illinialum

Greetings from Chennai (Madras), India to all FSMers!!
I watched SB on a local sports netwrok, Ten Sports. Looks like they signed with the Fox B-team. The game was called by Dick Stockton and Sterling Sharpe, your Fox B-team announcers. I am not even sure if the video feeds were the same as the original broadcast and no commercials. So I missed out on a lot but I at least got to catch the live action at 5 AM!

They say Pats have defied the NFL’s parity mission. Pats may be unbeaten but I wasn’t impressed by the way they played in the AFC championship. They would have been beaten by a healthy Charger team. Rivers played a decent game in spite of his gimpy legs and knees. I have said this before and I say it again. It would take patience, preparation and discipline to beat the Pats. Rivers showed courage but not patience. He forced a few throws in that windy field. Favre also didn’t (and never has) show patience, forced long throws in a turbulent filed and you saw the result.

I was exstatic when the Skins took the lead in early in early 4th quarter but couldn’t sustain it. Joe Gibbs is supposed to be a well disciplined coach but i was very disappointed in some of the penalties committed by the return team on at least a couple of occasions that pinned them back. The worst decision by Todd Collins was to loft a long pass with over 5 minutes left. Given the windy conditions that ball never had a chance of being caught by a receiver. It was intercepted and returned for a TD! Shouldn’t Gibbs and OC Saunders have told him not to go deep under the conditions?

So far the Big Ten has not done well in the bowl games, mixed results. Ya, Michigan, Purdue and Penn State won but not very dominantly. My own alma mater Illinois lost, but then no one expected them to do well against the Trojans.
I feel part of the poor showing could be attributed to the long lay over for the Big Ten teams. They finish their regular season by early November, and thus no game experience for almost two months while the other conferences go till T’giving or later.

We all know Mike Nolan is a handsome guy and the the way he dresses in a slick (Reebok) suit, almost a model material for the cover page of GQ. But does he have GQ on the football field? What I mean by by GQ is “Game (Management) Quotient” like IQ. If one (football statistician) were to come up with a formula for a head coach’s rating like QB rating, Mike Nolan would probably be in the bottom. Some of the parameters in such a rating would be decisions to go for 4th down conversion vs. FG attempt or punt, 2 minute clock management, challenge flags, declining or accepting penalties, etc.

I wish the Eagles coaches had listened to John Madden in the NBC booth. In the final minutes he kept saying that the Eagle sneed to slow it down as there was still plenty of time left on the clock (over 5 minutes). Also, they need to take what the Pats give them, namely on the inside and short. Instead the Eagles became impatient, wanted to go for the long bomb (that was intercepted in the endzone).