Super Bowl Prediction Thread

Absolutely.

Their coach showed a lot of class too, eh??

 

I'm going to throw out a convoluted theory that I'd like to get your opinion about.

Do you think the Patriots may have ultimately been a victim of their own arrogance?

Through 15 regular season games, the Patriots had 3 close games, beating the Colts by 4, and the Eagles and Ravens by 3. Of their 12 other games, the closest was a 10 point win in bad weather against the Jets, and they ran up the score against the Chargers, Cowboys, Redskins and Bills. All of those lopsided scores gave the Pats an air of invincibility going into the week 17 game. When the Giants played them so tough, it obviously gave the entire team a huge confidence boost going into the playoffs.

If the Patriots hadn't been running the score up and winning so many games by such lopsided scores, would they have had that air of invincibility? Without such an air of invincibility, would the Giants have gained the kind of confidence that they did after the Pats game? Would they have gained the kind of confidence that propelled them to winning the Super Bowl? Did Belichick's desire to extract revenge after Spygate ultimately lead to his team losing the Super Bowl?

 

Well I am late to the party today!

do you all know who the top three offenses in football were this year?

#3 - Cowboys - giants shut them down
#2 Green Bay ditto
#1 Patriots - Giants only gave up 14 points

Who says you dont win games with defense anymore? the giants proved those folks wrong - including your truly who boldly predicted perfection for NE since about week 3 or 4 and is now eating humble pie.

By the way Ken H - we cowboy fans may be in trouble next year. that boy eli grew up this year, he will no longer be the scared senseless eli that we have beaten all but this years playoffs, and if the giants d is as good next year as it was in the playoffs this year - yikes

CC, I also think that the Pats were victims of thier own arrogance, but I think that they were mostly victims to a bit of smash mouth football on behalf of the Giants

 

I completely agree and my theory is kindof a crackpot theory anyway.

 

I was impressed with the Giants defense, and their determination to keep plugging at it on offense. Though the Giants certainly got some helpful calls from the refs, they stayed in it emotionally through the ups and downs, didn't get lazy when ahead or discouraged when down. Nice emotional discipline.

There certainly seem to be a lot of people that feel this way. I'm unsure why, as the Giants were the ones making egotistical predictions every interview I saw, and the Pats were avoiding the media as much as possible. Was it Buress that kept saying they would shut down the Pats? Ultimately he was pretty much right, but it was a pretty arrogant thing to say either way. Now the party line is "I told you so" and "No, we weren't surprised we did so well against them."

Pats coach Belichick is getting a lot of flack for starting to leave the field early. No one seems to mention that he was leaving the field with a lot of Giants players, staff, and media. The game looked to be over and the officials had not established control or made it clear that another play would happen with 00:01 on the clock. In the regular season, such games are often not played out if fans and media mob the field, and "resigned" by the losing team, to use the chess term.

And now the Dolphins are gloating again. We could have had one team of gloaters; now we have 2 teams of them.

lol and now on the national news Tyree gloats about people calling his great catch one of the greatest in Super Bowl history. wtb more gloating...

 

I'm glad the whole thing is over for this year. As an athletically challenged person, my idea of a super bowl is a toilet that cleans itself!:tongue3:

 

Again with the arrogance. What's arrogant about Burress having confidence in his team? BTW, he predicted the Giants would win 23-17. Nothing in there about shutting down the Pats.

Why would the Giants be surprised at how they played?

 

Arrogance is in the eye of the beholder. If a Pats player says "We are the greatest football team in history," it would come across as arrogance, though it is probably true, and can be called "confidence in his team" if you want.

Burress said they would hold the Pats to 17. I did not see the whole interview so I don't know what else he said. Holding the highest scoring offense in NFL history to 17 points is a shut down, imo, and claiming you will do so is arrogant, imo. Something like "We are going to do our best to contain the Pat's offense and our goal is to limit them to 17 points," would be saying the same thing without arrogance.

Not being surprised at your superiority and saying you were not surprised at your superiority are different things. Quiet confidence in oneself is one thing, but expressing that as assurance of victory or superiority is arrogance. And making these comments after the fact is poor sportsmanship.

