Stupidity Kills Once Again

At least we concluded what was, to me, an ugly weekend of football with something happy. The Chargers, by far the most physically talented team in the league, lost simply because their players were too stupid to understand the game they were playing. Plain and simple. And not one report I read about the game mentioned this sobering fact. Everyone praised the Patriots for their resilience and their great comeback. All they did was play and let the Chargers throw it away. San Diego had the Patriots beat, and badly. They were out of sync, and off their game all night. Then San Diego made 4 inexcusable mental gaffes, any one of which could have saved the game.

1) 5 minutes left in the 3^rd quarter and New England is punting down 4 after having a nothing drive, essentially. San Diego’s return man drops the kick. Fine – it could happen to anyone. But then he tries to pick it up and be the man rather than falling on it, and guaranteeing POSSESSION OF THE BALL. There is a monstrous cavern of difference between having the ball and not. He would have to gain 25 yards the next 10 times he tried that to make up for losing the ball once.

2) New England gets the ball back and has 3^rd and 13 at the Chargers’ 29. They sack Brady, pushing him back to the 37 – out of realistic field goal range, and facing 4^th and 25. But no, a San Diego player head-butts a Patriot, and back to first down we go. Maybe the Patriots’ rookie kicker would have made a 54-yarder there anyway, but instead he gets to kick a 34-yarder for an easy score and a 1-point game. There is never any excuse for this – I don’t care what the other guy said about your mom.

3) The Chargers drive down the field finally, and with 8:30 to go score a touchdown to go up 8. But, on the extra point, right in front of two officials, a Charger drills a Patriots lineman after the play and gets 15 extra yards of field position for the Pats, making their next drive that much easier. This one might not have cost the game, but still this is retarded.

4) The Pats take the ball and drive down to about the Chargers’ 40, where they get faced with a 4^th and 5 with 6 to go down 8. Brady throws a pass headed straight for a Chargers defender. At this point, the game is really over if the Chargers get the ball. The Pats need a touchdown and a 2-point conversion. You have LT, and nothing to do but run the ball for as long as you can and then maybe give them the ball back with 1:00 to go, if they’re lucky. But, the Chargers’ defensive back makes it not over by catching the ball (which is bad enough – correct protocol is to play volleyball with it where the entire world is “in”) and then, he runs with it! If he spikes the ball to the ground, the game is over. If he catches it, and assumes the fetal position on the ground and sucks his thumb, the game is over. He did something which could only make the game slightly more over (mmm… killing dead horses), but with a small chance of it being not over at all (as actually happened). Yes, the odds of Troy Brown ripping the ball away from him and another Patriots player recovering were small. But anything was a better chance than the Pats had at that point. Again, possession of the ball is everything. He could have GUARANTEED it for his team, but instead thought of his own stats.

I personally would be embarrassed to admit as a professional football player that I really don’t understand the game. Evidently, either players are too lazy to learn (4), too wrapped in themselves to exercise a little self-restraint for their team (2 & 3), or too blinded by their own desire to be the hero that they forget anything they did know trying to do it (1 & 4). People talk about being a team player all the time, but they seem to ignore the fact that these mistakes clearly indicate that the individual involved is not one.