I’m guessing everyone watched last night’s game, which was great.  I’m going to do a full Rewind on it when I get access to the film, so look for that at the end of this week.

Some notes:

– First, a rant:  The officiating at the end of the game was unfortunate (that’s putting it lightly).  Clear interference on the 4th down pass, regardless of what Mike Pereira says.  I’m tired of announcers and commentators giving officials a pass by saying “in real-time it’s a tough call to make”.  I don’t care if it’s a difficult call to get right, it’s their job. Everyone else in the league is expected to make difficult plays, officials shouldn’t be any different.

Also, the idea of giving the players more leeway at the end of games is absurd.  Many people talk about how the players should be the ones deciding games, but an official NOT making a call is just as significant as throwing a flag.

The intentional safety play also featured a number of outrageously obvious holding penalties that weren’t called.  Not that it would have made a difference, but the infractions were so egregious that the only explanation is the refs actually did “put the whistles away”, which is unacceptable.

– Did anyone have a hard time not thinking of Eddie Murphy’s Buckwheat when listening to Jerome Boger last night?  Is that offensive?

– Remember the post about how taking the ball out of the back of the end zone is actually a decent decision most of the time?  So that worked out pretty well, though I obviously would have expected it to come from the 49ers.

– 49ers didn’t run the read-option very much.  Obviously the Raven’s game-plan was to make that difficult, but I’ll be paying close attention to exactly how they managed to shut down a scheme that so many others struggled against.

– Anquan Boldin deserves a lot more credit then he gets.

– As a reminder that nobody needs, the Eagles beat the Ravens this year…

– Nick Foles’ college career and rookie year statistics are now eerily similar to a Super-Bowl winning quarterback.

– Ray Rice does NOT have a fumbling problem. Just terrible luck and bad timing.

– Anyone else really disappointed that Jay-Z didn’t come out for a verse with his wife?  That would have made it easily one of the best halftime shows ever.

Here is a fun chart.  No great insight, but still interesting to look at.  I graphed every team’s point differential vs. its regular season wins for the last ten seasons and highlighted the Super Bowl winning teams.

For reference, a data point below the line means the team won MORE games than expected, while a point above the line means the team won FEWER times than expected.

Needless to say…fuck the Giants.