After living in St Louis during the Greatest Show on Turf era and experiencing how much joy that brought the city after the pain of the Cardinals moving to Arizona, I now hate the Rams (more specifically Kroenke). That whole period was an enormous slap in the face to the fans who had never done anything by support the team they inherited, even when it didnt deserve it. It was a disgrace the NFL allowed it and their move back to LA was so poisonous that I’d be very surprised if the NFL was viable again in the city in my lifetime.
Yet, watching Stafford move them down the pitch like that last night I celebrated along with him when he got that last second snap off to down the ball and bring on his FG team.
I’m moving to NYC in the summer. My missus is from Buffalo, but I spent a year there when we first met, and I’m not in a rush to return. A $2,500 p/m roach infested shoebox in a city with soaring crime rates is more my style.
Anyway, I thought I’d make an effort to sit through the Bills vs Chiefs game, probably the first time I’ve ever attempted such a daring feat, and I enjoyed it to be fair (constant onslaught of adverts aside).
I think I grasped the basic rules of the game, and though I’m entirely oblivious to the tactical side, the idea a team can still grapple away a win/overtime with seconds remaining on the clock is quite exciting.
The “golden goal” overtime seems a little shite, though. I thought it was strange the stadium erupted when the Chiefs won the coin toss, as I assumed they’d play out the 10 minutes. At the least, it would seem more balanced if the teams had one attack each.
Always trying to watch as many playoff games as possible but could never see myself watching games in the regular season. 3 to 4 hours a game - I have better stuff to do.
Looking forward to see the remaining games and especially the Super Bowl
The key to watching American football is to do something else at the same time. Within that 3 hours, there are only 60 minutes of managed clock time. Within that 60 minutes, the vast majority is the play clock counting down, up to 40 seconds per play. The average play lasts about 5 seconds. In most games, the quarterback will have spent more time trying to use his voice to draw the defence offside than the ball will be in play for his team’s offence. The total amount of football that is played in an NFL game is about 12 minutes.
I think at this point the NFL is committed to keeping their version of the rule the same way a teenager is only on twitter to troll people and get hate retweets.
Everyone knows its a terrible rule. Every year when someone gets bounced out of the playoffs in this fashion there is uproar over it with barely ever a reasonable counter argument made as to why the NFL have got it right. And every year we go into the next season with the exact same approach to resolving a tie. At this point the belligerence is almost impressive.
So Brady is chucking in the towel. Hard to argue against him being the best to ever do it. 22 year career, 20 years playing, 10 Superbowls, 7 rings. A fair legacy to leave that.
I think there is a really good argument that the way the rules have changed during his time in the league, both to improve safety and make it a supposedly more entertaining spectacle (the powers that be think passing is more entertaining than running) have skewed the game towards the QB more than used to the be the case, making winning a simpler formula to solve that is weight incredibly heavily towards simply having the best QB.
It’s still incredibly praise worthy that even under modified conditions he could still be in the conversation of best QB in the league into his 40s, but what is required for that is different these days, and the result is you cannot apply a 1-1 comparison against the likes of Montana in terms of titles won.
I had actually forgotten about that 1990 win, but remembered 1988 vividly. Weirdo that I am, I was a Tim Krumrie fan, I really liked how he played as a somewhat undersized nose tackle, and then there was that awful injury.
Mahomes looked a little shite second half, didn’t he? Strange to see him crumble after the Bills game/all the hype from the commentators.
Fun game, though. The Bengals #9 - Burrow, is it? - looked impressive, and the young kicker has nerves of steel. I didn’t really have a preference going in, but glad to see the Chiefs didn’t go through on another first drive in overtime.
