Observations in the wake of a wild football Sunday…
Chargers-Colts: OK, I was spectacularly wrong about the Chargers, who have both the hot team thing going on and the gritty underdog thing and are, remember, the same bunch that went 14-2 last year.
But would anyone on earth have given them a shot without Philip Rivers and LT and Antonio Gates? It could be that good NFL teams are now so deep and well-coached that anything’s possible, but there must be more to it than that.
If the Chargers went into a game against the Colts on the road without their QB and the league’s leading rusher and everybody has a whole week to think about it, the Bolts likely get stomped. But when it happens on the fly, hey, this is why we watch….
And yet, if Marvin Harrison hadn’t fumbled on a play where he was clearly trying to dance around contact, the Colts win, it says here, by double figures…
The refs were horrible, to the point where it crossed your mind that they were trying to bail Indy out and Norv Turner might self-combust. The whole pass-interference thing is a real problem with the NFL, and no solution is readily apparent.
The worst part of it is a very hairline call is often a 50- or 60-yard penalty or, if called in the end zone, a gift near-touchdown. It’s in some ways like the charge-block call in basketball… if they gave you 20 free throws…
Giants-Cowboys: OK, I was spectacularly wrong about the Giants.
Dallas had more first downs, more rushing yards, more passing yards, over 100 more total yards and 13 minutes more time of possession. And lost…
Give the Giants credit for playing some serious defense in the second half. They pressured Tony Romo and knocked him down again and again. Romo’s normally great on the run, but the Gs pass-covered well enough to negate that, too…
Come to think it, the link between today’s two winners is big-time defensive lines…
Eli Manning came into Sunday’s game as perhaps the most pressured player in the league, while Romo came in as this ever-grinning, freewheeling playboy.
And Eli comes out with a game-managing, fine-a-way-to-win rep, whereas Romo was the guy cursing teammates and slapping at his chin-strap and clearly now carrying the can’t-win-the-big-one yoke…
That yoke also got lifted from Turner today and passed to Wade Phillips. Games do change images and even lives, as absurd as that sounds…
Having said all that, I’m not sure if I want to pat Romo on the back or smack him upside the head…
Just found out today that, on Romo’s now infamous trip to Mexico with Jessica Simpson, Simpson’s parents were along, reportedly, as chaparones.
If that’s true… She’s like 26, and divorced, and she’s traveling with chaperones? Who happen to be mommy and daddy? Does this mean that with all the crap Romo is putting up with publicly and, no doubt, privately to date this woman, they’re not even, uh, you know….
ETC: Both broadcasts today were actually pretty good - remarkable pictures, broadcasting remarkably free of sugar-coating or dumbness.
Greg Gumbel has always been for me the epitome of sharp, sensible, no-nonsense play-by-play, and Troy Aikman’s gotten better than I ever thought he would.
The truth, though, is that what was good about the TV was less what they did than what they didn’t. In six hours of television, incredibly, I can’t think of anything that seriously annoyed me…
There is Penn State news: Justin King announced today he’s turning pro. I hope for his sake he was more injured than he let on last year…
For the first time in memory, there are two TV commercials in heavy rotation that crack me up: 1. The Chicken McNuggets rap (catsup and may-yo… catsup and may-yo…), and 2. The SportsCenter commercials with Richard Simmons leading the anchors in group workouts (type those stories!, type those stories!… check those sources!, check those sources!…)
This only means becoming utterly sick of these ads is an inevitability, of course. Particularly in the McNuggets case, that may happen before the end of this sentence…
