Well, I've finally calmed down enough to post about
the Steelers game yesterday. Jenn & I were on
the edge of our seats. I think it's a real a shame
that the game was even close at the end, because the
Steelers completely dominated the Colts and the officiating
was horrendous. I won't harp on that though. I will say,
it's games like that when I understand why there are
people who are convinced the games are fixed. I don't believe
that, but that game was very poorly officiated.
Jenn & I were really on the edge of our seats for the
finally 2 minutes of the game. We went from total exhuberation
when the Steelers sacked Manning on 4th and 16 on the 2 yard line,
to the complete and udder disbelief when Bettis fumbled the ball.
Cowher absolutely made the right call, it was just a fluke result.
The Colts still had 3 timeouts left at that point. The correct
call was trying to put the game out of reach by putting up a 10
point diferential. Anyway, it took Jenn & I both a good 3 hours
to really calm down. Jenn was still telling me later that night
that she was still feeling the results of the game. This
was the first time she's ever felt this kind of emotion over watching
a sporting event. I'm so lucky she's enjoying watching Steeler football
with me (although she'd probably argue how "enjoyable" it was once
Bettis fumbled.) However, the emotional swing you feel as you
go from knowing you've won the game, to thinking you've lost it,
to watching Vanderjagt miss a FG he makes 99 out of 100 times to
give you the win is something you just don't experience in any other
spectator event. I love football.
I can't say enough about how well Cowher had that team prepared
to play that game. He came out throwing the ball when the Colts
were expecting us to run and the Defense had the Colts completely
on their heels. Lebeau had a beautiful game called. For those that
don't watch the Steelers on a weekly basis, you wouldn't have noticed
this, but the Steelers tend to use a lot of motion with their Defensive
Backs to try and confuse the QB. Generally speaking though, Manning is
good at adjusting to that. Lebeau used very little movement before the
snap—which I think Manning was relying on to try and figure out
the blitz schemes. If you notice, it wasn't until very late in the
game that you saw Manning started to call more audibles on the line.
Heck, I even heard Archie, Peyton's father, on NFL Radio this morning
and he admitted that Peyton had to resort to "drawing plays in the
dirt--playground style" in order to counter the things Pittsburgh was
doing do them.
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