Patriots vs. Giants: Fan Notes from the Super Bowl

i take losses the same way you do. just ask my wife. she’s afraid to come near me. but this one was a little different. i still haven’t gotten over 2007, but i’m recovering much better for several reasons.

- this team is so well liked. you know they played their hearts out. disappointing loss, but you know they gave it their all.
- we made tons of mistakes, yet still had an opportunity to win
- we had to reinvent our entire offense in 2 weeks with gronk’s injury. gronk is the most important offensive player not only on our team, but i would argue the league. he wasn’t any better than 50% yesterday and it was OBVIOUS.
- the karma police were against us the last two superbowls (tyree catch, manningham catch, 3(THREE!!) fumbles that were recovered by giants or negated by penalty.
- they are gonna re-sign welker, and we’re going to have basically the same team next year.
- we have probably one of the most talented young cores in the league (gronk, herndo, mayo, chung, spikes, mccourty, fletcher, ninko, deaderick, love).
- if any team can survive the superbowl hangover, it’s the pats
- the jets put all of their eggs in the last 2 years’ basket. they are toast.
- mark sanchez
- the steelers and ravens, our biggest threats, are where we were 2008-2009 – near the end of an era of great defensive players, and will have to be gutting it soon.
- i can’t tell you how much i despise everything that is the new york giants. they will get their comeuppance.
- it’s time to finally give eli some credit. behind that goofy, horrible body language, he’s actually a clutch quarterback. it’s not like we lost to mark sanchez.
- i also had way too much to drink last night but felt sober as hell. the reson i know this is because of my current headache.
- here’s to the draft where we find a pass rusher, safety, and a field stretching receiver! not bad when you really only have 2-3 glaring needs to address.

Giants possessed the ball for just over 37 minutes while the Pats possessed it for just under 23 minutes.

That is almost all on Brady for that 1st-play mistake in the endzone. Giants first drive was stuffed and then given a second chance, plus two points. How big were those two points from that safety on Brady? It was the difference between hail-mary and a fieldgoal in the last drive.

Words cannot describe how painful that loss was for me . But after thinking about the game some, what else can we ask from our team. Everyone played hard and left there hearts on the field. According to reports Tommy B was the last person to leave the locker room and just sat there with a towel over his head. Imagine how he must feel losing to Eli . I wont even get into how I feel about him but will just say he is not the same class of person or football player. Everyone keep your heads high and get ready for the draft and more fun next year.

he is proud of the team and that he blames no one for the loss. In short, he isn’t going to be the usual BB for a while. But guys…

the band is still together.
Welker, Brady, Gronkowski, Hernandez, Woodhead, BJGE, Ridley, Vereen – this is a core for the future. Let’s draft a WR and get Brandon LLoyd and we’re instant Super Bowl favorites.

The D is better than ever and they’re all coming back.

Ellis, Carter, Warren may retire. But we get Dowling back, everyone gets a year of experience, we have plenty of draft picks. This D has potential. If we get a star safety (Barron, etc) and a Seymour-type DE we’re in position for a SB run. This D is a couple pieces short of a SB. The only FA we’re losing this year is Guyton.

So let’s all be devastated for a while but also pick up our lives and look forward to the draft.
I’m a glass-half-full guy. This loss hurt more than 2007. But the band is together and positioned for greater things.

Hey, we now have one more AFC Championship in the last 4 years than the Jets. We’re clearly the best in the division. We finally can shut up the stupid Jets fans.

Here’s what I hope happens in the next two years.
Next year: 49ers and Peyton face Brady and Patriots in the Super Bowl, ending with Patriots winning the SB.
Year after: Giants with a mature Cruz, Manningham, and older Nicks and Bradshaw come back for Rd 3 against a much older and mature Patriots team. Brady wins Rd 3.

