. But the Patriots offensive line played like gods for 18 games.
Now think back to what the Patriots were known for. Not just playing the starters every game to try to ensure they never lost; there are good arguments made that those teams who obviously coast to rest their starters after they have home-field clinched for the playoffs tend to check out early during thoe selfsame playoffs. The Colts did it this year, and they’ve done it before.
But the Pats didn’t just start trot their stud horses out to start every game, or even just leave them in until victory was reasonably assured. Remember what more they did, especially early in the season? They ran up the score like a football-factory college team.
A lot of noise was made about that being unsportsmanlike conduct. Not altogether incorrectly.
Of course, we didn’t hear about it happening so much toward the end of the season. Why? Because instead of continuing to go full-bore even after they had the game hanging by its hooves from a pole, the Patriots often found themselves struggling to win. (Note: as a professional writer, I reserve the right to switch metaphors mid-race like a spider-monkey jockey on crack.) The only reason they beat the Ravens, one of the year’s crappiest teams, was an imbecilic, unnecessary time-out the Ravens themselves called, which invalidated what would’ve been the last Pats play of a game New England trailed. Game over: streak over.
Why the late-season struggles? Could it be that the hard men of the Pats’ frontline, the players with possibly the most brutally arduous job on the field, had just flat worn down? That they took such a pounding they got tenderized?
Why, yes.
Now, the Giants won. Flat out. They deserve full credit (and I don’t normally care for them any more than the Patriots.) For most of the season the Patriots have exemplified both expert play and, much rarer, smart play. In this game the Giants played hard, and they also played smart: taking advantage of the worn-out Patriots offensive line to throw Brady the beating of his career.
The Patriots, I submit, contributed to their own demise by all that grandiose score-pumping. And that doesn’t subtract a molecule of the credit due to the Giants. They clearly perceived a weakness in an opponent absolutely no one not actually employed by the Mara family thought beatable. And they exploited it intelligently and ruthlessly. What more does strategy consist of?
