I'll fully admit, coming into yesterday's game against Pittsburgh, I was a tad nervous, though, truthfully, I tend to get a little nervous before every Patriots game. It's that 'any given Sunday' thing. Pittsburgh is a legit contender in the AFC and after last minute wins against Philly and Balmer the past two weeks, I was a little concerned about how the Pats would handle The Steelers. That is, until some guy in Pittsburgh named Anthony Smith opened his mouth and said something stupid.
After Smith, a Pittsburgh safety who's new nickname is now 'toast' after being burned repeatedly on Sunday, guaranteed a Steelers win over The Patriots I just shook my head and said to myself, 'Thank you Anthony Smith, whoever you are.'
Leading up to the game, the word out of the Patriots locker-room was that they don't pay attention to that kind of stuff, but let's face it, at that point it was practically all over before the game had even been played.
Pittsburgh did make a game of it for the first half, hanging with the Pats and keeping the score close when it looked like an early blowout might be brewing after some big plays initially put the Pats up 14-3. The Steelers came back strong as the 1st half wore on and the teams eventually went into the locker rooms with the Pats up by four at 17-13.
Those first half points were the last points the Steelers would score for the remainder of the game as The Patriots shut Pittsburgh out in the second half while scoring 17 unanswered points of their own, sending a message to some people out there who were openly wondering if the Patriots were starting to look a little fallible after their last few nail-biter wins.
The Patriots defense looked like it was getting back to it's old self in the second half, at one point stopping Pittsburgh from scoring on four straight attempts inside the 10 yard line. Rodney Harrison seemed to be particularly fired up and that is always a good thing to see.
I'm not sure if it could be heard on the TV audio, as they tend to raise and lower the volume on crowd noise as they see fit, but on the radio broadcast you could clearly hear the 12th Man at The Razor chanting, 'Guar-an-tee! Guar-an-tee!' taunting The Steelers' Anthony Smith as the game was coming to a close and prompting Tom Brady to gesture for the crowd to quiet down so they could work the offense.. Gotta hand it to those fans at The Razor. They always know just what to say.
I was glad to finally have an afternoon game again. Prime-time games are all fine and dandy, but after three in a row, they were really starting to wear on me. Not only that but my kids had not seen a Patriots game in a month! I missed watching football with them. They love to watch Patriots games because of all the jumping up and down, yelling and running around the house that's involved. They like to join in. Plus they get almost unlimited pretzels during the game.
I don't care what anybody says, Rene Rancourt rocks the National Anthem.
The Pats clinched a first round bye on Sunday and now need only one more win or a Colts loss to clinch home field throughout the playoffs. I watched about 5 minutes of the Indy / Ravens game last night, hoping maybe Baltimore might challenge Indy the way they did The Patriots. It was not even close. As Baltimore was getting shellacked, I was saying to myself, 'this is the team that came a botched time-out away from beating the Patriots last week? Wow. Any given Sunday indeed..'
Coach Belichick won his 100th game as the Patriots head coach. Tom Brady now has 45 TD passes and needs only 5 more to take ownership of the single season TD pass record. Randy Moss now has 19 TD catches and needs only 4 more to own the single season TD catch record. Moss has also bumped Curtis Martin from the top of the list as owner of the Pats' single season overall TD record. (Good.)
In the end there's only one stat that I care about, but watching these records fall and seeing the names of New England Patriots players at the top of these lists is going to be pretty cool.
This week's upcoming game against the Jets should be verrrry interesting. I'm sure the press will do everything in it's power to work people into a frenzy and try to create every video camera revenge angle that they possibly can. I fully expect it to completely overshadow the game itself and I can only imagine the number of cameras that will be on Belichick and Mangini during this game. It's going to be ridiculous. It's going to be the most covered 13-0 vs. 3-10 game in the history of everything. Expect ESPN to do a half-hour special on the post game hand-shake, with Ron Jaworski doing a full tape break-down and analysis of all the nuances, if, when the game ends, the two coaches can somehow get through to each other past all the cameras that is..
GO PATS
