Yesterday was the NFL Championship day.
I have shared that I’m not a huge football fan, but I do enjoy watching the big games. I just can’t invest in another team’s regular season and live and die with each loss. That’s too much. I invest those emotions in the Yankees.
Still, I love the big games. I love the games played in the cold frosty air (being glad I am inside). I love when Green Bay is in it.
I root for Tom Brady. (Sorry.) I like watching the greats be great. I also root for Aaron Rogers. As such, I was conflicted during the NFC Championship. I wanted them both to do well.
The following were my baseball thoughts as I watched the NFC Championship Game:
This big game, with two all-time greats is being played at 3:00 p.m. The AFC Championship Game is at 6:40 p.m. How about that, two championship games played early enough so that the people watching can go to sleep at a normal hour instead of waiting until 1:00 in the morning. (I wish baseball would do this.)
Tom Brady’s career (at least until he went to Tampa Bay) reminded me of Derek Jeter’s. Just continued greatness. Continued winning. Both are quite possibly the best ever at their positions. Both have a ton of rings. Both played for the same team for a long, long, long time.
I wonder if Derek Jeter could have helped lead a team to a Championship Game or World Series if he had played a few more years. I doubt it. By the end, Jeter was no longer elite. Brady still seems to be elite.
Joe Buck is much more enthusiastic of an announcer for football than baseball.
I sometimes wonder, which NFL team is the equivalent of the Yankees? Maybe it’s Green Bay with their long winning tradition, history of great players and coaches, legendary stadium, and the same uniforms over decades and decades.
I have always liked the green and yellow Green Bay uniform. They look like winners.
What if baseball had a coin flip? Imagine the home team batting first?
Imagine deferring batting first but then getting to end the bottom of the fourth with your team at bat followed by (after “halftime”) the top of the 5th. That would change the game!
Third down conversions are like two-out hits. When it’s your team, they are great, when it’s the other team, they kill you.
Tampa Bay = TD, Green Bay = Punt
Tampa Bay = Punt, Green Bay = TD
Tampa Bay = TD, Green Bay = FG
This isn’t like baseball it’s like boxing. This is like a heavyweight fight with both fighters being knocked down and then knocking down the other guy. What a game!
In football there are all these guys who come back from these terrible injuries, “He was out all week with a broken collar bone, two Achilles pulls, a neck strain, and a fractured fibula, but he’s back and that TD run was amazing…” Maybe James Taillon can be a similar success story for the Yankees.
Tom Brady with a lead and the ball with two minutes to play is like having Mariano Rivera on the mound.
Brady is now going to his 10th Super Bowl. Unreal. Can we call him Yogi?
