Super Bowl XLII Live Thread (New York Giants win 17-14)

http://www.nfl.com/scores ^

[SoldierDad]

Kudos to the Giants. I told members of my family, friends, and coworkers to not discount the Giants in this game. Many told me that the Pat’s had an easy win. Now they are eating crow.

[SoldierDad]

There is much in the world of advertisement that I find debasing, inappropriate, or downright stupid. The Payton Manning commercials are just one example. Humor? That’s your opinion.

[Cagey]

Humor? That’s your opinion.

I agree with you. Many see advertising differently than the next person.

I find television commercials, for the most part, are better now than they were a decade or so ago. They just seem more entertaining and humorous. When one comes up that I too find inappropriate or just plain stupid I consider that the next time I may be purchasing that type of product. Our purchasing decisions are indeed a powerful reaction to advertising.

I vaguely remember the Manning commercials you're referring too but for the life of me I can't recall the product he was pitching.

[SoldierDad]

I don’t recall the product either - seems to me that it was just an advertisement for the NFL, but I could be wrong.

[Ciexyz]

Re: post 2814: So sorry to hear about the Columbian World Cup player who killed himself in '94 after he let the USA score the winning goal. What a tragedy.

[Ciexyz]

Donnie Moore did it years later after never recovering from blowing the 5th game of the 1986 ALCS against the Red Sox.

Sorry to hear about this sports-related suicide. So tragic, that the memory just ate away at poor Mr. Moore and he could never recover from the baggage.

[mainerforglobalwarming]

He was classy enough to support Bob Corker in Tennessee in 2006. Great humanitarian in my book.

[highball]

I might be a little late to this party, but:

"18-1 is still quite different from 14-6"

14-6 with a Super Bowl victory is infinitely superior to 18-1 with a Super Bowl loss.

Agreed. I'm sure that every NFL player would trade a perfect regular season for a Super Bowl ring.

As a Packer fan, I'd eagerly take an 8-8 season if it ended with a Wild Card berth and Super Bowl win.

This year's Pats will be remembered the way that we remember the 2001 Mariners, who won 116 games but got killed in the ALCS.

[misterrob]

The Pats would have been much better off having lost a game or two in the season and getting rid of the quest for perfection thing. Leave that to the increasingly irrelevant Dolphins and their old washed up has beens.

[Alberta's Child]

Anyway if the giants couldn’t make the playoffs 20 years ago, neither would the pats. Because the giants are the more physical team, and the faster team.

The points you raised in your post are all valid, but you've based this one entirely on the performance of these two teams in one game. Over the course of the entire season the Giants looked like an average team at best (even some of their victories were awful), and if Samuels had been able to intercept that Manning pass on the Giants' final drive we probably wouldn't be having this conversation (the Giants would have been a team that tried valiently and did well to get to the Super Bowl, but lost a close game).

I agree with your point about Elway, BTW. Oddly enough, his Broncos got trounced back in the days when he was a Hall of Fame caliber player . . . then won two Super Bowls when he was way past his prime and wasn't even a major factor in their victories. The teams of the 1990s had several things that those teams of the 1980s really lacked: a great running game, a great defensive unit, and a solid, cohesive offensive line.

[Doogle]

as a life long Giant fan I enjoyed reading the thread..... and after 6 weeks of being the underdog and listening to the 6 weeks of the talking heads on ESPN and FOX explain why the favorites were going to win and then AFTER the game make excuses...and then the next week fall into the same routine time and again, more excuses, it was truly enjoyable day Sunday for me. Then each week listen to Joe Buck fondle Akman, the two game announcers for Fox, every time he criticized the Giants two minutes into the game evvvveerrryyy Sunday got quite annoying. It was a pleasure to have the lovebirds call the game Sunday too,with the same result they had watch, commented, and called for the previous 6 weeks....jeeezzz I miss Madden.

[highball]

you've based this one entirely on the performance of these two teams in one game. Over the course of the entire season the Giants looked like an average team at best (even some of their victories were awful)

So did the Pats. Their win against the Ravens only came because the Ravens handed it to them on a platter. There were many games the Pats were lucky to walk away from victorious.

