Finally, this has been a ridiculous rivalry for eight years now, and what fascinates me is how much has changed since ’04 when these plotlines were created and value judgments about the various players. The truth is sample size in football is too small. When two elite teams play against each other 11 times in eight years, you see about everything. The great players come up big some days; others they can’t convert fourth-and-2 or throw a bad pick when they’re in game-tying field goal range. No coach has some mastery over another player; he just has great defenses for two seasons that pose particular matchup problems, and the teams happened to play four times those years.
More than half of their eleven games have been great games, but the actual game never tells us anything more than who happened to be better on that given day. If they can add one more great playoff game, there really will need to be a good book about the series.
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