Monday, February 8, 2010

SBXLIV - Final Drives

Serving up some drive-thru Daquiri Who Dat,
New Orleans finally gets it DONE!

As expected, the Super Bowl featured a matchup of two teams that were about as evenly-matched as you could hope for. The Indianapolis Colts played a fine game and took advantage of the many weaknesses of the Saints defense.

I was actually pretty surprised to see Gregg Williams live in a 3-man front for the majority of the game, replacing some of their better defenders (Ayodele and McCray) in favor of Jeff Charleston (leaving me screaming WTF with seeing Mitchell and Young in the game). Obviously, Williams was going to treat 11 personnel as a dime matchup, instead of nickel, counting Dallas Clark as a receiver. Point being, it was remarkable to see a defense come out in the biggest game of the season in a look they rarely relied upon all year.

With that, it would appear that Williams (B.Ryan protege) took a page out of Rex Ryan's NY Jets game plan from last week, and threw some double-eagle ("46") Cover 1 on the Colts. Again, rather uncharacteristic of what they've done all season.




Saints

SBXLIVNOFINAL @ Yahoo! Video

Colts

SBXLIVFINAL @ Yahoo! Video

...and of course, the Balls Deluxe call of the evening (onside and ensuing drive);

ghug @ Yahoo! Video

I did some experimenting of my own for this game, relying on a steady dose of Guinness and Strongbow (known as a 'Black Velvet' or 'Velvetene') to create an amazingly smooth taste ala a Black and Tan.

* for some perspective here (impact on the state), up here in "East Texas, Louisiana" (Shreveport-Bossier), at about 9:00 pm CST, AT&T cell towers were overloaded and remained crippled until 5 am this morning.


Mango Mango on Bourbon St. last night (after Porter INT)




The Porter pick


The deflating stalled goalline drive for the Colts

3 comments:

dubber said...

Sean Payton: "So, we got 3rd and medium situation, let me look at my call sheet.....that's funny, the only thing it says is 'SPACING'....."

Brees had a Montana-esque Super Bowl....32-39 is sick

Great ball location equals long hand-offs.

I'm from Indiana, but I am not a Colt's fan (just enjoy watching them play), and I had to keep it down when Tracey Porter (Indiana University alumni) housed Manning's errant pass.

This is a match-up I would love to see again.....both teams played hard, victory favored the team making the fewest mistakes.

I don't pretend to understand what this means for New Orleans in the light of Katrina, but from listening to you, it is HUGE, and congrats to the people.

Troy said...

The mainstream media has not given Gregg Williams nearly the amount of credit he deserves. Not to mention the two previous playoff matchups, his scheme held the best QB of the past decade to one passing TD and a QB rating of 88.5. Credit to the Saints players, of course, but going 3-man front for most of the game was begging the Colts to run the ball, which they did. Keeping the ball out of Peyton's hands when he is in the game - genius!

brophy said...

thats a pretty good point there.
We may look back on this years later like we reverently reflect on the early 90's playoff matchups between Dallas, San Fran, and Green Bay...

I mean, New Orleans (not a bad team, themselves) successively matched up against HOF QBs; Warner, Favre, and Manning....

SIDEBAR