David Carr’s dog, preparing for the Super Bowl. (via)
You can prepare by reading Greg Hanlon on Bill Parcells, the coach who deserves credit from both teams, and the entire football league, for what he has done for the sport. (Quotes from Tuna on his football philosophy beyond the click).
Four years later, many changes for Patriots, Giants
- Of the 106 players who were on the active rosters for the Giants and Patriots in the Super Bowl on Feb. 3, 2008, only 23 are still employed with the same team today.
About twenty-five years ago, minutes before kickoff of Super Bowl XXI between the Denver Broncos and New York Giants, five members of the Broncos walked out to midfield for the pregame coin toss. Only one Giant did the same.
Harry Carson was 33 years old at that point, a team captain and 11-year veteran. The idea to send him out alone belonged to the Giants’ coach, Bill Parcells. It was one of his little psychological games: One of our guys equals five of your guys.
Greg Hanlon, in the locker room and on the field:
Wauffle’s replacement, Robert Nunn, has preached a renewed emphasis on technique and “gap discipline” to a defensive-line unit that strayed from these fundamentals last year. That’s what Rocky Bernard, the Giants spherical and soft-spoken defensive tackle, told me when I approached him for an interview at his locker.
“With Wauffle it was more about ‘getting off, getting off, getting off,’” he said, describing an approach that valued attacking penetration above all else. “With Nunn, we’re not just getting off like a wild man anymore. We still have a gap, but we balanced up our stances a bit so we’re not shooting the gap as much. It’s more just staying in your gap when [blockers] are trying to cut us off, reach us and scoop us and stuff.”
