<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (blackadder)</div><div class='quotemain'>I'l be honest if the Dolphins or Colts aren't in contention then I won't bandwagon hop. Rather, I root for parity if for no other reason than variety. Think back 10-12 years ago w/ all these dynasties... Super Bowls were as exciting, interesting, and entertaining as Chris Berman's annual wagon circling, gold digging joke of a predicition.</div> You mean all those Buffalo Bills predictions?
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Pats_Fan420)</div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MysteryMan)</div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Pats_Fan420)</div><div class='quotemain'> This coming from a Giants fan of all people. Yeah, the Giants have great attitudes all around. Shockey is a really classy guy, if constantly running one's mouth means they are classy.</div> Hmm seems like someones changing the subject. In no way did i say the Giants have class but it seems like you just wanted to get away from the Pats disrespect.</div> Hypocrisy irritates me and you have ZERO room to talk. Your head coach is an ass and several of your players are too. What I don't get is that the Pats do this ONE time and the Giants act out way more often than that and we're the bad guys. LMFAO</div> You could say that the giants have no respect and i'll agree. In no way am i a hypocrite. I think youre just twisting your words around. The Giants never taunted any other player after the other team lost. ( even though they didnt have the oppurtunity too much this year)
So if a team had beaten the Giants in NY & started mocking Strahan's ballin' dance you'd have a serious problem with that?
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bakes781)</div><div class='quotemain'>So if a team had beaten the Giants in NY & started mocking Strahan's ballin' dance you'd have a serious problem with that?</div> Strahan stole that dance from Jacksonville, yet we never hear anything about it. Cowboy71 has it right in that fans don't like success unless it is happening to them.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Pats_Fan420)</div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bakes781)</div><div class='quotemain'>So if a team had beaten the Giants in NY & started mocking Strahan's ballin' dance you'd have a serious problem with that?</div> Strahan stole that dance from Jacksonville, yet we never hear anything about it. Cowboy71 has it right in that fans don't like success unless it is happening to them.</div> Keep repeating this and someday you might actually believe it. (The rest of us won't, but you might.)
I may not be a big fan of Bill Belichick as an individual for a lot of reasons, but one of them is not how he has instructed his players to react on the field. Ninety-nine times out of 100, the Patriots will be very old-school about their celebrations, with a bare minimum of taunting or the in-your-face stuff that seems to be prevalent in the rest of the NFL these days. That being said, they're not angels. Not at all. I accept that. It's a football game and boys will be boys - especially when they've flown 3,000 miles to play a game that practically no one expected them to win, and they've come from eight points down in the last half of the fourth quarter to win the game. However, I can guarantee you that if Tomlinson became a free agent tomorrow, and that "classless" Bill Belichick called him and offered him a boatload of money and a chance to play for a Super Bowl championship with the Patriots, there would be a press conference in Foxboro the next day. "I'm just happy to be here with such a class organization," Tomlinson would say. "I have all the respect in the world for the Kraft family and for Coach Belichick, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to bring another championship to the great fans of New England." You bet he would, regardless of what he's saying now. This whole concept of "class" in the National Football League is puzzling me, anyway. Is it "class" for a player to do a sack dance over a fallen competitor with each and every sack? The way I was raised in sports, and most of my friends were as well, was that you did your job, got up and went on to the next play without taunting or embarrassing your fallen opponent. You've succeeded on this play, yes, but there are at least 70 more opportunities to succeed or fail for each player on the field in every game, and one play often doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the big picture of the entire game. But the celebrations continue, and they get wilder and more emphatic with each passing day. It really galls me to see a defensive player make a tackle of a running back who's just completed a 6-yard gain up the middle, and then suddenly jump up and cavort about as if the stop just won the Super Bowl. Good heavens, man, you just gave up six full yards! That's not worthy of a celebration, that's worthy of self-chastising for letting the opposition make such an inroad into your territory! These days, however, it's all about style. So if the Patriots neutralize the steroid-enhanced Merriman and then do his signature sack dance after they got the job done, they're bad guys - just like when Mike Vrabel, a linebacker by trade and a part-time tight end by situation, caught a TD pass in Super Bowl XXXIX and then performed Terrell Owens' "Eagle Wave" in celebration of the moment. To be honest? The linebacker doing the dance that Owens couldn't was just plain funny. I'm seriously disappointed in LT in this instance - or more accurately, the Chargers' media relations staff, which should have given their star running back the bum's rush out of the interview room before he contracted a full-blown case of hoof-in-mouth disease. If Tomlinson had seen the situation more clearly before opening his mouth, and assessed the meaning of teammates that performed head-butts after the whistle and got 15-yard penalties as a result, or if he looked more carefully at a litany of stupid plays and brain-dead mental lapses (hello, Marlon McCree) that factored into the outcome of the game, perhaps he would have been more appropriately offering a heartfelt apology to the fans of San Diego for his team's failure to perform with dignity and poise in its most important game of the year. Tomlinson is a class act. He could play on my team any day of the year. Truthfully, the Patriots would win six more Lombardi Trophies if he was wearing their colors. But on Sunday, he was a loser - literally and figuratively.