Dean's Blog: Super Prediction, Thanks For Asking

Okay, I missed it by one point. A week ago yesterday on the Blitz, I predicted a 27-24 New England win. Expected a couple of field goals instead of four TD passes.

The only thing my prediction proves is that if you pick enough games you'll get one right sooner or later. Or almost right—it was 28-24.

Seattle HC Pete Carroll obviously didn't buy into the Darrell Royal school of thought about passing. The legendary former Sooner player and Texas coach famously said, “There are three things that can happen when you pass the football, and two of them are bad.”

Of course if you have Tom Brady, DKR's one “good thing” happens a lot. The quintessential NFL QB set a record with 37 Super Bowl completions, tossed four TD passes and rallied his team from a 10-point fourth quarter deficit. And went home with the pretty girl.

I was hoping Bill Belichick would call a timeout and allow Marshawn Lynch to score on second down to give Tom Brady as much time as possible for a winning score. I believe Belichick gambled that his best chance was to make Pete Carroll and his players deal with the clock and late-game pressure. They'd wasted one timeout and were in scramble mode. The hyperactive Carroll outsmarted himself deciding to throw the football inside the one in what what will go down as as bad a play call as the game has ever seen. Carroll's unnecessary roll of the dice crapped out.

Ricardo Lockette? Yep, that's who Carroll decided should have the ball in his hands to determine the winner on the most pressurized play in the biggest game in all of sports.

Conspiracy theorists could build a case that this game was fixed. Of course it wasn't, but The Call was that bad.

By the way, Carroll's play call explanation is lame. The excuse that New England's personnel package dictated that smart football was to throw the football is wrong. Belichick goes three corners with his standard goal line defense.

As time was winding down before that fateful Seattle snap, I was one of what surely had to be many millions of folks thinking that karma was about to get it right again. That the tainted Patriots were being royally teased only to see a third Super Bowl slip through their grasp on a third supernatural reception on the game winning drive.

Final score, 1 Bad Call, Zero Karma. Unless you want to believe that karma was actually with the team in white. That Boston's Holy Trinity of Brady, Belichick and Kraft have been wrongfully and deflatingly accused.

Did you pick up on the shared ecstasy shared of Belichick and Brady when the veteran QB coaxed the Seahawks into a game-clinching encroachment penalty inside the one yard line? A perfect example of how this tandem is the best of the best at doing the little things right.

Being good and smart is lethal. And in the end Carroll and his QB flinched and flunked. Belichick and Brady, sound and sensational—Super Bowl champs once again.