| Ghoulish Delight |
01-21-2007 11:01 PM |
Thanks to TiVo, I have for the first season ever, seen every playoff game. Wow, I've watched more football in the past 3 weeks than I probably have over the past 3 seasons combined.
What polar opposite games. The first games started out as exciting as it gets, imo, and then kinda fell into a rut. The second...wow. Yeah.
I was disappointed to see NO lose, but at least Brees made a valiant effort. He didn't have many chances, but when he was given the time, he didn't make any unforced mistakes and put together some good drives. Unfortunately for him, his o-line wasn't ready for the early dominance by the Bears D, which forced them into a throw-heavy comeback mode. I think Brees would have the skills to handle a passing offense, but the line just isn't built for it. They're great at run blocking but only adequate at pass protection and only if the run is there as a threat. Without that, and with the Bears not giving them an inch, they didn't stand a chance.
Meanwhile...oh, THERE'S Payton Manning. It took him almost a game and a half to wake up, but that final drive of the 2nd half...wow. I watched their final regular season game against Miami, and Manning owned that game. He walked up to the line of scrimmage every down and decided exactly what would happen and how. That control was non-existent last week, whether it was because he was trying to be conservative to avoid mistakes under pressure or because he didn't need to turn that on due to their defense keeping them in it. But after a similar start, when it was finally clear that the defense wasn't going to carry them this week like they did last week, he was able to turn it on.
Gotta give NE credit for completely dominating the Colts on both sides of the ball up to that point, but once Manning decided to take the game into his hands, the secondary obviously suddenly started to feel every yard of those deep passes that Manning threw early that NE defended so well.
Maybe it's because I watched via TiVo, thus compressing the games greatly, but I thought both games were great. NO's defense did kinda poop out early, but the energy of Bears D in the first half made it pretty compelling to me.
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