Championship Sunday Reflections

Comments and thoughts from yesterday's games.....

• In this space yesterday, I predicted victories for the Patriots and Eagles, so, I BELIEVE I HAD THAT!
• True, I did predict that the Pats would "crush" the Jaguars.  That didn't happen, but, somehow, the manner in which New England did win had to be far more soul crushing to the Jags and their supporters than a 30 point blow out would have been.
• When Jacksonville kicked a field goal to go up 20-10 early in the fourth quarter, I posted the following on Facebook (I really did; you can look it up): Jax up by 10, 14:52 to play. I’m STILL saying New England wins this.
• Say it with me....I believe I had that.  
• Actually, and I didn't post this, when NE scored at the end of the first half to cut the Jags lead to 14-10, I figured that Brady and Co. were going to do it again, which is why I made that post at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
• For some perverse reason, I found myself rooting for New England in that game.  Maybe it was because of the way Jacksonville handed it to the Steelers last week, or maybe it was because it seemed that the Jags were overly chesty early in in the game, or maybe it's because you just have to admire sustained greatness over time, which is what the Belichick-Brady Patriots are, or maybe because it's because my recently discovered cousin and friend Jan Spencer lives in Maine and roots for them.  That said, I still can't stand the constant shots of Bob Kraft and his blue shirts-with-white-collars in the owner's box.
• As bad as it was seeing the Steelers get beat by Jacksonville last week - and that was really bad - would it have been worse to see them go to Foxboro yesterday and lose to New England yet again (which you know would have been the result)?  That's your existential question for the day.
• By the time the Eagles-Vikings game came on at 6:40 PM, I was pretty well spent, and the Eagles took all of the excitement out of that one fairly quickly.  In fact, I was amazed at the relative ease in which the Vikings were dispatched in that one.  I even switched to the SAG Awards in the fourth quarter.
• The hand-wringing and woe-is-us talk is already starting among Steelers fans about how the Patriots may now equal the Steelers' total of six Super Bowl Championships.  Oh, the humanity!  If something like that is really that important to you, I suppose I should envy you, because you just must not have any real problems in your life.

I will end on a serious note.  Rob Gronkowski left the game in the second quarter after being concussed after taking an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit from a Jacksonville defensive back.  New England lost perhaps the best position player in the NFL for the rest of the game, and, who knows, maybe for the Super Bowl in two weeks.  Jacksonville lost 15 yards.  We have seen these kinds of hits take place week after week in NFL games.  If the NFL is serious, really serious, about player safety and trying to prevent concussions as much as possible, a 15 yard wrist slap is not enough.  The player delivering the illegal hit needs to be ejected from the game immediately.  No questions asked.  Apologists will say "but not all of those hits are deliberate", and that is no doubt true, but it shouldn't matter.  The player making the hit needs to be kicked out of the game. That is, if the NFL really means what it says about player safety.