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Sun Journal, Lewiston, Maine, Saturday, February 4, 2012
HOT CORNER
BY KALLE OAKES
HUDDLE UP
BY RANDY WHITEHOUSE
The Patriots will win ... The Giants will win ... because the Giants are overrated
M
ost people’s recollection of history is selective and sporadic. This appears to be less trend and more epidemic among people who analyze professional sports, for a living or for leisure. To hear it told elsewhere — including a few column inches to my right — two wins by a total of seven points in a fouryear span indicate that the New York Giants own the New England Patriots and will eat their breakfast, lunch and dinner and their legacy for dessert Sunday night. Really? So you want to talk about history? Sure. Let’s rap. One team in Super Bowl XLVI ended the regular season with an VIII-game winning streak. The other won a grand total of IX games through that entire schedule. One needed to dispatch two underachieving, disappointing division rivals in order to clinch home field advantage. The other had to beat two of the three most overhyped teams in the league to finish above .500, win the world’s most overrated division since long division and merely make the playoffs. One beat the tar and the pride out of the teams in the allegedly soft second half of its schedule. The other lost at home by double digits to Seattle and was swept by Washington. The long-term perspective has been flawed and one-sided, too. Even before the Giants pummeled the Packers at Lambeau Field on Jan. 15, comparisons to their 2007-08 championship team ran rampant. Suddenly they were hailed as the poster franchise for momentum, never failing to catch fire when the calendar flips from December to January. Not once did I hear parallels drawn between the Patriots’ two-month winning streak and their teams of 2001 and 2003 that evolved from early-season doldrums and were eminently unbeatable. Las Vegas looks smarter than press row. This should be another air-tight Super Bowl, one that will generate highlights we’ll watch over and over again until all of us assume room temperature. But the Patriots deserve to be favored. Long-term history says so. Short-term history says so. Contrary to what the New York-centric national media has told you, even the numbers and the intangibles say so. If you’re sick to death of hearing about Eli-te Manning, his emergence from his brother’s shadow, his ascent to the Mount Rushmore of Clutch and his fitness for a post office box in Canton should he win that second championship ring, imagine how Tom Brady feels. With even a pedestrian performance
Sunday, Brady will become the first quarterback in NFL history to throw for more than 6,000 yards in one regular-seasonand-playoffs sequence. He’s the second QB to start five Roman Numeral games and is on the cusp of joining Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana as the only guys to win four. Despite missing a full season with a catastrophic knee injury and putting up mortal numbers in his comeback season, Brady is a top-five, all-time signal-caller near the peak of his career. If the Patriots’ patchwork offensive line gives No. 12 even two seconds to make his reads, he performs surgery on the league’s best defenses. Ah, and there’s the inconvenient truth. For all the talk about the porous Patriots and the peaking Giants, the latter’s defense stunk equally across the big picture. The Giants were a bottom-five ‘D’ all season. They have defied just as much (here’s that word again) history to get here as the bend-like-Gumby Patriots. Their secondary won’t make anyone forget Elvis Patterson.
Las Vegas looks smarter than press row. This should be another air-tight Super Bowl, one that will generate highlights we’ll watch over and over again until all of us assume room temperature. But the Patriots deserve to be favored. In fact, the Patriots have demonstrated a much greater propensity for forcing turnovers, a game-changing element with which Manning is (wait for it) historically generous. Red zone interceptions and strip-sacks were as much a Patriots staple in 2011 as the perpetual prevent. All the other categories furnished as damning evidence against the Patriots actually favor them. Manning has three great receivers? Brady has the best slot receiver on the planet (Wes Welker), one of the most prolific Super Bowl pass catchers ever (Deion Branch) and a tight end combination that scientists should be using as a proof of evolution (Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez). Gronkowki is hobbling around Indianapolis in a walking boot? Hmmm, I must be the only person in America who watched Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz hobble off the chewed-up turf at Candlestick multiple times. Patriots can’t run the ball to ease the pressure on Brady? He isn’t the one who had to fling it 58 times in the conference championship games. Even with BenJarvus Green-Ellis showing grandmother-like burst between the tackles, Hernandez lining up at fullback and Stevan Ridley using that loaf-of-bread grip, the Patriots had a better running game than the Giants. All season long. So the Patriots pass the ball better, run the ball better and force turnovers better. They’ve lost the swagger of 2007 and regained the why-not-us mentality of 2001 (OK, and the 2004 Red Sox). No 9-7 team has won the Super Bowl, and that history isn’t going to change, either. The Giants’ predecessors in medicrity, the 1979 Rams and 2008 Cardinals, got close. So will the G-Men. But not close enough. Brady will set the tone early with a touchdown or two out of the gate. That will atone for two failures of the two previous meetings — putting the Giants’ defense into heavy-breathing, on-its-heels mode, and forcing Manning to play catch-up long before the fourth quarter. Neither is a good scenario for the Jersey syndicate. Patriots 34, Giants 27. Chew on that legacy while you’re thumbing through the history book.
Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. He respects the Giants but fears no one.
