Anyway, what I’m really discussing in this “aftermath” post is the analysis of the spectacle that is known to be called the Super Bowl.  So my predictions, er I mean Lucky’s predictions were close but alas I did not end up with the cigar.  I guess I’ll have to try my luck in basketball then.  Not to give an overly blatant excuse in support of the prediction but, if you looked at the Las Vegas odds hovering around 6 to 7 points this past weekend in favor of the Steelers, you’d say my prediction was on cue.  Since the game ended with a 4 point victory by the Steelers, people betting on the Cardinals actually won.  In essence, the predictions were actually projected for the betting cr0wd..hehe.

Okay despite my efforts to mold the results in my favor, the predictions were actually pretty good. If you look back at the “SuperBowl Sick’ems” post, you’ll find that I did say Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu would not have effective games and that foresight came true.  My only downfall, ahem I mean Lucky’s downfall is that I forgot to factor in James Harrison, only the NFL defensive player of the year, and Santonio Holmes, now known as the Super Bowl MVP.  I guess defense indeed wins champsionships and a good team has players to always take over the game when their stars are injured.  Hey what’s going on with the Steelers and their recievers getting MVPs at the big game (Hines Ward, Santonio Holmes)?  Is this a conspiracy?  Are they actually better then Randy Moss and T.O.?

As for the game itself, it was Super Bowl worthy.  It was a delight that we would have such a good game right after last year’s momentous Giants vs Patriots  game.  As I was referring earlier about Super Bowl MVPs, it reminds me of last year’s award recipient, Eli Manning. He did not deserve the MVP trophy, rather it should have been awarded to the Giants Defense or at the very least, David Tyree with his incredible catch.  Hey that catch was better then Holme’s catch and that netted Santonio with the MVP trophy. (Plus, David had 2 TD touchdowns in last year’s game).  As you can see, I believe the NFL has a consipiracy to mold its image in a certain manner by interfering with the game (see Karlos Dansby’s supposed Roughing the Passer Penalty).

As for the entertainment outside “the game,”  I’d say with the economy tanking, the commercials generally tanked as well.  Some were funny (see CareerBuilder’s spot:

), but most were a big disappointment.  The trailers for some upcoming movies such as GI Joe and Star Trek looked too good to be true (and might still be when they come out).  Here’s the trailer for GI Joe again for those who like me thought that trailer went too quick, you can find it here.

Bruce Springsteen probably played a good show, but he looked old and tired on stage.  At least he didn’t make it “too” boring like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (truly heartbreaking).  I guess the NFL is playing chicken and putting old acts out there for its halftime event, thereby completely ignoring the 18-25 crowd.  I know, they’re scared from what happened with the “Janet” incident, but at least make the show relevant to the fans that will make their enterprise grow for the upcoming generations.  Now that’s true marketing.  That is the coveted age group.

Well that is my aftermath analysis of the past Super Bowl.  I hope you enjoyed the season as I did.  I look foward toward next Fall (and not the fake football of the Pro Bowl), but for the time being, let’s hope Andrew Bynum recovers soon for the Lakers.  We need a championship in LA.

If you have been following our Sick’ems then you will know the record stands at Jadamusss 1-1 and Quackster 0-2. It appears that I was right that Lucky isn’t so lucky and Quackster will need to do some real analysis if he hopes to pick the Super Bowl winner.

Jadamusss’s Super Bowl Sick’em

On paper, the Pittsburgh Steelers are the clear favorite even without Hines Ward. They have a superior defense that crushes opponent’s will. Their offense can move the ball through the air and on the ground. The Arizona Cardinals supposedly can’t defend against anyone and they have a 37-year-old quarterback named Kurt Warner. Even with the odds against them, I like the Arizona Cardinals and they will win by 4 points. The Cardinals will execute a similar game plan that they used against the Eagles. Edgerrin James will bust out for 115 rushing yards and two touchdowns. Kurt Warner will be consistent and throw for 250 yards and two touchdowns. At the end, their offense will have done just enough to pull out a win. Kurt Warner will have a fourth quarter scoring drive that will win the game and he will be name the Super Bowl MVP.

