I enjoyed seeing Foles TD reception trick play; showed Brady how it’s supposed to work, rubbed his nose in having dropped his own.
Congratulations, Eagles!
Remember the end of the original Star Wars film, how Luke blows up the Death Star, and Darth Vader’s spaceship sort of spins out of the frame, but you know he’ll be back?
Remember the end of “Return of the Jedi,” when Vader got his ass whipped by a bunch of God damned nerds, (NERRRRDS!!!), and you knew he wouldn’t be back?
It’s been a great run for sure, but I think tonight’s game signified the incremental decay of the Patriots. A 40-year-old QB, however great, cannot sustain that greatness for much longer. You have to wonder how much longer Belichick will coach and what’s left after Brady and Belichick are gone. I understand hopefulness, but I wonder how much longer the Patriots can keep this up.
5th suprbowl I watched in a row.
The out of bounds thing definitely feels like a “team rebound.” It’s a loss of yardage on a pass play. Same result except for clock stoppage. A strip sack is more of an individual play deserving of the state of “sack” if not always visually as impactful.
That may have been the most clutch performance by the Eagles since the end of the Third Age.
Personally, I’m rooting for the nerds. Heck, I’ll even stoop to rooting for the Eagles - I’m not a proud man.
What I’d like to see is for Brady to go 5-11 next season, and retire. Then let’s see how Belichick fares in N.E. without one of the greatest QBs to ever play.
But I wouldn’t be surprised to see them ride off together; maybe even get adjoining condos in Miami or Phoenix, and play golf every day at sunrise.
Eh, the quarterback has roughly 20 yards to throw the ball away and avoid loss of yardage on a scramble. If you can’t toss the ball past the line of scrimmage at some point in that distance, you deserve a sack on your stat line.
All told, it was a hell of a game, complete with last minute heroics. I’m not even going to gloat to all the Vikings fans that had to watch the team that smacked them around in the Championship round win on their home field. I’m glad Minnesota will have plenty of salt for the roads for the rest of the winter, though.
I’m still not completely sold on the idea of fight songs at the professional level.
Let’s face it, “Houston Oilers/Miami Dolphins Number One” was lightning in a bottle, and even that was just kinda funny at best.
Congrats Philadelphia. You won fair and square.
As a Giants fan, I shouldn’t ever have anything nice to say about the Eagles… But that was a fun game, and I was very happy for Austinite Nick Foles.
I was delighted that Doug Pedersen had an aggressive game plan. None of that “game manager” stuff- Nick got to use the whole playbook and throw the ball over the field.
Gosh I love a good underdog story. Somewhere Kurt Warner and Jeff Hostetler are grinning.
Philadelphia The Beautiful:
O’ finally for Reggie White
For Bergey, Quick, and Jaws
Screw Andy Reid’s awful timeouts
Forget Chip Kelly’s reign
Philadelphia, Philadelphia!
Doug called this game for thee
So praise his grit with wiz steaks ‘wit
While wearing Eagles green
So where does Foles play next year? He’s still under contract for at least another season and I can’t imagine the Eagles wouldn’t want to flip him for as much as they can get for him.
The quarterback must specifically run out of bounds due to defensive pressure for it to be a sack.
That makes sense. If you tackle the guy or run him out of bounds, you’ve accomplished the same thing, just as you get credit for a tackle if you knock a man out of bounds.
If logic had anything to do with it this is the way all NFL offenses would be run. Attack, attack, attack, attack. It works.
There was one glaring exception. After the strip sack the Eagles ran it three times to eat the clock then kicked a field goal. That was extremely conservative. Sure, it worked somewhat, but I was disappointed to not see them put a bit more effort into just nailing the game shut with a touchdown. And the FG was pretty far, if they missed it they would have given the ball back to NE in decent field position and a TD would have won.
It looked like they had more faith in their special teams than their offense at that point. It worked, they made a FG and had a great kickoff that both ate up time and made the Pats start on their own 7. So maybe it was smart. But I still wish (as a spectator) I could have seen them be more aggressive as an offense at that stage.
I don’t agree. If you play aggressively there, the number of possible bad outcomes goes way, way up. Throw even one incomplete pass on that sequence and, even if it ends with the same field goal, Brady has more than a minute for his final drive instead of just 30 seconds - plenty of time to mount a serious drive instead of a couple of desperation heaves. Throw two incomplete passes and he has two minutes and a time out. Get sacked, and you’re out of field goal range and you’ve squandered your advantage. Throw an interception, same deal but worse. The way the Eagles played it gave them probably something like an 80-85% chance at winning, which was the best they were going to get.
Honestly, Petersen really impressed me in this game, and I say that as a salty Giants’ fan who would be happier if he were a goofball. Going for it on fourth and two in his own territory, down one in the fourth quarter, was the most impressive coaching decision I’ve ever seen. It was absolutely the right decision. If the Eagles had punted the ball away there they’d have lost the game. But it was also a decision that approximately zero other coaches would have made, because if it had gone wrong, Petersen would have taken the blame for the loss. If he had punted and lost, he’d have avoided that blame. It was really good, fearless coaching.
On another note, have we all just decided not to discuss Belichick’s decision to bench his starting cornerback for no apparent reason about six minutes before kickoff?
Well at this point we can only conjecture, although he’s been said to have been erratic this year, and this from USA Today:
Let’s at least get the amount of time correct.
Brady got the ball with :58 on the clock to try and engineer a 93-yard drive.
There is one play the Eagles could have passed on, and it wouldn’t have hurt them if it was incomplete. The second-down play was started with 2:03 on the clock. The clock was going to stop, regardless of outcome, for the Two-Minute Warning. That would have been a perfect opportunity for a play-action pass (what they apparently now are calling an RPO, for reasons that totally escape me). I can see a slant or something of that nature being very, very successful at moving the chains, and ending the game.
Further, running options don’t have to be into the line. You can run sweeps, you can run off-tackle, etc. Granted, the Eagles had been successful early running up the middle, but the Patriots had actually taken that away as the Fourth Quarter wore on, so trying something else might have made sense.