Granted, last years Super Bowl was flat out hard to watch, but this year, the Super Bowl was ugly. I don’t know if it was the rain, or the Bears inability to play offense. OK, it was totally the rain. It seems silly, given my profession of choice, that I was so put off by the wet weather. But I really think it would have been a completely different game, but I’m not sure it would have been any more enjoyable. Of course, I enjoyed it immensely, given the result.
However, how can we blame fumbled snaps and handoffs solely on nerves and incompetence? The Manning-Addai exchange and the Kreutz-Grossman exchange wasn’t quite this flawed all year, and frankly, Manning and Grossman were to of the most jittery quarterbacks in the league, and have been for the past several years. It was all about the rain.
So, let’s say Grossman doesn’t make those fumbles, what happens? Well, the Chicago offense get’s a little more confidence, Thomas Jones gets more touches, and the ball is out of Peyton Manning’s hands. After Manning threw his first quarter interception I thought for sure that the Bears were going to run away with the game. I thought Manning would be rattled. Fortunately, Grossman lost the ball and his confidence, allowing Manning to slowly regain his.
Manning, of course, was helped by excellent games from Joseph Addai and Dominic Rhodes on the ground and while running short crosses. It seems interesting that with the vaunted Bears linebacking corps, their biggest weakness was the intermediate pass. I think the team needs to reevaluate some of their schemes for next year. Maybe Grossman isn’t their biggest concern.
But all in all, I thought it was a wonderful experience, from the weird 1995 Cirque Du Soleil pregame show, to Billy Joel (who looked like an irritated blowfish), to the especially sloppy first half, to Prince (who looked just plain irritated but was very good), to the exciting conclusion. If we don’t raise out expectations beyond that of other games, this qualified as a good game. It was ugly, but it was good.
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