Yes I Said it First

Archived
Jan 28, 2012

YES, I SAID IT FIRST.
Weekly Article and Sports Magazine
est. 2006

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NO EXCUSES SUPERBOWL
by Patrick Morand,
Saturday, January 28, 2012 (Issue #264)

The Superbowl XLVI rematch of New England Patriots and New York Giants shouldn’t really surprise anyone.

There weren’t many suitors for the AFC crown that could sport points at will like New England.

There were great defensive teams like Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Houston and Cincinnati but did anyone really think they were the money picks this year to advance out of the conference?

Pittsburgh and Houston had injured or third string quarterbacks or both.

Baltimore rarely scored enough, and Cincinnati went with all rookies.

Throw in the unreliable mystique of the Denver Broncos and Tim Tebow and we get what we expected: New England in the Superbowl.

For the Giants the field was much more daunting but they got healthy and ridiculously hot at just the right time. Everyone said they looked as they scraped into the playoffs like Green Bay looked last January when they pulled up their boot straps and got things done.

The Giants almost beat Green Bay in the regular season in a 38-35 game, and gained enough confidence that they would do it again. It was a similar 38-35 loss to New England on the final day of the 2007 regular season that gave the boost to the Giants confidence before that playoff sweep.

Perhaps experience is the reason the Giants seem to turn things up a notch and win all the big games in timely fashion. Entering the Superbowl their (soon to be elite) quarterback, Eli Manning, has notoriously built the greatest penchant for winning playoff road games against the odds in NFL history.

At the end of the 2007 season the Giants won on the road at Tampa Bay, Dallas, and Green Bay to make it to the Superbowl. Knocking off all the conference seeds in a row...and ultimately finishing with a neutral site win over the then unbeaten Patriots.

This year what they have accomplished actually appears more difficult but we must fall short of calling it completely unexpected because they seem to score at will when they need a score and have filled out their game with more pass rush and running game as playoffs approached.

THE PATRIOTS NOT FOOLED

Now as I type this Vegas has already posted the Patriots as three point favorites but it seems hard for anyone to explain why without adding that “anything can happen in the NFL”.

Vegas is probably just tempting passionate Giants fans – there may be more of them that would take the bet – to put money down disputing that line.

But that said they also can’t say with certainty that the Giants will continue to win and beat New England for the second time in the same season (Patriots only lost three games this year) let alone second time in Superbowls.

You got to believe the Patriots see them coming this time and that they have anticipated this next collision for some time.

Vegas and the most optimistic Patriot fans are hopeful but not adamant. They are careful to not say the Pats will definitely win this thing. And I assume the Giants supporters are of the same mindset towards their prospect of victory.

Frankly neither team has an excuse big enough to induce losing. They are both good candidates to win this matchup.

Usually there is one team that has a huge advantage in running game or on defense where we can say if they do xyz they win this game but this time we just are not feeling it.

Both offenses are very good, and that is good news for Manning who may have put away the naysayers by leading a team back to the Superbowl with a completely new set of wide receivers the second time. Showing he can make good receivers out of anyone just like Tom Brady historically has.

The debate used to be whether Manning should be considered in the same breath as other elite QBs let alone Brady who heads the class.

If his consecutive starts streak and becoming only the fifth quarterback in history after Drew Brees, Dan Marino, Brett Favre and Peyton Manning to have five consecutive seasons with a minimum of 3000 yards passing and 20 TDs hasn’t vaulted him into that universe then what will?

Beating Brady and the Patriots again maybe?

Yeah that would do it.

MOST MOTIVATION

Not only do these teams both have no excuses for losing they really have all the motivation and then some to want to win this one.

Bragging rights, revenge for the Patriots, Eli’s vindication as elite, legend status for coach Belichick or just redemption for Brady who of all the active quarterbacks to have won a Superbowl now has waited the longest to repeat since winning back in January 2005.

Maybe the players in the game that haven’t won a Superbowl yet will be the difference makers with their raw desire to win and coincidentally New England has the most of those.

But the Giants have the most returning champions from Superbowl XLII and are quite aware of what it takes to win big games over and over again. No group of players other than the seventeen still on the Giants from 2007 have overcome odds and won big games as many times as those guys.

