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This Article Already Is better than SB44

When the Superbowl ends every year, you do one of two things: 1) Think to yourself, “Well, that’s over with..”… Get up to use the bathroom for the first time since half-time… lose about 2 of the 10 pounds of whatever you just ate and drank… and come back to pay half attention to some old dude thanking the fans and the city… a couple dudes thanking god while rocking goofy shirts  and hats that don’t fit and holding their children who are mysteriously only 18 years younger than their parents… while you clean up a lot of Tostidos crumbs and wish CBS had something better than Undercover CEO on after the game – That’s the usual option… total buzzkill… but sometimes you do thing #2: Don’t move a muscle as the game ends… sitting there half-comatose like you’re watching the music video at the end of Slumdog Millionaire and you’re not sure if it’s over… and definitely not ready to get up. You then look over to the group and say: “That has to be the greatest Superbowl of all time right?”… the group will give you some sort of “is that even a question” look or response… and for the next 2 hours, all you wanna do is relive the whole thing… so you watch every interview, highlight, and commercial 10 times and break the game down much the way we all had the “Shit man, I can’t believe Frodo destroyed the ring after all those creatures were on his ass” breakdown conversation of the LOTR series after finishing Return of the King for the first time…

This year… We tried as hard as we could to fool ourselves into believing this was a Type 2 Superbowl… there was so much there: Peyton, Brees, Katrina, Haiti, Pierre, Pierre… Dwight Freeney’s ankle?… I watched the game with the same 5 guys I’ve watched it with every year since we were freshmen in college… we’ve been on a good streak of Type 2 Superbowls… almost take them for granted… so when everybody got up take a leak and get rid of the Tostidos pretty much right when the game ended… nobody exactly knew what to say; Nobody wanted to admit that we had actually just watched a Type 1 game… but come on… we didn’t get to see Kim Kardashian (other than in those diet pill ads on during pregame) the entire game.

The Number of Saints Related Sketch Internet Memes is Unprecedented...

This year, I brilliantly predicted a Colts victory in shootout fashion after the Saints jumped out to a large 1st half lead… As usual, I clearly have no credibility whatsoever. Instead, the Saints didn’t move the ball at all in the first quarter, while the Colts took 20 minutes each time they had the ball to get down field and only put up 10 on New Orleans (there were only 4 <2minute possessions all game, versus 12 >2 min… including the entire 2nd half)… In the second quarter, the Colts suddenly had a couple 3 and outs and instead New Orleans moved the ball all over the field without scoring… and then New Orleans tries to hand Indy all of the momentum with some terrible play calls on the goal line (Sean Payton sure subsequently exonerated himself from those knocks… but it’s true), but Indy… instead of scoring in the last 2 minutes of the half “as all good teams do”… lets New Orleans get the 3 points that they ceded by calling the lazy handoff on 4th and goal (I am always pro the bootleg, QB sneak, 1 yard in route, or gadget HB pass Boise State play in this situation… anything but the fade route or the lazy handoff).

This isn't New Delhi or Woodstock 99... This is Bourbon Street... on a normal day.

And then came halftime… in which The Who looked like they were doing karaoke versions of their own music while standing motionless on top of giant Bridgestone Tire of a stage… and everyone watching said to their buddies: “That old British man with the perm is kind of odd looking”… This was actually worse than the Tom Petty “I need a methadone clinic remix” of Free Fallin that was delivered a couple years ago…. that was so terrible that it became entertaining… The Who just had no energy… and kept going and goin… so much that the only thing in the world that I desired was to hear Shannon Sharpe’s “insights”.

So then came “the play” (1 of 2). What made Sean Payton’s ballsy call so sick to watch(one of my friends who I was sitting with for the game got multiple text messages including the words “Sean Payton” and “balls” only seconds after the kick) was that the camera-people had no clue that it was on… and gave us the sweeping cam lengthwise view of the stadium to get maximum flashbulb action… which resulted in the viewer getting a unique and perfect view of the onside kick. It was unbelievable accidental television. As for the call itself, S.P. was probably thinking “Manning owns these second halves… he makes adjustments… we are gonna need one more possession than them to win this game… and they have the ball first… we need to try this”… and he was totally right. It’s a what-if-game, but didn’t you expect the Colts to go up 17-6 after about an 8 minute drive and put all the pressure on New Orleans to keep themselves in the game? That seemed like the likely outcome… and S.P. prevented that from happening. (Note: even if the Colts had recovered… you’d be giving them great vs unknown field position…

Did Drew Brees borrow those ear-muffs from his leaf-blower guy? Those are intense.

but it almost seems like Manning is so good that coaches don’t even consider field position an issue when giving him the ball… like he’d just score it from anywhere so why even consider it? When Manning has better field position, you can at least know it’s going to be a shorter drive and that your D wont have to be on the field for 8 minutes right? The NFL: Where Bizzaro World Coaching Strategies Make Perfect Sense).

