Boys and girls, I just watched one of the five best Wild Card games of all time, and maybe the second best, behind (of course) the Frank Reich game.
There's only one little problem.
Mike Tomlin choked.
The Steelers have their head coach to blame for Saturday's loss to the Jaguars. When they got the ball back with just under four minutes remaining, Mike Tomlin decided to take his foot off the gas with the old run-run-run on 1st, 2nd and 3rd down strategy that almost never works. And I don't care if they were protecting a 29-28 lead or not, they had stormed back from an 18-point deficit with a passing attack that couldn't be stopped. Like, you know, it was unstoppable and stuff.
RUNNING THE BALL WAS A BAD IDEA! You hear me?
This crap kills college basketball teams all the time. It goes a little something like this: Team A is crushing Team B. Team B decides to play small ball. Team B forces a bunch of turnovers, grabs the momentum and roars back to take a late lead. Team B then changes offensive philosophy and attempts to bleed out the clock with Dean Smith's four corners approach. The result? Team B either hangs on for dear life and eeks out a win or blows the game completely. Regardless, it's always a bad idea. Always.
Listen, Ben Roethlisberger is a great QB. Probably the third best in the league at the moment. If Tomlin would have put the game in Roethlisberger's hands we'd likely be talking about Pittsburgh's remarkable comeback, and not David Garrard's mad dash on 4th & 2.
Mike Tomlin failed tonight in his biggest test as an NFL head coach. I'm right about this.
As for other NFL things's, I didn't deliver a Lock of the Millennium yet, which I'm sure has been bugging the piss out of you. So relax, or shutup, or whatever, because here goes nothing...
NFL Lock: San Diego-Tennessee OVER (39)
My record now stands at 18-15, and if my San Diego-Tennessee pick comes through, and if OSU covers Monday night (please God, or Jesus, or whoever, let this happen), I'm now looking at 20 wins against 15 losses. Not bad when you consider I started off 5-9. And since I'm all of the sudden a wizard at picking games against the spread, I will continue this fun little hobby for the remainder of the basketball season.
Keep the change, you filthy animals.
-Brad Spieser (Brad@TwinKilling.com)
1/6/08
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
Completely agree with your take on Tomlin blowing that game. Big Ben was throwing the ball all over the place and could not be stopped. They should have went for the jugular and scored again, which they would have if they had thrown the damn ball.
I still like Tomlin, and I am sure he learned this lesson the hard way.
Post a Comment