The Myron Cope Memorial Steelers March to the Super Bowl Thread

[mhendo]

@Weirddave

No matter, as poor as that call was, it didn’t cost us the game, we cost us the game by going to the goddamn fucking prevent on that last drive instead of sticking with what was working on defense, and the Steelers won the game by producing when it mattered.

This is exactly right. Here’s what i wrote about this incident yesterday, in the NFL Week 15 thread:

@mhendo

1. The Ravens deserved to lose the game. They beat themselves by allowing a sack to take them out of field goal range, then letting the Steelers march 90+ yards down the field. I blame the defensive play calling; i’ll never understand why Baltimore insists on playing a loose, prevent-type defense in situations like this, rather than using the sort of aggressive, blitzing defense that had kept Pittsburgh out of the end-zone all day.

It’s really fucking frustrating, because the Ravens seem to do this all the time. They did exactly the same thing against the Redskins last week, and suddenly a team that had made virtually no yards all game began marching down the field. Luckily, in that game it didn’t really matter because Washington were too far behind for a score to make a difference anyway. But my friend and i were yelling in frustration at the TV for the Ravens to play their regular defense.

Here’s the rest of my take on the Pittsburgh touchdown, also copied from the other thread:

@mhendo

2. I initially thought the pass was a touchdown. When the officials made the call that it was no touchdown, i was happy, but rather surprised. But then i saw the replay, and it seemed to me that they probably made the right call.

3.If the officials HAD called a touchdown on the field, i wouldn’t have been surprised, and i also wouldn’t have been too upset if that decision had been upheld on review. It was so close that i think it would have been reasonable to let the call stand.

But, given that the call on the field was “No touchdown,” i cannot see any way that the officials in the booth could reasonably overturn it. The standard for overturning a call is that there needs to be incontrovertible evidence that the call on the field was incorrect. I thought that the slow-motion replay demonstrated that the officials made the right call, and there is NO WAY you will ever convince me that there was sufficient evidence to overturn the call on review.