So the Saints recover the ball out of a scrum that  “I have no clue what goes on in that pile and don’t really want to” dynamic to a new level (testicles likely assaulted on many fronts)… and their offense really gets in rhythm… the Colts answer too… Manning completes his requisite 30 10 yard gains to Dallas Clark… Addai is rolling (he really dominated the game… but that had a lot to do with the Saints either blitzing or sitting way back… giving the run away either way)… and suddenly, we appear to be in the midst of a shootout.

The problem was… “shootout” didn’t cross my mind until the game was 2/3 over and the score was 17-13. The teams had taken so much time moving the ball without actually scoring, that it just was never in the cards. Why? There was not a single big offensive play the entire game (Addai 25 yd Run is big… but not “big” big). These defenses clearly made the decision to mix pressure with bend but don’t break (the safeties also seemed like they were playing really well on both sides)… and as a result, we saw a lot of 6 minute drives that resulted in non-touchdowns… This wouldn’t have happened without poor offensive execution… and we sneakily saw a lot of missed 3rd and mediums in enemy territory (9-22 combined… with these offenses… pretty bad).

It really was wacked out: a closely contested game with compelling teams in which the offenses moved the ball with ease on almost every drive… that legitimately bordered on boring on occasion. Guess you don’t really know how much you miss big plays til they are gone…

A cross between the Enzyte Ad face and a Mugshot for Garrett

So then Stover misses a FG (the contrast between 42 yr old Stover and Garrett Hartley’s stock photo that looked like Aaron Carter was awesome)… the Saints go on another long drive… get a nice 2 pointer… and we are back in “Manning is clearly gonna score… this is a whoever has the ball last game” mode… until big play #2 of 2 happens.

While you would have had to be crazy to have expected or called that Pick 6… there were a lot of warning signs: 1) The Colts were in throw on every down mode… even though they didn’t need to be and Addai was crushing it… 2) The Saints knew that was going on… 3) Manning had really been pushing the envelop… like that crazy Dallas Clark in triple coverage strike 4) Manning had thrown one or two Rex Grossman balls over the course of the game already… so when it happened… I was mainly just bummed that what had so much potential to go down to the last second would now end in uncontested fashion. Even down 14, I watched Manning and played the mental math games… “if they score now and save their timeouts, they can still kick it deep and force a 3 and out”, “if they only have 40 seconds when Peyton gets the ball after the 3 and out since they burned a timeout, can Peyton score in approximately 5-6 plays?”… I didn’t even consider a goal-line stand to end the game a possibility… so when that went down… I was at a loss…

But then again: the Saints were the best Red-Zone defense in the league all year (perhaps the most important niche stat in football)… why shouln’t they pulled that off? They also had the best offense in the NFL… best running games… best coaching… and from time to time, dominated in sublime way that no other team came close to this year… Maybe they were underdogs… and this was a David V Goliath matchup in terms of franchise prestige… and all of the Katrina stuff went to frame the Saints as underdogs way more than it should have… but they won because they were better… because the two big plays in the game were theirs (the potential 3rd big play..

You see... You already forgot he messed up when you saw that stache... you can't stay mad at Peyton...

. the Colts goal-line stand… went from being a 14 pt swing if the Colts had scored a TD thereafter… to being a wash or even a 4 point Saints swing when the Saints got the ball right back without an Indy score and kicked a FG right before half).

As for Peyton Manning… well Drew Brees is only one title away from staking claims to the greatest QB ever thing too… so I guess they’re even. Difference is: If Manning wins another one… it’l actually be true. I bet we see him selling insurance or Tampax Pearl or something in the next couple weeks, stop doing the “remember before 2006 when we all called him a choke job” thing… and get back to knowing the truth: there’s nobody better… but that doesn’t make the guy perfect. If he was perfect, we’d enjoy it a whole lot less when Peyton gets us that Type 2 Superbowl win next year.

And of course… Re: Commercials – the lack of Miller Lite and Coors Light really dampened the bro beer ad arms race… though Bud Light’s autotune and armaggeddon ads were solid. Coke’s ads were a little LSD induced for my taste… the Budweiser Clydesdales had a real down year… Tim Tebow was pretty understated… it was just an odd year – seemed like a lot of smaller companies really trying to gamble on weird Superbowl Ads… some hit… some missed. The two best ads: Brett Favre with the holographic 2020 Lombardi Trophy and the Google Search Story… which I think really “nailed it” with the kids… even more than this alternate version:

Did I mention they didn’t show Kim Kardashian once all game? We got hosed…

Word,

Nick

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