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (DolfanDale)</div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Pats_Fan420)</div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bakes781)</div><div class='quotemain'>So if a team had beaten the Giants in NY & started mocking Strahan's ballin' dance you'd have a serious problem with that?</div> Strahan stole that dance from Jacksonville, yet we never hear anything about it. Cowboy71 has it right in that fans don't like success unless it is happening to them.</div> Keep repeating this and someday you might actually believe it. (The rest of us won't, but you might.)</div> lol i agree with DalfonDale Yes when the Bears did mock strahan's ballin dance i did get mad. Its a show of disrespect in my opinion
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Pats_Fan420)</div><div class='quotemain'>I may not be a big fan of Bill Belichick as an individual for a lot of reasons, but one of them is not how he has instructed his players to react on the field. Ninety-nine times out of 100, the Patriots will be very old-school about their celebrations, with a bare minimum of taunting or the in-your-face stuff that seems to be prevalent in the rest of the NFL these days. That being said, they're not angels. Not at all. I accept that. It's a football game and boys will be boys - especially when they've flown 3,000 miles to play a game that practically no one expected them to win, and they've come from eight points down in the last half of the fourth quarter to win the game. However, I can guarantee you that if Tomlinson became a free agent tomorrow, and that "classless" Bill Belichick called him and offered him a boatload of money and a chance to play for a Super Bowl championship with the Patriots, there would be a press conference in Foxboro the next day. "I'm just happy to be here with such a class organization," Tomlinson would say. "I have all the respect in the world for the Kraft family and for Coach Belichick, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to bring another championship to the great fans of New England." You bet he would, regardless of what he's saying now. This whole concept of "class" in the National Football League is puzzling me, anyway. Is it "class" for a player to do a sack dance over a fallen competitor with each and every sack? The way I was raised in sports, and most of my friends were as well, was that you did your job, got up and went on to the next play without taunting or embarrassing your fallen opponent. You've succeeded on this play, yes, but there are at least 70 more opportunities to succeed or fail for each player on the field in every game, and one play often doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the big picture of the entire game. But the celebrations continue, and they get wilder and more emphatic with each passing day. It really galls me to see a defensive player make a tackle of a running back who's just completed a 6-yard gain up the middle, and then suddenly jump up and cavort about as if the stop just won the Super Bowl. Good heavens, man, you just gave up six full yards! That's not worthy of a celebration, that's worthy of self-chastising for letting the opposition make such an inroad into your territory! These days, however, it's all about style. So if the Patriots neutralize the steroid-enhanced Merriman and then do his signature sack dance after they got the job done, they're bad guys - just like when Mike Vrabel, a linebacker by trade and a part-time tight end by situation, caught a TD pass in Super Bowl XXXIX and then performed Terrell Owens' "Eagle Wave" in celebration of the moment. To be honest? The linebacker doing the dance that Owens couldn't was just plain funny. I'm seriously disappointed in LT in this instance - or more accurately, the Chargers' media relations staff, which should have given their star running back the bum's rush out of the interview room before he contracted a full-blown case of hoof-in-mouth disease. If Tomlinson had seen the situation more clearly before opening his mouth, and assessed the meaning of teammates that performed head-butts after the whistle and got 15-yard penalties as a result, or if he looked more carefully at a litany of stupid plays and brain-dead mental lapses (hello, Marlon McCree) that factored into the outcome of the game, perhaps he would have been more appropriately offering a heartfelt apology to the fans of San Diego for his team's failure to perform with dignity and poise in its most important game of the year. Tomlinson is a class act. He could play on my team any day of the year. Truthfully, the Patriots would win six more Lombardi Trophies if he was wearing their colors. But on Sunday, he was a loser - literally and figuratively.</div> I agree with you. I also was raised to just get ready for the next play after a catch or something. I think the most ridiculous thing is when on the kick return a player makes a tackle on the 30 and starts talking crap to the player he just hit. Usually the hit is just a normal tackle and they make it seem like they just knocked out the guy.
