What Part of Football....

(This is not political, so if you are looking for controversy, I will disappoint you.)

There is an old saying, (or there ought to be and I just invented it) "What part of stupid do you not understand?" One of the axioms in football (see above parenthesis) is that when protecting a lead you do not do dumb stuff. An old coach of the Titans (unnamed) used to "sit" on a three point lead. Once the Titans got a three point lead, he would go into "three rushes into the line, and punt" offensive mode. He said that his defense could and most of the time would protect the lead and we would win.

Atlanta may not have done quite that in SuberPowl (can we say that?) LI, but the fourth quarter had some glaring instances of football savvy being abandoned. Forget that New England was on a roll. Atlanta fumbled the football on a sack.

Most sack-fumbles come on a blind side hit. The QB does not see the rusher coming and loses control of the ball when a freight train hits him at 60 mph. (Or so it seems.) But this sack was right in his face. The good old "tuck rule" would have protected him had he tried to just take the sack. But he tried to throw it with an 8 foot gorilla slamming into him. Mistake number one of the overt kind.

Then the Falcons, who had played "belly button defense" all game long switched to, sadly again, the Titans' favorite pass defense. Early in the game even a completed pass resulted in a defender on the receiver for essentially no yards after catch. Then after the turn over, and the rest of the game they used the 5 yard cushion, backing up at snap, then chasing after the catch. It works like a charm–to lose the game.

Recover onside kick. Good move guy. Then in the waning minutes, they moved into field goal range for the "easy" clinching score. Fantastic catch. Probably the play of the game had they kicked the FG.  "No dumb plays." Right? So the first thing is the QB stays in the pocket for a sack. No slipping out the side for a throwaway ala Tom Brady.

Thirteen yard loss. Still not completely messed up or hosed as we say in chemistry.* Throw for a short gain to regain some yardage and ease the distance for the FG try. But wait, the left tackle held a rusher, who seemed to be falling to the ground anyway, and 10 more yards of penalty cost about 20-25 yards of field position. Incomplete pass. Punt.

Still, not all is lost. Punt fielded on the 10 or so. But the "let'em catch it and run" defense comes through beautifully. Pats march down the field and score...and complete the second consecutive two point conversion. Tie ball game.

Overtime. No criticism of the coin toss. But after that, we watched the let'em catch defense back down the field for the winning touchdown.

Ballgame. What part of football do you not understand?

*Hosed describes an experiment that went so badly that we just bring out the garden hose and wash it all into the sink.