STAFF PICKS
because they are simply better
I
am not here to try to convince you the New York Giants are a cross between the 1985 Chicago Bears and 1989 San Francisco 49ers. Despite what you've no doubt heard and read all week, the Giants are not unbeatable. The New England Patriots are not lambs for the slaughter. The Giants are not in their heads. Eli Manning is not a better quarterback than Tom Brady,
ball over once in three postseason games. It has dominated time of possession despite having a mediocre running game. And it has the best quarterback the Patriots have faced this season. There is a lot of hype surrounding Eli Manning right now. Some people who apparently haven't watched him play besides Super Bowl XLII and this season insist that he would be a lock for the Hall of Fame if he wins his second Super Bowl title this Sunday. But Manning did have an excellent 2011, and he's been great so far in 2012. He outplayed Aaron Rodgers by a mile at Lambeau. He took one of the worst beatings a quarterback has ever taken in the playoffs against San Francisco and prevailed. If the Patriots can't put that kind of pressure on Manning, their secondary will be shredded by a deep, speedy group of receivers. I'm trusting that Bill Belichick isn't dumb or arrogant enough to line up Julian Edelman in the slot against Victor Cruz. But even if the Patriots stay in zone or get their preferred matchups in man-toman, their defensive backs won't be able to keep up with Cruz, Mario Manningham and Hakeem Nicks, who didn't play in the Giants' 24-20 over New England on Nov. 6. And why does an undrafted, rookie tight end that caught 38 passes all year scare the hell out of me? Oh yeah, Jake Ballard owned the Patriots on the gamewinning drive. If the Giants have a chance at another one of those drives on Sunday, say the ball at their own 20 with less than two minutes left, you will find me on my living room floor in the fetal position. Obviously, this brings me no pleasure. I hate the Giants. I hated them long before Super Bowl XLII. Growing up in the 1970s, I hated that Channel 13 always insisted on subjecting me to Joe Pisarcik, Doug Kotar and Brad Van Pelt and their truly putrid and boring teams on a weekly basis. I've built up a lot of resentment for the Giants, and the fact that some of their fans still want Tom Coughlin fired makes me want to strangle them with their "18-1" tshirts. I can only hope the Giants are as cocky as their fans are and believe they are as invincible as the national media is making them out to be. But I doubt Coughlin will allow that. And I can't ignore the facts, which all add up to the final painful fact that the Giants are the better team. So, since every Patriots Super Bowl in the last four has been decided by three points, the Giants will win this on a Lawrence Tynes field goal with eight seconds left, 26-23. Now please excuse me while I repeatedly smash this keyboard against my head.
(The Giants) proved four years ago that Brady can be rattled, not just with sacks and hits, but by collapsing the pocket up the middle. And they are even more capable now than they were then of making that happen. or Peyton Manning. New York's defensive front four isn't Deacon Jones, Randy White, Mean Joe Greene and Reggie White. But the Giants are better than the Patriots. And they're a bad matchup for them to boot. New England has gotten this far with an exceptional offense based on the precision of its quarterback, the ability of its inside receivers to get open and run after the catch, and the defense's ability to minimize its own mistakes by capitalizing on its opponent's. New York has answers for all of that. It should be the three-point favorite, not New England. The Giants can take care of the precision thing by getting in Tom Brady's face. They proved four years ago that Brady can be rattled, not just with sacks and hits, but by collapsing the pocket up the middle. And they are even more capable now than they were then of making that happen. The Patriots have faced some good pass rushers during their 10-game winning streak, but not a group this talented. The Giants have a lot of options in their front four — sometimes they will line up four defensive ends. The chances of them finding a matchup they like in the trenches and being able to exploit it are pretty good. New England starts a backup center (Dan Connolly) and either a rookie (Nate Solder, who looked shaky at times against Baltimore) or a rusty Sebastian Vollmer who hasn't played in nearly two months, at right tackle. Even if the offensive line keeps Jason Pierre-Paul, Justin Tuck, Chris Canty and Osi Umenyiora off Brady's back most of the night, the Giants can make things difficult for him by loading up its coverage between the numbers and challenging Brady to throw outside, where his options are limited to Chad Ochocinco and that guy he tried to throw the foolish fourth quarter interception to against Baltimore. The secondary is New York's biggest weakness, but the Patriots may not have the tools to expose it. Since Rob Gronkowski's ankle likely won't be 100 percent by Sunday, Brady may have to do without his best deepmiddle threat. If Gronk's mobility is severely limited, they won't have to double him and could turn their attention to Wes Welker or Aaron Hernandez.Regardless of where Brady throws the ball, yards after the catch will be tough to pick up because the Giants a) tackle well and b) will have lots of people in coverage to chase the receiver. New York's defense struggled for much of the year, but for the last five weeks, it has been close to dominant. It's given up more than 14 points just once, in a 37-20 win over Green Bay. New England's defense is playing the best it has all year, but New York's is playing even better, and it is clearly the unit that is more likely to make a gamechanging play. Chances are, the Giants offense won't be handing the Patriots any game-changing plays, unlike Denver and Baltimore. New York has turned the
Randy Whitehouse is a staff columnist. Coughlin’s frozen face still haunts him.
Four years ago, 10 out of 12 Sun Journal employees picked the Patriots. This year? See for yourself!
Justin Pelletier
Randy Whitehouse
Dave St. Hilaire
Steve Sherlock
Assistant Sports Editor, Online
Staff Writer and Columnist
Staff Writer
Sports Editor
Patriots, 24-20
Giants, 26-23
Giants, 24-20
Patriots, 34-30
MVP: Aaron Hernandez
MVP: Hakeem Nicks
MVP: Eli Manning
MVP: BenJarvus Green-Ellis
Bob McPhee
Nathan Fournier
Kevin Mills
Brandon Waltz
Staff Writer
Agate Clerk
Staff Writer
Web Developer
Giants, 28-24
Patriots, 31-27
Patriots, 30-27
Patriots, 28-17
MVP: Eli Manning
MVP: Tom Brady
MVP: Tom Brady
MVP: Tom Brady
Eric Maxim
Kalle Oakes
Tony Blasi
Tony Ronzio
Sports Clerk
Staff Writer and Columnist
Staff Editor
Director of New Media
Giants, 38-27
Patriots, 34-27
Patriots, 31-28
Patriots, 34-28
MVP: Victor Cruz
MVP: Tom Brady
MVP: Stephen Gostkowski
MVP: Wes Welker