Super Bowl Football Thoughts

Here goes nothing:

1. Mike Holmgren is officially a shaky coach. He absolutely screwed the pooch on the final drive of the first half where, because of sloppy time management, Brown missed a 54-yard field goal. I haven’t closely examined the stats, but it seemed that every time a drive got going in the second half, the genius got away from the running game. John Madden was spot-on in calling out Holmgren’s time management in the final 2 minutes of the game. Hasselback(up) not spiking the ball cost the Gulls about 25 seconds on the clock. His biggest sin, however, was punting the ball with about 6 minutes to go in the game (it was a 4th and 10). In the Super Bowl, there is no tomorrow. The Lord favors the bold. The Football gods punish the meek. That's why Bill Cowher is wearing a championship hat.
2. Ben Roethlisberger: There is a lot of dialogue out there how white players only get compared to white players and black quarterbacks only getting compared to black quarterbacks. It's in every sport, too. All you have to do is listen to the Larry Bird-Adam Morrison comparisons and Vince Young-Every Black QB ever to play the game comparisions. Let me hit you this cross-racial knowledge: Big Ben IS Donovan McNabb. He has a strong arm, but not Marino-strong. He’s mobile, but not Michael Vick-mobile. He also experiments with facial hair, but not in a Koy Detmer neck beard-kind-of-way. The only major difference between the two, after you count Ben’s ring, is that Roethlisberger doesn’t start vomiting in big spots.
3. I’d also say that Andy Reid (another Mike Holmgren genius-apprentice) should take a page out of the Pittsburgh/Seattle/Denver playbook and realize that the run is a necessary supplement to the passing game. B-Ro looks like a great signal-caller because he isn't asked to make the offense run by himself, like Mac-5 is asked to. A strong running game would allow McNabb to take longer shots down the field and would also maximize his ability to get out of the pocket on bootlegs. As the old adage goes, when you’re a team that throws the ball 74% of the time, you’re a team that throws the ball 74% of the time.
4. I thought that the Steelers would win the game. I thought and hoped that it would be a good game (I was wrong). I thought the commercials would be a let-down. That being said, I absolutely knew for a fact that Heinz Ward would cry regardless of the outcome. This is the guy who got, uh, a little too emotional last year after the AFC Championship game last year when talking about how much he loved Jerome Bettis. Let's just say the tears were free-flowing with a little over two minutes to go.
5. All-in-all, it was a crappy end to a crappy play-offs. There was ONE exciting game in the whole lot. League officials didn’t help matters much. Going back to the 2003 playoffs, I never thought that refs could affect the playoffs as much as when they screwed the Giants in the Wild Card round against the Niners. I’m referring to the last-second play where the Niners weren’t called for pass interference because the Giant lineman was an ineligible receiver, even though he had declared himself eligible. Well, as always, I was wrong. Last night, the Stillers and the Gulls were both screwed sideways a bunch of times by the men in stripes. The Gulls got it especially bad on a yet-another pass interference call (this time on offense) that cost them a TD early in the game. Between last night, the Pats-Broncos game, and the Steelers-Colts game, this has not been the best month for the league. I’m just glad it’s over.
6. My last last-minute addition. Here's a quote from a chat session on ESPN.com with Chuck Klosterman that is funny enough to share:

Question: If you get too drunk to remember a Super Bowl, does it still happen?

Chuck Klosterman: Yes. But the game is then played in Narnia.