Either Tejada was encouraged by the signing of Jeff Conine or the non-signing of Jeromy Burnitz or he was afraid of getting traded to the Phillies or Cubs. Or maybe he likes crabcakes a lot.
So the blockbuster deal of the winter is off, for now. Unless Tejada changes his mind yet again. You can go back to watching NFL playoff games won by a team that passed for 25 yards.
Bob - In your free time, you might check to see how often the team who passes for more yards ends up winning in the playoffs. My guess (based on my memory) would be that that team who
(1) passes for more yards and
(2) rushes for fewer yards
wins less than half the time.
Anecdotally (with no stats to back me up), I don't think total yardage is all that important. I've seen many box scores in which a team led in both passing yards and total yards (but not rushing yards), and still lost the game. This has certainly been true of the Rams.
Yep. Turnovers are huge. Again, I'm just guessing, but I'd guess that the percentage of pass attempts that result in interceptions is greater than the percentage of rush attempts that result in fumbles recovered by the other team. If so, this might help explain why running teams tend to fare better than passing teams in the playoffs (though not so much in the regular season... not sure why there would be a difference...)
(1) passes for more yards and
(2) rushes for fewer yards
wins less than half the time.
But I'm not footballoutsiders.com
Those guys are likely all over this game.
But 3 turnovers by Tampa Bay, two of which led to touchdowns were the difference.
Again, the Rams are a great example.
When the Rams won the Super Bowl, they outrushed Tennessee and Atlanta outrushed Denver the year before.
But Super Bowls aren't great samples since a lot of them haven't been close.
You might be on to something there.
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