Some Post-Super Bowl Observations

What a game! ~ What a game! ~ What a game!

SABR friends and colleagues Bill Gilbert and Mark Wernick both were kind enough to e-mail some of their own brief observations last night and this morning about Super Bowl 51 at NRG Stadium in Houston. on Sunday, February 5, 2017.

Bill Gilbert
Rogers Hornsby Chapter
SABR
Pecan Park Eagle Contributor

(1) Bill Gilbert wrote Sunday Evening:

“It appeared that Houston did itself proud with Super Bowl 51. Everything I heard announcers say about Houston was positive. The game was possibly the best Super Bowl ever.

“It’s interesting that all three major professional sports featured big come from behind wins this season. I suspect that this won’t happen again for quite a while.”

My Personal and Pecan Park Eagle Response to Bill Gilbert:

Bill –

I couldn’t agree more. It was the greatest comeback deficit rally in Super Bowl history – and also the first overtime game in any Super Bowl.

Houston did a great job, people had a great time, and even the weather cooperated. The city deserves all the praise it earned from this effort.

SB51 will also be remembered – in pain and sorrow – as the event that gave even more people the courage and right to claim that Tom Brady, indeed, is the greatest QB in NFL history. With this incredible game under his belt at age 39 – and as the new holder of the most SB wins for a QB at 5, who else really compares? Count me in among Brady’s believers.

Another thought that floated through my head after tonight. Wonder how many baseball/football fans will now begin to couple the Cubs’ 7-game World Series win and tonight’s New England win as the two greatest versions of each event in the eyes of some beholders. They certainly are for me. In fact, it’s impossible tonight for me to see how the next offerings of each could be more dramatically important than these two have been to each of their sports.

Here are some other observations that made me smile:

1) About 20 minutes prior to the game, one of the referees jogged all the way across the field to pat Tom Brady on the back.

2) After the game on Channel 2, Chronicle writer John McClain said that “once Tom Brady got over playing like Brock Osweiler, the Patriots were back in the hunt.

3) At the trophy presentation, Pats Owner Robert Kraft, Coach Bill Belichick, and QB Tom Brady all gave the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell the same blank stare as they accepted his handshakes of congratulations. Wonder if their hands felt as cold as their stares? Kraft even made a point of grabbing the mike to thank the fans, saying something like “as all of you know, we’ve been through a whole lot this past year. I don’t have to mention what it was, but it hasn’t been easy, but thanks to all of you, it’s been a whole easier.” Kraft knew that the NFL chief was standing behind him as he talked, of course.

4) Football will never replace baseball for 1st place in my heart, but it is an interesting contrast by virtue of the way football has to be spatially played because the wear and tear of violence from a single game. In football, every championship game is a “there’s no tomorrow” contest. For baseball’s World Series to have that special moment, as we did this past year, two teams have to play even in the W/L column before our Game 7 can appear to give us that same weight in a single game.

Mark Wernick
Larry Dierker Chapter
SABR
Pecan Park Eagle Contributor

(2) Mark Wernick wrote Monday Morning:

“The two most fearless people in the stadium tonight were Tom Brady and Lady Gaga.

“The comeback from a 28-3 deficit late in the 3rd quarter would have been a rejected Hollywood script. What was that graphic they showed? Teams with a lead of 19+ points in the 4th quarter were a combined 93-0 in post-season play? Make that 93-1.

“Edelman’s stupendous catch in the 4th quarter … that did it. I re-watched it in slo-mo 12 times.

“Actor Mark Wahlberg, a big Patriots fan, left the game with the Patriots down 28-3. He missed the comeback.

“I can’t be too critical. I retreated to my study at half-time to work on bills and finances and didn’t come back to the game until 18 seconds were left in the 4th quarter. I was sure New England was en route to getting blown out. However, my wife, who is from Russia and who never saw an American football game until 2010, faithfully watched the entire spectacle and was glued to the television screen when I returned. I made up for it by watching the whole thing on DVR. Hence the time-stamp.

The weather here has been pleasant all week.

Houston had a good time.

Pitchers and catchers report in two weeks.

My Personal and Pecan Park Eagle Response to Mark Wernick:

Great observations, Mark!

1) Brady and Gaga the most fearless? Absolutely!

2) SB51 rejected as a Hollywood script? Absolutely 2!

3) Also, remember all those 1940s movie scripts where some bad guy weakens the lines of the beautiful trapeze artist before her act. I thought of that one when Lady Gaga made her descent into NRG. Glad there were no bad guys working NRG yesterday.

4) Edelman’s catch was another one for the ages by the little man with the tall talent for remarkable catches. The name is amusingly distracting to me. 85-years old and quite tiny herself, Miriam Edelman is a fifty year friend and still practicing therapist in Houston. I can neither shake nor try to release the imagery that – under that gear and helmet – that it is my friend Miriam making all those catches in the Edelman name. Guess I’d better call and congratulate her for the great grab of yesterday when I’m finished here.