Nothing wrong with that - every pitcher who throws a no-hitter is the beneficiary of at least one stunning defensive play to keep it going - but all this talk about them being The Greatest Team Ever (or anywhere near it, which some of their fans are still proclaiming) is highly dubious at best and laughable at worst.

[mainerforglobalwarming]

The great thing about the NFL is that you play the regular season to get to the playoffs. The Giants were blown out by minnessota, and washington, a team the pats beat 51-0, beat the Giants late in the year. But somehow they made it to the postseason. And in week 17 they played the pats and in their minds knew that they were the better team. And that’s why burress and Strahan were so confident they’d win.
Looking back on the game, and I’ll probably watch it again on the NFL network tonight, I really can’t believe they won it. They made so many terrible mistakes. The Smith interception cost the G-men points. And the Chase Blackburn penalty was inexcusable. That gave the pats more plays in Giant territory, and the additional time on the field hurt the giants defense in the fourth quarter. Yet they still won the game. I’ll add that the idiotic game plan of Belichick certainly helped.
So it was ugly, there were so many games that made my stomach turn. But once those guys made the playoffs with the win against Buffalo, they were a bit more relaxed. And After the played the pats, they knew they were better. It’s probably the only time I can think of that a loss proved to be valuable.
As for elway I’d put him ahead of montana as the best QB I’ve seen.

[mainerforglobalwarming]

As A Giants fan I find Moose Johnson to be the worst when it comes to anti-giant bias. Aikman is horrible as an analyst and Buck just loves himself too much.

[mainerforglobalwarming]

I watched every pats game this year and it’s amazing how fast teams caught up to them. Within a half-season they went from the best ever, I caertainly thought they were, to a team that barely won games. The chmapionship game against the Chargers might have been the tell-tale sign that the Giants were going to win. Missing LT, gates and Rivers banged they had a shot the Pats. If the games was played in SD, SD probably wins. So the pats are a good team. Next year I wouldn’t be surprised to see them got 10 and 6. They’ve got a lot of house-cleaning to do. Especially on defensive. They’re old and worse slow. If hobbs can’t cover a banged up Burress, maybe he should go the way of Brushchi, Seau, Harrison.

[Alberta's Child]

I'm the first one to point out that today's NFL teams aren't nearly as talented as the top teams in the NFL were back in the days before the salary cap, but the Patriots were hardly a mediocre team this year.

They didn't even play a close game until their victory over the previously-undefeated Colts in the ninth game of the season, and over the course of the entire regular season and playoffs they played only five games (four in the regular season plus the Super Bowl) in which they failed to win by at least a touchdown.

Their AVERAGE victory margin of about 20 points per game wasn't much less than the Giants' TOTAL point differential for the entire season (+22 points).

[Pete-R-Bilt]

I agree with you that Nascar has made some changes that drive me crazy!

the only thing I point out is that its all about the good time.

I’ve been out on the road for 32 years and have 3.3 million miles and mostly missed my kids growing up.

since I became a grandfather and recently a great grandfather, I have slowed down substantially trying to keep you all fed and dressed and am spending all the time I can afford to spending pleasure time making sure the memories my family has of me is more than just how many places I’d been to.

collect and display bellybutton lint if it makes you happy I’ll back ya up to anyone. just enjoy as much as ya can afterall thats why they call it sport not work...

FRegards...

[Reaganite1984]

I think you've hit upon a great point.

What really galls other fans-and this is the reason almost all of them, including those who supported teams that had lost to The Giants previously, were rooting against The Pats-is the unjustified arrogance.

Even now, after the biggest choke in the history of the NFL, you can still find Pats fans who are making the ludicrous argument that their team is somehow superior to the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins.

To compare Tom Brady to Joe Montana, or even more absurdly, Bill Belichick to Chuck Noll or Vince Lombardi, exemplifies the self-absorption of Patriots fans, IMO.