 

Agreed. And in only a year or so, the blah blah blah about the Giants will hopefully die down.

 

I've never understood something: why is an athlete doomed to arrogance when he answers the inevitable (and ridiculous) question: "Are you surprised you won?" What the heck is he/she supposed to say? "Golly, we're shocked. We're not that good. We just got lucky, Bob. I have no idea how we even were in the game, let alone won."

What the heck are they supposed to say????????

I just noticed I'm mirroring CCROB's comments. That's okay. Great minds.....:laugh: And convuluted theories, CCROB? You know those are only to come from Andy, right? :laugh: :thumbs:

 

What they are supposed to say is something that defers sole responsibility for their supposedly-inevitable victory not to their own athletic superiority or genius, but to God or fortune or luck or "it was just our day" or "we were fortunate on a few critical plays" or "things just went our way" or "our opponents played great and if it wouldn't have been for that dropped pass....or that fumble...."

The key is to not take credit for the variables of chance and bad ref calls and not assume you are just better than your opponent when they might have had a bad day for one of a million reasons.

Arrogance says "it was all me." Humility and good sportsmanship says "we did our best and some other factors helped."

 

We all saw the difference in top Qb's Sunday. Lets take all the talk here and others places that Tom Brady is the greatest Qb ever and Payton Manning is not as good. The difference for most of their years it has been which Qb had the least amount of pressure.
Up until this year NE didn't pass as much and their D did a better job of getting to the other teams Qb. This year NY did a better job of getting to Brady than NE did of getting to Eli.
Look at the 3 Washington Superbowl winning Qb's none were great over their career but looked good for that day, wasn't hit as much. So many today put in my mine to much into winning the Superbowl if a Qb is great or not. Look at his O line and the team they were playing D line. That will tell you a lot.

 

Bob Alkire, those are great points.

 

Good things happened in that game for the Giants because they made them happen. Your approach is a fatalistic sort of "it was meant to be" approach where everything that happens in a game is due to chance. It's not.

Huh? The Giants can assume they were better because they won. On Sunday, February 3rd, 2008, the Giants were the better team. We play the game to determine who the better team is. If those 2 teams played 10 times, the Patriots would win 8 of them. But, on Sunday, when it counted, the Giants were better. Again, your approach is fatalistic and says, "We won because of chance." Nothing happened on that football field by chance on Sunday.

Arrogance - offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.

I don't see the Giants doing this at all.

I missed this earlier.

What calls did the Giants get from the refs? I didn't see any questionable calls made by the refs, who had a great Super Bowl and didn't make a single bad call.

Who are you and where is the real Tomvols? Because the real Tomvols wouldn't be agreeing with me. :smilewinkgrin:

 

I beg to differ. The Patriots were overrated. If they played 10 times, I'd give the Pats 5 or 6 wins.

In a thread back in the fall where we were talking about the Pats going undefeated, I said that eventually teams would figure out how to combat their excellent scheme. And teams did figure it out, but luck and other factors kept the Pats winning. A healthy Colts team beats the Pats earlier in the season. The Pats got wildly lucky against the mediocre-to-bad Ravens team. The Pats got somewhat lucky against a mediocre Eagles team. A healthy Chargers team probably beats the Pats in the AFC final.

The 2007 Pats were a great team for about the first 8 weeks of the season. After that, they were a pretty good team. Teams figured them out. Brady is overrated.

 

As a die-hard Raiders fan going all the way back to the AFL days, the defeat of Brady and the Pat's, was in some indirect way, a soothing balm to me for the old, "Tuck Rule", that saved the Patriot's behinds years ago, sending them to the Super Bowl and the Oakland Raiders home for the season.

Also, Eli Manning has gotten so much guff and criticism which was probably more than normal, when your older bro is a super bowl winning quarterback.

It was great to see Eli, come on strong in the latter part of the season, and see those Giants win one road/away game after another in very hostile conditions........Weather (Green Bay), Crowds (Dallas).

I'm not down-playing the Pat's as a good team. They are something else. I just get tired of the media's frenzy at pushing infallibility on the Patriots.

Good old, hardnosed, aggressive defense from the Giants prevailed.