Quackster’s Super Bowl Sick’em

First of all, you can’t kick a dog when he’s down yo!  So Lucky was run over by a car in an accident, but somehow he survived with some relatively minor gashes.  Nevertheless, he was able to stay upright and still yearned to play catch right after the accident as if nothing happened.  This reminds me of the Jeff Garcia game at then end of the regular season where he got clocked by Quentin Jammer resulting in a bloody face.  So you’ve got to give the dog a break since he may have envisioned an alternate reality when he got clocked by the hit and run car.  At the very least, he’s alive and getting better.  With this improved health, he has viewed the future and his tail wag toward the west indicates that Arizona will win the Super Bowl, but only by a tail wag.  Why?  Kurt Warner plays in only close Super Bowl games.  This revitalization of The Greatest Show on Dirt (formerly Turf of St. Louis) sports three 1000-yd receivers (Larry Fitzgerald, Anquan Boldin and Steve Breaston).  This triple threat will be hard to defend.  As for the Steelers being the favorite, you’d think they’d knock this game out of the ballpark against a 9-7 Cardinal Team, but injuries in the past few games to Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu affecting their movement will hurt the team.  Without a true go-to receiver and a devastating safety at full health, dropped balls on both sides of the ball will spell doom for the Steelers.  To add to this, the flavor of the season is the underdog winning (Barack Obama coming from relatively no where to lead the free world).  I guess both of jadamusss and I agree on this pick.  Enjoy this barn burner of a game!  Finally the end of a championship drought for the once-lowly Cardinals.

To begin, I’d like to start with the least woeful offender, Mitch Berger (and I’m only speaking about offenders; if you’re not on this list, you were a good kicker yesterday). He almost whiffed a punt at the end of the game (I think).  Obviously the Pittsburgh-Baltimore game was the least enticing game to watch because I can’t remember the exact details.  If he were a rookie, I’d give him a small reprieve but this guy has been in the league since the 1990’s.  However, I don’t want to seem discriminitory toward “senior citizens” oops I mean “veterans” of the game therefore I did some background research.  Guess what I found?  He has spent  most of his career in domes (Vikings, Colts, Saints).  Maybe the cushy environment has something to say about his snow flurry cold day dinky punt.

The next biggesst offender was Neil Rackers.  He’s the “least” experienced of the offenders so that gives him some mercy.  He kicked the ball out of bounds by way of Eagles player Victor Abiamiri.  If Abiamiri did not touch the ball, the Cardinals would have gotten the ball back and we might have been talking about a genius play by Ken Whisenhunt a.k.a. the “gadget plays” master.  I’m not quite sure it is a designed play because Neil had at least another instance where he almost kicked it out of bounds during yesterday’s game.  Again, sorry the details are hazy because it looked as though the game was over by halftime.  Luckily for him, the referees forgot to give the standard 40-yard penalty for a kickoff out of bounds during their disscussion about the  Abiamiri play.

The worse offender of this past weekend was David Akers.  He’s a Pro Bowl kicker and should be “money”, but for some reason he almost kicked off  like our friend Neil.  Adding to the misery, he missed a 47 yard field goal (in a dome nonetheless).  The dumbest play of them all though was a missed PAT.  I mean how can that happen especially when your kicking from a distance closer then an NBA free throw.  I know David is a good player and I might be heavy-handed with my words but irrespectively, you’re a Pro Bowl kicker earning  at least a million dollars.  You should be making those kicks!  I guess you can see that I was rooting for Philadephia (see NFL Conference Playoff Sick’ems)

So why were the kicks so bad this past weekend?  Were they intentional or just some coincidental bad luck?  I think we might have come upon something more serious here.  Maybe there’s a backhanded approach by Vegas.  Why do you think I said that?  Maybe a look at the Vegas odds might give you a HDTV-like picture.  Did the kickers get paid off to alter the scores a bit and thus get in-/out of-line with the odds?  I don’t know, but I’m sure it isn’t the first time we’ve thought about off the field gameplay tinkering.  You be the judge.

Until we find the truth of the matter, I’d like to leave you with a tutorial on how to punt and kick:

How do you ask?  We’ll I’m glad we’ve put you into a tease.  Basically without going into too much technical information, we lay out two treats (which represent the two teams in a match) in front of a dog.  The treat the dog prefers (a la McGruff ) after we yell “sick’em” is the winner of the match.  Our job as the founders is to interpret and analyze this “preference” and relay it to the masses (a.k.a you the reader).  For scientific reasons (objectivity and precision), each of us (Quackster, jadamusss) have our own dog that we allow for the decision to be made.  We’ll see whose dog is more “accurate.”  Without further adieu, here are our results:

Quackster’s Dog, Lucky the Pointer chooses:  Eagles over Arizona, Ravens over Steelers

Eagles:  Lucky chose the Eagles because they are riding high right now with Donovan McNabb zoned in like a locked target in Top Gun (see my cinematic tastes are not limited to Bruce Willis flicks).  Oh by the way, the old Top Gun school in San Diego at Miramar Air Base.  Just thought you’d like to know this random tidbit.  Now back to the pick.  The Cardinals are also riding high (Wow! We got a “cockfight!”), but I think their inexperience at this playoff level will be a detriment.  In addition,  Jim Johnson’s defensive blitzing schemes will knock  the immobile Kurt Warner down and stifle their passing game.  Look for Asante Samuel to get some takeaways.  Let the Eagles soar (with help from former Attorney General John Ashcroft):

