AFC Championship Afterword: Patriots vs Ravens

Another year, another case of Bradying. Brady made some atypical poor decisions
late in the game and was as much to blame as anyone else for their loss.
Photo credit to The Boston Globe.

For a while, neither team really deserved to win this game. The Ravens weren’t playing all that well in the first half and the Patriots, Wes Welker in particular, couldn’t catch to save their lives.

Joe Flacco improved to 8 touchdowns and no interceptions this postseason with another solid outing. He had a few poor throws, but every quarterback does so you won’t see me hassling him over this game. I can’t really think of many, if any, instances where his receivers had to bail him out. He made good throws, they made good grabs, and by the end of the game, the Ravens were clearly the better team.

As I was previewing this game, I talked about a lot of stuff on my radio show, but I focused on previous stats when I previewed the game on my blog. I brought up that Joe Flacco always seems to show up against the Patriots, that there is only one team he plays better against. Low and behold, he had a pretty terrific game yesterday.

And what about Tom Brady? I mentioned that he has played well enough against the Ravens but that he has below average numbers in Conference Championship games. He completed 53% of his passes, threw one touchdown and two interceptions, though to his credit the first one wasn’t entirely his fault.

New England’s predictable passing attack haunted them badly. When your quarterback is Tom Brady and your entire receiving corps only averages about 11 yards per catch, that’s a sign of a pretty conservative passing attack.

The Patriots run this offense often, but when they play good teams they usually switch it up more, it’s what it takes for them to get ‘over the hump’ to beat the NFL’s better teams. They didn’t do so yesterday and I feel it’s a big part of why they lost by two touchdowns.

Wes Welker had eight receptions despite having more drops than I could keep track of, so he is still Tom Brady’s favorite target at receiver. However, when you have as many bad drops as he had yesterday, you can expect plenty of questions about his future with the team.

Baltimore advances to their franchise’s second Super Bowl and the fourth appearance for the city. The Ravens won their last Super Bowl matchup against the Giants in January 2001. The Colts went 1-1 before moving their franchise to Indianapolis.

Check back with my blog daily over the next two weeks, especially next week when the focus will be fully on Super Bowl XLVII. For updates on when new blog posts are published, ‘like’ my page on Facebook and follow me on Twitter @cpuffnfl.