Bloodless Coup

I strongly suspect that in the coming days we'll hear that Brady was hurt and/or that the ankle was affecting him more than he had let on. He missed a few that he shouldn't have missed. My eight-year-old Pats fanatic was howling at him all game.

the daily news is already reporting a source as saying, as of saturday night, that brady was hurt more than he was letting on. here's the thing, though -- he's a pocket passer, and he didn't show any effects on his movement -- he glided around in the pocket on the rare occasions that he had time, balls didn't get batted down, etc. yes, perhaps he would have thrown more accurately downfield had his back ankle not been hurting, but the fact remains he seldom had time or the open men for that, and his accuracy in the short game seemed unaffected. bottom line is he had nowhere to go, and no running game to fall back on, because of the giants defensive dominance.

regarding whether the pats are the better team, the giants have 6 losses to suggest as much. but the pats haven't won 11 in a row on the road, didn't come out of the wildcard and play one more game in the playoffs like the giants did (and while the pats were undisputedly the class of the AFC, they didn't even have to beat the Colts; the giants came to the big game through two teams that, all season, had held the mantle of presumptive class of the NFC, teams against which the giants had gone 0-3 for the season), and so on.

more importantly to me, in week 18 the patriots squeaked out a victory against the giants in which the giants played the patriots game. yesterday, the giants dominated the patriots for much of the game, forcing them to play giants football. the two games together tell a pretty compelling tale of just how close the giants are to the patrtiots in raw talent and team cohesiveness.

and of course, "best" is a fool's game anyway. last team standing is what matters. i'm just happy that eli seems to have turned the corner. it'll defy all the stats over the years, which say that a mediocre qb for four years is a mediocre qb for life, but i'd bet a lot of money that, whatever else happens next year, eli's rating for the season ends up at 90 or above, despite his career 77-ish mark. it's about time. i've had his back for most of his career against the detractors, but after his miserable swoon late this season, even i was starting to give up on him. i'm glad he's proved me wrong.

I don't think you need to condition your praise for Eli that much. It sounds almost like Eli, "better than Trent Dilfer". I think he was remarkably good this year - and better than his numbers given that his receivers have such an oddly difficult time catching/holding onto the ball.

i'll grant that his receivers don't do his completion percentage any favors, but 20 interceptions, which roughly equals his totals for the prior two years as well, is simply too many. and some of those misses owe to the fact that eli throws a lot of wobblers, and often just misses his mark, forcing his receivers to do all sorts of gymnastic shit to catch the ball. with someone like plax, of course, that's not a problem -- it's a game plan. any time he's in single coverage, throw him a jump ball, and he doesn't drop too many either. but the other guys are average size, and eli makes their lives very hard, or has historically.

having watched the giants pretty devotedly the last few years, i'm confident in my sense that eli simply became a different guy on the field this year. he's always shown flashes of talent, and perversely has usually played really well late in close games -- that is to say, he's always had the cool to play in new york (rivers didn't, clearly (he doesn't have the cool for san diego)) -- but his execution has been really really inconsistent, and his decisionmaking too.

that's what changed in the post-season this year. i think he just got tired of losing and started seeing the field differently. and i hope that a 90+ rating is unduly pessimistic for next year, but statistically, that alone would be a notable, if not entirely unprecedented, jump, especially if it came with significantly fewer interceptions.

I think getting Shockey out of there made a HUGE difference for Eli.

yeah. the one meme about tiki and shockey that i buy that purports to explain the correlation between shockey leaving the clubhouse and eli getting it together is the idea that it took those two larger-than-life personalities standing down to force eli to step up and lead the team. and that in doing so, somehow eli became more confident of his place and his role. there's no question that can make a big difference in performance, especially when the most confounding thing about eli was the disjoin between his obviously elite tools, including his intellect, and his persistently less than elite play.

and that theory will probably be tested next year, when shockey, after yet another off-season where he arrogantly and destructively refuses to practice with his quarterback at all, returns to find that the team is no longer in his thrall, if it ever was, and that eli no longer cares about his shit. in fact, if eli really wants to show he's a serious team captain, what he ought to do is demand that shockey and burress both show up for off-season workouts, and call for them to be traded if they refuse. shockey's got enough potential left that he should draw a nice package of draft picks and /or talent on the open market, and i for one wouldn't miss him.