The Man in Blak

Both games have a potential to be great and, really, can the NFL complain about the matchup possibilities? New England vs. Chicago - Rematch of Super Bowl XX, with Belichick and Brady going for a historic fourth title against Rex Grossman, History's Greatest Monster. Indianapolis vs. New Orleans - Peyton Manning finally looks to win the big one against his father's old team, those Amazin' Saints. New England vs. New Orleans - The Saints try to cap off their magical season with a Super Bowl win against Brady, Belichick, and the Greatest Team of the Decade. Indianapolis vs. Chicago - Peyton Manning finally looks to win the big one against Rex Grossman, History's Greatest Monster.

How about "it wasn't a fortunate bounce", from your previous post? If it's not a fortunate bounce, then the implication is that the Patriots were somehow better prepared for the recovery of this remarkably improbable fumble, correct? Do you care to explain that with something other than "Reche Caldwell dove on that fucker"?

You can say that "Reche dove on that fucker" and explain what happened, but there's no explanation for how it happened, because there is no "how"; though players are always taught a particular thing to do whenever a fumble occurs, there is no discernible skill held by football players that makes them any more pre-disposed to making more fumble recoveries than another given player in any given situation. Statistics bear it out and, really, common sense bears that out - folks just dive onto the ball and pray. Fumble recovery is a matter of random chance, but I can understand how you might be confused, since the Patriots recovered five of them yesterday (two of their own).

Somewhat, yes. Lennon actually quit the band before McCartney's announcement, walking away in September '69, but the rest of the group talked him out of making a formal announcement at that time. When the Beatles met for their last recording session of "I Me Mine" shortly after the new year, Lennon wasn't there. Following that last recording session, there was still an implicit understanding that the group would hold off on announcing a breakup or releasing their solo projects until Let It Be went to market. When McCartney announced that the Beatles had broken up on April 10th, 1970, a week before the scheduled release of McCartney, the rest of the band was a little surprised, as you can imagine. Not only that, but Harrison was tiring from the endless squabbling during the session and the condescension from others, regarding his playing (McCartney, in particular). An argument with Paul over how to play a particular guitar line, which was caught in live detail for the Let It Be tapings, essentially led to George quitting the band temporarily. At times, they treated him more like a session musician than an actual part of the band. And, speaking of solo Harrison, has anybody even listened to anything else outside of All Things Must Pass? Gone Troppo, anyone?

Great! Now we're talking! Yes, I'm perfectly comfortable with saying that the Chargers' stupidity directly led to Troy Brown having the opportunity to make a fantastic play on the interception; if McCree realizes that it's fourth down and that his team had an eight point lead with mere minutes left in the game, he probably falls to the ground with the ball or just swats it away for an incompletion. But he made a costly mistake of trying to be a hero with the ball and Troy Brown made him pay for it by forcing a fumble, which (for the third time in this thread) took a fortunate bounce into the arms of a Patriot. If you somehow can't see how improbable that series of events was, then I don't really know what to tell you.

If you can get through the full Beatles Anthology on DVD (which, I'll admit, is more of a chore for a non-Beatles enthusiast, than anything else), you can find more than a couple instances of resentment towards Paul from the rest of the group, particularly near the end, when he tried to bring in his wife's father as the manager of the band. (Watching Paul calling out every single minute detail of how the TV camera should move for the Let It Be sessions is worth a laugh.) John's erratic behavior and relentless inclusion of Yoko in the later recording sessions certainly didn't help matters, sure, but there was plenty of dissension from all of the members of the group leading up to the end.

I can see some people wanting the Bears to lose, just so that we don't have to hear about Rex Grossman for the rest of the season.