5) Poor Mark Wahlberg, but let’s do cut him a break. Did any of us really see this coming? No way. I thought it was close to done late in the first half when Brady threw the pick-6 to make it Falcons, 21-0. I might have done the same thing you did last night, but my personal TV sits side-by-side with my computer and Internet service. Everything I do with written work or writing, I do from here, and I am also guilty of occasional multi-tasking of a report column and bill-paying at the same time. I think I hold a degree in OCD propensities. But, unless it bites me, I see no need to call animal control for assistance. 🙂

6) My wife didn’t grow up in this culture either, but, as a native Filipino and naturalized American citizen, Norma is now an avid Texans, NFL, and Super Bowl fan. She watched the whole game on our big TV, pulling for the underdog Falcons. When it was over, however, her appraisal was simply that “the best team had won.” She will attend an occasional baseball game with me, but she really doesn’t understand the sport. She is wont to make statements like “they don’t really do anything in baseball and they spend way too much time standing around.”

7) This game was great for Houston – and Houston deserves all the credit it is now receiving from visitors.

8) Because of the way this game played out so awesomely – many of us are now free to say without equivocation ~ Tom Brady has now proven that he is the greatest QB in NFL history. Ironically, Joe Montana earned his bones at the college level the same way on January 1, 1979. That was the frozen Cotton Bowl game in which Montana rallied ND from a 34-7 deficit with 7:30 to go to a 35-34 win over UH on the last play of the game. – Believe me, many of us Cougar football fans know exactly how the Atlanta owner, coaches, players, and fans feel today. Atlanta people will get over the “stunning” phase that they are in today, but they will never forget the loss or the remnant pain that rests with yesterday’s cave-in loss.

9) I thought the contiguous editions of the 2016 World Series and the 2017 Super Bowl were the best examples of each that I’ve ever seen.

10) Because of the pain that comes from each football game played, football cannot handle a best 4 of 7 World Series format – nor does a once-a-week potential 7-game series over 7 weeks sound exciting or practical. – So – football can make their annual Super Bowl the three hours plus sudden bang for all the marbles that it already is. Baseball, on the other hand, has to settle for two teams breaking even in six closely scheduled games to even experience a year in which a seventh game, winner-takes-all contest, is even possible.

Late Post-Game Note

Some sleazeball managed to get into Tom Brady’s clothing bag inside the Patriots NRG clubhouse after the game and steal his game-worn jersey – supposedly for some kind of greed-grab and quick sale of it as an historic NFL Super Bowl artifact. Hope they catch the idiot and recover the jersey. Tom had planned to give it to his mother, who is still recovering from a longstanding health problem. One thing we hate more than cockroaches are the human variety that keep falling into life’s most delicious moments and causing everyone to lose their appetites for an adulterated beautiful moment in time.

_____________________

Bill McCurdy

Publisher, Editor, Writer

The Pecan Park Eagle

Houston, Texas

Tags: Some Post-Super Bowl Observations

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2 Responses to “Some Post-Super Bowl Observations”

Sumner Hunnewell Says:
February 7, 2017 at 5:52 am | Reply
Whoever has the jersey will have to secret it away forever or be caught. Anyone who has it could never show it to anyone without it getting out. (I had a Massachusetts ancestor, Edmund Bridges, who was out haying and bragged that he was being a bit loose with two neighbor women. His confidant spilled the beans and Edmund got a whipping across his back.) Could *you* ever keep the secret if your neighbor said, “Yeah, that was me. Don’t tell anyone. You want to see it?”
Jim Farge Says:
February 7, 2017 at 6:42 pm | Reply
Mark Wernick’s recalling the Joe Montana (Notre Dame) comeback in the last quarter from 34-7 to 35-34 over U of H in the 1979 Cotton Bowl triggered a memory. A bus-load of Notre Dame alumni and backers, led by the bishop of Houston, had chartered a bus from Houston to Dallas. At the point in the second half where U of H led Notre Dame by 34 to 7, and the Dallas temperature was about 25 degrees Fahrenheit, they gave up and left. They piled into the bus, which, just outside the Cotton Bowl, could not make it up an icy incline in the road. So, they waited for tire chains nearly an hour, just outside the stadium, with no radio and (of course, in 1979) no cell phones or internet, while Joe Montana proceeded to pass for four touchdowns to beat the U of H by a point. I think that at least equals any Patriot fans who left NRG Stadium when the score was against them by 28-3.
With no discredit to the really great Tom Brady, some think Otto Graham should at least be ranked equal with him.
Jim Farge