Ravens:  The Ravens are to win this game because Lucky knows that the Steelers can’t beat the the Ravens three times in a row, that is unless you are the Raiders in which case any team can have a 3 game winning streak or more, even a BCS football team like Utah.  Plus, I think the NFL wants a huge “cockfight” for its final in the Super Bowl.  Since cockfighting is illegal now, the next best thing are teams dressed as birds:  Eagles, Ravens, Cardinals.  Out of these three teams, only the Cardinals are not predators but rather prey.  In terms of football play, the Ravens are younger and have a better offense with Joe “Cool” Flacco at the helm.  I don’t trust ”Big” Ben Roethlisberger is fully recovered from his multiple spinal and head concusions.  The Chargers in the last game did not have a good enough defense to exploit Big Ben.  Be fearful of the Ravens my friends because they have the poetic supernatural backing of Edgar Allan Poe.

Jadmusss’s Dog, Sharkee the Shorkie chooses:  Arizona over Eagles, Ravens over Steelers

First let me say that Quackster’s borrowed dog Lucky is unlucky so I wouldn’t listen to anything he has to say about who will win this weekend.

Arizona will win by 10 points. Before you get your panties all bunched up, let me explain why. The Eagles are overrated and are getting lucky that teams are over looking them. Asante Samuel is a joke and we all know it. I seriously doubt that he can cover Anquan Boldin or Larry Fitzgerald one on one. This means the Eagles will need to bring safety help everytime Larry or Anquan runs a go route. This will free up the other player and Kurt Warner will have a field day with the Eagles secondary. Also I strongly believe the Donovan McNabb will commit two turnovers that will be the difference in the game. Okay I am going out on a limb on this one, but I will say that Kurt Warner will only be sacked once because the offensive line coach will prepare his line to handle the different looks the Eagles will throw at them. Quick! Can you name the offensive line coach? ……. MMMMM yah that is what I thought. His name is Russ Grimm and prior to being with the Cardinals he was in charge of coaching the stellar Pittsburgh Steelers that won Super Bowl XL.

Ravens will win by 6 points. I strongly believe this will be a smash mouth game with a low scoring output. Big Ben will get hit repeatly in this game and will leave with an injury. I do not wish any harm on anyone, but the Ravens will have heard how the Steelers beat them twice already and how they will lose again. This will add extra bulletin points for the Ravens defense to put a monster hit on Big Ben. Joe Flacco will have studied his game film from the previous meetings and made enough adjustments to win it by two field goals. Also Ed Reed should keep the Steelers passing game honest allowing the pass rush to pressure Big Ben into situations where he will turn the ball over.

In my opinion if the Panthers had stuck with the running game of DeAngelo Williams and Johnathan Stewart, the game would have ended in Carolina’s favor.  Instead, an anxiety attack hit after the first few turnovers and the Panthers tried to air it out like they were the “Greatest Show On Turf” of Warner’s Ringling Brothers past.  Argh, how frustrating!

However the disappointments would only grow come Sunday, a day of supposed solace and holiness.  What I received instead was a unrelenting  and savage Pittsburgh 3rd quarter beating of the San Diego Chargers.  Though it is not a total surprise that the Steelers won the game, it is still not okay for the Charger offense to give only 17 seconds of fight in the 3rd quarter.  They had one stupendously great TD catch in the first quarter by Vincent Jackson and then the Steel Curtain put the Foster’s Freeze on.

I suspect something fishy (mackerel) is going on behind closed NFL doors.  Some teams that should have won ( Titans) laid a goose egg–they should be demoted to the now defunct NFL Europe–while teams that should have kept the game close got blown up like a scene from a Bruce Willis flick–”Out of Bullets” from Live Free or Die Hard.  On closer review and speculation, I have found a worthwhile correlation from this past weekend’s playoff games.  Lets check out the facts:

1.  The Carolina Panthers lost.  They (12-4) should have won being the 2 seed against what was supposed to be a weak 9-7 Cardinal team.

2.  The Tennesse Titans also lost fumbling the ball away a couple times.  They border Carolina and their current quarterback, Kerry Collins, use to play the very same position with the Panthers.

3.  Philip Rivers played his college ball at North Carolina State and currently quarterbacks the San Diego Chargers who lost as mentioned earlier.

Analyzing all these cold hard facts, I have come to the conclusion that the NFL was betting against anything remotely “Carolina” this past weekend.  Is it true?  Did they pay off players  to rig the games?  Only Roger Godell knows for sure.  If I disappear, then you know Roger ordered a mob hit by way of some wealthy Las Vegas casinos hurting for money.

Oh I’m feeling so blue, those Carolina blues!