It's not that they did his dance that pissed me off, its that they went to the middle of the field AFTER the game and did it. No class by those who did it, the Patriots have been here before they more than anyone should know how to act.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (FLORIDA PACKER)</div><div class='quotemain'>It's not that they did his dance that pissed me off, its that they went to the middle of the field AFTER the game and did it. No class by those who did it, the Patriots have been here before they more than anyone should know how to act.</div> Its like when TO went in the middle of the sdtar in Dallas. Werent you mad when you saw that?
Anyway back to the game at hand. And it appears Nick Harper has provided the Pats with material to use for motivation already... <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>"He will throw you some," Colts cornerback Nick Harper said. "No quarterback is perfect. If you have great coverage, sometimes he tends to throw the ball into coverage. I guess he feels like all his receivers are better than the defensive backs. He will throw the ball into coverage. We watched the New England game. He threw a lot of balls to the opposing team, but they didn't catch them."</div> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/sports/f...r=1&oref=slogin
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bakes781)</div><div class='quotemain'>Anyway back to the game at hand. And it appears Nick Harper has provided the Pats with material to use for motivation already... <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>"He will throw you some," Colts cornerback Nick Harper said. "No quarterback is perfect. If you have great coverage, sometimes he tends to throw the ball into coverage. I guess he feels like all his receivers are better than the defensive backs. He will throw the ball into coverage. We watched the New England game. He threw a lot of balls to the opposing team, but they didn't catch them."</div> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/sports/f...r=1&oref=slogin</div> And the Pats will celebrate right after the final whistle by having a little hoedown, right?
You are Peyton Manning and you are about to play the biggest game of your life, the validation game. For it no longer matters how many yards you throw for, or how many commercials you do, or how many games your team wins in the regular season. No longer matters that you long have been the league?s cover boy, the centerpiece in the family that?s become NFL royalty. No longer matters that you are 6-foot-4, 230 pounds and have a laser-rocket arm, like it says in the TV commercial. All that matters is if you beat the Patriots on Sunday. If you want to go down in NFL history as one of the all-time greats, it no longer matters what you do against the Cardinals in a game in October, or any other regular-season game, for that matter. It only matters what you do in the playoffs. It only matters what you do when the stakes are at their highest. And right now it only matters what you do against the Patriots on Sunday. Call it your validation game. You are Peyton Manning and they have become your Great White Whale, the one thing that stands in the way, as though you?ve become a football Ahab, forever in search. And it doesn?t matter that you have beaten them the last two games you have played them, in Gillette Stadium, no less. Until you do it in a playoff game it doesn?t count, for the perception lingers that in a playoff game against the Pats, in a game you have to win, you simply have not been able to. Your fault? Your team?s fault? A combination of both? That no longer matters, either. You are Peyton Manning and the Colts are your show, fair or not. That comes with the territory, right there with the money and the celebrity, the commercials and the status that you are arguably the quarterback of your generation, in the express lane to Canton. And there are no excuses this time. No Gillette Stadium, your own personal house of horrors. No cold. No wind. None of all those potential ills that always seemed to have you out of sync in past playoff games against the Patriots. Remember those? Remember the last playoff game against the Pats? It was two years ago, almost to the day. The year before, you had thrown four interceptions in a playoff loss to the Pats in Gillette, and this was going to be your redemption. So what did you do? You seemed to spend most of the game like a petulant child who has been told he can?t go to the mall. Your hands were in your pocket, your shoulders were hunched over, your face grimaced, as though it was simply too cold, too uncomfortable. That was the day when you almost wore your frustration, as though none of this was supposed to be happening. The cold. The Pats? defense. Bill Belichick in your head. None of it. This was someone coming off back-to-back