[washingtonismoney]

One last note that I saw upon watching the replay: the secondary performed worse than I thought, overall, though I'll stand by my poor review of Bademosi, particularly relative to Lyons. Bademosi frequently lined up as the deepest corner, and often as deep as the safeties on plays. Lyons, on the other hand, frequently played press coverage. In the running game, Bademosi would get blocked and stay blocked. Lyons had tenaciousness, and had an excellent tackle at the line of scrimmage. I think Lyons replaces Bademosi by the middle of the season, if he hasn't already (I would guess Lyons played more snaps than Bademosi, though the garbage time effect throws that off).

Also, I thought a Bill Simmons column from a while back provided a nice way to think about the game:

Here's the point: In all five of these games, the winning team was ready to use everything but the kitchen sink to come out on top. For instance, the Steelers scored a TD on a delayed QB sneak with Roethlisberger from 14 yards out, the kind of play you run once a year (because it will only work once). That's a kitchen-sink play -- you don't use it until you absolutely need it. On Monday, the Steelers needed it.

And:

There's a flip side to this theory: The Anti-Sink Game. I don't know who invented it, but it's been a Bill Belichick specialty during any regular-season game against an inferior opponent -- you can always count on the Pats to keep everything close to the vest, avoid any gimmick plays or defenses, stick to basic formations and try to win doing the bare minimum (like against the Raiders in Week 1). They're almost like a con artist who keeps passing up small poker pots and playing possum until someone is dumb enough to raise the stakes.

Pretty good description of the respective teams' approaches. Duke busted out everything it had; Stanford went from vanilla schemes early to what we'll call strawberry ice cream in the middle to end when things became a bit dicey (without progressing to full-on sundae--does this make sense to anyone else?). So, you know, another thing to keep in mind.

[washingtonismoney]

One last note that I saw upon watching the replay: the secondary performed worse than I thought, overall, though I'll stand by my poor review of Bademosi, particularly relative to Lyons. Bademosi frequently lined up as the deepest corner, and often as deep as the safeties on plays. Lyons, on the other hand, frequently played press coverage. In the running game, Bademosi would get blocked and stay blocked. Lyons had tenaciousness, and had an excellent tackle at the line of scrimmage. I think Lyons replaces Bademosi by the middle of the season, if he hasn't already (I would guess Lyons played more snaps than Bademosi, though the garbage time effect throws that off).

Also, I thought a Bill Simmons column from a while back provided a nice way to think about the game:

Here's the point: In all five of these games, the winning team was ready to use everything but the kitchen sink to come out on top. For instance, the Steelers scored a TD on a delayed QB sneak with Roethlisberger from 14 yards out, the kind of play you run once a year (because it will only work once). That's a kitchen-sink play -- you don't use it until you absolutely need it. On Monday, the Steelers needed it.

And:

There's a flip side to this theory: The Anti-Sink Game. I don't know who invented it, but it's been a Bill Belichick specialty during any regular-season game against an inferior opponent -- you can always count on the Pats to keep everything close to the vest, avoid any gimmick plays or defenses, stick to basic formations and try to win doing the bare minimum (like against the Raiders in Week 1). They're almost like a con artist who keeps passing up small poker pots and playing possum until someone is dumb enough to raise the stakes.

Pretty good description of the respective teams' approaches. Duke busted out everything it had; Stanford went from vanilla schemes early to what we'll call strawberry ice cream in the middle to end when things became a bit dicey (without progressing to full-on sundae--does this make sense to anyone else?). So, you know, another thing to keep in mind.