Super Bowl: Grossman
Unlike Chris, I thought going in that Grossman was underrated. Of course, that statement comes with my standard 2006 NFL season disclaimer: I'd never seen him play a game. I was aware of his up and down season and thought he was a young quarterback trying to settle into the game. I thought that he was the biggest reason the Bears were such heavy underdogs coming in, and so I thought the game might be closer than people thought.
Well, Grossman is worse than I thought. The weather was brutal and could be blamed somewhat for the fumbles, and slightly for the INTs. He didn't have the passing weapons that Peyton has, but Muhsin Muhammed could possibly have been a Hall of Fame WR if he had played his entire career with a Hall of Fame quarterback, don't you think? He had a great running game, though the Benson injury was a severe blow.
I've only read John Clayton's column about Peyton Manning and glanced at some of the headlines on ESPN.com. (Actually, by the time I finally got around to clicking on ESPN.com, less than 24 hours after the Super Bowl, the event had virtually vanished from the homepage. Thus is life in the 21st century. Football season is over. It's basketball season now.) The 2007 Super Bowl will be remembered as Manning's first win. And it'll be remembered for the rain. But the game itself should mainly be remembered for being lost by Grossman.
In everything they did, the Colts dared Grossman to beat them. Dungy's insane conservativeness? He knew that he was facing Grossman in the rain. I completely agreed with his 2nd quarter call not to go for 2 to put the Colts up by 3. Way too early. No team should go for 2 until the third quarter at the earliest, ever. He also had a chance to get a 4th and short on the Bears doorstep in the 3rd quarter. A TD would have almost put the game away. But he declined the penalty and took the FG. A 3 point deficit for Grossman in the rain was almost like a 7 point deficit to a good QB in regular weather.
In the end, he had to lead the Bears back and he couldn't. If the Colts are good at one thing on defense, it's stopping the pass when they know it's coming. With Grossman throwing the ball, it was almost too easy. Hence the late INTs.
Meanwhile, watching the game in England was, once again, an interesting experience. They were using an English-language international feed produced by the NFL network featuring commentary from Sterling Sharpe and a play-by-play guy by the name of Spiro Dedes. I've never heard of the guy. It brings to mind a few quotes from the two most quotable TV shows in world history. I'll let you decide which is the best:
Kramer in "Seinfeld": Frankly it sounds made-up!
Moe in "The Simpsons": Homer that's the worst name I've ever heard.
I think the former works best in this situation. You could even substitute Spiro Dedes for Todd Gack and the episode would work almost just as well, except Dedes doesn't sound Dutch like Gack does. Anyway, even though I would have rather had the CBS feed, whoever they were, the commentary was fine. Stirling Sharpe wasn't as good as I remembered him being from his ESPN days, though that was in a studio show.
There are 5 basic TV stations in England, and ITV was the one with the game. They had one sideline reporter and three guys in the booth. For some reason in England, TV sports broadcasters don't feel a need to dress up as much as they do in the US. You almost NEVER see them in ties. The Super Bowl was no exception. The three guys in the booth were wearing button-up shirts with the top button open. They probably picked them out themselves. No "wardrobe supplied by..." It's possible that they were crammed into a tiny booth in the upper reaches of the stadium but it's also possible that they were just sitting on stools in front of a green screen with a video feed from a high camera. Couldn't tell for sure.
The funniest part though was who they were. The host was some generic English broadcaster who follows the NFL. His two partners were Merrill Hodges, former NFL player and American TV analyst, and Martin Johnson, former captain of the English Rugby team that won the World Cup. Johnson is this massive brute of a man. He looks the part of rugby player. He probably follows the NFL, but he was out of his element as a TV broadcaster. Hodges, meanwhile, looked embarassed to be a part of the broadcast. He looked like he felt he had been banished to the far corners of the football announcing universe. Occaisionally, he offered some insightful analysis that I appreciated, but I could sense all the British eyeballs glazing over across the nation as soon as he mentioned "Cover-2".
That's it for me. I'm going to fall asleep and try to assume that Dubber's pessimistic comment about SU basketball that he just randomly IMed me in no way implies that they lost to UConn tonight in a game that I was trying to go the next day without finding out the result to so I could watch it replayed on NASN on Wednesday morning. Ugh.
Well, Grossman is worse than I thought. The weather was brutal and could be blamed somewhat for the fumbles, and slightly for the INTs. He didn't have the passing weapons that Peyton has, but Muhsin Muhammed could possibly have been a Hall of Fame WR if he had played his entire career with a Hall of Fame quarterback, don't you think? He had a great running game, though the Benson injury was a severe blow.