That’s a pipe dream but hey, it could happen.

by an ankle. Gronk went out there and tried his best but he just couldn’t do it. All the great run blocking and pass catching was missing from this game – besides the one catch. That interception was horrible. It was like he was wearing cement shoes and couldn’t get to that ball. Of course the LB made a great grab. The Giants made lots of GREAT plays, the Patriots made some – but missed many on key plays.

You mentioned they couldn’t put the game away. This is key. You could sense they Pats had momentum and one more score would really allow them to make the Giants panic. But the Patriots just don’t put teams away. They always let them hang around. This one is on the offense all the way. MAKE IT HAPPEN! Not hope it happens.

That’s an incredibly hard catch. Harder than Manningham’s? No, but you can’t pin the game on him for one play. Hernandez dropped an easier pass.

I’d put just as much blame on deferring on the coin toss. Hey, let’s show the world how sly we are. I know BB thinks it doesn’t matter, but scoring first is a big deal. Kicking away gives the other team a chance to score first. And as we saw, if their drive stalls you can get pinned in your own zone. Field position killed them in the first quarter. Field position killed them the last time they played.

We knew what the Giants were going to do, there is no disguise to what they do, they were going to try to slow it down, run as much as they could get away with, and keep it close enough to give Eli the last shot.

We actually played well, we stopped the pass rush, we limited the receivers, but just didn’t have enough play makers on D to change the course of the game (again).

As much as I appreciate the BB strategy (and don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t rather have anyone else coaching) of dropping people who aren’t buying in for scrubs who will work their tails off and never question coach, I think the lack of strong leadership … from the players … is what is killing them. You can’t afford to drop Meriwether, Sanders and Bodden and have a viable secondary. Meriwether blew his chance, I can’t help but believe without Meriwether, Sanders was a better guy, and Bodden just needed to play…he had been out for a year…I get the you’re either on the bus or you’re not approach, but sometimes you need enough quality to make it work, and last night it was lacking. Ninkovich should not be starting, nothing against the guy, good player but lets hope Markell Carter or Jermaine Cunningham come through…

On the flip side, the team is young, they have picks, and this can only make them more hungry. I think in the longer term this may be a good thing, but losing to such a set of punks as the giants who had been mouthing off all week is tough….

I suppose in the end I’d have to say that while I’m disappointed in last night’s results (I knew we lost when Welker dropped a pass that he’s caught a thousand times before), that I really have little to complain about. My team went 13-3 this year, 14-2 last year, 10-6 in a "rebuilding" year before that, 11-5 without Tom Brady the year before that, and 16-0 the year before that. Things could be worse. I could be a St. Louis fan, a Colts’ fan, or a Bucs’ fan….. so I should complain then about my plight as a Patriots’ fan? I should feel destitute and forlorn? Really? I’ve been following the Pats for 51 years and I could write a history book of horrible moments and horrible seasons, most from the pre-Robert Kraft era!! As it is, I am the fan of a team that wins consistently year in and year out, and, which, as you so rightly pointed out, doesn’t even know who I am. So, I’ll “sulk” for a few days, and then….life will go on…. There is the draft in a couple of months, and there are, as you say, more important things in this life other than football. Even Robert Kraft said that in an interview a few days before the game when he talked about the importance of "random acts of kindness" and about how much he misses his "sweetheart."

In the end though, I think my biggest disappointment occurred because the romantic in me actually thought that the Pats had a couple of “angels” on the field last night that would help them….Myra Kraft, and, my mom, who was a lifelong Pats’ fan and who would often times pray for them until she passed away in ’07. In the end, being a romantic, it seems, just doesn’t pan out. In the end, there is reality. It’s the players who make the plays, not “the angels”. If Welker catches a ball that he’s caught 1000 times before, we get the ball on the Giant 20 and run off 2 or 3 minutes more and possibly end up with a game-icing touchdown. Instead, he drops it. Deion Branch, who normally catches nearly everything thrown his way, follows it up with a drop of his own and the rest is history. In the end, reality rules….. and life goes on.

