So, how much does it suck to be David Garrard? He was 22-for-33 for 278 yards, with two touchdowns and only one interception, an excellent performance by any normal standard, but he was the second-best quarterback in the game. Tom Brady was 26-for-28, 262 yards, three TD’s, no interceptions. And one of the incompletions was a flat-out drop by Wes Welker, who took his eye off the ball at the last second.
That’s just outlandish.
Jacksonville made a good showing of it, but after the first drive, I never really had any doubt that the Patriots would end up winning. For most of the game, there was no Jaguar within ten feet of Brady, and he could calmly throw the ball around like it was a walk-through in practice. You’re just not going to win a game where you give the opposing QB that kind of time.
Garrard might’ve been the third best quarterback on Saturday, actually, because Brett Favre played a classic Brett Favre game. He didn’t have as many completions or yards (18-for-23 for 173), but he was playing in a snowstorm. And the underhand flip while stumbling off-balance was just ridiculous.
So, the Pats and the Pack advance to their respective conference championships, and both looked good doing it. Yeah, Jacksonville managed to move the ball on New England pretty well, but the Patriot defense adjusted well enough at halftime to hold them to a couple of field goals in the second half, and that’s all they needed to do.
Yesterday’s games were a nice warm-up for the real action today, as my Giants try to avoid losing to the hated Cowboys for the third time. The Cowboys looked a little wobbly in the last couple of games, but the Giants are getting pretty banged up. They ought to be able to keep it respectable– everybody talks about the fact that the Cowboys put up 45 and 31 against the Giants in the two regular-season games, forgetting that the Giants scored 35 and 20, which isn’t all that shabby. They would need another good offensive performance to win, but the problem in the first two games wasn’t the offense, it was the defense– in order to win, they’ll need the defense to get some stops, and unless the Cowboys come out really rusty, I don’t see that happening.
There’s also some game involving a couple of AFC teams, but nobody cares about that.