Your Super Bowl Recap: Holy Fuck...

Having your birthday fall on Super Bowl is not a good thing for your liver, or for your ability to make it to work on time the next day. Needless to say, I was somewhat...not prepared...to post about the Super Bowl last night. Any post I would have made would have been nothing but a breathless series or incoherent, expletive-filled exclamations. And we already have one writer for the blog who provides that with every post. (Editor's Note: Zing.)

I spent the first three quarters trying to decide how to sum up what some people might call a "gripping defensive struggle," while others would say it "sucked on toast." And then the fourth quarter came, and then...well, at this point you know the rest. But here I am, on Monday morning, still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Eli Manning didn't just win the Super Bowl, he's he's now a Super Bowl legend.

To quote John Wayne, the whole thing rigoddamneddiculous.

With 2:42 left, and the Patriots having just scored a go-ahead touchdown, I was sitting at my friend's place and thinking my Super Bowl Prediction Haiku was going to be pretty damned prescient: the Giants had hung around, but the Patriots decided at the last minute to do just enough to win. Yes, it was going to be another underwhelming win, but it was going to be 19 in a row this season, and it would be pretty tough to argue with that.

And then...Eli Freakin' Manning.

You know who leads their team the length of the field for a Super Bowl-winning touchdown with less than two minutes to play? Joe Montana. And apparently now, Eli Manning. I mean, once Tom Brady threw that touchdown to Randy Moss, we all knew that it was over, right? Even with as "magical" of a post-season as Manning had been having, there was no way to recover from the kidney punch that was that touchdown drive by the Patriots.

Unless, of course, you pull off one of the most incredible plays in Super Bowl, if not (especially given the context) NFL history:



(On a side note, let's not forget that Asante Samuel had a chance to wrap up the game on the previous play, when Eli and...yup...David Tyree...got their routes mixed up and a pass wound up right in Samuel's hands. Make that play, and it's 19-0, and we're here contemplating
how Eli Manning could throw an INT with the game on the line.)

The hype leading up to the Super Bowl about Eli Manning always felt like a joke waiting for a punchline to me. Every time someone suggested that Eli Manning had "arrived" I was waiting for the rimshot.

"Eli Manning is aving one of the best playoffs of any quarterback in recent memory."
BA-DUM!
"The Giants have a chance to shock the Patriots if Eli continues to play like this."
BA-DUM-BUMP!

It turns out the joke was on the Patriots. Eli Manning pulled off perhaps the most stunning touchdown drive in NFL history, and in the process slew Goliath, rescued America from a deep national depression, made sports safe for kids and the dads to enjoy without fearing that an ogre-like figure in a hoodie would ruin it for everyone, and someone saved the dogs from the Puppy Bowl from a house fire.

And for the Patriots? Finishing the season with one loss for them probably has to be a bit more bitter than the 1985 Bears. I thing I will say is that the criticism of Bill Belichick for walking off the field with one second left is pretty baseless. Remember that the clock originally had run out after the Patriots' fourth down conversion attempt failed, and that's when Belichick started walking across the field. Once he's three-quarters of the way over and has already shook hands with Tom Coughlin, what's he supposed to do, go back to his sideline and coach the last kneel-down?

Still, seeing The Hoodie and The Golden Boy have to eat this loss certainly didn't make me weep.

The bottom line is that it's a day later, I'm sober, and I still can't make any sense of what happened in the Super Bowl. Depending on the arc of the rest of Eli Manning's career, this is either going to be looked back on as a defining moment, or one of the flukiest, strangest moments in Super Bowl history.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 9:39 AM 2 comments  

Patriots Downplay Reports That Brady is a Zombie

FOXBOROUGH, MA - As they continued preparations for next week's Super Bowl, The New England Patriots sought to downplay another mystery involving quarterback Tom Brady, dismissing reports that Tom Brady had been turned into a lifeless, blood-thirsty zombie as "highly speculative."

"Right now, there's no reason to suspect that Tom isn't going to be playing next Sunday, so for me this is a non-issue," said Patriots head coach Bill Belichick at the Patriots' practice facilities. "This is just like the so-called 'Bootgate' - one picture that appears to show Tom feasting on the still-fresh remains of human, and things just get blown out of proportion."

Speculation on Brady's condition intensified on Sunday, as a battery of scientists, priests and voodoo practitioners filed in and out of the Patriots' training area, which was closed to reporters. Some reporters also noticed large quantities of field mice, rats, gerbils and other small mammals being shipped to the facilities, but Belichick said these were part of "normal game week preparations."

"It's just something we do every week, and certainly not because we're trying to keep Tom satisfied with warm animal meat until we can find a cure," Belichik said. "You media guys just don't pay attention to our preparations until the Super Bowl."

Brady was last spotted in public Saturday morning, after having returned from a short trip in Jamaica with his girlfriend, supermodel Gisele Bundchen, to an event raising awareness for the "Help People Who Appear to be Soulless and Have a Taste for Human Flesh, Especially Brains Foundation". Brady was photographed by paparazzi with a large bandage on his neck, which he said came from "an overzealous fan at the event."

Brady himself was mostly silent on the matter, stating only "aaarrr, uggghhh, aarrrrr" while leaving team headquarters, before stopping briefly to eat a stringer from the Associated Press. Witnesses said that Brady did not appear to be limping as he slowly chased down, killed, and devoured the brain and other flesh of the unnamed reporter.

Randy Moss briefly addressed the situation in his locker room following the game, and echoed the comments of his teammates, who said that they unanimously expected Brady to start and perform well against the New York Giants, even if it was just the quarterback's flesh-eating, reanimated corpse.

"You tell me, who would you rather have: a zombie Tom Brady, or Eli Manning," Moss said. "No contest for me. Tom's got that killer instinct anyways, so even if he is a zombie, and I'm not saying he is, this can only help him. I don't think Michael Strahan is going to be wanting to get close enough to sack Tom on Sunday, and that's all I have to say about that."

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 12:24 AM 8 comments