“Can somebody please beat the Giants so we don’t have to play them in the SB?”

I think it reflects the attitude going forward well.

The D played very well. They stopped the Giants regularly throughout the game. They made two bad mistakes, neither of which should have cost the Pats the game.

It was too much to ask the 2012 Patriots defense to stop one of the best 2 minute drills in the game. Overmatched, gentlemen.

The offense played very well. Brady and O’Brien had it going through the TD at the start of the 3rd quarter and then it just wasn’t the same. By the 4th quarter they were done. A couple of bad passes and a couple of drops. Welker’s drop was just a symptom of the game overall. The Patriots offense had three other chances to ice the game and couldn’t pull it off.

Neither unit was able to get it done. I felt if Brady was “average” which for only the last 20 minutes he was, the D would need to step up and make a major “Ty Law” kind of play. No such luck.

We lost because of the 12 men on the field penalty that negated the fumble recovery (which would have prevented the TD). Brady’s safety could have been a sack for a safety. Welker, Branch, and Hernandez all made key drops. If they’d caught those balls, we’d have won.

Also, we had no Gronk. If the Giants had no Cruz, they would have lost.

Woodhead stepped up.

If Woodhead were Arian Foster, he would have run for a TD on that outlet pass he caught around the 20 yr line. Woodhead is a gamer and I love the guy, but he’s not Foster or Rice.

I know this loss hurts, but if we can resign Wes and sign a big WR in free agency, we would be in great position for next year especially with those draft picks. Plus, you guys have to remember that Ras I Dowling is pretty much like an extra draft pick since he was injured all year.

I don’t post this lightly, or with emotional malice, but I have been thinking about the nearly impossible – should the Patriots trade Tom Brady?

Here are 3 valid reasons:

1. He can’t throw the long ball. The last 2 playoff throws, Tom has proven that his arm is indeed all of 34 years old. Everyone talks about the deep ball, Randy Moss, 2007 high powered offense. But, let’s not kid ourselves. He’ls getting older, not younger.

2. Poor decision making. Brady panics when facing a team with a moderate to above average pass rush. You don’t need hits to get to Brady, you just need the psychological edge. He’s lost his comfort level. Besides, when your highest paid OL is your biggest sieve, then you’ve got a shaky QB.

3. Value. Ryan Mallett will not take over the keys when Brady would like to retire. That’s crazy. The Pats should trade Brady to an organization (in the NFC perhaps?) so that we can get some players / picks that could be useful for the long-term and in the best interests of the club.

Just wanted to encourage some rational discussion. It is possible to consider?

John elway went to a super bowl 7 times and won 2 so soak that in for a minute.

Gronkowski was Gronkowski in name only. He was our Guns of Navarrone all season and they had one pitifully slow linebacker guarding him all game. Don,t ya think that had a LOT to do with our offensive firepower?! I Do!!!!!!Take away Hakeem Nicks or Cruz from the Giants and let,s see them operate. Far as I can tell Our Defense held that team to 13 pts for 57 minutes…..caused 3 loose balls…. none of which bounced anywhere near a patriots player (talk about shit luck for the Giants) No… the defense more than did their job. The ultimate irony is that it was our offense that faltered at precisely the wrong time and it is Welker who must bear the lions share of the responsibilty. Miscues made in the first half can be overcome…even those in the 3rd quarter….Why?…because there is still time on the game clock to make up for them. Brady completed 2 out of 3 passes in this game and threw for 2 scores and although I have seen him sharper Welker needed to make that catch because everyone (ESPECIALLY our defense) knew that this was the game clinching drive. It is fashionable in this era to say we win and lose as a team but the simple truth is Welker IS the goat in this instance precisely because of when his miscue ocurred….namely with the game on the line. It was asking WAY too much for our defense to have to go back on the field after that emotionally deflating drop by Welker!