Thoughts on the Super Bowl

I ended up betting $500 on the Cardinals to cover the spread of -7.  My Father flew to Reno to make the bet as well and bet some moneys that he had brought of his own and some from a few other people.  

I thought the game was very even between the two teams; I never thought the Cardinals were going to get blown out at any point during the game. 

I thought the Cardinals run defense was very impressive.  They Steelers had so many runs for negative yardage it was crazy.  

The Cardinals refused to throw the ball as much as I thought they should; however, they may have just been trying to keep the Steelers from dropping back to much.  Who can tell what chess match was going on  between the playcallers?

Otherwise it was even; I think the warm weather helped the Cardinals: look at their last two drives when Fitzgerald was just running rampant through their secondary.  If its cold slippery he probably wouldn't have made those plays.

I thought Ken Whisenhunt had the team prepared and their passing plays were very effective. 

So two of the three factors I mentioned in an earlier post appear to have worked out.

I thought the Cardinals body language showed they really thought they could beat the Steelers; credit the coaching on that one.  Offensively the Steelers scored twenty points to the Cardinals 23.  It was just that crazy interception that was the difference.  

Ben Roethelisburgers (I don't know how to spell it) scrambling ability is very under-rated.  He is so big and he scrambles but he always looks to pass out of the scramble.  That is a very strong skill in the NFL because defenses will stop the run but they can't cover all the receivers.  

Super Bowl XLIII: we've seen this before (sort of)

In the aftermath of the Cardinals' and the Steelers' victories, I read something very intersting.

Ken Whisenhunt was the tight-ends coach of the Steelers from 2001-2003, and the offensive coordinator from 2004-2006, including their Super Bowl run.  

He interviewed for the Head Coach position but lost to Tomlin; in the aftermath, he left the organization and went to the Cardinals.  So the Steelers thought they had seen the last of their former coach;  he's back, with a strong team.

And the reason I bring this up is because Super Bowl XXXVII (37) was very similar to this situation.  We have a former coach going up against his old team.  

SB 37:  Jon Gruden faces his old team (Raiders).  Gruden was one year removed from the job.  Gruden was head coach of Raiders and Bucs. 

SB 43:  Ken Whisenhunt faces his old team (Steelers).  Whisenhunt is two years removed from the job.  Whisenhunt was offensive coordinator, now is head coach.  

So this is now the third time in recent memory that something like this has happened:  SB 37, when San Francisco hosted Detroit (with Mike Martz, Detroits offensive coordinator from last season, as our new offensive coordinator).  The result both times has been the coach on the new team helping his new team dominate the old one.  

I've seen this twice in the pro-league and both times its been a bad loss for the former team.  Will it happen a third time?  

Remember: the Cardinals are good too.  And the game will be played in warm weather.  The Steelers are a cold-weather team with a great defense travelling to  a warm weather city to play a fast, dome offense.  Sounds just like when the Colts played the Bears.  

Conference Championships

Looking at your post about the luckiest teams (and actual games where the Eagles lost at the end of games) its surprising to think that a 12.1 win team (Eagles) would be road underdogs to a 8.2 win team especially win the 8.2 win team is from the NFC West. Concerning the Ravens/Steelers, we saw the Giants lose to Dallas twice in the regular season before finally solving the riddle at Dallas in the playoffs. The Ravens were so close both times and I wouldn't be surprised at all if they won. They have Superbowl experience, great leadership (Ray Lewis), and a good defense. That is a recipe for victory.

Lastly, if you look at how the Cardinals won, it was by intercepting the QB five times. But they only had 13 in the entire regular season. They average less than one per game. So perhaps they defense is playing really well. But its more likely that Carolina's offense was just really bad.

The toughest things to figure out are absolute measures of a team. I think I would have to have a great understanding of a team and watch the game three times at a minimum to figure out how good a team is. If the Cardinals defense is say, a 60 on a 100 point scale, but Carolina and Delhomme play at a 20 level, the Cards will really do well . But if Carolina plays at a 60 but the Cards at a 40, it will look worse for the Cards.

So the two concepts are the *normal skill* or average, median, mean, typical, or baseline, performance level of an a team unit. Then there are certain factors applied to it, for motivation, correct game planning, fatigue, familiarity between teams and players, etc. These factors can boost or reduce a teams number.

As an analyst one has to figure out the baseline level and then the true level. And these concepts can be difficult to discern because there is no easy way to measure them. A defense can only be graded relative to the offense it is playing against, which also has a myriad of its own factors. No home-boosted offense plays a home-boosted defense.

These are the problems I have to solve. The first is just watching a game several times. I've never watched a game more th an once. What if I watched it five times? What if I watched every game that a football team played all season five times?

Then I would have a tremendous understanding of that one team.