Quote Originally Posted by Maxie the Taxi View Post
I confess I only played one year of organized football in high school, so my interest in the game is purely as a fan. However, I bristle a bit when, as a fan, I'm pigeonholed in a group of fans who all react to the game in a stereotypical way.

I didn't need sports beat reporters to tell me after the fact what to think about the debacle in Seattle. In fact, though you only have my word for it, I didn't need the benefit of hindsight to tell me what went wrong or right in that game.

After halftime I was praying McCarthy and Capers would keep their foot on the gas pedal. Sadly, midway through the second half, I sensed both coaches were beginning to play it safe. At one point Capers rushed only two and Wilson began to have time in the pocket. Plus, there was less penetration on running plays. After Burnett's interception, and Lacy's first dive into the stacked defense, I was screaming for Rodgers to throw the ball, for McCarthy to get creative, put Cobb in the backfield, something to move the ball downfield.

As for Burnett, I was stunned when he slid down after his INT. I asked myself what does he and Peppers know that I don't? There was five minutes left and Seattle had three TO's left!

Yes, by all that's probable, we still should have won playing it safe. But I've watched too many NFL games turn in the last 30 seconds, let alone in the last 4-5 minutes. At the time, I did not want this game -- and our entire season -- to boil down to having to recover an onside kick, which was totally foreseeable at the time. If we were going to blow this game, I wanted us to go out with our boots on, so to speak.

Yes, yes, yes. It was an "easy" onsides kick to recover. Bostick shouldn't have missed it. But then again, a pro golfer shouldn't miss an "easy" five footer for the win on the 72nd hole at the Masters, a five footer that that same pro probably made 10 out of 10 times earlier in the match. (I DO know something about competitive golf.)

Pressure is real. It's palpable at the end of a close football game or a golf tournament. Everyone who plays any kind of sport is familiar with pressure and the choke factor. Players are known to wilt under that pressure, to "react" emotionally rather than to think. In pressure situations, hands turn to iron and "easy" becomes difficult...and one mistake compounds the pressure causing another and another.

As a fan, in the last five minutes of that game, my heart almost beat out of my chest. It had to be the same for coaches and players. The difference, as far as I can tell, is the Seattle players reverted to the familiar, their comfort zone. They got aggressive and physical on both offense and defense. Because they reverted to the familiar, their mind and body handled the pressure.

GB, on the other hand, reverted to the unfamiliar. They played it safe. On offense they stopped trying to push the ball downfield by any means possible. As mraynrand puts it, they knelt down.

On defense, they let up on the pass rush, forsook the reckless abandon they played with in the previous quarters and fell back into a passive "prevent" mode. Consequently, the pressure got to them, they made mistakes and the game slipped away.

I've been there as a golfer. I've done that. I know what choking feels like. So nowadays I try to avoid it by playing like I'm behind right up through the final stroke. If I go out, I go out giving it my best shot.

But that's just me.
This debate has gone round and round and is once again at the place it started so I'm gonna end with this.

When the golfer misses the 5-footer on the last hole at the Masters to go into sudden death, you can look back to the 10th hole when he had the three stroke lead and blame his caddy for telling him to lay up instead of trying to fly the creek and reach in two (though I doubt you'd be doing that). Because he desperately needed to play like he's behind and avoid the pressure situation at all costs, right? And laying up just made him tight down the stretch... Not many pros lack that kind of confidence in their ability to finish at that point.

Instead, you say, "Damn. If he just would have made the gimme putt, he'd have won the Masters. Pressure goes with the territory, and sometimes champions have to make easy putts when major championships are on the line."

The rest may have been true, but it's all just bad excuses for missing the putt at the end.