Dave Naffziger's Blog

There are few times when a writer completely and absolutely captures an experience, thought, feeling, emotion or sometimes all of the above.

Bill Simmons has been writing about Boston Sports for years. He nails ‘it’ every time:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/080204

With that said, I never thought the Patriots would lose. I thought they’d be tested, I thought the game would be great … but lose??? You could point out 10 different instances when the Pats blew a chance to make a monster play or put the game away, and you could point out all the different times the Giants caught a break or had a ball bounce their way, but really, everything you need to know about Super Bowl XLII happened on the Miracle Play To Be Named Later — you know, the third down on the do-or-die drive when Eli Manning ripped himself away from the entire Patriots defensive line (THEY HAD HIS JERSEY!!!!!!) and threw a pass that hung in the air forever like one of those sports movie passes, and even though David Tyree and Rodney Harrison had an equal chance of getting it, Tyree jumped a little bit higher, hauled in the football, trapped it against his helmet and somehow held on while Harrison was doing everything but performing a figure-four leg lock on him.

Boston sports (football, baseball and soccer) definitely fall into my list of guilty pleasures (sometimes bordering on obsessions).

For those that don’t know (or Indy fans and would like a reminder), the New England Patriots became the first football team to win all 16 games in their regular season. The undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins (that only had to win 14 games) can finally stop popping champagne every season.

Last night the Pats broke several other records:

• Most points scored in a season
• Tom Brady broke the record for TDs thrown in a season
• Randy Moss broke the record for TDs caught in a season

It was awesome to hear the crowd in Giants stadium cheering at the end of the game. I’m sure there were a ton of Pats fans there, but I think even some of the Giants fans enjoyed witnessing history.

Oh and what a coup for the fledgling NFL network to broadcast the game. I’m sure the traffic to iwantnflnetwork.com surged last night.