Lost

Things to consider while crawling out of the wreckage and trying to figure out what happened:

*This is going to have to be the SparkNotes version of Knee Jerk Reactions. Partly due to the late finish, but also because while I’m staring at the same pages of notes I usually have, they’re all pretty much worthless now. Asking a Patriots fan to remember anything besides the 4th & 2 play is like the yearbook committee going up to Carrie at the end of the prom while she’s covered in pig blood and asking her to share her favorite memories of senior year.

For the record, this was the sequence for me:

-2:23, 1st & 10. Sweaty palms, but OK.

-Time out. Increased heart rate, but glad they’re being cautious.

-Run by Kevin Faulk for no gain, Indy timeout. High-pitched whine in my ears.

-2:18, 2nd & 10. Pass to Wes Welker for 8. Dizziness. Disorientation.

-Indy timeout. Pupils dilating.

-2:11. Incomplete. Kenny Powers almost has a pick-6. Numbness in left shoulder. It feels like Sebastian Vollmer is sitting on my chest.

-New England time out. Stroke like symptoms.

-2:08. 4th & 2. Complete to Faulk for 1.9999 yards. I’m stumbling around now like Vito Corelone in the garden with his grandson.

-We’re seconds away from the 2 minute warning so it’s not an automatic measurement. Colts ball. I’m now hovering above my body and praying for the sweet release of death.

- Beyond that, my notes are like they’re from a game I can’t remember watching.

*This game will always be remembered for the decision to go for it instead of punt. It was one of the all time great regular season games, but the rest of it will all be forgotten save that one call. Randy Moss’ incomparable plays, Faulk’s Hobbit-like heroics, even Faith Hill’s MILFtastic thigh high hooker boots, have already faded into what Mike Tyson called “bolivian.”

*And after a night of staring at the ceiling going over it in my head, I have to say that I’m OK with it. I woke up the morning after the 2003 ALCS wanting Grady Little’s head on a stake in front of the Fenway dugout as a warning to all future Sox managers not to make the same mistake, but I agree with His Hoodedness on this one. It took the balls of a brass monkey to be sure. But how many times have we watched him clang his metal testicles together, the move pay off, and we’re all laughing about it months later when we’re taking the shrink wrap off the Super Bowl DVD?

*The best QB in football throwing to the best 3rd back in football and coming up short is the equivalent of Paul Pierce missing an open buzzer beater or Mariano Rivera giving up a walk off with his slider. At least you got beat with your best.

*I might not be rational right now, but that doesn’t mean I can’t rationalize.

*For the first 3 1/2 quarters, I seriously thought Peyton Manning was returning us to those days when the world made sense. When you could count on an October collapse by ARod and Belichick putting safeties where Peyton didn’t expect to find them and there was a certain order to the universe. See, this is why I last year I voted for Hope but wanted no part of Change.

*And what is it about losing to a Manning brother that just seems to make their unsufferable gooberishness increase exponentially and their freakishly large foreheads swell to Timmah!-like proportions? God, I feel miserable today.

*My buddy Cliffy called before the Colts even snapped the ball, and it was the exact same phone conversation as when he called during the Grady Little game. The exact same. He was asking what the hell we just saw and I was speechless. Literally, like I was speaking in tongues. I had no insight. Nothing to add. I’m pretty sure I just said “Meep.”

*I just can’t believe Melvin Bullitt came up on Faulk that quick and stopped him short. It’s the first time in his career Faulk wasn’t faster than a speeding Bullitt.

*Maybe I’m just in a bad mood, but I don’t need to lectured about my carbon emissions by a network that spent years delighted with itself because it used a massive Greyhound bus to cart one old fart around the country. Does anyone remember the Madden Prius? Exactly.

*As badly as things ended, is it wrong that I feel as good as I do about the Pats secondary? I mean, Manning wasn’t putting the ball into tight windows, he was putting in through port holes. It was the tightest press coverage and man under defense we’ve seen since the Law, Samuel, Harrison, Wilson unit of 03-04. OK, the Colts ultimately beat the coverage, but at least this time it was the Field Turf catching fire, not Ellis Hobbs.

*I can’t even blame Jonathan Wilhite for the game winner. Earlier on Reggie Wayne set him up with a fade route, and on the TD ran a quick slant. Even with that, Wilhite was there, it was just a perfect route by Wayne. He averages like 5.5 Impossible Catches a game, and the Pats DBs held him to about 3. So you take your moral victories where you can find them.

*Every week the Pats put another guy on the field who should be wearing a “Hello My Name Is” sticker on his shirt. And this week’s was Isaiah Stanback. Officially he had two catches for 17 yards. Unofficially, he put the Pats in sole possession of first place in the NFL’s dredlocks rankings.

*One thing that got overlooked in all the talk about Nick Kaczur vs. Robert Mathis and SeaBass against Dwight Freeney is how well the interior line played. Mankins, Koppen and Neal threw up a deflector shield and there wasn’t one play where Brady didn’t have a pocket to step up into.

*Lost in all the spirit crushing disappointment is that I never got to live out the dream of seeing Pierre Garcon tackled by Pierre Woods.

*The Pats D threw a lot of different fronts at the Colts. They came out in a 4-3 with Derrick Burgess and Gary Guyton at OLB. Later they switched to a lot of 3-4s including one look they ran several times where Mike Wright would be covering the center and Wilfork and Myron Pryor would be to his left. But the best moments were the rare times they had Wilfork lined up on Jeff Saturday. It was like watching one of those Animal Planet shows where they have a computer animated bear fighting a pixelated bull or something. Just an epic clash, but it happened too infrequently for my liking.

*Whatever the Pats defense did, at least they kept Manning’s ridiculous, over-the-top semaphore routine to a minimum. I mean, he still did a lot of that attention-drawing nonsense, but at least he kept it down to just below the level of a North Korean traffic cop.

*Plus I think he knows the Pats aren’t taking the cheese on all his audibles. By the end of the game he just started calling out “Sprint! American! Express! Oreos! Gatorade! Under Armor!…” Anything to make a buck, that bastard.

  • *The other “Rivalries of the Decade”:
  • 60s: Green Bay vs. Dallas
  • 70s: Pittsburgh vs. Oakland
  • 80s: San Fran vs. Dallas
  • 90s: LA vs OJ

*By the way, Wright has quietly become the undersized, over achieving white guy nose tackle we always hoped Dan Klecko would be.

*But Adalius Thomas did nothing. The difference between his pass rush and Tully Banta Cain’s is startling. I’d watch him off the snap and he’d be so passive I thought he was dropping into zone coverage or something, but he’d be one of four rushers. That’s just his style of play now. Soft and passionless. He’s become JDlius Thomas.

*This loss is so bad even the purple leather multi-zippered jacket that Andrea Kramer bought off of Pat Benatar couldn’t cheer me up.

*And why couldn’t we see more of Hank Baskett? There’s nothing like seeing a guy who married Hef’s sloppy seconds to put a smile on your face.

*This one is going to sting for a while. Quoting Mike McDermott in “Rounders” quoting Jack King from “Confessions of a Winning Poker Player,” “Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.”

*Rereading this just now, I realized it’s kind of dark and I apologize. Next week I promise to lighten it up. The Jets couldn’t be coming to town at a better time.