So still we can find no bubbling reason for either team to lose, and they are both remarkably healthy – as healthy as any Superbowl pair could be with their key regulars playing for sure.

Then what do the stats tell us and are there any specific trends that may give us a clue as to which team might finish on top in this Superbowl?

Both teams are winning everything right now even when they deserve not to. They both came precociously close to not winning their title games against the two teams in the league best built to stop an offense.

Brady coughed up the ball twice to Baltimore and had two more turnovers that were called back by officials. The Baltimore receiver dropped what would have been the winning points in the end zone and the kicker missed the consolation tying field goal which would have caused overtime.

The Giants let their QB get sacked six times against the league’s best San Francisco defense. They won that game on a grass home field of the 49ers in the rain with another fourth quarter score because of punt/kickoff return mistakes by Kyle Williams of the 49ers.

So it is similar that both teams capitalized on mistakes to get to Superbowl XLVI. There are many other such similarities between the teams except when it comes to regular season record.

JUDGE A TEAM BY RECORD?

We can’t really judge them by record though because there were better teams like Green Bay (15-1) that haven’t done as well in the playoffs, so one could argue, and Green Bay last year proved, when the slate is wiped clean and records don’t count New England’s 13 wins are now equal to the Giants 9 regular season wins.

As fate may have it, just as in the 2007 season, they had similar schedules as close as you could have for playing in opposite conferences.

This was the year the AFC East and NFC East divisions played each other. In that respect to no one’s surprise the Patriots fared best - but they were the 13 win team.

The Giants and Patriots both beat the New York Jets, but the Giants victory was absolutely necessary to control their destiny and make the playoffs.

They both had scares in a game with Miami but ultimately prevailed.

They played close games with Buffalo, where offense mattered, and New England even lost one to the Bills.

On the NFC side the Giants hobbled in to Philadelphia on crutches and won when they were at their worst, but gave away the home game late in the season while the “Philly Dream Team” took their lumps from New England.

Combined they played squeakers versus Dallas but didn’t lose.

Each team struggled with the Washington Redskins. In fact the Redskins beat New York twice perhaps showing the world the way to frustrate the Giants may be to keep play in front of the safeties all game.

Teams are built to beat the teams in their own divisions. The beauty though of the NFL is there is not one trodden road that a team must take from point A to point B to win. Certain teams are the antidote for other teams and that is why what another team does successfully to stop an opponent is often copied.

We can learn from some of the close games what worked to limit the offenses because doing so in this Superbowl will matter.

Whatever Philadelphia tried to do to stop the Patriots and counter attack certainly didn’t work, but if either of these teams could install a little Miami or Washington abrasiveness on defence they would have a great shot at winning.

This may be a telling factor if you notice that in two of the New England losses, to Pittsburgh and Buffalo, and in the Giants losses when they were most uncomfortable playing the hard hitting Redskins the teams’ offenses looked frustrated and it affected their play.

JUDGE A TEAM BY MINDSET?

Here are some other stats that might give reason to believe that psychology and player mindset could be the biggest clue to what will after kickoff.

In their book, Who Will Win the Big Game: 50 Championship Characteristics a Psychological and Mathematical Method for Identifying Winning Players, Teams and Coaches (published by World Audience Inc, 2010), Carlton Chin and Jay Grenat, a fund manager and a psychotherapist, suggest that based on their review of every Superbowl since 1967 there are five evaluators that are the most key in forecasting who might win.

They include Super Bowl experience, which team has the best defense, the quarterback that best minimizes errors, confidence that they can score oodles of points, and consistency in their game as it relates to time of possession stats.

The team with more experience has won over 60 percent of all Superbowls so mark an edge to the Giants with their recent win even though a handful of Patriots have won more than one.

Also almost 70 percent of Superbowls have been won by the team with the best defence in the regular season. They measure that defence by points against and not yards against.

Defence – can we really consider that here?

This factor may be muted in 2012 as this game is absent the steel curtain type defence sometimes on display. Even just last year the number one and two ranked defenses (Green Bay and Pittsburgh) met in Superbowl XLV.

This year the teams were far from elite in that category.

The Patriots though still gave up 60 fewer points than the Giants and by all indicators have played better in that department as the season ended and I for one am a fan of “trending up”. The last I checked the Superbowl is at the end of the season.

