I’d like to see Brees win one, but I have a feeling Manning is getting ring #2 - and honestly I’m pretty happy with that, too. The Colts have always been my second-favorite team.
They’re mine, too. Back when Brady/Manning arguments were all the rage on the internet, I was always a big Manning supporter, writing long treatises on, for instance, how his reputation as a playoff choker was unearned. Probably because I wanted to be proven right, I found myself rooting for them whenever they played anyone except the Giants.
New Orleans was lucky to escape the playoffs. They seem to be floundering at the wrong time.
In what sense are they “floundering”? They squashed the Cards and beat the Vikings cleanly.
I wouldn’t say “cleanly.” For all the turnovers, the score should have been 56-3 Saints. A better team would have capitalized more strongly on all those turnovers, and would’ve whomped the Vikings a good one. As it was, only bad decisions on the Vikings part resulted in a 3 point victory for the Saints - they didn’t win it outright.
Yeah, I’m biased, but I think the Vikings were the better team last Sunday, they were just killed by their own mistakes.
See, people keep saying this, and I’m just not buying it. You can’t separate out turnovers like that - “well, if not for the turnovers, the Vikings would have won.” Well, that’s almost surely true. Also probably true: “If not for allowing all those passing yards, the Jets would have won against the Colts.” Forcing and avoiding turnovers are part of the comparison when we talk about who was “the better team on Sunday.”
This is especially true in this particular case, because propensity toward turnover is part and parcel of who the Vikings are. You can’t separate it out. Sure, they lost in part because Brett Favre made two stupid passes and Adrian Peterson put the ball on the ground an estimated eighty times. But that’s an inseparable characteristic of those two particular players. You put Peterson in the lineup and you’re going to get some terrific runs and some horrible fumbles. You can’t decide that the terrific runs count when determining whether you were better than the opponent, but the fumbles don’t. Sure, the interceptions hurt, but they happen because your quarterback is Brett Favre. Replace him with Trent Dilfer and you don’t get those two interceptions, probably, but you also don’t even come close to winning that game.
This is absolutely correct. You could say the Vikings beat themselves (dubious, but less so) but to say that the better team was the team that turned the ball over 5 times, including twice inside the red zone, just defies logic.
Ouch – someone got some crappy boxes.
I’m trying to sort this out in my head for gambling purposes as well. A pool I’m in is down to me and one other guy – pick winner, ties broken by total score, further ties broken by total offensive yardage. I want to root for the Saints – I really do. I’ve always liked the Colts, but the Saints have the whole “plucky underdog rising to the challenge” storyline going for them. Problem is, I just don’t think they can pull it off – the Colts have just too much finesse.
Hopefully the guy I’m playing against will fall under the Saints’ spell, and hopefully I’m right about banking on Manning’s execution ability. Obviously, I want to see a good shootout of a game, but if it comes down the way I suspect it will, then I’ll be just fine with a blowout by the Colts as well.
Neither team is on my personal list of teams I specifically care about, so I could go either way on this. On the one hand, I tend to favor midwestern teams, but on the other hand, I do have some sympathy for New Orleans (both for Katrina, and for the fact that this is their first appearance). Probably I’ll end up going with whomever the majority is rooting for at whatever party I go to.
Well, yes and no. While causing and avoiding turnovers is a big part of being “the better team,” going forward, the NFC Championship game is still a great big red flag for the Saints. Picking off two passes and forcing six (six!) fumbles is great, but it’s not the sort of thing that’s likely to repeat itself. On the other hand, look at the defense’s allowing the opposition to march up and down the field completely at will for the entire game, and the offense’s being forced into seven 3 & out’s – those are the types of trends that *are *likely to carry over into upcoming games (especially considering that, though they continued to win, the Saints were far from dominant over the second half of the season).
So, if the two teams played a seven game series, that first game would suggest to me that the Vikings would be a better bet going forward, as they lost the turnover battle 5-1, that probably wouldn’t happen again, and the Saints needed everyone one of those five turnovers just to barely win the game. In that sense, you could say that the Vikings were the better team.
Well, the Saints forced turnovers all season, so while they might not force 5, one could assume that they’ll force more than usual.
:Yawn: Big deal. The goal at the start of the year is to win the Super Bowl. Who cares about going undefeated except the old Dolphins who don’t want to share.
The Saints were excellent at forcing turnovers (2nd most in the NFL), but the Vikings were excellent at avoiding them (3rd fewest). For the season, New Orleans was +11 in turnover differential, Minnesota was +6 – not a huge difference.
Maybe so, but the Vikings were a lot better at avoiding turnovers between Weeks 4 and 12 than between Week 13 and now.
On the other hand, the Pats did try to go for 19-0 and the football gods punished them most humorously for it.
Plus, Mercury Morris is upset that nobody’s giving him air time this year. So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.
SB44 will be a blowout for the Colts. NO’s D can’t stop anybody, much less Manning, they just count on outscoring them. Five turnovers by the Vikes and they still allowed 28 points? The Indy D isn’t one of history’s greatest, but they’re good enough.
Not to mention they DIDN’T rest Wes Welker for the playoffs and he ends up blowing his knee in Week 17 and they lose in the first round.
Of course Bellicheat deserves all the bad karma the universe can heap upon him.
This. Much as a New Orleans win would make me smile, my prediction is 35-21 Indy, and one of those “not as close as the score indicated” games. Manning will get a (legitimate*) MVP - he’s going to go down as, arguably, the greatest QB of all time, and I expect this win will be a nice mark on his resume.
*In their last SB Win, I thought the MVP award should have been split between his two running backs.
I really hate to nitpick, but Dallas made its first appearance in SB V, and Miami made its first appearance in SB VI.
That’s what the Pro Bowl is for.
Which is exactly what the table says.
SB V = Baltimore over Dallas, January 1971
SB VI = Dallas over Miami, January 1972