Mercury Morris Gets to Keep Yapping
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When they completed the first 16-0 regular season ever by dispatching of these same New York Giants in the Meadowlands six weeks ago, forget his neighborhood, the New England Patriots had officially stepped foot on Mercury Morris' block. When they defeated the San Diego Chargers in Foxborough in the AFC Championship Game, they strolled up his walkway. When Tom Brady hit Randy Moss for the go-ahead touchdown with 2:42 remaining in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLII in Arizona Sunday night, they were standing on his porch (and every other cliche that has been used ad nausea in the leadup to the game.)
Unfortunately, they were shot down by a sniper before they could enter through the front door.
It was Giants 17, Patriots 14, and so I guess it's true that you can't win them all.
It was analysed before the game that the key to any chance the Giants had of pulling off the upset centered on the ability of their front four to get past New England's stellar offensive line and to Brady, who's jersey is usually as clean at the end of the game as it is before it. They did, 5 sacks and many more hits on the game's best player. Just as important was Eli Manning, who contrary to the petrified look on his face as he ran onto the field for the drive of his life, who showed major poise and flair in answering Brady's testical-size by leading his team downfield for the game-winning drive and making one of the most memorable plays in football history.
In a sequence that will certainly become a part of Super Bowl lore forever and ever and ever, Big Game MVP Eli somehow managed to escape the grasps of three Patriots defenders and loft the ball to the middle of the field to wideout David Tyree, who jumped to the highest point and gripped it away from safety Rodney Harrison, clutching it against the side of his helmet with his right hand on the way down to the field. Unbelievable on both ends of the play. It was at this point that you began to believe that maybe the Giants were a team of destiny - and as it turns out they were. Shortly thereafter, Eli floated one to the corner of the endzone to an open Plaxico for the deciding touchdown. Good for the Giants. God bless them.
As for the Patriots, winning the first 18 games of the season and then losing the Super Bowl, missing out on immortality by a mere 35 seconds, ranks right up there with the collapses of the '86 Sawx, '04 Yankees, and anybody else in terms of all-time most devastating defeats. As Tom Jackson pointed out on ESPN after the game, the fallout that will come from the Patriots organization in the wake of such a loss is unimaginable. How do you respond to something like this? Five months of the highest level of football ever played, rendered meaningless in a little more than two minutes? I feel for the players, I feel for the coaches, I feel for management, I feel for Robert Kraft. And if I'm a Patriots fan - which I am, although I'm of the bandwagon variety, so it's not gonna lay on me like it would a diehard, the only kind that exists in Boston - it's gonna be hard for me to really get myself back into football next season. Actually, the Pats could win the next three Super Bowl's and it still wouldn't fully ease the pain of losing the one that was played Sunday. This was a huge missed opportunity.
But the worst part, for everybody involved? The '72 Dolphins. They live on. It seems we may never get rid of them.
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7 comments Last one added 7 months ago — Leave a Comment
Mark Myers about 1 year ago
Yes but look around today. Most fans are happy to see the Pats lose.
Why? because there have been a lot of Pats fans who have been insufferable themselves and weren't really looking forward to five months of off-season smack talk and chest-pounding.
So the complaint about the 72 fins rings hollow in some ways.
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Anonymous about 1 year ago
I wasnt even alive in '72, so my complaint with the 72 dolphins is their snot-nosed tradition of sipping champagne whenever the last undefeated team goes down, so that would have been a plus if the pats had won.
But the pats didn't win. So now all the bragging that pats fans and those insufferable bostonites have been doing for the past few years on the back of their sports teams can now be countered, because it all just doesn't matter anymore. What matters is that the 2007 patriots went 18 and fail in their bid for perfection, and to see an unstoppable juggernaught fall so flat on its face, and to drink in the delicious taste of that failure, makes me want to get excited about football again next year, despite the fact that I'm from Minnesota.
Thank you Giants. I hate your ugly as hell town and basically all fo your teams (especially the yankees), but you guys have renewed my faith that there is some justice in sports. You guys were the brick wall that everyone in NFL fandom wanted to see that pats run into.
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Anonymous about 1 year ago
Wow, why do you have to be so hateful towards the 1972 Miami Dolphins? Regardless, neither you or anyone else can take their accomplishment away from them. You said in your article "...so I guess it's true that you can't win them all." Wrong. The 1972 Miami Dolphins showed the world you can win them all. You may not want to recognize that but it's absolutely the truth.
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Anonymous about 1 year ago
I agree. Here and elsewhere there seems to be quite a bit of hate for the '72 Dolphins rather than recognizing what an accomplishment that was. The Patriots put together a phonomenal season with a ton of talent (and questionable opponents game film) yet was not able to pull it off.
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Anonymous about 1 year ago
LOL!!! I guarantee the last two posts were made by Mercury Morris and Don Shula. Great cover up, guys.
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Anonymous about 1 year ago
Screw the '72 Dolphins and their dolfans. But Shula doesn't have to say bupkus; he's won more games than any Coach in NFL history and never lost the Super Bowl when his team went in undefeated. Hey, if he wins another 186 games Belichick will tie Shula for career wins by an NFL coach.
What the Patriots did yesterday put the "Pats" back in their headlines.
Possibly the most humiliating season ending in sports history.
Or at least up there with the '54 Indians.
Who, you ask?
Exactly.
The 1954 Cleveland Indians won 111 regular seaon games and then lost the World Series in 4 straight.
To whom?
The New York Giants of course.
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Michael S 7 months ago
I like the comment about the ugly town and the Giants and Yankees and blah blah blah. But thinking back to 2007, this shouldn't bring any feelings toward a bunch of grandfathers, the 1972 Dolphins. They went 17-0 in legitimate fashion (okay it's not 19-0, but they won all their regular and postseason games). They deserve a little time to celebrate when the last unbeaten falls, and they never could've been happier than after last year. I know I was, that Super Bowl brought a wave of happiness I never thought I could experience when it comes to sporting events. Even though I am hardly a Giants fan (my hometown Ravens smoked them in Super Bowl XXXV anyway), I adopted them like my child in the Super Bowl. Couldn't be happier that the Giants brethren, the Jets, avoided a Patriot-like choke job and knocked them off last Thursday.
Mike
www.pitchingideas.net
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