What the heck happened?
That could apply to the outcome of last night's Super Bowl, but it also could apply to how I felt as I was watching it unfold on Fox.
Was it really just a simple matter of the New York Giants defense applying pressure to Tom Brady and disrupting the vaunted New England Patriots offense? That seemed to be the only explanation we were hearing from analyst Troy Aikman.
They were attacking the Patriots in a variety of ways, with different blitzes, Aikman said in the first half.
"They do what they do," he said, "and they don't care if sometimes that leaves them one-on-one outside."
But didn't Brady look a little bit off on his passes, even in the second half when he was getting some better protection? Aikman did allow that Brady was "out of rhythm." Was the ankle bothering him more than expected? I didn't hear any explanation.
And we shouldn't be surprised by names that keep coming up during the game. I don't think Giants receiver Steve Smith was mentioned once in the pre-game, but he ended up with five catches, several of them on crucial downs.
Plus, one of the other themes was that the Giants would have to run the ball very well to win. They gained only 91 yards total on the ground, and time of possession was basically even.
So ... what happened?
Well, here's some of what else happened during the game telecast:
Maybe I misunderstood, but exactly what did Aikman mean when he said Giants running back Ahmad Bradshaw had "tremendous elusiveness within the pocket"?
Give play-by-play man Joe Buck credit for prescience. Early in the game, he said of New York quarterback Eli Manning: "If there has been an imaginary corner, he has turned it."
Buck also said Brady had told Buck of his ankle: "I'm not worried about running. ... I'm worried about being able to step into throws. I don't want a 65-yard yard pass to turn into a 55-yard pass." But we didn't hear a lot more about the ankle.
This was a pretty big game, just in case you didn't realize. The last hour of the pre-game was introduced by a piece on perfection, narrated by Russell Crowe, featuring images of the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, Martin Luther King, Louis Armstrong and Jimi Hendrix, among others. Then pre-game host Curt Menefee reminded us we were about to watch "the biggest championship in all of sports."
Not counting the rest of the world outside of the United States, that is.
One of the best graphic touches during the entire game: seeing a Terminator grab the Fox football robot and fling him away. As annoying as that robot has been all season, the Terminator was doing what lots of viewers would have liked to have seen back in October.
During the pre-game, in the mini player profiles, it was all well and good to see the Giants' Osi Numenyiora dressed in a beefeater's hat because of the team's trip to London, and it was nice to hear New York's Antonio Pierce likes 1963 Impalas and jazz. But I could easily have gone on with my life without hearing the Patriots' Rodney Harrison once was nicknamed "Doody" by his brother because he had "really bad gas."
I'm all for network synergy, but if you're going to interview John Krasinski -- as Ryan Seacrest did on the red carpet -- shouldn't you mention he's from The Office even though it's not on Fox?
Oops Dept.: A pre-game spot to promote voting featured St. Louis Rams quarterback Marc Bulger. Except the name flashed under him spelled his first name "Mark."
ray.frager@baltsun.com