 

I beg to differ on that last comment - I do not think Brady is overrated - the man has three superbowl wins, he is in rarified air. The giants got to him on sunday - he did not have a chance.

Lets not forget, when the game was on the line, brady drove his team down for a TD to give the Pats the lead. Had the Pats made any of three possible ints on the Giants drive that game them the final winning score, or had Eli not escaped etc etc etc, we would be having a different conversation. Oh by the way, if moss had reached out for that first bomb thrown his way, it is likely that the Pats would have kicked (or had an opportunity to kick)the game tying field goal. Moss seemed gassed at the end of the game - it would have been a fantastic catch, but we have seen moss make those kinds of catches throughout his career

The Giants won the game, they dominated the play clock, they had a great scheme - yet it took a bit of luck mixed in with all that to give them the win.

But Brady overrated - not so much, If Dallas had the opportunity to trade him for Romo - they would jump at the chance, as would any other team in the NFL excpet perhaps the colts, and they would give it some long hard thought

 

I don't have a problem admitting Brady is one of the top QB's right now, but I think he is overrated by saying he is one of the greatest of all-time - i.e. in the top 5 ever. That is where I think he is overrated. And for now, I hold those 3 Super Bowl rings in suspicion, since it appears this organization has a pattern of cheating.

 

I have always been a fan of the team that plays the Patsies. This attitude goes way back to the snow plow incident on December 12, 1982.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowplow_Game
They were cheaters then and they are cheaters today. Isn't it curios that they are putting this in their new Hall at Patriot Place which is set to be completed this year.

Congratulations to New York Giants and their fans and Tom Coughlin who is still a cherished resident of Jacksonville, Florida.

 

First, it's not my approach. We are talking about humility or arrogance in claiming, in effect, "We deserved to win because we are better." My approach would have been totally different than either approach discussed. I'd have said, "I'd like to thank God that it was a hard-fought, entertaining game and no one was seriously hurt. Hi, Mom!" Second, it wouldn't be chance I believed in if I were fatalistic, it would be God's will. Saying the Giants "made" anything happen is completely discounting all other influences on the outcome of the game. The Giants are not Gods with authority over all circumstances and matters outside of human control.

No, they can assume that a combination of their play and other circumstances were superior in that game to the combination of the Patriots play and other circumstances. Whether these other circumstances favored the Giants or Pats is up for debate.

The game is played for entertainment and profit, and "we" don't play it.

The Giants plus all the additional circumstances that make up a game result prevailed, yes.

Again, it is not my approach. We were talking about arrogance and which team had more and whose arrogance we choose to tolerate for the next year. Admitting one's victory was the result of far more than one's own superiority is both true and humble. God is in control, even of football games, not men.

Strictly speaking, I don't believe in chance, but there are a host of factors that influenced the outcome of the game, which, if we choose, we can collectively call "chance." For example, which players were injured (such as Jeremy Shockey, who, had he been healthy and playing, would have influenced the Pats preparation and playcalling, especially as pertains to the tight end position. Would this have eliminated some of the big plays the Giants got from their backup TE? Who knows? Brady's gimp ankle is another example), the weather and the decision to close the dome (which QB throws better in wind with a wet ball?), the ref calls (everything from the decision to give the Giants a measurement for first down to try to disrupt the Pat's rhythm to the usual questionable calls), etc. It takes a lot more than simply "being better" to win a close ball game.

The Giants have displayed the same arrogance most winning football teams display. Imo, no more, no less. Every team has a few loud-mouths, and the Giants are no exception.

Without an easy way to review them, I suspect that the debate over these plays would be even more useless than the rest of this exchange. But suffice to say the Giants critical catch on the sideline and replayed several times was very debatable--the player's foot was in bounds but did not (one side of the argument states) touch the ground before he went out of bounds. Another is the manipulation of the refs mentioned above, when the ball was clearly a yard short of first down. Another is whether Manning was "in the grasp" during that exciting escape and throw and amazing helmet catch. These and many more, some close, some not, all, by some cowinkydink, ruled in favor of the Giants. As always, those in favor of the game's outcome think it was all fair, and those opposed to the outcome think they were all unfair.

I am Beowulf!