The 2001 Rams are off the hook!

Congratulations and thank yous from all of Rams Nation to the New York Giants, whose 17-14 victory over the evil Patriot empire in Super Bowl XLII is being widely hailed as the greatest upset in Super Bowl history. Pointspread-wise, that honor really belongs to the SBIII Jets, and the Patriots were slightly smaller favorites yesterday than the SBXXXVI Rams, but it looks like those Rams are off the hook for biggest upset and/or choke in Super Bowl history. With the recent revelations that the Patriots didn't just cheat during that game - they cheated by filming the Rams' walkthrough the night before - karma ran over the Patriots last night like Osi Umenyiora running over Matt Light. That wasn't just karma last night, it was truckma.

Assorted Super Bowl XLII notes & observations:
* I voted Eli Manning MVP; back-to-back Manning MVPs was just too powerful a story to resist. Plus, there's Eli's two 4th-quarter TD passes and the insane escape from several Patriots on the miracle deep pass to David Tyree. But a big reason Eli wins MVP is because it's impossible to pick one Giants defensive lineman to vote for. They were all outstanding and were 2/3 of the reason the Giants won the game. My MVP top 5:
1 - Eli
2 - Osi Umenyiora, who seemed to whip Matt Light on every play and was constantly in Brady's face
3 - Justin Tuck, 6 tackles, 2 sacks, also in the Pats backfield all night
4 - Wes Welker, 11 catches, would have been MVP had the Pats held on
5 - Corey Webster, who's probably the overlooked star of the game. Brady is so good at finding the open receiver, you know the number of times he got sacked or hit or threw the ball away was because the Giants were covering everybody. The d-line was more valuable, because they gave Brady so little time, but the Giant secondary (coached by ex-Ram DC Peter Giunta?!? what's next, the Seahawks win it all next year with the Larry Marmie-coached secondary?) deserves its due.

* The Giants won in 08 in much the way the Patriots won in 02. No, they didn't cheat; they hit their opponent in the mouth, and what we learned about the 07 Patriots is that they're very much the finesse team, very much the antithesis of what they were at the start of their run. Giants DC Steve Spagnuolo had a brilliant game plan and can pretty much name his price to HC somewhere (except if I were him, I'd avoid Daniel Snyder like the plague right now). The Patriot offensive line, so heralded these last few seasons, was completely dominated by the Giants' quickness and by Spagnuolo's willingness to mix in the blitz. I railed at the Jagwires and Chargers for not doing more to put heat on Brady this postseason. Spagnuolo wasn't cowardly, and it paid off in a Lombardi. The Pats couldn't handle the Giants' speed and couldn't establish a thing on the ground, even though they had the two starting linemen back they were missing when they beat the Giants in week 17.

* Did the Patriots choke? Hell yeah, they choked! Take the Giants' red-hot play this postseason out of the equation, and you've got a two-TD favorite who lost to the #5 seed from the decidedly weaker conference, a team they just beat a month ago, on the road, minus two offensive line starters, to boot! (If it weren't for those offensive line injuries in December, maybe I would have had a brain in my head and picked the Giants to win after pointing out all of the Super Bowl XXXVI parallels a few posts ago.) The Patriots surely choked, especially their offensive line, and their whole defense, really. Sure, they gave up only 17 points, and in the 4th quarter, they were pressuring Eli like nobody's business, but really, the Giants walked up and down the field last night. The Pats led 7-3 at halftime, but you really felt like the Giants were winning. Their o-line did its fair share of pushing the Pats around. The Patriots you saw last night are a team that needs to get a lot more physical. Funny how they beat up the SBXXXVI Rams to start their run and ended it by becoming the SBXXXVI Rams, getting beaten up by their opponent and lacking the physical game to answer.

* The Patriots also got flat out-coached. Spagnuolo coached the Pats' OC wunderkind under the table. It was fun to watch Brady losing his composure and yelling at his teammates. Belicheat shouldn't leave any postgame analysis unscathed. On 4th-and-13, OF COURSE you should be trying the field goal when it's a 49-yarder, certainly in your PK's range, AND YOU'RE INDOORS. If Gostkowski misses, the field position change, which Troy Aikman idiotically tried to play up, is a whole 7 yards compared to not making the first down, which is what happened. I think the Giants made up the 7 yards the next play. TMQ better be ripping Belicheat for that stupid, GAME-LOSING decision early in the game. And why were the Patriots flinging deep the final two plays? On 3rd-and-20 with 20 seconds left, I thought they would have been FAR better served working for a quick first down and then try to get into long FG range. Highly weird that from their 20, with :35 left and all three time outs, that they had to resort to crazy deep throws the last two plays.

* More good news: the team that loses the Super Bowl always sucks the next year. The Rams went 7-9 after SBXXXVI; don't think I'm not pining for the Pats to do the same. Belichick has a large coaching challenge for next season, which is not to go through the whole season in shock from the Super Bowl like the 02 Rams did. A challenge Mike Martz didn't meet.

* The Rams play BOTH Super Bowl teams next year, btw. Thank God for that cushy last-place schedule, huh?

* TV notes: thought Joe Buck was great, thought Fox should have shown us a LOT more of what was going on in downfield coverage, which they also ignored in XXXVI, Jordin Sparks has enormous hips, favorite commercial: Coke's runaway parade balloons, funniest: Bud Light cavemen, worst by far: jumper-cable nipple guy. Glad we got away from groin-humor-dominant commercial crops; now let's start relying a lot less on grossout spots (That means you, puking E-Trade baby). And thanks to the advertising geniuses of the world, after last night I can no longer tell one energy drink from another.

* Biggest disappointment: the Victoria's Secret commercial; the Patriots cheerleaders were wearing less than the model in the commercial was! On a related note, let's hear it for the Patriots cheerleaders.

* Made the night for me when Curt Menefee declared XLII the biggest upset in NFL championship history. He got that ball rolling, and hopefully it'll leave XXXVI in the dust.