Universe Back in Balance, Pats Win

Rap rap rap. Nothing. Again, Robert Kraft gently knocked his knuckles on the outside of the cave-like habitat. Suddenly there were sounds of stirring on the inside. The words ‘humility’ and ‘integrity’ could be heard amongst the faint squeaking/squealing sounds. Mr. Kraft held his hand up to the gathered mob of media and other Groundhog Day weirdos fanatics as if to say ‘here it comes’.

Kraft opened the wooden door, peeked in, then reached in with his arm and pulled Roger Goodell out by the scruff of his neck. Goodell stared into the gathered mass, with the flash of camera reducing his beady eyes to a squint. Unfortunately for us, Roger Goodell saw his shadow today which means there will be six more weeks of DeflateGate investigations. Six more weeks, before Goodell announces some conclusion that leaves us all mystified, confused and angry.

Now that this Groundhog Day silliness is behind us, I’d like to share a couple of closing thoughts on last night’s Super Bowl:

It was the Butler!

I think there are two reasons we need to back off of Pete Caroll for the decision to throw instead of run there at the end. For one, it takes away from the fact that Malcolm Butler made a great play. He made that happen. Two, that was balance and order being restored in the universe.

You see, the only reason why it came down to that was because of an impossibly ridiculous circus catch by Kearse, despite excellent defense by Butler on that play. Instead of the ball falling harmlessly incomplete it somehow found its way into Kearse’s hands as he was flailing on the ground like a tipped over tortoise. Instead of it being 2nd and 10 at the NE 38 with 1:14 to play, it was now 1st and goal from the 5. Incredible. It was the Tyree catch all over the again. But wait…it can’t be. It …literally…can’t…be. It’s just not possible that a team loses a Super Bowl in gut punch fashion twice (3 times if you want to count Manningham’s catch). No matter how good you are, it does take some luck to bring home a title and now this Patriots franchise was seemingly quite snake bitten. Remember that Mophie commercial where the world descends into chaos because the battery on God’s device died? I’m pretty sure that’s what happened to allow Kearse to catch that ball. As soon as God got a charge back into his device he thought “Oh shit, that wasn’t supposed to happen. I’d better fix this” and then we get the game saving INT two plays later. The whole thing reeked of Divine intervention.

Balance was restored.

Belichick The Genius

You have to have a certain level of trust in your team to get as far as both teams did. Less than a minute on the clock in the Super Bowl with the game on the line, every decision matters. When the Seahawks were down inside the 5 it became obvious they were going to score. I couldn’t figure out why Belichick wasn’t either just letting them score or using timeouts. But then it hit me: trust. He trusts his defense enough to live or die by them with the game on the line in the Super Bowl. If Seattle did punch it in and they lost, some might defend his tactics there but I think ultimately his decision making would’ve been questioned. Obviously it worked out in his favor, but it seemed like one of those things where regardless of the outcome the decision making was sound. The choices are: trust your defense to make a huge play and save the game, or try to get the ball back and somehow march 70-80 yards in a matter of seconds on a historically great defense. Brady already did his part, it was time for the defense to do theirs.

The team had championship DNA and they proved it with the way they played in the waning seconds.

From Order Comes Chaos

Just as I was thinking that order was restored in the world, I saw this:

Sarah Palin, who probably thinks she can see Seattle from her house, supports the Pats? For real? I don’t know what to make of that. It can’t be a good thing though.