Good riddance to the New Orleans Saints. Don’t let the door hit your a** on the way out.
If the NY Giants can pull off a great upset today and beat the Packers, it really should not matter who the Giants would face the following week. You play whoever is in your path. With that said, there was not a single Giants fan who wanted to see the team have to go through that bleeping dome to get to Super Bowl XLVI.
The SF 49ers will be a formidible opponent for either the Packers or the Giants. But let’s get real here. The 49ers needed a whole lotta miracles to pull off the upset. AND FIVE TURNOVERS. So permit me to state that the better team did not win. The better team that day won because they had a little extra and made some of their own luck. If that game is played 10 times, the Saints should and would win more than half the time. But between some uncharacteristic sloppiness by Brees and the fact that they were not playing in that track meet dome, they lost. Bad for the Saints, good for the Giants if the Giants can win today. It all means absolutely nothing if the Giants lose. Let’s make it mean something and we’ll have all week to talk 49ers.
Separately, if you missed the game yesterday between the Saints and Niners, you have to watch it. And if you have not DVR’d it, find a way to watch it, perhaps through a purchase of the NFL Game Rewind. It was that good. It was arguably one of the best football games I have ever watched, an instant classic. We tweeted this game, and it was a great one. We’ll be tweeting today also; Rich Conforti will be at Lambeau Field, so we’ll be connected and he’ll be able to report what he is seeing as well.
There is a play toward the end that I do not want to spoil. But here is the scenario: you are down by 1 or 2 points and there are ~2 minutes left. You are going to go into the end zone for a TD. Should you stop yourself at the 1 yard line. It is obvious that you should, because this way you can kill off the rest of the clock and get your FG. Being up by 1 with essentially no time left is a much greater certainty of victory than handing the ball to Drew Brees with 2 minutes left and a 5-7 point deficit (depending on the 2 pt conversion). PLAYERS DO NOT THINK THIS WAY. They just score the 7 and hand the ball to the opposing offense. I remember an onside Kickoff vs the Giants on the last day of the 2000 regular season when Jacksonville (then coached by Coughlin) trailed by 7 with ~minutes left. Jason Sehorn fields the onside attempt cleanly and runs like a bullet straight in for a TD. But kneeling at the 1 yd line would have been better, as the clock was the bigger enemy than the points. The Giants held on but it was possible for Jacksonville to theoretically come back otherwise. In the situation yesterday, it was not wise to give the ball back to Drew Brees. The first down and the Akers lock FG were far more lethal than a TD. I do not want to hear about the chances for Akers missing what would effectively be a PAT. Is that as large as Brees scoring a TD with ~2:10 left? Cmon! PLAYERS DO NOT THINK THIS WAY. (Remember, this is limited to a situation where you are down by 1 or 2 pts with very little time left on the clock. If you are down by 3 or more, just score the TD.)
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