I can't stand how everyone is acting as if it was a foregone conclusion that Lynch would have scored on a run or even better that Wilson is somehow incapable of throwing a pass....last I checked it was him chucking it around that got them down there in the red zone in the first place.
I'm not trying to sound agitated here or anything and I wanted to see the Pats win anyway so I'm far from upset, but if anyone listens to what Pete said in the interviews after the game it was about playing the matchup, clock management and making sure that they had 3 shots to get into the endzone. The fact that Bill didn't call a timeout was actually brilliant because they were still able to run in their goal line package. This was important because it meant that in order to get all 3 shots that at least one had to be a pass so that they could still stop the clock. So you get to choose between running and calling timeout and then being forced to throw the ball on 3rd down when they are expecting it or you throw it on 2nd when you still have a little bit of an element of surprise.
And the Seahawks had ran in their 3WR set on that play hoping to spread the defense out and then run it in (probably a read option play). But because the Pats sold out on the run that meant that Seattle just didn't have enough meat up front to be comfortable running it, but more importantly it meant they had man coverage from the 1 with a rookie undrafted free agent playing off against a stacked WR. That is the best matchup in that situation.
The playcall was perfect, heck it was executed fairly well too...what happened is that said rookie broke on the ball unlike anyone I've ever seen defend that kind of play.
It simply wasn't a bad call...it was an amazing defensive play by a young man who had actually perfectly played that ridiculously lucky catch that Kearse made on the 6 just two plays earlier. My point is that anyone who second guesses a coach who managed to get his team to the SB two years in a row (not to mention win a few national titles in college) should consider the fact that he knows what he is doing.
Anyway if people want to speak in hyperbole and act like that play was that bad that's fine; that's their prerogative. What I got out of this game is that Tom Brady is the greatest QB of all time in my opinion. That sucks because I am a Peyton Manning guy. Peyton is still amazing, but even as great as he is Brady basically pulled off the closest approximation of head to head comparison that we could ask for. He was able to carve up the best defense (by a significant margin) in the league. It's basically the same defense that Manning couldn't crack. You combine that with 6 SB appearances, 4 wins, 2 losses by a combined total of 7 points, playing in just about every AFC championship game in the last 14 years and winning last night with a 10 year margin between rings and I don't think that you can compare anyone to that. We also have to remember that he was out one season with an ACL and they were 11-5 with Matt Cassell at QB; that was obviously a great team and who knows if they would have gone all the way that year.
I don't particularly like the guy even though he doesn't really bother me, but if you look at the facts of the matter you can't discount him completely and most of the time if you knock him down a few pegs it's because of personal preferences and looking for an argument rather than just acknowledging his accomplishments.
And last but not least the whole deflate gate thing is a debacle. There was two weeks of non-stop coverage about PSI on CNN and every other news channel because the Pats had 11 balls that were allegedly 2lbs under-inflated. Yesterday there was a little covered news release that in fact it was one ball that was 2lbs low and the others were just barely under the 12.5 PSI minimum. Of course no one covered that story because its not as intriguing as the idea of lying, cheating, and deception. A lot of former players really laid into the Pats and Tom Brady and prosecuted them without factual information.....that is probably the single biggest reason that I wanted to see them succeed last night.
I can guarantee that the ball was inflated properly and he managed to complete 27 passes and throw 4 TD's without a deflated ball against the best cover defense in the league.
