Super Bowl XX wasn’t pretty
A few nights ago the NFL Network showed the entire Super Bowl 20 game (or Super Bowl XX, for those of you who are even more reactionary than I am). I’d only seen highlights of it - well, really lowlights since I’m a Patriots fan - so I took the opportunity to watch it.
Holy cow, the Patriots were bad. Just awful. To some extent they were simply overwhelmed physically but the Chicago Bears’ big and fast front seven, but to a greater extent they executed about as poorly as a team can execute. It was absolutely awful.
I saw only two players who approached acceptable level of play: Left guard John Hannah and outside linebacker Andre Tippet.
Thw worst goat of the game was probably outside linebacker Don Blackmon, followed by runningback Craig James who consistently came up short in all four phases of the game (run blocking, pass protection, running, and receiving) although he did have one nice catch. Inside linebacker Steve Nelson was blown off the ball on nearly every snap (in fairness, it should be noted he was playing hurt). Quarterback Steve Grogan was off-target on almost all of his short passes and his receivers did a piss-poor job adjusting to his bombs. You could go down the line of players. It was pitiful.
Worst of all was the pass protection. Sure, they played against what was probably the best defense of all time but for crying out loud, the Patriots looked like they had never seen the 46 defense before the game. They clearly blew assignments and frequently threw really bad blocks when they didn’t. The center and the right guard were the worst, followed by the tackles. The tight ends did nothing to help.
It should be noted that the Bears quit before the third quarter was over. If they hadn’t they might well have scored another three touchdowns.
And, no, it wouldn’t have made any difference if Grogan had started instead of Tony Eason.
By the way, the broadcast itself was terrible. I think about a dozen snaps, maybe more were missed because of replays and irrelevant camera choices by the producer, or obscured by graphics. You really have to see it to believe it. Terrible broadcast. The announcers, on the other hand, were quite good.