Hey, I missed out on Inc's second post. Yeah, there's no doubt that he thought that McCartney was a coward for being reluctant to take a lyrical stand on the cultural issues of the time. (Which, years later, would make "Freedom" and "Ebony and Ivory" all the more hilarious.) The song had more behind it, historically, than just that conflict, though - Harrison's appearance on the track is quite a coup and it, along with Ringo's participation on Plastic Ono Band, reaffirmed the idea that McCartney was the Big Bad Guy in the Beatles' split. Anyway, while Lennon's cultural aspirations do seem a little cheeky (and possibly misguided) nowadays, they were a remarkable step for a guy of his status in pop culture; Lennon's reputation soared after death more as a result of that idealism and optimistic than his solo career. I'm not sure I would necessarily call that ambition "nonsense", as it does make McCartney's silly little love songs seem a little hollow by comparison. But that's more of an argument of taste and, really, the Beatles' breakup was probably the best thing for both Lennon and McCartney, given the divergent directions they took in their respective music. Back to the song, I would agree that "How Do You Sleep?" doesn't really build to anything, but I just like the groove taken through the song, slithering from verse to verse. Harrison's guitar work is great, Lennon's vocal is deliberate and scathing, and the strings, overproduced as they may be, tie up phrases quite nicely. It's not "Jealous Guy" by any means, but it's still good stuff for me. "Freedom" is just about the worst thing I've ever heard (and, BTW, wouldn't it be great if the Patriots won the Super Bowl?!), but, since it's essentially a hidden track on Driving Rain, I tend to turn a blind eye to it when discussing the album. And, all things considered, Driving Rain is probably my least favorite out of the four later McCartney works, as it's a little on the gooey side.

Yes and, once again, after the fumble is forced (which is definitely to the credit of Brown, who did make a great play there), it's basically a coinflip when it comes to the recovery of the football. And, given that the Patriots were 5/5 on fumble recoveries, while the Chargers were 0/3, you might say that the ball bounced their way - literally - a couple of times in this game.

Actually, there was something wrong with the folder being stuffed in Sports: both Sports and MMA shared the same "Last Post" entry on the main page, making it a little irritating at times to keep up with updated posts at times. I suggested the move because, in my opinion, MMA has enough traffic and is distinctive enough from Sports to warrant its own spot on the front page. Outside of hysteria surrounding the folder's placement on the front page (OMG wrestling is fake kill it), I'm not sure I see a problem with that idea.

Yes, and one of those essentially turned into a 17-18 yard gain when it was fumbled and miraculously recovered by the Patriots. I realize, by your fractured logic, that interceptions thrown by Tom Brady are probably considered to be "gifts" to the other team, rather than an actual accomplishment of the defense. (The fact that you framed them against a laundry list of screw-ups that New England had absolutely nothing to do with indicates that well enough, thanks.) But two losses of possession through interception don't really balance out all of the things that I mentioned in my original post, as much as you'd like them to. Nobody would assert that you'll find a football game that doesn't have mistakes, but to ignore such a disproportionate amount of errors between the teams in this game, especially when the margin of victory was so small, is pure fallacy. What exactly makes you think that New England didn't play their "best" football? Did you seriously think that Tom Brady, who's never been renowned for torching higher-caliber defenses, was going to roll up 400 and 5 TDs on the Chargers defense? I will freely admit that the Patriots made less mistakes than their opponents - if there is any constant for the Belichick era, it's that fact right there. But, two things that have to occur to arrive at that outcome. The first one is that the Patriots have to make a low number of mistakes and that is certainly a credit to the players and the coaching staff. The second one is that their opponents have to make a larger number of mistakes and that's something that New England has very little, if any, control over. Why yes, Schottenheimer and the Chargers were so intimidated by the mere notion of being on the field as the New England Patriots that they burned two crucial timeouts in the second half (so that they could immediately soil themselves in terror). And that unnecessary roughness penalty that extended an important scoring drive was induced by hypnosis from the opposing sideline too, right? In my opinion, the reason that there are "haters" in the first place is because the blatant Patriot fanboyism and sports media saturation just screams out for a directly proportional backlash. Most of the objective observers of the game have noted that the Chargers let one slip away, but that just doesn't fit under the M.O. of the TSM branch of Patriot Nation, where every skate job becomes an epic victory where the Patriots "showed more grit/poise/moxy" than the other team. One might tempted to think that this was a very loud inferiority complex that rolls over from baseball season, as Boston fans clutch so tightly to Belichick and Brady as their own Torre and Jeter, but I'm willing to give you guys credit and just assume that you're just being morons in the wake of a big playoff victory. What's wrong with just saying "Damn, guys, we got away with one here, but I'm looking forward to next week. Go Patriots!" ?

