Any given Sunday, etc. Any team can theoretically beat any other team. And with the right breaks, a “better” team (on paper) can be mangled by a ”worse” team.
Except Cleveland. The Browns just lose now.
What Bullitt said. Marcus Williams actually reacted extremely quickly, too quickly for his own good. Had he arrived at the scene a second later, he could have wrapped up Diggs in bounds, or at least, not be seen so much as the culprit. By arriving on scene so quickly, he risked either 1) PI, which makes him a villain, or 2) letting Diggs get loose.
It’s probably harder than it looks. Again, he’s covering deep to prevent the walk off in the end zone, for which he really would have been rightly criticized. There’s already another receiver on the sideline just a few yards up the field, so from the defender’s point of view, the bigger danger is that if he’s not deep, then he leaves the receiver alone near the end zone. He doesn’t want him to get close. When the receiver breaks for the sideline, it’s a split second decision that has to be made.
He did mistime his reaction, so it’s fair to say he misplayed him a little, but it wasn’t a blown coverage and I don’t think his reaction was as bad as the replay made him look. Rather, it was a great play by Keenum and Diggs.
Or 3) Diggs lunging out of bounds stopping the clock with two or three seconds left and a very makable fieldgoal from about the 35.
The big danger I see for New England is an injury to Brady. I don’t think the Jags can win, but I do think they can keep the Patriots from repeating.
You could argue that the Jags have the worst QB in the playoffs this year. Maybe you could argue Buffalo, but a lot of people would take Tyrod over Bortles. I know boiling it down to the QBs may be oversimplifying, but having a below average QB up against Brady does seem like a no brainer.
Yes, please!
No other team this century has been to the SB even half as many times as New England. I feel like the rest of the country will rooting against them next week – which means they will probably win out of spite.
Never discount that as a motivating factor. When Brady got his most recent ring last summer, he made a point of wearing it on his middle finger for the photos.
“Nobody likes us, nobody respects us, nobody thought we could do it, everyone hates us” etc. is standard locker room talk in sports anyway. “They think we’re cheaters” is just a bonus.
None of the other three remaining non-Patriots teams has ever won a Super Bowl, and between them, there’s only been one Super Bowl appearance since 1980 (the Eagles in SB XXXIX / 2004 season). If the Packers aren’t going to be in the game, I like to see a team that hasn’t won in a long time (if ever). That said, I do suspect that the Pats will win yet again. 
Yeah, I’ve pretty much resigned myself to another Pats Superbowl win. I initially wrote “boring,” in that yeah, yeah, yeah, what’s new sort of way, but the games themselves had mostly not been boring. I guess I know now how NBA fans outside Chicago felt like during the 90s Bulls runs.
I really still don’t see it. Either the safety is there after the ball is touched in which case he can hit the receiver or better grab him. Or he’s there before the ball is touched in which case he jumps for the ball to try to bat it away. If he makes contact while playing the ball, it’s not PI.
I think it would have been tough to keep Diggs inbounds where he caught it.
He was a few feet away, exactly enough to make whatever case you want made, just like the “slipped coincidentally with completely coincidental hands to the back” visual evidence.
Yeah. I have no rooting interest, but my feeling watching the first umpteen times was that he could easily have been brought down in bounds. Now, looking at it a few more umpteen times, I’m not so sure. It’s really a matter of the timing of that tackle. It looks like Diggs was ready to throw himself to the sideline, so William’s tackle would have to have been timed pretty finely. I still think he blew it, but perhaps not as egregiously as I first thought.
I checked the rules and a win due to the other team’s mistakes is still a win.
Is this a response to something I said? If it is, I don’t get it. Even though I had no rooting interest, I was pretty stoked to see that finale.
I’m not anti-Brady. The Patriots from 2001-now are having the greatest run of success of any franchise in the history of the NFL and one of the best in the history of North American professional sports, so you have to respect that as a football fan. Watching the Pats now is like what it would have been like to watch the NY Yankees from 1923 to 1940 or 1950 to 1965. It’s like watching the Celtics of Bill Russell, Bob Cousey, and Red Aurbach. Like watching the Montreal Canadians. You’re watching one of the great generational runs in pro sports so enjoy it.
But having said all that, watching the Jags vs. Iggles or Jags vs. Vikings would be cool, especially if the NFC emerged as the winner. No offense to the Jags but the Vikings have deserved it for a long time (Eagles too).
What’s the rule these days on forcing a receiver out-of-bounds before his feet come down? I think ages ago it used to be a discretionary call for officials; that if they thought the receiver would have come down with two feer in-bounds, they would rule it a catch. I think that changed at some point, but I never see defenders try to exploit it; if the receiver is near the sidelines and jumps for a catch, just try to get underneath him and push/carry him over the line before his feet come down. Is there some reason that won’t work?
I think it’s also hard for a player to turn off his instincts when a rare situation demands it. Corners and safeties spend years training themselves to react to pass routes, to prevent catches, and not give up any yards. When something happens like yesterday, when the smart play is to let the receiver catch the ball and keep him in-bounds, I’m not sure if they’ve trained for it or even thought about it. I think there was something similar the week before in the Pittsburgh game. One team went for it on fourth down late in the game, the other team intercepted and that player was tackled immediately. He cost his team ten yards by catching the ball; would have been better off to just bat it into the ground.
Again, you’re not seeing it because you’re not the one playing it in real time.
I’m not saying he could’t have played it better - he could have timed his arrival better. He just didn’t that one time and it cost him. It also took a great throw and a great catch on the part of Diggs.
I don’t defend the DB by saying he couldn’t have played better; I just push back at the idea that this was some obvious or easy play. In reality, the defender was doing everything almost textbook perfectly up until the split second before he committed himself to disrupting the receiver’s catch too early by going low.
Some of the posts here (and elsewhere online) made it seem like he just didn’t tackle the guy. So I naturally had to check out what that was about. When you look at it on the replay, it’s obvious what happened if you understand the game of football. The ones who are saying it was some blown coverage or blown tackle don’t understand football. Might have played a few games in 8th grade but don’t understand it at this level. It’s not as easy as it looks.