Miscellaneous Football Thoughts

A few more detailed comments on the games leading up to the Chateau Steelypips Showdown in two weeks:

• The Patriots looked a little shaky, but again, I was never that worried that they would actually lose. Their defense isn't as intimidating as it was a few years ago, but they did enough to get the job done, holding the Chargers to nothing but field goals.
• Tom Brady looked distinctly mortal, which probably had something to do with the lousy weather. He had a number of passes wobble in the air, and got picked off an astonishing three times, but still held it together well enough to score when they needed to.
• That said, he's 100-26 as a starter, which is just preposterous.
• Astonishingly, given the miserable weather, the Packers-Giants game was a well-played and entertaining game. Most of the famous bad-weather games (the Ice Bowl, the fog game between Philly and Chicago back in the 80's, last year's Super Bowl) are kind of plodding and uninteresting. Last night, both teams were passing the ball, and moving it pretty well.
• Even more astonishingly, Eli Manning had the best game of any of the four quarterbacks in the conference championships-- 21-40, 254 yard, no interceptions. If you had said at the beginning of the year that Manning would outplay Brady, Favre, and Phillip Rivers on a random Sunday in October, let alone in the game before the Super Bowl, I would've laughed at you. But Eli gets Manning family bragging rights for the next little while.
• I feel bad for Favre, and hope he comes back. I would've been perfectly happy to see the Giants lose to the Packers, if it allowed Favre another Super Bowl.
• Not exactly the match-up the NFL was hoping for, I suspect, but it'll be big in the Northeast... Probably the lowest ratings ever in the South, though.

Thoughts?