05-27-2021, 02:04 PM
(05-26-2021, 11:18 PM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: That's what happens when you play a playoff team who is one of if not the best rushing team in the league and they have the ball for 2/3 of the game while your team converts 1/9 3rd downs and your QB only completes 6 passes for 48 yards and has 2 INTs. And you have a whole slew of back end of the roster guys like Margus Hunt, Xavier Williams, Amani Bledsoe, Christian Covington, Khalid Kareem, and Khalil Mckenzie taking a large portion of your DL snaps.
The NFL was founded over 100 years ago in 1920. The NFL merged over 50 years ago in 1966.
Now you're probably wondering "what the hell does this have to do with anything?" A.) It's to provide provide context to my next statement.
In over 100 years of football, and in over 50 years of the "Super Bowl era" there have only been 4 games where a team has rushed for 400 yards or more. 4 times. Total. Let that really sink in.
In roughly estimating the total amount of games played in those latter 50 years, the best number I could come up with (without a ton of research) is 22,400 games. There have been somewhere around 22,400 games since 1966.
Really wrap your head around these numbers above. The amount of years, the amount of games played. We're talking about an incredible amount of data, and an incredibly amount of opportunity to meet that mark (400 yards).
Now come back to the fact it's only happened 4 times. I think if you really try to think about this you'll come to the conclusion that there is no explanation or excuse that can be made to rationalize that level of output.
In all of those thousands and thousands of games, played decade after decade after decade, you don't think there's been countless examples of teams who faced similar cirucumstances (facing a great rushing team and having backups play)????
Making this all the worse, is the fact the Ravens started pulling their starters in the late 3rd quarter. We didn't give this up in a close game against their #1's playing till the end. A lot of this came with their backups, and with us knowing full well what they were going to do (run clock). Yet we still couldn't stop it.
I'm sorry, I think if everyone thinks long and hard about this then they'll know there is no way to come to any conclusion other than this was an asbolutely pathetic performance. There's not an excuse in the world that helps forgives such a historic performance.