MVPs, the all-time leader in passes thrown in a season? This was the best quarterback in football? You didn?t seem like it. Instead, you seemed like someone who wanted to play inside a velvet glove. Not for you the Pats in your face, and Belichick in your head. Not for you, the frozen tundra of Foxboro. Not for you, the unrelenting pressure of a playoff game. Not that night, anyway. But you are Peyton Manning and Sunday you get another chance, right there in the familiar confines of the RCA Dome ? no cold, no wind. No distractions. Another chance to wipe away the old script and write a new one. Another chance for redemption. Another chance for validation. Because, truth be told, you?re running out of chances. You are in your 30s now, still in the prime of your career, but how many more chances are you realistically going to get, how many more times are you going to be one game away from the Super Bowl? For there are no guarantees in this game. Not even for quarterbacks who are 6-foot-4, 230 pounds, with a laser-rocket arm. And that?s the other thing about the Patriots and this game on Sunday, the perception that Tom Brady is everything you are not. That it?s Brady who takes his team down the field in the closing minutes, Brady who finds a way to win the big games, Brady who already has three Super Bowl victories, Brady who has become all about winning while you?ve become all about stats, Brady who always seems able to will his team to victory. The perception that Brady has become what you were supposed to be, this sixth-round draft pick who has become Joe Montana to your Dan Marino, the one whose career will be remembered in ways yours will not be, regardless of all the stats and all the commercials. Because we remember titles., not stats. Stats invariably end up like dust in the wind. For you are Peyton Manning and Brady is what stands between you and the Super Bowl, a chance for the NFL immortality you once seemed so destined for. Brady and the Pats. Your own Great White Whale.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (blackadder)</div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bakes781)</div><div class='quotemain'>Anyway back to the game at hand. And it appears Nick Harper has provided the Pats with material to use for motivation already... <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>"He will throw you some," Colts cornerback Nick Harper said. "No quarterback is perfect. If you have great coverage, sometimes he tends to throw the ball into coverage. I guess he feels like all his receivers are better than the defensive backs. He will throw the ball into coverage. We watched the New England game. He threw a lot of balls to the opposing team, but they didn't catch them."</div> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/sports/f...r=1&oref=slogin</div> And the Pats will celebrate right after the final whistle by having a little hoedown, right?</div> Yup, knowing that they are in your head and you will be bothered by it.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (blackadder)</div><div class='quotemain'>And the Pats will celebrate right after the final whistle by having a little hoedown, right?</div> It really doesnt matter how the pats react. I'm sure you'll find a way to find it offensive/arrogant.
OK, away from all the "You just hate us 'cause we're good" talk...my honest to goodness prediction. I predict that....ready.....Pats will win - and Vinateri will win it for them again by missing a crucial field goal. You can take that to the bank. I called the 98 Gary Anderson miss...
That would be crazy. Then again, he doesn't have the leg that Gostkowski does so maybe that is the reason the Pats let him flee. I know that 3 points is 3 points but Vinatieri barely had that one from 51 against the Ravens. Who knows with the Pats? Up means down and down means up over there, so it seems.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (vikingfan)</div><div class='quotemain'>OK, away from all the "You just hate us 'cause we're good" talk...my honest to goodness prediction. I predict that....ready.....Pats will win - and Vinateri will win it for them again by missing a crucial field goal. You can take that to the bank. I called the 98 Gary Anderson miss...</div> That would make for excellent drama, but I really hope it doesn't come down to that. I know Adam missed 2 FGs in the last game at Gillete, but to bank on him missing at the dome is asking for a miracle.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bakes781)</div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (blackadder)</div><div class='quotemain'>And the Pats will celebrate right after the final whistle by having a little hoedown, right?</div> It really doesnt matter how the pats react. I'm sure you'll find a way to find it offensive/arrogant.</div> Even if it is offensive and arrogant.
