You’ll tell your grandchildren about this one. At least you are lucky to be a Giants fan and not a GB fan. GB fans will have a nightmare hangover that will not end until they get back to and win another Super Bowl. We know this feeling all too well, as our nightmare demons from Flipper Anderson, Minn 1997 and SF 2002 were not exorcised until Super Bowl titles were won in 1990 and 2007.
What do these games all have in common? A dominant butt whooping everywhere except the scoreboard comes home to roost in the playoffs because playoff competition by definition is too strong to assume the competition will just give up and pack it in. The games are 60 minutes. Not 55 minutes.
The Prevent Offense
5:04 Burnett INT
5:04 Lacy run- 4 yd loss
4:57 SEA timeout
4:57 Lacy run- 2 yd loss
4:50 SEA timeout
4:50 Lacy run- 2 yd gain
Hubris- excessive pride or self-confidence. In Greek tragedy, excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.
Some will argue that Fassel with a 24 point lead vs SF with only 18 minutes left had nothing to worry about, that it was not overconfidence as much as simple foolishness. Likewise, the Giants in 2010 vs Philadelphia, up 31-10 with 7 minutes remaining, losing in regulation. Or McCarthy’s Packers up by 12, picking off Wilson with 5 minutes left. What these games all have in common is a team that stopped doing what had gotten them there. RunRunRunPunt is not foolishness. It is hubris. A first down puts the game away. This is entirely on the head coach. You have to coach to win, not to prevent a loss.
We would need an encyclopedia to catalog all of the insanities that were hatched by GB to squander the win. Wonder, for one, points out that Bostic was a BLOCKING TE, so what was HE doing on the hands team for that onside kick? If his job was to block the opponent from getting 10 yards, screening his own players to enable possession of the ball, then he missed his assignment. Nelson was behind him and would have corralled the ball. Others ask why Burnett fell to the ground after the INT… if he ran with it, he could have gotten more yards and made a difference with field position. My reply to that idea is that I have seen way too many times where the ball is popped loose by the opponent on the subsequent runback, so I did not have a problem with him giving himself up and handing the ball to Rodgers. After all, all the Offense had to do was get ONE first down to salt the game away. Others will also ask why Ha Ha Clinton-Dix did not attempt to break up the helicopter 2 pt conversion pass by Wilson. All of these points are valid. And I know we can list many more. But for me the Ultimate Sin is RunRunRunPunt. There are still too many other things that can go wrong. You have the best QB in the game, so win the game. Bill Walsh would never have done the RRRP. If you do the right thing, The Score Will Take Care of Itself.
Congrats to SEA on a big win. Can anyone tell me an example of a team which was the recipient of such an enormous playoff Prevent gift which then went on to win it all? My anecodotal observation is that if you were weak enough to be completely outplayed for the first ~50 minutes of such a big game, you probably have enough flaws to not be worthy of the Super Bowl. The ’93 Bills, the ’97 Vikings, the ’02 Niners, the ’10 Eagles… the ’14 Seahawks? Time will tell. The early line is pick’em.
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