We start where we do each and every week, why change now right? It’s Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and his weekly visit on WEEI in Boston with “The Big Show”.  Bill talks about the AFC Championship game and the upcoming Super Bowl against the Giants. By the way one the interviewers, Steve DeOssie, has a son, Zak DeOssie, who is a rookie linebacker/long snapper with New York.Â
So with the New England Patriots playing the New York Giants for the second time in just a few weeks and this time in the Super Bowl the war of the words will no doubt start at some point. But here’s a left over courtesy of the Boston Herald’s “The Point After” blog.
So apparently Rodney Harrison’s comments to the Herald following the season finale a couple of weeks back about the Giants being a dirty team finally somehow found their way to New York. Harrison felt the Giants were going for his knees during the game.
“I’m going to tell you, we saw it on film,” Harrison said at the time. “It wasn’t no secret. They push, they hit late, they come at you and try to take you out. That’s the way they play.”
Harrison was steamed at the end of the game after getting cut. He singled out star Plaxico Burress.
“Plaxico was going for my knees,” Harrison said. “They’re a big, physical group, but sometimes I feel they go overboard. Plaxico was trying to cut my knees, take my knees out. There’s no room for that. But with that type of intensity, that type of atmosphere, you’re going to have that.”
An intrepid reporter in Green Bay prior to the Giants-Packers game read the quotes to Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora, who laughed heartily.
“That’s funny,” he said. “We’ve got to be the dirtiest team of all time if Rodney Harrison thinks we’re dirty.”
Speaking of being called out for dirty play, San Diego Chargers center Nick Hardwick called out Patriots defensive end Richard Seymour after Sunday’s game and had some choice words about the lineman that should stoke this rivalry for a while.
“Richard Seymour is the biggest (expletive) I’ve ever come across in football,” Hardwick said. “They’ve got 10 good football players on that team. Richard Seymour is a dirty, cheap little pompous (expletive).”
“He’s cheap and dirty, and the head man just let him get away with it the whole time,” Hardwick said. “They’ve got 10 great players, and when Jarvis Green is on the field they have 11 great players that compete how you’re supposed to compete. But that Richard Seymour is the biggest (expletive) I’ve ever played.
“Head-slapping, foot-stomping in the pile, running by and throwing punches in your back late. He’s a (expletive).”
But as with most stories there’s always another side and this comes from the Tennessean earlier this year after the Chargers beat the Tennessee Titans.
“Their mindset was to try to intimidate us and see if we’ll back down,” Hardwick said. “Everyone seems to think we’re soft – that we’re Southern Cal boys and we’re not going to play hard and we’re soft and we’re quitters. We’re just as dirty, if not dirtier than anyone else in the league, so we like that. That’s the way Kansas City was. That’s the way Tennessee was. They think they’re going to swell up on us and be bigger than us, tougher.”
So Nick it looks like you need to pull your panties up.
This is the Patriots sixth trip (3-2) to a Super Bowl tying them for the second most appearances with Pittsburgh (5-1) and Denver (2-4). Dallas (5-3) has appeared in the most Super Bowls, they have done it 8 times.
With their 18th win on Sunday the Patriots tied the all-time NFL record for most wins in a season. The 1985 Chicago Bears and the 1984 San Francisco 49ers both went 18-1 enroute to winning Super Bowl Championships. The Patriots are the first NFL team to win their first 18 games of the season and first major professional sports team to start a season 18-0 in over 100 years.
The Patriots 11 straight home playoff wins is second best in NFL history behind the 13 straight won by Green Bay between 1939 and 2001. The Patriots have the best playoff home winning percentage in NFL history (11-1 .917), Green Bay is second (14-3 .823).
I don’t recall where I saw it the other day, it may have been on Awful Announcing or on Deadspin but with the Giants getting to Super Bowl XLII we now have two weeks of that annoying tub of goo named Chris Berman shouting “GEEEEE-MEENNNN!!!” Someone please go to Bristol and give him a case of the flu.
Did you realize Sunday’s final score, 21-12, is also the Patriots franchise playoff record?
Yesterday was Tom Brady’s 100th career win in both regular season and playoffs. He got to 100 wins faster than any other quarterback in NFL history. 16 games faster than Joe Montana and 29 games faster than Brett Favre.
- Player W-L-T
- Tom Brady 100-26-0
- Joe Montana 100-42-0
- Ken Stabler 100-49-1
- Johnny Unitas 100-50-3
- Bart Starr 100-50-5
- Brett Favre 100-55-0
The AFC is the home conference for this year’s Super Bowl so therefore the Patriots will have the choice of which jersey to wear. I’m sure they will go with the home navy blue but it would be cool to see them wear their alternate gray jersey. That would then allow the Giants to wear their alternate red jersey. It would be the first Super Bowl with teams wearing their third jersey’s and Paul Lukas at Uniwatch would probably have his head explode. Paul if you see this I love the blog and the ESPN column too.
Patriots running back Laurence Maroney is pretty excited to be going to the Super Bowl. Here see for yourself, just don’t get too close.
In the game review I had some praise of Philip Rivers and really of all the Chargers. To play like they did in a game where their stars were really hurt they showed a lot of character. It’s too bad their coach didn’t show some confidence in them and put them in a position to win. But Norv Turner aside, Rivers has earned some respect from me by playing not only a gutsy game but now it turns out he did so just days after he had his knee scoped to clean out the joint so he could play. It’s still too bad he’s a mouthy ass but he stepped up for his team when they needed him and he should earn some points from fans everywhere. I can’t think of many athletes, most who are spoiled and pampered, who’d put their career on the line for their teammates.
This was in a few places on Monday but a New York City radio station, Q-104, is distributing Bridget Moynahan masks that you can download from their website in an attempt to throw Tom Brady off his game. If the actual baby momma drama hasn’t distracted Brady what makes them think a bunch of cardboard cutouts will, it’s not like he’s Tony Romo. I think Brady counteracts this by taking his Super Bowl nap in his locker again. The station website also has a poll on who you think will win the game. I figured the Giants would have a substantial lead. Was I ever wrong, the Pats have a 70%-30% lead as of 10 PM on Monday night.
The one thing that mask did do on Monday was make Comcast Sports Net’s Gary Tanguay better looking. Too bad he couldn’t get Michael Felger to wear one too.
