I mean, this time, the Cardinals had to make the late-game comeback. This time, Larry Fitzgerald made the huge touchdown catch that likely had people across the country thinking the Cards were gonna win this game. This time, it was Kurt Warner who had to watch on the sidelines as the other team drove down the field and took the lead.
I don’t care if it’s vengeful – damn, did that finish feel good.
Truthfully, until the fourth quarter, this game was pretty unmemorable. At least I thought so. With the exception of the James Harrison 100-yard interception return at the end of the first half, the first three quarters were pretty damn boring. I even fell asleep for awhile. And for much of it, I was just angry. I thought I had gotten over the Eagles NFC Championship loss.
Clearly, I hadn’t.
Whatever. How about that Santonio Holmes? Or Big Ben, leading his team to victory late in the game. (Editor’s note: God, that must be nice…) And, to be fair, how friggin’ good is Larry Fitzgerald? The Steelers bottled him up for much of the game, and he still ended up with two touchdowns. Not fair. All in all, we’ll probably look back at this Super Bowl and remember it as a pretty good game.
But for some reason, I don’t think I’ll remember it as a classic.
Why? It had all of the drama, all of the late-game, back-and-forth heroics from two very good quarterbacks. It had that classic moment, this year’s being the Santonio Holmes catch over three Cardinals defenders in the corner of the endzone. Then, there was the longest play in Super Bowl history, James Harrison’s interception return. Objectively, it was a pretty classic game, despite the fact that it was incredibly dull for three quarters.
But here in Philadelphia, I wonder if it will be a game that Eagles fans will always look back on regretfully, the bitter aftertaste of disappointment lingering far longer than one football season. After all, this was a game we all felt we should have been in. I know I probably should be over that by now – it just didn’t happen for us this year, much like it didn’t happen for every other team in the NFL. And that’s totally logical, and probably is the way I should think. And for some reason, I can’t. Instead, I was just annoyed for most of this game, and pretty much still am.
But I was happy to see the Steelers pull it out in the end, especially after the Cardinals had made their comeback. Maybe us Eagles fans have learned to find solace in poetic justice after all of these years, I don’t know.
But it’s better than nothing. And I’ll take that over nothing at all.
The Pattison Pundit 
You were pulling for the Steelers here?
And how is that “poetic justice” for the Cardinals?
Kurt Warner actually has a legitimate right to be mad at his defense. He gave them a 3 point lead with 2 and change left. Not like another QB who gave his team a 1 point lead with 9 minutes left. And then got the ball back with 3 minutes left and blew it.
Warner got the ball back with under a minute left and STILL made you believe he had a chance.
The refs let Harrison beat up a guy and stay in the game, they let Holmes use the ball as a prop to celebrate his TD and call no penalty and then they refuse to review the last play (probably because they were sick of Whisenhunt making them look bad on challenges) and that’s poetic justice?
Your thinking is very strange.
Yeah – for Eagles fans. I thought it was poetic justice for friggin’ Eagles fans. I could care less about the Cardinals. My point was that at least Eagles fans got to see the Cardinals lose in similar fashion to the team they beat, the Eagles, two weeks prior.
Petty? Yeah. But hey – I’ll take what I can get.
I wasn’t really pulling for anyone, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad the Cardinals lost. Especially in the fashion they did. In many ways, because it was a great finish. But also because they lost in a heartbreaking manner, much like our Birds. Might be a bit immature, but it was how I was feeling during the game. Just being honest there.
By the way, Kurt Warner waited until the fourth quarter to show up, much like the rest of his offense. Harrison’s penalty was unnecessary, but I’m not sure he should have gotten tossed for it. A lot of that goes on in the trenches and nobody sees it. Holmes should have been penalized, but that guarantees nothing for the Cardinals. I’ll grant that the extra yardage would have given them better odds, but the odds of them scoring would have still been low. They should have reviewed that last play; don’t know that they would have overturned it, but the game should have been stopped.
Perhaps my thinking is very strange – or perhaps it’s your analysis that is a bit off kilter…
I was a fan of watching a great football game. It cheapened the Steelers victory by that sequence of events at the end of the game.
Also a fan of Kurt Warner. He deserved a final shot to try to win it. And if he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t get it. I’ll sleep.
Wishing bad things on a team that beat our team is really silly. We got outcoached and outplayed. The Cardinals deserved to be there.
And what a great story if they won. Maybe it wakes the Eagles organization up to see how a team that passes constantly wins the game? THEY GET BETTER PLAYERS AS OPPOSED TO TWEAKING A TIRED SYSTEM.
Aren’t you sick of seeing first time teams walk over us to the Super Bowl? Especially in games we’re supposed to win?
But I guess if you find comfort in hating on a team that was better than us – at least on one day – then so be it.
Can”t bring myself to root for a team that already had 5 rings though….
Whoa, wait a second – I never said I wished for bad things to happen to them. Honestly, I watched most of the game with an extremely faint interest. But, when the game came down to those final drives, and the Steelers came out on top, I did enjoy the fact that the Cardinals lost the way that they did. Not, as you probably would interpret me to mean, because the Steelers got away with a TD celebration and a trip to the review booth (though it still – STILL – isn’t clear that they would have won that review).
No, I enjoyed it because they beat us, and then they got beaten in the same way.
After all, does it really matter why we root for one team or another in a sport? I mean, I have nothing but respect for the Cardinals and the season that they had. In almost every way, I am more mad at the Eagles for the way they played – I thought they should have played better, and they didn’t. But as I was watching it, I just started to hope that the Cards would lose after they took the lead. It’s not hatred – in fact, it was pretty much the only moment during the entire game I actually started rooting for a team. The rest of the game, other than that fourth quarter, was just bland.
I could care less about the Steelers and their six friggin’ rings – I wasn’t even born for four of the six! Much like I could care less that the Cards haven’t won one yet – welcome to the club. The end of the game finally offered me a reason to root one way or another for a game I otherwise didn’t give a shit about. I’m okay with that.
I had the same thoughts as you did, Pundit. I was telling people today at work that it was a case of what goes around, comes around.
I was certainly pulling for the Steelers. I can ‘bring myself to root for a team that already had 5 rings’. I wonder who the petty and bitter one really is.
“In almost every way, I am more mad at the Eagles for the way they played – I thought they should have played better, and they didn’t. ”
I agree with this.