Today, Nancy and I watched pro football together for the first time since the Superbowl. We went to R.J. Gator's, which attracts many extremely passionate Dolphins fan (Nancy refrained from sharing her gay logo theory with them). They had 2-for-1 beers, so I had four Miller Light beers (Nancy helped me with one of them) and she had a Coors Cutter so her baby doesn't have extra eyes, though I think it might be fun to have a child with superpowers.
We had two notable accomplishments today: we watched two games at the same time, and we came to understand an important strategic play on our own.
Watching two games at once was facilitated by the enthusiastic Dolphins fans who made it known when there was attention-worthy action, and by the two games that we were watching, MIA v BUF and NE v ATL, being on adjacent screens. Most of our time was devoted to the Pats game, but we did catch some exciting plays in the other game.
The strategic Pats move happened at the end of the fourth quarter. The score was tied with around three minutes on the clock and the Pats had possession around the 20-yd line. For the first three downs, the running backs charged straight into the defensive line, gaining barely a yard each time. Nancy was baffled at how stupid this technique was. I gave Billy the benefit of the doubt, and convinced Nancy that it's possible that there might be something going on there that we're not aware of. She finally agreed that perhaps Bill had something up his sleeve other than desperate stupidity. We knew that they only needed a field goal to win the game, and they could easily get it from where they were positioned. Then it occurred to us that they might be trying to kill time so that Atlanta wouldn't have time to tie them with their own field goal, while not risking an interception by passing. Finally, we remembered that as long as the ball doesn't go out of bounds (and possibly something having to do with the ball bouncing on the ground--we still don't have the spike thing totally worked out), the clock will continue running. Ah-ha! The run straight into the defensive line was a suicide mission for the sake of guaranteeing a field goal and the win.
These two accomplishments made us feel wicked smaht. We haven't completely loss our touch.
One final note came up last week but I was too lazy to get it down on virtual paper. Last season, Chris R gave us a quiz question having to do with clipping, but we never came close to figuring it out. Last week, the ref charged a penalty for clipping, and signaled to his knee area with his arm straight down, his fingers pointing towards his leg, palm up, and arm swinging forward and back. Clearly, clipping has something to do with the legs. Perhaps the length of the penalized player's trousers was not regulation and needed some shortening.
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