Mo is Indy covering Super Bowl 46. The game will be referred to as Super Bowl 46, and not with any Roman Numerals, because this is America and we don't use Roman Numerals. Follow Mo on Twitter by going here, and catch his reports at the bottom of every hour today on 700WLW.
11:09am: I arrived in Indy around 9:00. My first order of business was to park. That only cost $80. My second order of business was to quickly walk through a tailgating lot to see if people were throwin' 'em back even with kickoff more than nine hours away.
Much to my delight, there were people tailgating pretty hard. The early morning Giants-to-Patriots fan tailgating ration was 4:1 in favor of the Giants. One man from Middlesex NJ claimed he'd been tailgating since 6:00am. He was in rough shape already. I can't imagine what he'll be like around kickoff.
Most of the bars have opened up early to serve breakfast. However, I have two rules when it comes to dining out....1) Never eat at a strip club that offers food. (For that matter, just avoid strip clubs) 2) Never eat breakfast at a bar. Thus, I am typing this blog at the downtown Indy Dunkin' Donuts.
Most of the talk right now seems to be about Hall of Fame snubs....mainly Chris Carter and Bill Parcells.
It's hard to imagine that Chris Carter will not one day make the Hall...he's fourth all-time in catches, eighth all-time in yards, and fourth in receiving touchdowns. His exclusion highlights how diluted passing and receiving numbers have become and illustrates will it will be near impossible for some of our era's best wide receivers to get to Canton. It's actually kind of interesting...among the top 20 in career receptions, ten are or have been eligible for the Hall of Fame, only two have made it (Jerry Rice and Art Monk) and most of those players won't even get a sniff.
Which is why I'm amused when Chad Ochocinco fans (a group I include myself among) get mad when I scoff at the idea of #85 making it to Canton. If Chris Carter isn't a Hall of Famer, Chad isn't either, as great as his career was.
Bill Parcells should be a Hall of Famer. The knock on him has been that he "only" won two Super Bowls and that his winning percentage isn't high enough (.570, which is actually better than Chuck Noll's). That's crap. He coached four teams...all four were rebuilding projects. He went to three Super Bowls with non-Hall of Fame quarterbacks. He actually never coached a quarterback who's in Canton, and unless Tony Romo gets in one day, he'll have coached his entire career without ever working with an enshrined QB. All four teams he took over improved exponentially from when he took them over. He won eight division titles...many of them when winning a division meant something. He had coaches who worked under him go on to become very successful (Some have argued that the success of Belichick and Coughlan works against his case. I say that's BS) He beat Hall of Famer Joe Gibbs in an NFC Title Game and Hall of Famer Marv Levy in a Super Bowl. He knocked Bill Walsh out of the playoffs twice.
Halls of Fame exist to tell the story of a sport. Good luck telling the story of the National Football League without spending a fair chunk of time talking about Bill Parcells.
Maybe the voters are holding this look against him...
-Drew Brees is the NFL's Offensive Player of the Year while Aaron Rodgers is the MVP. That's like a pitcher winning the MVP but not the Cy Young.
-I spent yesterday watching and attending college basketball games.
*It's scary to think about how good UK can be. No one is playing at their level.
*XU is running out of opportunities for good wins. The Muskies have a lot of problems, but the lack of killer instinct might be most troubling.
*Cashmere Wright bailed the Bearcats out again on a night where UC couldn't shake a pesky DePaul team. If the Justin Jackson we saw last night is what we get down the stretch, this team will win more than they lose and they'll get back to the tournament. What the win shouldn't obscure however, is that DePaul, with a lot less to play for, played a lot harder.
*I can't watch Paul Williams play anymore. He might be my least favorite Flyer ever. And the list of least favorite Flyers is long.
*The mark of a great player is how he does when defenses do absolutely everything they can to stop him. Exhibit A is Jared Sullinger against Wisconsin.
-Oh yeah. Today's game.
Patriots v. Giants
Has any Super Bowl favorite ever pulled off an upset?
Vegas has New England at anywhere from a 2.5 to 3.5 point favorite, yet the story of this week has been about how New York is the more complete team and the hotter team. And it is hard to pick against the Giants after watching them torch Atlanta and Green Bay, then win at San Francisco. It's hard to imagine their pass rush not getting to Brady, it's tough to pick against Eli Manning, as hot as he is, and the Gronkowski injury has been talked about so much that I've actually turned to Presidential debate coverage to get away from it.
But the Patriots are hot too. Like, scorching hot. They've won ten straight, by an average of more than 17 points a game. They've scored 30 or more in eight of those wins, and while many of those wins have come against some of teh dregs of the NFL, they did hang 40+ twice on a good Denver D, scored 37 on a top-five Jets defense, dropped 27 on a quality Miami unit, and put up 38 against a Philly defense that's better than they're given credit for.
My initial inclination was to pick NEw York, because they've been really impressive these last five games....but they were still a 9-7 team, and if we're gonna pick apart the New England wins, let's look at who the Giants beat down the stretch....
*An imploding Jets team
*A Jeckyll and Hyde Cowboys squad
*A soft Falcons team
*The Rusty Packers
*A San Fran team that made two huge special teams mistakes and has an extraordinarily ordinary group of wideouts.
The Giants have been great, and Eli has played his way into the elite QB conversation with some clutch performances, but I don't think they've gotten many teams' best shots and the 49ers overachieved.
I have no dog in the fight. No reason to dislike either, no real reason to really root for either, but as the week has wore on (slowly), I keep thinking if people are overlooking New England just a little too much.
And when you think of their season, that's kinda been the story. This might have been the least talked-about Patriots team of the Brady/Belichick era. Early on the stories were all about Buffalo and Detroit, the middle of the season was dominated by Green Bay and San Fran, and the focus down the stretch was on Tebow's Broncos and Brees' Saints. Think back to the season, the only thing you really heard about New England was about how bad they were defensively.
And I don't think they're as awful on D as they're made out to be.
I think Belichick and his two offensive coordinators (an unfair advantage by the way) find some new wrinkles, I think we overstate the quality of New York's secondary, and I think Brady takes what the Giants defense gives them....
....and I think Chad Ochocinco does something.
Chad is likely to dress after New England whacked Tiquan Underwood (That's cold, cutting someone the night before the Super Bowl. Bill Belichick would make a great radio exec) and I'm guessing he sees the field, at least a little.
Unlike many Bengals fans, I have no issue with #85 winning a ring. In fact, I think it'd be awesome if he did. Chad Ochocinco is one of the best ten players to ever play for my favorite franchise. He made rooting for the Bengals cool again, and he personified my favorite Bengals team in my lifetime. There was bad, and maybe his time in Cincinnati didn't end so well, but there was a ton of good as well.
I hope he gets a chance tonight, and I think he does. The knock on him has been that he can't learn the playbook, but this is a one-game scenario...they simply need him to learn a handful of plays, point out which routes to run, and ask him to run them. Chad, even at this stage in his career, can still do that.
And the Patriots can win this game. I think we get a great one tonight, and while a New York win would hardly surprise, I say the Patriots win number four. Patriots 27 Giants 24.
© 2012
