Super Bowl XLVII: Media Day

Super Bowl Sunday Countdown: 3 Days

Ray Lewis will play his final NFL game on Sunday. A win would give him
a second Super Bowl ring and send him out on top.
Photo credit to NFL.com.

Tuesday was Media Day at the Superdome. For the second year, the NFL allowed fans to come in, for a fee, to watch the action quietly from a section of the stands.

On Media Day, every player and coach is made available for about an hour to answer questions from the media. There are so many players and coaches involved in this game, so here are just a few of the highlights.

Randy Moss

I had a good time listening to Randy Moss talk. I respectfully disagree with his statement that he is the greatest receiver of all time, but I thoroughly enjoyed his response to a Manti Te’o related question: “ If I did ever have an imaginary girlfriend, I never told anybody about it.”

Ray Lewis

Of course, the allegation that he used deer antler spray to aid his recovery from a triceps injury this season came out on Tuesday during media day. He sidestepped questions about it, saying it was a two-year-old story being rehashed. I wonder why nobody has written anything about that? Interestingly enough, asked a similar question to one asked of Randy Moss, Lewis said he “may have been catfished once or twice.”

Joe Flacco

On Monday, a story I read on NFL.com said Flacco’s father called the Baltimore quarterback “dull.” Asked if he is dull, Flacco said, “I don’t know if I would say I’m dull, but I’m probably close to it.”

Jim Harbaugh

Of course plenty of questions were asked about the Harbaugh brothers. In fact, one of the 49ers offensive linemen, Joe Staley, was asked a serious of questions concerning the brothers, including which is more handsome and dresses better. Jim took a Shakespearean approach to answering one question about the matchup. The quote ended with, “For he who sheds his blood with me today shall be my brother.” I immediately recognized it as a quote from Shakespeare – though I did have to check on which work it was from, it was Henry V – but it was pretty cool to have someone answer a Media Day question in that manner.

Chris Culliver

I’ll end with this bit. Culliver was asked whether he would accept an openly gay football player in the 49ers locker room. I respect his courage to speak his mind when his opinion is not at all politically correct, but that respect is significantly lessened by the way he in which he spoke his opinion, saying, “We don’t have any gay guys on the team. They gotta get up outta here if they do. Can’t be with that sweet stuff.”

The 49ers quickly released a statement saying that Culliver’s words do not express the ideals of the franchise and Culliver later apologized, saying, “The derogatory comments I made yesterday were a reflection of my thoughts in my head, but they are not how I feel. It has taken me seeing them in print to realize that they are hurtful and ugly. … I apologize to those who I have hurt and offended and I pledge to learn and grow from this experience.”

Tomorrow I will publish two posts, one about the 49ers’ history in the Super Bowl and one about the Ravens’. Saturday I will preview Super Bowl XLVII and my official prediction will by published by noon on Sunday.

To stay updated on new posts as they are published, ‘like’ my blog’s Facebook page and follow me on Twitter, @cpuffnfl.

Super Week: 2011 Postseason Rewind

The 2011 NFL Season has been a treat. The summer lock out seems like ages ago after the regular season held perhaps more excitement than any other in recent memory. With no training camp, Cam Newton came in and played shockingly well in Carolina on his way to setting the all-time record for rushing touchdowns by a quarterback in a single season. The Packers nearly went undefeated until a Romeo Crennel coached Chiefs knocked them off; then their playoff run ended before it started. And, of course, no recap of the 2011 season would be complete without mentioning Dan Marino’s record of more than a quarter century being broken by Drew Brees (and by Tom Brady).

The postseason has been no different. With the exception of the Atlanta Falcons (and the Broncos in the divisional round), each team has played at a level to make every game competitive and exciting. When one team excelled, their opponent stepped up to plate and hit it out of the park, too. When other teams underperformed, so did their opponent so those game could go down to the wire as well.

Unfortunately I only got to watch parts of the wild-card games live, so I missed out on the true excitement from Tim Tebow’s overtime win, T.J. Yates’s winning the duel of rookie quarterbacks against Cincinnati, and Drew Brees out-Breesing Matt Stafford.

The only game I predicted incorrectly in the divisional round was my prediction that the Saints would knock off the 49ers in an instant classic. I like to give myself half-credit for predicting a truly exciting game, but the 49ers took care of business and Alex Smith finally justified that #1 draft pick in 2005. I never expected the Broncos to be close, but what the Patriots did to Tebow was just wrong. These playoffs could have ranked among the best ever if we had even had a chance of another edition of Tebow Time.

The Giants knocked off the Packers, and I have my gut to thank for that correct prediction. I’ve ignored my gut before, when it told me to predict my Terps to win the National Championship in 2002 before the season began and when it told me to pick the Giants over the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. I went with it this time and it paid off.

The Texans receivers struggled against Baltimore, but then Yates wasn’t fantastic either. But that was still a pretty exciting game as the Ravens squeaked by with yet another postseason win for Joe Flacco and Ray Rice.

Jim Harbaugh has had a fantastic season and is absolutely deserving of Coach of the Year honors, but rookie coaches don’t usually have the kind of success he’s had, and Giants put a stop to it last weekend. I don’t know what it is with New York, but December and January have ‘Giants’ written all over them. The Manning family has their 4th Super Bowl appearance in six seasons, and a chance for ring number three.

Meanwhile, Tom Brady had a lackluster performance against Baltimore, but the Ravens failed to capitalize for most of the game. Then, two jaw-dropping moments ended the game as a potential game-winning touchdown pass by Joe Flacco was dropped in the end zone just before Lee Evans got his second foot down. Then Billy Cundiff rushed onto the field and more than missed the game-tying field goal. We were denied a second overtime conference championship game and were awarded a rematch of the Super Bowl XLII.

