00:00A game, score-wise, where New England wins by three was, you know, kind of, you know, sort of what I expected here.
00:07I expected Denver to keep this game close, and I expected New England to win and get to the Super Bowl.
00:14But I feel like I don't even know that I could judge anything that I saw in the second half of that game.
00:20It's, you know, extremely unfair weather conditions in this one, and I don't think people are discussing that enough.
00:26They're just saying, ah, New England won.
00:27I mean, New England, I think, in the Super Bowl, we could see, you know, they could score 30 on Seattle.
00:33I mean, it's certainly possible.
00:34I just don't know that there was a single takeaway, which is rare, from an AFC championship game that we could even use in the Super Bowl,
00:41and I haven't even gotten to the fact that the Broncos were using a backup quarterback.
00:46Yeah, I think the Patriots, one thing you take away from their AFC playoff run is the fact that they played dominant defense,
00:52and they needed to play dominant defense because their offense stunk.
00:55It was not what we saw in the regular season when they were putting up 28-plus points per game.
01:01So that defense really saved them.
01:04I know the quarterbacks they faced weren't exactly murderer's row,
01:08and it kept decreasing when you went from Justin Herbert to CJ Stroud to then Jared Stidham.
01:13But, look, then you get Sam Darnold at the Super Bowl, so you could argue that this is not the biggest run of quarterbacks you'll ever see in their run,
01:23but you've got to beat the teams that are in front of you, and you've got to take care of business.
01:26You've got to protect the ball, and that's what they did.
01:28I mean, they protected the ball better in those conditions, made better decisions in critical moments than the Broncos did,
01:35and that's why they won the game.
01:36Now, it looks like it was a field goal, but you didn't really feel that the Broncos, once they went behind in that game,
01:43New England took the lead, but they didn't really have a shot, right?
01:45The way the Patriots are playing after that first drive.
01:49And then you have Drake May.
01:50Look, he wasn't fantastic at all.
01:53He was in the shell of what we saw in the regular season,
01:57but he still ran big time against the Chargers and the Broncos when they needed it.
02:03He made the plays in the second half they needed.
02:06So, I mean, people are going to kind of rip into Drake May a little bit,
02:10but, again, he did what he was able to do in some tough matchups, and his team came through for him.
02:16So, I think what you're seeing is the Patriots and Seahawks are complete teams.
02:21It's not just about the quarterback, but they're in the Super Bowl at 14-3
02:25because they're good, well-rounded teams that should be in the Super Bowl.
02:30Let's play that Monday morning quarterback for a minute, Vinny.
02:32Do you indict Sean Payton for not knowing the weather, what was coming,
02:36and not taking those points like was indicated,
02:39and now we're all circling back and saying that he should have,
02:42or do you think that he made the right decision going forward on fourth and one?
02:46I think I would have kicked the field goal for multiple reasons.
02:49The way the Patriots' defense had played all throughout the playoffs,
02:52like you've got to take the points that are available to you,
02:55when you have them in, it could have been this battle of attrition going back and forth, right?
03:00So, every point was big based on how his defense was playing,
03:04based on the way the Patriots' defense was playing.
03:07Regardless of what was coming weather-wise, I think you just have to say,
03:11hey, we've got a backup quarterback.
03:12We've moved into the red zone.
03:13We've got to take points with that, and you don't know what's coming,
03:16and then we know what came.
03:17They didn't score any other points in the game.
03:19So, I think you just have to look at the game situation.
03:22It's not always about the analytics of that moment and what you should do in that situation,
03:28but based on the big picture of the entire game.
03:31And I think from that perspective, Mike Vrabel outcoached him for sure.
03:35I mean, they played keep away, but it was intentional in the second half,
03:38and it really paid off for the Patriots.
03:40But if you did, well, we did a lot of shooting.
03:59An after the Patriots is shot now, and we're holding it back,
04:00and we're looking into the Patriots' defense ici,
04:03and we're looking at this сделал differentbiots.
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