I’m not a sports “journalist,” so
I don’t have to pretend that I’m not a fan with intense likes and dislikes when
it comes to football. I couldn’t care less about the NBA these days, and baseball
is only of interest because of my fascination with statistics: I haven’t really
been a “fan” of those sports since the early 90s—coinciding with the arrival of
Brett Favre in a Packer uniform. Thus I can state without one iota of self-consciousness
that I was “rooting” against Peyton Manning more than his team in the AFC
championship game. I dislike Manning because he is a fraud that the media has
elevated to such stature (like Hillary Clinton) that it is sacrilegious to say
the truth. His carefully stage-managed public persona is nothing but a Potemkin
myth.
From my perspective, Manning is a
player in love with his stats, as vain people like to preen in front of a
mirror. Oh sure, since he’s been off his “game” he has feigned “humility,” but
wasn’t it time and again in the past that the conceited Manning had a habit of
throwing his teammates under the bus for his mistakes? Remember the incident
when offensive lineman Jeff Saturday expressed dismay that instead of trying to
run the ball in from the one-yard line, Manning chose to pass the ball on three
straight downs (all incompletions), and wearing down the offensive line players
unnecessarily? Manning was no doubt already frustrated by his failure to pad
his personal stats when he went after Saturday, yelling and screaming at him
like a pampered, obnoxious child being told to eat his spinach; it was a
stomach-turning spectacle that revealed the real Manning. Afterwards the media
aided Manning (and Saturday) in an unconvincing effort to “laugh off” the whole
incident, but I wasn’t fooled by it one bit.
Yes, Manning likes to win games
and maybe even a Super Bowl or two, but it is less about the “team” than it is
about his “legacy”—as the Manning-fawning media has reminded us time and again.
Anyways, the results of week
three of the playoffs:
Broncos 20 Patriots 18. In hindsight, it is easy to say that Bill
Belichik is the goat in this game, for making the questionable decision of not
settling for a field goal with six minutes left in the game with the Patriots
down by eight points. The Broncos were doing virtually nothing offensively in
the second half, and there was a greater than likely chance that the Patriots
would keep Manning pinned down like a scared rabbit and have at least one more
chance to score a go-ahead touchdown. But Belichick decided to go for it on
fourth down, and failed. In fact, Tom
Brady and the Patriot offense were moving the ball almost at will between the
twenties in the fourth quarter, but on this drive and the subsequent one
Belichick decided to forgo an easy field goal try, and lost the ball on downs.
The Patriots in fact got the ball back one more time, this time scoring a touchdown
with 12 seconds remaining, but failing to convert on a two-point play to tie
the game; had they attempted and made a field goal on one of the two aborted
drives, they would be heading to the Super Bowl for the seventh time in the
Belichick/Brady era.
But that is hindsight. Certainly
it was a highly questionable move not to kick the field goal on that first
drive, but on the next drive there was a little over two minutes to play and
hardly any assurance that the Patriots would get the ball again (they did). The
bottom line is that Belichick miscalculated the potential scenarios, gambled away
opportunities for points and made things more difficult for his team to pull
out a victory; the Patriots thus lost this game, the Broncos didn’t “win” it.
Going into the game, we heard
Bronco players telling us that “hate” isn’t a strong enough word for their regard
for the Patriots—odd since there is hardly a history of “rivalry” between the
two teams. Speaking as a fan rather than a fundament-kissing commentator, I
will say that I "hate" the Broncos, and hope that whoever comes out of the NFC
will lay a fundament-whipping on the Broncos, just as the Seahawks did two
years ago—sending Manning off to a fitting “legacy.”
Panthers 49 Cardinals 15. That will be the Panthers, who laid an
old-fashioned whipping on the Cardinals; instead of allowing the Cardinals some
“dignity” like they did for their “brothers” the Seahawks last week, the
Panthers did everything they could to embarrass the Cardinals—even going for
the needless, unsportsmanlike two-point conversion with the game long since
over (not that they could have embarrassed Carson Palmer any more with his six
turnovers). That is the kind of arrogance that turned a lot of fans off about
the Panthers, and if the Patriots had won their game, I would be favoring them
easily to win the Super Bowl. But they did not, and my antipathy toward Manning
is greater than it is for the Panther team. I feel more comfortable that the
Panthers are the team to lay Manning and company low than the Cardinals could.
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