I've only read John Clayton's column about Peyton Manning and glanced at some of the headlines on ESPN.com. (Actually, by the time I finally got around to clicking on ESPN.com, less than 24 hours after the Super Bowl, the event had virtually vanished from the homepage. Thus is life in the 21st century. Football season is over. It's basketball season now.) The 2007 Super Bowl will be remembered as Manning's first win. And it'll be remembered for the rain. But the game itself should mainly be remembered for being lost by Grossman.
In everything they did, the Colts dared Grossman to beat them. Dungy's insane conservativeness? He knew that he was facing Grossman in the rain. I completely agreed with his 2nd quarter call not to go for 2 to put the Colts up by 3. Way too early. No team should go for 2 until the third quarter at the earliest, ever. He also had a chance to get a 4th and short on the Bears doorstep in the 3rd quarter. A TD would have almost put the game away. But he declined the penalty and took the FG. A 3 point deficit for Grossman in the rain was almost like a 7 point deficit to a good QB in regular weather.
In the end, he had to lead the Bears back and he couldn't. If the Colts are good at one thing on defense, it's stopping the pass when they know it's coming. With Grossman throwing the ball, it was almost too easy. Hence the late INTs.
Meanwhile, watching the game in England was, once again, an interesting experience. They were using an English-language international feed produced by the NFL network featuring commentary from Sterling Sharpe and a play-by-play guy by the name of Spiro Dedes. I've never heard of the guy. It brings to mind a few quotes from the two most quotable TV shows in world history. I'll let you decide which is the best:
Kramer in "Seinfeld": Frankly it sounds made-up!
Moe in "The Simpsons": Homer that's the worst name I've ever heard.
I think the former works best in this situation. You could even substitute Spiro Dedes for Todd Gack and the episode would work almost just as well, except Dedes doesn't sound Dutch like Gack does. Anyway, even though I would have rather had the CBS feed, whoever they were, the commentary was fine. Stirling Sharpe wasn't as good as I remembered him being from his ESPN days, though that was in a studio show.
There are 5 basic TV stations in England, and ITV was the one with the game. They had one sideline reporter and three guys in the booth. For some reason in England, TV sports broadcasters don't feel a need to dress up as much as they do in the US. You almost NEVER see them in ties. The Super Bowl was no exception. The three guys in the booth were wearing button-up shirts with the top button open. They probably picked them out themselves. No "wardrobe supplied by..." It's possible that they were crammed into a tiny booth in the upper reaches of the stadium but it's also possible that they were just sitting on stools in front of a green screen with a video feed from a high camera. Couldn't tell for sure.
The funniest part though was who they were. The host was some generic English broadcaster who follows the NFL. His two partners were Merrill Hodges, former NFL player and American TV analyst, and Martin Johnson, former captain of the English Rugby team that won the World Cup. Johnson is this massive brute of a man. He looks the part of rugby player. He probably follows the NFL, but he was out of his element as a TV broadcaster. Hodges, meanwhile, looked embarassed to be a part of the broadcast. He looked like he felt he had been banished to the far corners of the football announcing universe. Occaisionally, he offered some insightful analysis that I appreciated, but I could sense all the British eyeballs glazing over across the nation as soon as he mentioned "Cover-2".
That's it for me. I'm going to fall asleep and try to assume that Dubber's pessimistic comment about SU basketball that he just randomly IMed me in no way implies that they lost to UConn tonight in a game that I was trying to go the next day without finding out the result to so I could watch it replayed on NASN on Wednesday morning. Ugh.
posted by Prof. A at 8:19 PM
3 Comments:
What?
How is your assessment of Grossman unlike mine? I think our points were identical! "I had been thinking that Rex was better than his reputation, but I now think he is pretty awful," I said. Why the "unlike Chris" tag? Is this a gimmick of yours, Paul? First Demitris Nichols, now Grossman?
The agony of misrepresentation!
My new gimic is: "write as though you are in a Presidential debate with your co-bloggers and no matter what they say, you need to disagree with them."
Actually, just kidding. My new gimic is: "only read the second clause of any compound sentence with a comma in it." So you can see how I could make that mistake.
Paul,
You didn't miss much in the CBS broadcast. It was basically Jim Nance and Phil Simms playing grab-ass in the booth for three hours. I am not kidding, the shots of the two of them in the booth had them uncomfortably close and only taking up about 2/5 of the screen.
-Dan
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