What is it with losing teams in the Super Bowl not having any urgency at all in the final few minutes? Seriously, did the end of this game remind anyone of last year’s Super Bowl debacle with the Eagles? Too much time wasted, too many throws in the middle… It’s like you’ve pretty much given up the game. With 0:34 seconds left in the game, they still have to score the TD and the FG. No one is running to the line, no one is hurrying to spike the ball… There’s no urgency. Is this a West Coast offense thing? Some attitude passed down among the Holmgren disciples? (Or is that Walsh disciples?) Ugh, made me sick watching it because it reminded me of last year…
This is a trend in the NFL. I can’t count the number of games where teams seemed to ignore the game clock until 4 minutes left. I start wondering about the clock at about 6:30 left, especially since at 4 minutes you pretty much need to be perfect on defense. That’s unreasonable unless you have one of the best one or two defenses in the league. And even then, it’s asking a lot.
On a different note, Jerramy Stevens and Darrell Jackson are the worst big game receivers I’ve seen in a while. The drops were bad enough, but what the hell was up with Jackson and his, “oops, I went out of bounds again” thing? He’s the number one receiver on the Seattle Seahawks, arguably one of the best offenses in the league this year. Too casual with those catches, and completely lacking in urgency. You have to want to make those catches and try harder to win in those moments. Instead, both DJack and Stevens seemed to pull of the accelerator. Too bad for them and for Seahawk fans.
Beyond that, the referees were too much a part of the game. A couple of weird calls that ended up being drive destroying calls. More of them went against Seattle, but the Steelers got robbed some too. The penalty on the TD and the phantom holding call were probably the most egregious calls. You hate to have to talk about the refs when you’re talking about a championship game. I don’t remember really talking about them last year, and that’s probably because the ending of that game was so nuts.
At the end of it all, though, the game came down to urgency. The Seahawks didn’t have it at any point during the game. Congratulations go out to the Pittsburgh Steelers. I’m happy for the Pittsburgh fans and, most importantly, Jerome Bettis and Hines Ward. Bettis gets to go out in style as one of the good guys in the game. Ward gets the MVP he deserves. This guy almost wasn’t a Steeler this year. Can you imagine that? Does this team make it to the Super Bowl (let alone win) without this guy? I don’t think so.
