In week 17 of the NFL regular season, the New York Giants had a chance to prevent the New England Patriots from achieving a feat once deemed impossible, a perfect 16-0 season.
At halftime, the Giants held a 21-16 lead, and appeared to have found the formula for beating the Patriots.
After the Giants extended their lead to 28-10, the Patriots jumped back into the game, and scored 21 straight points in just 11 minutes of game time. When the Giants regained possession with under two minutes left to play, the Patriots were ahead by two scores, 38-28.
The Giants scored a touchdown with just over a minute left in the game, but failed to get the ball back, which allowed the Patriots to sit comfortably on their lead to claim a 38-35 victory over the Giants.
Sports analysts have been stressing that while the Patriots’ 16-0 regular season is a great achievement, the legacy of the team will be lost if they ultimately fail to win the big game.
Now, the Giants get a second chance to prevent the Patriots from achieving perfection.
Quarterback Eli Manning has suddenly matured in the postseason, looking more like his older brother Peyton than the “bust” the New York sports media made him out to be.
Can Manning lead his team to a Giant upset against the Patriots?
Time will tell. The big game isn’t until Feb. 3, so, for now, it’s all speculation.
And then there were four.
The remaining teams have worked all season to get to the Super Bowl, and now all that stands between them and a spot in the championship game is one more game.
The New York Giants upset the NFC’s top seed, the Dallas Cowboys, to get to this point. Now, they find themselves the underdog yet again, this time to the NFC’s number two seed, the Green Bay Packers.
While Giants quarterback Eli Manning competes for a Super Bowl berth, his brother, Peyton Manning, and his Indianapolis Colts, will be stuck watching the rest of the playoffs.
The San Diego Chargers pulled off the weekend’s other upset, beating the Colts a second time this season. The win earned them a ticket to Foxboro, Mass. to take on the perfect New England Patriots.
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is coming off of the best game of his illustrious career. Brady completed an unprecedented 26 of his 28 pass attempts for 262 yards with three touchdowns, including one coming off of a perfectly executed fake Statue of Liberty play.
It doesn’t look like anyone will be able to stop the Patriots from achieving true perfection: 19-0.
But anything can happen. This is, after all, the NFL.
Odds are, the team with the best chance at ending the Patriots pursuit of perfection is whichever NFC team makes it to the Super Bowl.
The Giants came close to beating the Pats once already, and Packers quarterback Brett Favre is having a season to remember.
As the Jacksonville Jaguars showed the rest of the league, you can play a great game against the Patriots and still lose. It takes more than great to beat the Patriots.
It takes perfection.
Bandwagon fans. Every sport has them. They’re the fans who follow success, constantly giving their allegiance to the latest and greatest team.
And their allegiance goes as quickly as it comes.
They rode high with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls during the team’s glory years, but most of them would be hard-pressed to tell you anything about Joakim Noah, except perhaps that he’s the guy with the crazy hair from Florida. They’re too busy following the San Antonio Spurs and the Detroit Pistons these days.
As soon as the MLB postseason rolls around each year, they love the Boston Red Sox. The “Red Sox Nation” has become little more than the ultimate bandwagon.
These fans love Tom Brady, Brett Favre, and Peyton Manning. Take any of those three star quarterbacks away from their teams, and the bandwagon fans move on.
These so-called fans are the scum of the sporting world.
Anytime a team wins a championship, there is a legion of people who will suddenly be a fan of that team the next day. They’ll be decked out in the winning team’s gear, acting as if they had followed the team for years.
In 2005, after the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl, you could get a Terrible Towel at almost any sports store nationwide. This year, not so much. Retailers know how the bandwagoners’ minds work.
It’s sad, really. Bandwagon fans miss out on everything that makes being a sports fan great.
For true fans, the ones who have followed their favorite team year in and year out, the seasons of success taste so much sweeter. They have lived and died with every play, they have been through every thrilling victory and every heart-wrenching loss. They know what it’s like to suffer through the bad years, and truly appreciate it when things are good.
The bandwagon fans, flitting from successful team to successful team, are nothing more than pretenders, and true, diehard fans rightfully despise them.
For months, Jaguars.com senior editor Vic Ketchman attached an asterisk to the New England Patriots in his weekly power rankings.