There is no denying that quarterbacks must protect the ball to make it to the Superbowl. So maybe more important than passing for yards and touchdowns will be not turning the ball over on drives. This really is important for the player who can be most frustrated and affected by mistakes and that is the quarterback. The quarterback that turns the ball over the least in the regular season generally wins the Superbowl 60 percent of the time.

In the season these QBs were both good at protecting the ball. However Brady only gave up 12 interceptions in the regular season which is 4 better than Eli. The Giants have played one extra post season game and Eli has narrowed the gap to two interceptions on the season.

This statistic is for all intent and purposes of this discussion a tie.

We already know the better quarterback will win.

When Brady has bad games he has games with interceptions or hurries from his protection collapsing in front of him. The strategy of any team will be to hope they can frustrate him enough into throwing early and coughing up pigskins. Since that happens about three times a season when Brady is visibly upset enough it is hard to predict that it will be in the next game.

In a New York Post article Giants defensive end Justin Tuck indicated that pressuring Brady usually gets a sack or two and maybe a turnover but expecting Brady to “rattle” is not a sound game plan.

Tuck noticed Brady “fussing” at his offensive line in Super Bowl XLII, but knows it is difficult to rattle him... “Some guys don’t get rattled, even in that Super Bowl at the end of the game, he’s getting lit up and he’s still throwing passes for 70 yards down field. He still led their team down the drive before that to what seemed like a game-winning touchdown at that point...I dare say we hit him almost 30 times in that game, so if that didn’t rattle him, I’m not sure if we can rattle him. But more than anything, it’s about just not giving him the time to complete passes like that.”...Tuck pointed out that the Giants sacked Brady only twice, and beat the Pats in Foxborough at midseason anyway. ...“So it’s a lot of things that you can do to be effective against him — making sure you keep guys in his face and not give him an opportunity to step up with open lanes,” Tuck said. “But rattling him? It’s gonna be pretty tough to do that.” (New York Post, Steve Serby, January 26, 2012)

The previous indicator suggests that even though the Giants had a good pass rush against Brady in their regular season encounter and he turned the ball over they still aren’t the best defensive team of the two. The strong pass rush strategy could backfire and negate any offensive advantage they build up – unless of course it works and Brady has another “bad game”.

(We are talking about tendency to lose composure and quarterbacks tend to have games with more than one turnover in bunches. Brady may have just had that game last week.)

The team that has had the most double digit wins in the regular season also has prevailed in sixty percent of the Superbowls played. This is the confidence factor that is so important. I assume its confidence for when a team needs a score.

Setting aside all you know about the Giants great ability at fourth quarter comebacks the fact is they won by a handful of points in those games. Only four games were won by ten or more points.

The Patriots meanwhile won eight games by double figures.

What does that mean?

Nothing absolute it is simple correlation that usually the teams that win the Superbowl are teams that can run up the score. Many times those teams get to the Superbowl because they have put away the opposition early many more times.

Confidence is an asset in the playoffs but I doubt either of these two teams feel that they could get behind by three touchdowns in this game and make a comeback. One touchdown though and I am sure they both think they can convert that one important drive.

Ball control and being able to mix in a running game to wean time off the clock is an important statistic and one merited by 60 percent of past Superbowl winners. Usually the team with the best running game is that team.

There are by the way other ways to keep the clock running by completing passes and staying in bounds but using time on drives may be a better statistic to track for these teams.

If teams just whiz up and down the field passing all day this won’t matter. Just have to watch a rerun of the final five minutes of the 49ers and Saints in the fourth quarter of their NFC playoff to confirm that. In the season both the Giants and the Pats held the ball for about 28-29 minutes a game. On the season while New England didn’t run much they were selective runners when they won. This might be a statistic that tips this game one way or another but I wouldn’t bank on it.

ARGUMENT AGAINST WEAKNESS

And to show that all these indicators may mean nothing, if you analyzed the same five factors before the last Superbowl you wouldn’t have predicted Green Bay as the winner. That’s because we aren’t talking ninety percent and eighty percent probabilities here – it’s a nominal sixty percent of the time that champions have these advantages.

The Giants made the playoffs by winning less than sixty percent of the time!

