I can only speak for myself, but a lot of healing went on for me yesterday.
1) For starters, I got to watch my most hated team, the Philadelphia Eagles, go down 32-25. It would have been particularly nightmarish to have them win the title, knowing they went through us and WE LET THEM THROUGH. Now that they are gone, I am going to sleep easier.
2) Secondly, and much more importantly, we got to watch what a REAL OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR DOES WHEN GIVEN PRESSURE LOOKS FROM THE OPPONENT. It was such a pleasure to see how the Cardinals, who actually HAD THE Plaxico option in their WRS corps, still play intelligently and go to the small ball stuff to burn the Eagles. As we mentioned in the comments last night, we saw AZ give the Eagles EVERYTHING that was required:
SLANTS, SCREENS, FLARES, DRAWS, CHECKDOWNS!
How many screens did the Cardinals run today? Maybe more than the Giants ran all season?! And I am lmao when On 3rd and goal from the 8 when the Cardinals are down 25-24, they ran a screen(!) to Hightower for a TD! The screen works all day to slow down the pressure, the blitzing. And they even used one to deliver a TD too!
A breath of fresh air.
It gives me, for one, a lot closure to see how someone with half a clue can keep the chains moving, how UNDESERVING WE REALLY WERE. The contrast was so stark. I am so proud of how the Cardinals played, how they beat that garbage pressure. At least SOMEONE was able to unmask the Eagles gimmicks. Like Crazed Giant Fan joked about last night in the comments- this was a revolution in playcalling. NOT!
I must have been six years old- we had this game where it had these mini prerecorded disks for football plays. It was a 2 player game, and each kid would switch from defense to offense after each possession ended, just like in the real game. The offense would pick a play and the defense would pick 1 from an assortment of many defenses to choose. Then the disc went into the audio box and you would listen to the outcome. You quickly learned that the draw and the screen beat the blitz like a drum. This was not rocket science. We were barely able to read and we knew that pressure meant appropriate counter-responses. So to see on one drive alone how the Cardinals used a draw, checkdown dumpoff, and screen was just so sweet. That drive ended in a TD. The Cardinals are deserving of their invite to the SB, they did what the Giants would not do, and I applaud them.
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