Around the time Ketchman first added the asterisk, Jaguars defensive end Paul Spicer was asked by the media for a comment on the Spygate scandal.
“Do like the NCAA and kick them out of the playoffs or something,” he told reporters. “Put them on probation; they can’t go to no playoff games. Roger Goodell has definitely enforced some new rules. He’s been hard on players. Now let’s see how hard he’s going to be with a team.”
All of a sudden, four months later, the media has decided the asterisk and the quote are newsworthy.
Why? Because the Jaguars are about to face the Patriots in the playoffs.
One ESPN story suggested Spicer’s comments should be motivation for the Patriots.
“If the undefeated Patriots need bulletin board material for their playoff game Saturday night against the Jaguars,” the story read, “they have it now.”
ESPN Radio host Dan Patrick said the same about Ketchman’s asterisk, many of his fellow sports journalists agreed.
Wait a second. We’re not talking about the Miami Dolphins or the Baltimore Ravens here, we’re talking about the undefeated New England Patriots.
“But should the Patriots really need bulletin board material? Isn’t that a little tacky?” Ketchman asked. “Come on. I thought this was supposed to be the greatest team of all time.”
He’s right. If the Patriots, who have the chance to gain NFL immortality with a 19-0 year, need motivation, then something is fundamentally wrong.
Spicer was asked what he thought about his quote being bulletin board material for the Patriots.
“”If they got to bring up something said so long ago,” he said, “let that be their motivational tool.”
It was a bad weekend to be a number four seed.
In the AFC, the wild card Jacksonville Jaguars knocked the number four Pittsburgh Steelers out of contention with a last-minute field goal that saved the Jaguars from a meltdown of epic proportions.
The Jaguars went into halftime with a dominant 21-7 lead. They had rattled Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, causing him to throw three interceptions in the first half, one going all the way for a touchdown.
By the end of the third quarter, the Jags were up 28-10, and appeared to have the game wrapped up.
And then came the Steelers.
In less than eight minutes of game time, the Jaguars squandered their once-powerful 18-point lead to give the Steelers a 29-28 advantage. The Jaguars looked rattled, frustrated, and beaten.
But appearances can be deceiving.
When the Jaguars got the ball back with 2:38 left, they were determined to win.
On fourth-and-two, Jaguars quarterback David Garrard dropped back, and was faced with an all-out blitz from the Steelers defense. He lowered his helmet, turned upfield, and ran. The blitz left the field wide open, allowing Garrard to amass 32 yards on the quarterback draw.
“I knew they weren’t going to stop me for two yards,” Garrard said.
The long run set up Josh Scobee’s 25-yard field goal, and the Steelers offense stepped on the field for one last time.
Jaguars defensive end Bobby McCray quickly forced a Roethlisberger fumble which was recovered by the Jaguars, effectively sealing the outcome in the Jaguars’ favor.
The Jaguars will head to New England to try and topple the undefeated Patriots next Saturday at 8 p.m.
Over in the NFC, the number five New York Giants, coming off of a thriller against the New England Patriots, defeated the number four Tampa Bay Buccaneers to move on to the divisional round.
The Giants looked sharp on both sides of the ball, with quarterback Eli Manning showing the same poise he demonstrated in New England, and defensive end Michael Strahan led the way for the defense.
The big difference maker was the ability of the Giants to force three Buccaneers turnovers. Uncharacteristically, Buccaneers quarterback Jeff Garcia threw two interceptions.
The other turnover occurred during the opening kickoff of the second half. Buccaneers kick returner Michael Spurlock, who became the first Buccaneer to return a kickoff for a touchdown just a few weeks ago, fumbled the ball and allowed the Giants to take over deep in Bucs territory.
“That’s huge, the play of the day,” head coach Jon Gruden said of Spurlock’s fumble.
The Giants will face the Cowboys in Dallas on Sunday at 4:30 p.m.
The other two wild card matchups had unsurprising outcomes, as the Seattle Seahawks handily beat the resurgent Washington Redskins and the San Diego Chargers held off a formidable effort from the Tennessee Titans.
The Seahawks will travel to Green Bay to play the Packers Saturday at 4:30 p.m., and the Chargers will go to Indianapolis to face the Colts Sunday at 1 p.m.