Nothing in those tendencies scream Brady is going down or that Eli isn’t already elite.

If anything they make this Superbowl look closer.

Fans of the Giants will want to throw out stats from games played before December and say that with significant players injured the stats of an apparent lack of running game or pass rush early in the season were excused.

Well there isn’t an excuse now and they are quite correct that the team’s renaissance of 2011 coincided with healthy players.

Patriot fans then are just as able to wash out the defensive play from September and October because the team has improved and more noteworthy the stat that measures yards surrendered is very misleading for a team with a kicker that has been backing other teams to well behind the twenty yard line to start each drive.

That also matters since the urgency to defend is not as acute until they get closer to where they might score. So the first sixty yards defended were soft yards.

This Patriots team is the only Patriots team under Bill Belichick to make it to the Superbowl with a defense ranked lower than sixth in the NFL. That has never happened before, it actually goes against the NFL grain where a good defense is supposed to protect a good offense – it appears now that Brady and the offense came to the support of their statistically immune defense.

You are supposed to win because of a dominating defense but New England has done it with a much deeper domination on offense than those great teams which were built for dominating by defense. It is a lack of balance we are not used to at this level.

How else could they win the 13 games, the AFC East and now the conference if they are dead last in surrendering yardage?

That can’t be an excuse if they lose either.

These teams don’t have an excuse to lose. They should both win this game.

The Patriots aren't facing the Jets, Chargers or Broncos and the Giants aren't up against the Rams or Seahawks, all teams they played this year. They are facing each other and usually when you know the opponent you tweak the game to fit that oppponent and you start by fixing first what they will try and exploit.

NOTHING HIDDEN HERE

They don’t turn the ball over much. They have athletic receivers and quarterbacks that can ace the final drive and they have pretty good specialty teams that came through for them in order to get this far.

My advice to either quarterback might be not to score too fast on that “final” drive or it won’t be the final drive.

They have motivation at every level imaginable. Someone either hasn’t won, wants to win, wants to win another, a second time, a fourth time, so that everyone suiting up is aware of the legacy that may befall the winners of this game.

Nothing is hidden here.

Teams may devise schemes like the Patriots often do to give their defenders an edge or maybe they will pound at each other strength on strength in the trenches as coach Tom Coughlin of the Giants normally prefers to do.

It is completely plausible that New England will win, but also totally possible that the Giants will do it yet again.

The uncertainty though is a great thing for football even though they didn’t need more people interested in the game.

This is probably a better combination to showcase the game than a San Francisco vs. Baltimore “Harbaugh Bowl” would have been for all fans.

While I might enjoy defensive nail biters through the regular season you know that once one of those teams got a three point lead they would have tossed their playbook and just smothered the other team and the spectre of anyone creating plays to come back with hurry up offenses and down field plays would have disappeared.

The quarterbacks on other teams just don’t have the liberty managing their offenses like we get in Superbowl XLVI and certainly no team could say they have it in the bag with five minutes left if the other quarterback is still healthy and in the game.

This is the season that the lack of a training camp gave an edge to offense.

So it is only suiting that the game this time is offense against offense.

Purists may say any combination of teams make a Superbowl great but we all know that is not true and that the interest has spiked for this one game.

It is not like 1986 when we knew the Patriots were long shots to beat the Bears and they did lose by several scores 46-10. And it isn’t 2001 when the Giants were going up against a Baltimore team that was one of the stingiest ever surrendering points and they were to lose 34-7.

The last four Superbowls have been hard to predetermine like this years. Something has changed since New England was supposed to romp to an unbeaten finish and Brady mocked Giants’ Plaxibo Burress for suggesting they could keep the Pats to only 17 points. The final was 17-14 Giants.

Maybe teams at this stage know each other better than they used to in previous years. Everyone is aware of the weaknesses and what to expect and were naive to think back in 2008 the Patriots were as big a favorite as they feigned to be.

As participants expect to have the opportunity to play their game the Superbowl is living up to be more “super” in this era of the sport.

Whatever the science or the statistics belie I know one thing. If we can get the same as 2008 we want that. So having no inkling for sure who might win makes it even better and I caution anyone who thinks they know what will happen in Superbowl XLVI because they really don't... at last look there isn’t a team in this Superbowl with a good enough reason to lose.

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