Merrill Park Superstar

5:31 ET: Tom Brady finishes this drive, finding a wide-open Wes Welker for a 6-yard touchdown. A Stephen Gostkowski extra point makes it 21-12 Patriots with just over 12 minutes left to play.

5:41 ET: San Diego put together a nice drive, but it wasn’t nice enough. They get stopped at the New England 36 and choose to punt. Mike Scifres looks to have netted about 25 yards on the boot.

The Chargers desperately need a stop here, and fast.

5:49 ET: They haven’t gotten that stop yet. The Patriots continue to grind it out and eat up clock using Laurence Maroney and Kevin Faulk. Under six minutes to go.

5:51 ET: Brady finds Faulk over the middle on 3rd and 3, and this drive is now seven plays and nearly five minutes long, with a fresh set of downs about to begin.

Additionally, the Chargers have only a single timeout remaining.

5:55 ET: Phil Simms just had the audacity to wonder aloud what the reaction of the Chargers and their fan base may have been if they were told San Diego would intercept Brady three times. “Wow, maybe we could win,” he imagined the reaction would be.

Not once did he drop the bomb on these hypothetical individuals that they’d be without LaDainian Tomlinson. I imagine that hypothetical reaction would’ve changed had he done so.

5:59 ET: And, because wins just can’t be wins in the NFL anymore, Jim Nantz points out how Randall Gay and Jarvis Green were playing for the late Marquise Hill, who drowned during the off-season. He even busted out some nonsense about the first drive of the season going 91 yards for a touchdown, and how the number Hill wore was 91.

He then called his buddy Bill Belichick a “super-genius.”

Screw this.

FINAL SCORE:
NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS 21, SAN DIEGO CHARGERS 12

6:12 ET: Oh, hell. I’ve got time.

I’m sick of hearing these lazy broadcasters trying to get cute by connecting untimely deaths within organizations with team performance. Nantz’s bullshit with Marquise Hill is the latest one, but the Sean Taylor thing really pissed me off.

Not only did the media hop on the Taylor thing as the reason for the team suddenly turning it around, but the Washington Redskins — led by Taylor’s best buddy Clinton Portis — played right into it and added fuel to the storyline.

In my view, all this did was serve to cheapen their accomplishments towards the tail end of the season as well as the legacy of Sean Taylor. Every time the Redskins did something positive, it was “ooh boy, Sean Taylor must be watching over them!” Look, I wouldn’t have had a problem if the Redskins privately felt that Taylor was guiding them — I don’t have any issue with individual spirituality. Unfortunately, the team harped on it to such an extent that it almost seemed that they were trying to con the public into feeling sorry for them and supporting them. Some people fell for it. Others became disgusted by it.

The fact of the matter is, if you lose a Pro Bowl player or even just a solid defensive player — hell, if you lose anyone who started or contributed on special teams, anyone who played regularly — your team isn’t going to magically get better because that individual died. Replacing Sean Taylor with some backup safety didn’t make the team better. Marquise Hill dying didn’t make the Patriots better. In one case, it was a team that had a bunch of injuries getting healthy. In the other, it was an influx of high-level talent during the off-season.

It’s completely within a team’s rights to dedicate a game to a member of the organization who recently passed away. Had the Rams been in the playoffs, it would’ve been fine for them to say they were playing for Georgia Frontiere. If they go into next season, though, and their big rallying cry is “let’s win this one for Georgia, whose ghost is lurking in the Edward Jones Dome to make sure we always win!”, they should, by all rights, be subject to ridicule.

What I’m saying is, there’s gotta be a limit to the exploitation of deaths for the glorification of a franchise, team or individual in the NFL. The Denver Broncos had Darrent Williams and Damien Nash die during the off-season. Nobody made a big stink over the Broncos. Why? Because they didn’t win. Did Nash and Williams’ teammates not care at all about them? I mean, these other teams played fantastic in the wake of their teammates’ deaths!

Enough. Football is football — it is, in fact, just a game. Real life is different. A man or woman’s life is far more significant than their posthumous involvement in the outcome of a football game. To say otherwise is moronic and insulting, and the media portrayals contrary to this need to stop.

I was going to rant a bit about LaDainian Tomlinson, too, but I think one is enough for now. Suffice it to say, anyone who says LT is an all-time great running back in the vein of Jim Brown needs to take a step back after today’s effort.

Enjoy the Giants-Packers game, everyone!