This past weekend I turned on the Pro Bowl for a little while, but the uninspired play early in the game quickly turned me off and reminded me why nobody watches it. I got to see some fantastic replays after the game, such as Brandon Marshall’s 3rd of four touchdown receptions when it bounced off two defenders, off his own knee, and into his hands while on the ground in the end zone.

Now we have just one game left. I watched a 9-minute video of Eli Manning speaking to reporters yesterday and look forward to a chance to see more as videos from today’s Media Day as the week progresses. As those of you who read my blog last year know, I never make my Super Bowl prediction until I use Madden the morning of the game, and I have only been wrong twice in the past. In fact, last year I correctly predicted the Packers final score and was only five points off for the Steelers.

Of course, it should be noted that the two Super Bowls I have incorrectly predicted both involved the Giants. I picked the Giants to beat the Ravens in the first Super Bowl I ever predicted using this method and my game of Madden predicted the Patriots to beat the Giants in 2007, leading to me ignoring my gut as I mentioned before.

My point in bringing that up is that though I am 9-2 in Super Bowl predictions, I am 0-2 when the Giants are involved. However, I finally found a real good custom difficulty setting that I’ve been playing with this season and have it pretty much perfect, so I’ll be changing the parameters of the game slightly from previous predictions and hopefully that will lead to a more accurate result this time around.

If I don’t post again until the morning of the Super Bowl, be sure to either come directly here for that prediction or ‘like’ Puff on the NFL on Facebook to see when that post goes up. Enjoy Super Bowl week and thanks for reading!

Super Bowl Week: Media Day

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

I took off writing yesterday for my birthday since I couldn’t take off school or anything else, but there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to make a few comments about Media Day down in Arlington. Unfortunately, my being in class all morning and having track obligations all afternoon kept me from seeing more than one or two guys live so you’ll see that my comments are on stuff that ended up on NFL.com.

The first video on NFL.com is of the Steelers players putting on a Troy Polamalu wig, including DE Brett Keisel who first used the wig to accentuate his beard. He was then asked how to spell “Polamalu,” and after messing up went on to say “T-R-O-Y.”

Ben Roethlisberger plans to just enjoy his time leading up the game because “you never know when it’ll be your last.” One thing that struck me during Big Ben’s time in front of the cameras is that he didn’t back down from any questions and he also didn’t take a lot of time trying to formulate a good answer. He’s been through a lot over the past year but, as he said, now isn’t the time to reflect because “it’s about this game.”

Unfortunately, the video on NFL.com for Roethlisberger’s counterpart, Packers QB Aaron Rodgers, only showed the two questions by NFLNetwork’s Deion Sanders. Despite the brevity of the video, it was long enough to tell me that Rodgers is looking forward first and foremost to the game and that he and Brett Favre have not been in communication about the game, that fact coming from a single “no” given by Rodgers to Sanders’s question.

Troy Polamalu, who was chosen as this year’s Defensive POY by the Associated Press, also had his time in front of the camera. He’s always appeared very quiet in front of the cameras when it’s not one of his Head & Shoulders ads. He was still quiet today, but he did give a little insight into his mind, specifically when he’s going in to make a hit on an opposing player. He said that there are a lot of factors but that the first thing that he thinks of is that it’ll hurt but that he’s doing it to support his family and he doesn’t “want to let his brothers down.”

Another player I had hoped to get something interesting from was James Harrison, the Steelers linebacker who has constantly been in the news around the league for being so heavily fined throughout the season. Unfortunately, as with many other players, there wasn’t a whole lot to comment on, other than his look at the end of the video after saying, “we are not trying to hit anyone hard. We don’t want to get fined.”

Though most of the players didn’t have a lot to say that I found to be so interesting that I had to comment on it, I was sure to check out the Coaches interviews.

Steelers HC Mike Tomlin:

This is the second time in four years that the Steelers, under Mike Tomlin, are in the Super Bowl. They won in their previous appearance against the Arizona Cardinals. Tomlin credited a lot of his team’s success this year to the players’ ability to make plays and not care who gets the credit. He also responded to a question from Deion Sanders about Center Maurkice Pouncey, saying that he “is not going to rule that young man out.” He said that everything Pouncey has done this year leads him to believe that Maurkice will be on that field if at all possible.

Packers HC Mike McCarthy:

In his first appearance in the Super Bowl as a head coach, McCarthy has a lot to be excited about. This is a Packers team that has had to deal with a lot of key players being listed on IR over the course of the season. No matter what happen this Sunday, they have a great shot at getting back to this point in the near future.

In the mean time, his focus is on this weekend. He said, about midway through his video, that in his previous five years the team has lacked a certain level of leadership. He mentioned not only QB Aaron Rodgers, but also CB Charles Woodson, as leaders that he feels have been cornerstones of the team’s success up to this point.

Most of the other players’ videos on NFL.com were full of clichés or just weren’t all that interesting and so aren’t worth my dragging on this already fairly long post.

For anything else, as always just check NFL.com, they have a lot more than I have time to post without losing interest from you. One thing that you may or may not be interested in was a video with Chad Ochocinco, which doesn’t really belong in this post but gives some insight into the Cincinnati Bengals organization. If you are interested, here is the link:

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-super-bowl/09000d5d81e0b1d1/Ochocinco-at-XLV?module=HP_video

I’ll be back tomorrow with some more Super Bowl week updates.