Coach from the Couch: Only a Giant Effort Will Stop the Pats' Perfect Season

Remember in third grade or so when they broke out the Roman numeral counting and your thought, even as a kid, when will I ever use this obscure method of counting for anything? 

Well, fortunately for all of us, the NFL made sure this would never be information that would go unused by numbering the Super Bowl after said crazy learning. 

With Super Bowl XLII, you can reach into the recesses of your brain and ponder what that actually means in layman’s terms: L=50, X preceding the L means take away 10, II means add two (50-40+2), and you come up with Super Bowl Forty-Two. 

(Who knows if this is actually right?) 

The good news is, as a sports columnist, you never have to type "Super Bowl Forty-Two," you only have to go with XLII, so theoretically, this year’s Super Bowl is phonetically Super Bowl "Ex-lie," making it sound like watching it could be a cure for diarrhea. 

In fact, quite the opposite is more than likely true. 

While watching the Super bowl and eating and drinking things that are probably bad for you, Super Bowl Exlie will more than likely cause diarrhea.  I wonder if the Romans had a term accounting for this particular byproduct of counting; probably not. 

Now that all of those brain cells of yesteryear have been called upon, one can take solace in the fact that if in fact these brain cells are killed during alcohol over-indulgence during Super Bowl Exlie, they will not have died without purpose. 

After all, they were called upon to calculate Exlie prior to the great alcohol flood of 2008.  I’m not sure what 2008 would look like in Roman numerals.  I think C was as high as Roman numeral teaching went in the third grade.

Now that the Giants and the Patriots know what numeral Super Bowl they will be playing in, lets take a quick look at how they got there.  The New England Patriots enter Super Bowl Exlie undefeated.  That is XVIII-0 in Roman numeral terms.  If they win Super Bowl Exlie, they will be the only team ever to finish a season XIX-0—an impressive feat even if you don’t know what XIX is. 

I’m also not sure how zero is represented in Roman numeral terms, but for purposes of this column, we won’t get hung up on that. 

The Patriots downed a pretty good, yet banged up San Diego squad to achieve 18-0, and the game can be summarized in basically ten yards.  The reason the Pats advanced to Super Bowl Exlie is simple: they stopped San Diego inside the ten-yard line every time the Chargers got to within first and goal. 

On the opposite side of the coin, San Diego could not stop New England inside the ten, except for one interception.  Going back to our math skills of third grade, three times inside the ten, and only field goals to show for it = 12.  Four times in inside the ten, a hiccup of the interception, but the other three times yielding touchdowns = 21. 

Final score?  21-12 New England.  See, math really does come in handy! 

Junior Seau beat his old team, even masterminding one of the stops within the ten-yard line, and New England advanced to the final.  New England did not look like an undefeated team in victory, and San Diego gave them a run for their money.  It will be interesting to see if the New York Giants can do the same.  They should be wary of making sure they get the ball in the zone inside the ten.

Speaking of the Giants, they make it to Super Bowl Exlie the hard way, traveling to a freezing Green Bay and beating the Packers on their home turf.  Before Michael Vick (who?) and the Falcons beat the Pack a few years back, Green Bay was money in the bank on the frozen tundra of Lambeau field. 

It's interesting that Lambeau looks like a typo in spell check and wants to be changed to Flambeau, somewhat of a combination of Flames and Lambeau—ergo, going down in flames at Lambeau field. 

That is exactly what happened to the Pack.  They lost 23-20 in OT. 

The Giants looked to be the better team all day and really deserved the win.  If not for giving up a ninety-yard touchdown, the game would not have been that close.  Brett Favre threw two interceptions, the low-light being the one in overtime, and giant hunks of wedged shaped head gear were put away for another winter, hoping for next fall.

So with one game remaining, the real question remains—will a Manning not named Peyton be able to humble the mighty Patriots? Only two weeks' time will tell.  Until then, get your big screen TV shopping finished now! Coach from the Couch—out.