1. The Patriots did get flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct on the GW FG. Apparently, Tomlinson wasn't the only one who felt they were being a little excessive. 2. New England got plenty of breaks in this game. San Diego pissed away two of their timeouts, one of which came on an mind-numbingly stupid challenge call. The Chargers went for it on 4th-and-11 when the game wasn't even out of the first quarter, giving away a 47-yard field goal attempt. An unnecessary roughness penalty gave the Patriots a crucial third-down conversion deep in Chargers territory that eventually led to a field goal. The Chargers lost all three of their fumbles, one of which came off of a back-breaking interception of Tom Brady, while the Patriots maintained possession on both of their fumbles. (Keep in mind that, while forcing fumbles is certainly a credit to the defense/Troy Smith, the recovery of those fumbles is basically random chance.) (Hell, I'm not even going to count the potential OPI on Caldwell's TD catch, because that's always up for interpretation anyway.) The fact of the matter is that the Chargers made a ton of crucial mistakes that the Patriots capitalized on, just like in seemingly every other Patriots playoff game during the Belichick era. As always, you have to give New England credit for being disciplined and reducing the amount of stupid mistakes that they have, but I don't think I'd go so far to say that the Patriots "nutted up" or outplayed the Chargers, by any stretch of the imagination.

Couldn't agree more. So you admit that the Chargers basically gave the game away, then?

You do realize that Manning is pretty much screwed now, right? Even if he wins next week, they'll say that it took everything falling into place (home field advantage, a weakened Patriots team) for Peyton to finally beat the Patriots. And let's not even talk about the bloodthirsty roar that will come forth from Bristol if he manages to lose.

Oops, my mistake - I thought Gould's career long was a 48-yarder before that kick, but he nailed a 49-yarder in the regular season this year for his longest kick ever. At any rate, great kick, great game, and great game next week.

Pretty ballsy kick for a second year kicker. If you're going to establish a new career long, you might as well do it for the winner in OT in the playoffs. So we get Saints/Bears for the NFC Championship, the best two teams in the conference. That should be a hell of a game.

It's for what you used to do all the time. There's probably a fair number of people that think that topics and posts in the "original" Site Feedback folder don't get a satisfactory amount of attention. Creating a second Site Feedback folder (and prefacing it with a statement that moderators MIGHT look at some of these posts) doesn't really fix that problem, does it? And, on a side note, are you actually discussing these changes with the rest of the moderator staff? Some of them may be able to give you some input on some of these changes before you move forward with them. Not only that, but these guys may have some other ideas of their own as well.

With a pitching duel, you have a dominating individual performance (the pitcher) to latch on to and you see every single facet of that domination with the batter/pitcher matchup. With football, many aspects of an elite performance can be obfuscated by the sheer number of things happening on any given play; TV coverage can (and typically does) point out many of the important points, but so much is happening so fast that the drama behind each play can be somewhat muted. That being said, I'm not even sure I would consider the Indy/Baltimore game to be a defensive "matchup", per se, because the Baltimore offense just forgot to show up. Save for a deep bomb to Todd Heap, it seemed like McNair was checking it down on virtually every pass attempt and, even on many of those checkdowns, was forcing it into some heavy traffic. Jamal Lewis had a few moments where it appeared that he'd get something going, but he never really tore through the Indy D like many had predicted; the Ravens almost never had any offensive momentum through the whole game and you could sense that (or at least I could). I wouldn't call it a stinker, but it wasn't even a good "defensive struggle", in my opinion.

This one goes to eleven.

That's the nagging thing about it, and one reason that I don't think the Bears win big tomorrow (if even at all). This team probably had the talent to go undefeated if it actually focused from game to game, but they have an unerring capability to mail it in whenever they play a team that they view as a cakewalk. From that standpoint, Seattle was probably the worst possible team that they could have stumbled on - they're arguably the worst division winning team in recent history, they're wrecked with injuries and, worst of all, the Bears are fully aware of all of it.

Would there be any interest in starting up a roto keeper league? I'd definitely be interested in playing, but I despise head-to-head leagues.

There is an option to turn off sigs and avatars in your board options, under My Controls -> Board Settings. I've had mine turned off for about a year now and, really, I don't feel like I've missed much.

I think I liked you better when you just said "Xenogears."

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If anybody was going to turn dissociative and go for the full MPD monty, we'd probably already be seeing signs of depression by now. Perhaps Patrick has some inside information.