TGN.com's Super Bowl Post-Mortem: Think Long, Think Wrong....
Went back over my sent emails from before the big game, and I can't believe how strongly I fancied Tampa Bay in the immediate aftermath of the conference championship games. I'll spare you the copy-and-paste thing to prevent boredom, and because it smacks of trying cover my ass after I gave out Oakland, but let's just say I was about to take another ride down the road to Slathersville. Basically, in separate messages to Mr. Lupu and Lopes Jr., I laid out, in graphic terms, how and why the Bucs would leave the Raiders swirling like turds in the water of the toilet bowl of shame.
Ah, but me and my fucking ego...there is no crying in baseball, they say, and they shouldn't be any ego in handicapping. In an effort to show the world how goddamn smart I really am, I deserted sound analysis in favor of some weird sort of fact-less karmic handicapping. Round about last Thursday I thought I detected a whiff of Tampa Bay turning into the "wise-guy", "obvious" play, and once that happened I degenerated into coming up with all sorts of lame reasons (which we will not bother to reprise here) why Oakland would win.
They didn't, of course. The old bastards never had a chance. The media touted the matchup pitting Oak's # 1 offense versus TB's # 1 defense as a pigskin version of the Shootout at the OK Corral, but it ended up more like Custer v. The Natives. Or maybe even the Christians v. the Lions. The game was clearly slipping away from Oakland by the time the first quarter ended, and by halftime all but the most devoted Raider fan knew that Tampa had already put the toe tags on Gannon and the boys.
Gannon's display on Sunday made our boy Chad Pennington's performance a couple of weeks ago look like a textbook display of grace under pressure. He played the way you might imagine Lawrence Welk playing - if Welk was drunk, and taking snaps with a conductor's baton in his left hand. The Bucs beat on him like they were Hell's Angels. I kept waiting for Warren Sapp or Simeon Rice to rip Gannon's head off and shit down his neck. They blanketed his receivers, they laughed at his stupid little pump fakes, they stuffed his running backs...oh, wait. Did the Raiders even bother to call a running play in Sunday ? I honestly can't remember.
They picked off Gannon five times. The same Gannon who threw ten interceptions this year - in roughly 620 passing attempts. It was a defensive performance for the ages, folks - the best I've ever seen in a Super Bowl. Yes, da Bears of 86 held the Patsies to minus yards in the first half, and yes, the Ravens mercilessly sucked the life out of the Giants a couple of years ago. But those defenses faced NOTHING like the juggernaut that Oakland brought to the field on Sunday. Yeah, they gave up a couple of garbage-time TDs, but the train had long since left the station by then.
As stunning as TB's defense was, Oakland's was miserable, and the weakness of their d was what had us all hot and bothered over the Bucs' chances early last week. As I said to someone, when I watched Eddie "2.7 Yards Per Carry" George of the Titans rip off huge chunks of yardage in the AFC championship game, I suspected the Old Men in Silver and Black might be in big trouble.
So there you have it. The game was about defenses. The greatness of Tampa Bay's, and the shoddiness of Oakland's. A great defense will almost always defeat a great offense. When a great defense matches up against a terrible defense, well, you get what we saw on Sunday: just another in a long line of Super Bowl blowouts.
Well, at least I didn't slather it on. (And, in my feeble defense, my prediction of over 43 1/2 won with ease). I did read online that Hunter S. Thompson (the S now stands for Slather, by the way) did just that when predicting that Oakland would win with ease. Just how far did he go? Apparently he wrote that he'd appear on television with live leeches on his head if the Raiders somehow lost The Big One. Check your local listings for details, but rumor has it he is leaning toward going on the Conan O'Brian show to do his penance.
And that's it for the 2002 NFL season. Kinda too-bad that such an unpredictable season had to end with such a desultory final game, but hey, we had a good time.
Went back over my sent emails from before the big game, and I can't believe how strongly I fancied Tampa Bay in the immediate aftermath of the conference championship games. I'll spare you the copy-and-paste thing to prevent boredom, and because it smacks of trying cover my ass after I gave out Oakland, but let's just say I was about to take another ride down the road to Slathersville. Basically, in separate messages to Mr. Lupu and Lopes Jr., I laid out, in graphic terms, how and why the Bucs would leave the Raiders swirling like turds in the water of the toilet bowl of shame.
Ah, but me and my fucking ego...there is no crying in baseball, they say, and they shouldn't be any ego in handicapping. In an effort to show the world how goddamn smart I really am, I deserted sound analysis in favor of some weird sort of fact-less karmic handicapping. Round about last Thursday I thought I detected a whiff of Tampa Bay turning into the "wise-guy", "obvious" play, and once that happened I degenerated into coming up with all sorts of lame reasons (which we will not bother to reprise here) why Oakland would win.
They didn't, of course. The old bastards never had a chance. The media touted the matchup pitting Oak's # 1 offense versus TB's # 1 defense as a pigskin version of the Shootout at the OK Corral, but it ended up more like Custer v. The Natives. Or maybe even the Christians v. the Lions. The game was clearly slipping away from Oakland by the time the first quarter ended, and by halftime all but the most devoted Raider fan knew that Tampa had already put the toe tags on Gannon and the boys.
Gannon's display on Sunday made our boy Chad Pennington's performance a couple of weeks ago look like a textbook display of grace under pressure. He played the way you might imagine Lawrence Welk playing - if Welk was drunk, and taking snaps with a conductor's baton in his left hand. The Bucs beat on him like they were Hell's Angels. I kept waiting for Warren Sapp or Simeon Rice to rip Gannon's head off and shit down his neck. They blanketed his receivers, they laughed at his stupid little pump fakes, they stuffed his running backs...oh, wait. Did the Raiders even bother to call a running play in Sunday ? I honestly can't remember.
They picked off Gannon five times. The same Gannon who threw ten interceptions this year - in roughly 620 passing attempts. It was a defensive performance for the ages, folks - the best I've ever seen in a Super Bowl. Yes, da Bears of 86 held the Patsies to minus yards in the first half, and yes, the Ravens mercilessly sucked the life out of the Giants a couple of years ago. But those defenses faced NOTHING like the juggernaut that Oakland brought to the field on Sunday. Yeah, they gave up a couple of garbage-time TDs, but the train had long since left the station by then.
As stunning as TB's defense was, Oakland's was miserable, and the weakness of their d was what had us all hot and bothered over the Bucs' chances early last week. As I said to someone, when I watched Eddie "2.7 Yards Per Carry" George of the Titans rip off huge chunks of yardage in the AFC championship game, I suspected the Old Men in Silver and Black might be in big trouble.
So there you have it. The game was about defenses. The greatness of Tampa Bay's, and the shoddiness of Oakland's. A great defense will almost always defeat a great offense. When a great defense matches up against a terrible defense, well, you get what we saw on Sunday: just another in a long line of Super Bowl blowouts.
Well, at least I didn't slather it on. (And, in my feeble defense, my prediction of over 43 1/2 won with ease). I did read online that Hunter S. Thompson (the S now stands for Slather, by the way) did just that when predicting that Oakland would win with ease. Just how far did he go? Apparently he wrote that he'd appear on television with live leeches on his head if the Raiders somehow lost The Big One. Check your local listings for details, but rumor has it he is leaning toward going on the Conan O'Brian show to do his penance.
And that's it for the 2002 NFL season. Kinda too-bad that such an unpredictable season had to end with such a desultory final game, but hey, we had a good time.
posted by RiseUpEconomics at
5:21 PM
