The Super Bowl (Contains Only 25% Bitterness)

February 6, 2012 at 2:49 pm | Posted in Sports | Leave a comment
Tags: Eli Manning, Madonna, Super Bowl, Super Bowl Commercials, Tom Brady

I promised Mrs. Cutter that this would be my final Super Bowl related post.  And as a special gift to her, next week I’m going to review an episode of Glee!

But for now…the Super Bowl!

Commercials

I’m reviewing the Super Bowl ads over on The Ad Pundit, starting with the Matthew Broderick Honda ad.

For those of you who haven’t checked that site in a while, I’ve made a point to be more concise with my posts.  People told me that the reviews were too lengthy, so I’ve tried to get to the point quicker. 

I thought last year’s ads were superior to this year’s.  Of course, last year didn’t have the commercial for…

Battleship

It’s always nice to see how out of ideas Hollywood is. They’ve made a movie out of the game Battleship:

Naturally, when you think of Battleship, you think of aliens attacking a city.

I think just about everyone had the same reaction to the trailer: Is this Transformers 4?  If they had simply put TF4 at the end of the trailer, I don’t think anyone would have questioned it.

Wait, the Giants won?

Looking back, I’m not sure how the Giants won this game.  It felt like the Patriots should have won.

The Giants seemed to control the first half, received a decent amount of breaks, and yet they were still losing at halftime.  That seemed like a bad omen, especially considering how Tom Brady came out hot in the second half.

And then, the next thing you know, the Giants are going in for the winning score with a little over a minute left.  How the heck did that happen?

I thought it was amazing that Brandon Jacobs was almost the goat of the game.  Yes, somehow, the guy who scored the winning touchdown, could have been the goat if the Patriots had come back to win.

The Giants: A great team?

I didn’t think I had a rooting interest in the game.  But when it came down to it, I would have rather seen the Patriots win.  This was based on two things:

1. It doesn’t seem right that Eli Manning has two Super Bowl rings.

2. The Giants were not a great team.

Giants fans can – and should – be very happy about their team’s championship.  But please don’t try to pass this off as some sort of great team.

The Giants lost to the Redskins (twice!) as well as to the Vince Young led Eagles.  Great teams don’t do that.  And remember, when the team was sitting at 7-7 there was talk that the coach was going to be fired!  Typically, there isn’t speculation about the job status of coaches on great teams.

This is clearly a case of a team getting hot at the right time and getting some breaks along the way.  Those breaks included:

- Taking advantage of the NFC East being ridiculously weak this season.  Their 9-7 record was the worst ever record for an NFC East champion.

- Playing a callow dome team (the Atlanta Falcons) at home. 

- In the divisional round, the Green Bay Packers played horribly and their receivers uncharacteristically dropped a ton of passes.

- In the NFC Championship Game, the normally surehanded 49ers had two key special teams turnovers.  It also helped that 49er quarterback Alex Smith played like Tim Tebow.  Except unlike Tebow, he continued to suck in the fourth quarter and in overtime.

In two of the last five Giants seasons, they had a horrific collapse at season’s end and missed the playoffs.  In two others, they barely qualified for the playoffs and went on to win the Super Bowl.

I can’t explain this.  Can anyone?

I’m probably not alone in thinking “Why the hell can’t my team be the one to go on a miracle run like this?”  Why do the Giants seem to have the “horseshoe up the @$$” market covered?

And not only did the Giants win, but I didn’t get to see either the Eli Manning face or the Tom Coughlin face!  And after scoring his touchdown, Victor Cruz didn’t make any Chappelle’s Show references.  Total fail.

OK, I’m done being bitter.  Probably.

Super Bowl Bingo

Our friends, the Perezburys were kind enough to invite us over - even with a child.  One clever item they came up with was a Super Bowl Bingo game.  Bingo cards were created, with each square containing something that might be seen or mentioned on the TV broadcast.

Items included: Toyota, Manningham TD, Sack by Patriots, Touchdown Dance, or Justin Bieber.  If you saw that item on-screen, you got to mark off the square.

Let me tell you, because of the game, people were really excited about a 31 yard punt return.  And there was near ecstasy when they showed the Budweiser Clydesdales.

Sadly, Mrs. Cutter and I didn’t win before we had to take the Cutlet home at halftime.

Madonna

Speaking of halftime, the reaction to the Madonna show seems to be split among gender lines.  Women seemed to really enjoy it, while men thought it was awful.

I missed most of it.  I was just confused what Cee-Lo Green was doing up there.  Was he part of the act, or did he just decide to wander up on stage, and nobody realized that he shouldn’t have been there?

Sadly, I missed seeing M.I.A. flick off the crowd.

Food

Since Mrs. Cutter and I stayed at home for the big game last year, I missed the gorging process that usually comes with parties. 

I made up for it last night as I consumed a lot of everything, including Mrs. Cutter’s “Better than Sex” peanut butter brownies.  Seriously, those things are good.  They might take a month off your life expectancy, but it is definitely worth it.

Halftime Adjustments

After watching Andy Reid coach the Eagles for the past 12 years, I sometimes forget how other football teams function. 

For instance, it always surprises me when teams make adjustments as halftime and counter what their opponents are doing.  In theory, Andy Reid might have done this at some point, but there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of it actually happening.

When the announcers talked about how the Giants had changed their defensive game plan in the second half, my reaction was “Really?  They can do that?”

If the Eagles don’t either win the Super Bowl or fire Reid after next season, I think I might really have to stop watching the sport.

Tom Brady

Brady is still going to be regarded as one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, but this game probably didn’t help his legacy.

On the Patriots first series, they were backed up near their goal line.  Due to a safety being an item on our Bingo cards, people got excited about the possibility of him being sacked in his own end zone. 

I didn’t think it would happen.  In fact, I said, “Brady has too much pocket presence to get sacked there.  He’ll throw the ball away.”

Sure enough, on the next play Brady did indeed throw the ball away.  Unfortunately, he threw it nowhere near a receiver and got called for intentional grounding, resulting in a safety.  It seemed like he should have had enough time to at least get it in the vicinity of a receiver.

Despite that early hiccup, in the middle of the game, Brady looked like he was well on his way to another MVP award.  He couldn’t seem to miss, and even set a Super Bowl record for consecutive completions.

Then, in the fourth quarter, the Patriots offense couldn’t seem to get anything going, allowing the Giants to take the lead. 

Given the ball with a minute left, and needing a touchdown to win, this seemed like a perfect spot for the “great Tom Brady” to come through and win the game  While his receivers certainly didn’t help him, and you can’t really blame him for the Hail Mary failing, Brady simply didn’t get the job done.

Are we being too hard on him for failing there?  Perhaps.  But then again, this is a guy in the debate for greatest QB of all time.  Shouldn’t we expect greatness there?

The great reset

While I had listed some reasons to be excited about the Super Bowl, I excluded what is perhaps the greatest reason of all: As of today, everyone is undefeated and tied for first place!

I think this commercial from 2005 summed it up:

That’s right, the offseason has officially begun.  We can all be optimistic that even though this season didn’t go our team’s way, next year will surely be different!  Right?  Right?

Ah, hope.  It will be the downfall of us all.