Semi-Final Thoughts

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?  That – with props to T.S. Eliot and apologies to Billy Shakespeare – is the question. 

“…Think now

History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors

And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,

Guides us by vanities.”

-      Gerontion, T.S. Eliot

A week later, I can’t help but think of Saints and Packers fans. 

Saints fans have to live with the knowledge that had their pigskin heroes won in San Francisco, New Orleans would be hosting the NFC Championship game.  Week 12, the Saints beat the Giants 49-24 in the Superdome.  The Saints averaged 41 points a game at home during the 2011 season and would rightly have been the favorites to win a spot in the Super Bowl.  Instead, nothing. 

How will Packers fans come to grips with that performance – at home – after a 15-1-0 season?  Coming off a Super Bowl win, Green Bay’s inevitability had been crowned with talk of a new dynasty.  Super Bowl XLVI was theirs to lose, and they did.  They will play next year with a new offensive coordinator and face the very real possibility that this team’s window may be closing.  The Lions will be the trendy Super Bowl pick in 2012.  The Bears may actually put things together if Cutler and Forte come back healthy and they actually, you know, put things together.  Will the Packers failure against the Giants drive them next season to prove that game was a fluke or will it sit like Shatner’s gremlin on the wing of their psyche, pressing its face against the glass with every missed tackle and dropped pass?

Guides Us By Vanities

Bill Belichick and Tom Brady won’t admit it, but they know the numbers; the playoff wins, the touchdown passes, the Super Bowl championships, the historical implications.  Tom Coughlin knows he will tie Bill Parcells with a second Super Bowl win as Giants head coach.  Eli Manning knows that with one more Lombardi Trophy in hand he will have more rings than big brother.

All of that can be taken away on Sunday.  Well, not taken away so much as postponed indefinitely. 

Ray Lewis played in Super Bowl XXXV and brought the Lombardi Trophy home to Baltimore.  Eleven years ago.  Ed Reed joined the Ravens the next year.  He is arguably one of the greatest players in the history of the NFL and he has never played in the Super Bowl. 

Getting to the Super Bowl is apparently difficult and arbitrary.

Whispered Ambitions

A moment, an inch, a link of chain.

An unlikely hero, danger unseen.

A tip, a slip, a loosened grip.

A pivotal play, a backward flip.

A nail. 

A shoe.

A horse. 

Okay, not a horse.  But the spikes (metaphoric nails) on their shoes might be the difference between a clean cut and a slip; a receiver falls and a defensive back has the ball with nothing but green and chalk between him and the end zone. 

One play.

It may well come down to one play this Sunday.  If that’s the case, it seems more in line with the capricious nature of pigskin fate that it would be the Patriots defense making that play in the AFC Championship; Devin McCourty with a nothing but green and chalk moment.  In the NFC Championship I’ll go with Michael Crabtree catching the game-winning TD pass.