Superbowl Predictions

[63dot]

And let's face it..He was one yard away from losing his ownly SB ring.

That was a very tense ending. I could not believe what I saw on that play.

Also the Super Bowl kick with Buffalo was a good ending for those who wanted to see one. It was one of those sports moments where you could hear a pin drop in a very drunk bar. It would have been nice to see them get at least one ring even though at the time I couldn't stand them.

 

[zimv20]

from Peter King, here:

The Kurt Warner fumble with five seconds to go actually was reviewed -- and upheld. There is no question that, cosmetically, replay assistant Bob McGrath, sitting upstairs, should have called for a booth review and let Terry McAulay see the play down on the field. But understand the mechanics of the way this process works -- and understand the process was aided by a penalty call on the field.

When the ball was knocked loose from Warner and the Steelers recovered, an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty was called on LaMarr Woodley for excessive celebration. So now, in the replay booth, McGrath had extra time, well over a minute, to use the touch-screen system of examining replays of the play. I don't know how many McGrath saw; he had 16 angles to choose from, and he used the extra time -- not only the time that comes with a change of possession and a re-spotting of the ball and a new play clock commencing, but now a discussion among the officials of the penalty and the spot of the penalty and walking off the penalty.

McGrath had around 90 seconds from the time of the loose ball to examine the replays to see if McAulay needed to examine the call himself -- and McGrath judged, and was later backed by the league, that officials on the field made the correct judgment that Warner fumbled before his arm started going forward.

 

[jimmyw]

still, don't you have to stop the game and have an official review on the 2nd to last play of a very close super bowl game?

 

[63dot]

still, don't you have to stop the game and have an official review on the 2nd to last play of a very close super bowl game?

I so wanted to see the game end in a hail Mary, which traditionally, and statistically is a bad and desperate move. (sorry fotographica, math was pushed into me hard core in graduate school, but next week I get to meet Dr. Nash at Naval Postgraduate School .. www.nps.edu .. if all goes well (he's old and never well upstairs)

While I trust math to give me general trends, how people react in the big game sometimes differs than regular season behavior. This is why we see a #6 team make it into the Super Bowl, but still not as much as a #1 seed team so the math usually wins there. This is why a #1 ranked defense is favored over a #22 defense and gives the #1 team a 7 point advantage and this looks at math.

And it's numbers that put the likes of Warner, P. Manning, Montana, Marino, Brady, and Young at or near the top in all time passers usually translating into hall of fame status. Do big numbers mean that these people are exceptional leaders under pressure? Of course not. Those are the intangibles but it's the numbers in tackles, completions, interceptions, yardage, field goals, etc. which are the objective factors in determining a hall of fame candidate, not if the dude was a good guy and pumped up a team in the locker room.

In the end the Steeler's defense, while not their best game this season, did their job. They either made Warner fumble or rush a pass causing an incomplete pass on the last play. Those Steelers, like them or not, kept on coming in like Sherman Tanks, and if not a 18/8 Stailesss Steel Curtain, at least they were unrefined Iron showing some rust around that durability. The Cardinals were pink cotton candy on defense all season as some idiot washed their tops and bottoms together too much.

Well now, time to take the math to the March Madness. And yes, math people got the Syracuse thing wrong some years back! I am going to use math to help determine who I think will win, but my picks are based on the numbers, not who I like.

BTW, in football, I wanted the Cardinals to flub up the last third of the season and have the Niners sneak past them and get into the playoffs. Didn't happen though, but it's not as if the Cardinals were 12 game winners this season so the Niners were in the hunt late in the season. I was saddened when the Cardinals made that 8th win, eliminating the Niners, but I still rooted for the Cardinals since they were the underdog.

All my fellow Niners fans were hoping to see the Cardinals crushed into the ground, sacked, held to single digits in the Super Bowl, all in revenge for having the Cardinals snatch the season away from the Niners. If my team does not go, I root for the underdog. As much as I don't root for the Patriots or Colts, if they get into the Super Bowl next year, against let's say Detroit and Detroit has commanding odds over Patriots or the Colts, then I will root for the Patriots or Colts.