Re: Superbowl XLIII
Man..
There were a lot of penalties in this game where I thought they were BS until I saw the replay. The Cardinals played some dumb football in this game, some really really really dumb football. They managed to come around but they put themselves in such a hole that it was hard to come out of (kinda scary how much this resembled the Cardinals/Eagles game). They just played a sloppy game early with so many damned penalties.
On the final Steelers' drive the Cardinals did what everyone does against the Steelers: they play prevent. I don't know why, and I don't know what film suggests this but they did it and once again Roethlisberger managed to drive on it. What we know about Ben is that he loves to hold the ball so by applying less pressure you're allowing him to play to his strengths. Once the Steelers provided extra attention to blocking Dockett, and thus neutralizing the Cards' pass rush, the Cardinals should've tried to dial in some blitzes on that drive instead of faking it. Did they try to move Chike Okeafor back to end there? I didn't see, but that would've made sense (since he's better than Travis LaBoy at end anyway).
Santonio Holmes came up with a Deion Branch like performance (add him to the list of WRs better than Roy E Williams).