NFL Playoffs running thread

Both things can be (and are) true.

Early game viewership always takes a back seat to late game.

Rams' fan base is more apathetic than most.

Whatever the New Orleans market numbers were for the Saints game, they would have been even better had it been the late game.

 

Don't blame you.

Did you ever see the 1970 Colts America's Game? That might have been one of the saddest things I've seen. Guys admitting shame to have won a Super Bowl because it was such a bad game.

 

Curry sure seemed to feel that way.

But the others were/are just still haunted by III. Hell, it was my first time watching a sporting event on TV and feeling anger, of actually hating those other guys. Hated their names --- Sauer, Sample, Maynard, Snell. Hated those bleeping white shoes Namath wore. It was the first --- though certainly not the last --- time that watching sports caused pain.

 

I miss the despair I'd feel when the Raiders would lose to the Steelers in the playoffs AGAIN! When you're a little kid, knowing you're a full year away of possibly easing that pain (when a year is a tenth of all the time you've ever known) is brutal. Not much better when you're college loses a rivalry game it either should have won, or could have won.

But now? I don't even feel bad for the Olympic skiier who crashes out of a downhill run. They'll get a few more cracks at it.

 

I read Bob McGinn's history of the Super Bowl. McGinn said that Winston Hill, who was 28 years old and 270 dominated Ordell Brasee, who was 36 and 245. Bob Talamini, the left guard, dominated the tackle, Fred Miller. The Jets consistently won upfront.

 

Ha! I was a little kid in Jersey just enamored by the whole Jets/AFL thing. Namath was a god. Maynard remains to this day my favorite player of all time (getting to interview him some 15 years ago was pretty damn cool). The Colts and the NFL? Unitas and those black high tops? Squaresville, man. That's for the old folks. Gimme some Broadway Joe in white cleats. The AFL is where it's at.

 

In Wilmington, Del. where I grew up, you were either an Eagles fan or a Colts fan and hated the other team worse than anything. I was an Eagles fan. I also like the AFL because of the high scores in the early days and because the Jets were on WABC, the top 40 station which you could get as far away as Maryland or Rhode Island.

 

Morrall's first INT bounced right off the shoulder pad of the receiver; the third was on a goofy flea flicker Hail Mary just before halftime. Obviously he had a rotten-ass game but he wasn't throwin' nothin.'

 

The flea-flicker is the biggest indictment against Morrall.

It worked so well that a receiver was ridiculously wide open. Facing absolutely no pass rush, Morrall throws elsewhere and has it picked off.

 

John Mackey also dropped a potential touchdown in the first quarter.

So the biggest questions is was there anyone on the Colts that DIDN'T throw the game? Even Matte had a horrible fumble to start the third quarter.