Championship Analysis

I’m glad Arizona won. I thought they could, and I thought they would but I wouldn’t have bet the ranch on it. Things looked good for quite a while, then they looked really bad for quite a while, but then they ultimately ended up good.

It still boggles my mind how Larry Fitzgerald is seemingly always open on every play. I understand that a lot of that is the fact that he’s a fantastic route runner, but if you’re Philadelphia (or Carolina, or Atlanta), how do you NOT cover him?! You know the ball’s going to go to him when they need a play, yet he’s more often than not single-covered or there’s very weak safety help over the top / the safety isn’t close enough to actually impact a play. I don’t know how many times I counted that, near the goal line, he lined up in what appeared to be single coverage. All Kurt Warner would have to do is toss it up there and Fitz would bring it in. Why aren’t you double-covering him?!

I do have to give the Eagles credit, though. I think for the first time all postseason, a team went into halftime not playing well and came out playing far better. It seemed to me that a lot of times earlier in this postseason, there would be certain things that teams would need to think about at half, like ways to stop certain guys or ways to get other guys involved, but would come out and go back to the same routine they had been running in the first half. Not the Eagles. They were down big at the half (18?) and came back and scored three unanswered touchdowns. THAT’S a halftime adjustment! I think they had dug themselves into too deep a hole, though, and ran out of gas (or Arizona, as they rightfully should have been, decided not to lose a game they were leading by 18 in).

The Ravens / Steelers game was pretty much what I thought. I thought the Ravens could win, but I was surer of the Cards winning than them (if that makes any sense). The Steelers are, essentially, the Ravens with a more mature quarterback and (arguably) a weaker defense. I’m not saying the Steelers’ defense isn’t good, but if push came to shove, I’d take Ed Reed over any defensive player in the league.

The game was decided by the fact that Roethlisberger made no mistakes and Flacco did. That has a lot to do with the fact that Flacco’s a rookie and that he was bound to make those mistakes at some point this postseason. It’s not like he completely put the game out of reach, but when you’re facing a team as good as the Steelers, throwing two interceptions isn’t going to help much.

But boy, that was a fun game to watch! Those two teams really hate each other. It’s pretty awesome. I mean, there is the down side to this – just ask Willis McGahee – but seeing that kind of physical play is incredible to watch.

So now, it’s Steelers / Cardinals in the Super Bowl. I think you have to give the Steelers the edge here, since they were able to stop the all-offense Chargers with ease. The Cardinals have very surely proven, though, that they are not the team a lot of people (including myself) think of when they think of the Cardinals. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a close game – with somewhere in the neighborhood of 21-20 or something – but I think the Steelers have it.