Sports Nut

Bill Belichick, Iraq Strategist?

Josh, you’re right about the skillful wizardry of NFL telecasts these days. I’m astonished at the lightning speed of the production. Running back gets tackled, offense heads back to the huddle—and within a second, Troy Aikman is telling me that it was the pulling guard who opened up that hole, and what’s more, the truck guys have cued up the perfect isolation-angle replay to illustrate this fact. People often rant about the lack of insightful analysis from the average color guy (and it’s true that they mostly just narrate what I can see on my screen), but on a play-to-play basis I really can’t complain about the networks’ ability to show me what happened in painstaking detail.

Speaking of which, I enjoyed every slow-mo moment of Tony Romo getting busy with the pooch on that field-goal try. Mainly out of sympathy for Dallas’ backup quarterback, Drew Bledsoe. Bledsoe is an earnest, clumsy (he once stage-dived on top of a terrified woman at an Everclear concert, injuring her spinal column), well-meaning lump of a guy. He suffered nobly through the 2001 season, when Tom Brady replaced him and led the Pats to the Super Bowl. If he’d been forced to watch from the sidelines as yet another cocky, slick, younger QB took his job and led his previously blah team to the Promised Land, it would have been like a horrific acid flashback come to life. I was glad to see, for his sake, that the anointing oils were apparently smeared all over Romo’s fingertips.

Regarding the Patriots: I will grant that the current squad is almost surely not as good as the back-to-back winners of Super Bowls XXXVIII and XXXIX. Tedy Bruschi and Mike Vrabel have grown older and less effective. The safeties are shaky. The receiving corps is untested. Adam Vinatieri left town.

But of course they’re still a “championship-level organization.” They just went 12-4 in the underrated AFC East. They’ve got a tremendous defensive line, which is perhaps the most important postseason asset there is on the field (after Tom Brady). And then there’s Bill Belichick.

That Wild Card game against the Jets was the brainiest NFL duel I’ve ever seen. The Jets used only two down linemen on the first series, with linebackers milling around before the snap like it was intermission in a theater lobby. The Pats countered by speeding up their tempo. This forced the Jets to reveal their formations earlier, lest they get caught out of position. (In my analogy, this was the equivalent of flashing the lobby lights on and off before anyone can use the restrooms or bad-mouth the sets.) When the Jets attempted to substitute players, the Pats literally ran to the line of scrimmage, forcing the Jets to either call a timeout or get flagged for having too many men on the field.

Meanwhile, the Jets—under brilliant Belichick disciple Eric Mangini—did a remarkable job on offense, with Chad Pennington finding receivers underneath in open space. They had no trouble moving the ball between the 20s. It was in the red zone, where the field compresses and all that open space suddenly disappears, that the Pats were able to shut down New York’s clever passing game. As the Jets had no run game to fall back on, they were forced to settle for field goals—and field goals weren’t enough.

Can the Pats beat San Diego this weekend? I won’t get into any analysis yet, but I’ll say this: I can’t bring myself to pick against Belichick in a matchup with Marty Schottenheimer, the Chargers coach who is notorious for postseason boneheadery. Of course, I freely admit that I’m an absurd Pats homer who’s decided that Belichick is the great thinker of our age. At this point, I would have no problem letting him coordinate our Iraq strategy.

(If, like me, you obsessively read transcripts of Belichick’s press conferences, you’ll find this easy to envision: “Look, the insurgents are a tough squad. No doubt about it. Talent up and down their roster. It doesn’t get any tougher than Moqtada Sadr. He can do it all. He gave us trouble last year, and we’ve got our hands full preparing for him now. I can’t give you any information on casualties—I’m not a doctor—but we’ll just take it day by day and do what we think is in the best interests of the coalition forces. I don’t know how to put it any simpler than that. It is what it is.”)

Chris, let me extend my condolences on the early exit of your Chiefs. Let me also add that they put on the absolute worst playoff performance I’ve ever seen. They missed a 23-yard field goal. They didn’t get a first down until more than midway through the third quarter. They made the classic dumb move of attempting a two-point conversion with lots of time still on the clock (sure, they made it, but it was still really dumb). Ugh.

On top of it all, Herm Edwards ate dinner with Colts coach Tony Dungy the night before the game? Crikey, is this the NFL playoffs or an Iron John bonding retreat?