Projo Pats Blog

Eleven fans were waiting to greet the Colts when their plane landed at Indianapolis International Airport Monday afternoon.

The indystar.com calls that a sparse crowd.

Read the story here.

CLEVELAND (AP) -- The Cleveland Browns have released wide receiver and former New England Patriot Donte' Stallworth.

Stallworth was suspended for the 2009 season by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell after he pleaded guilty to killing a pedestrian while driving drunk in Florida. He spent 24 days in jail.
Stallworth played one season for the Browns, catching 17 passes for 170 yards and one touchdown in 2008.

Goodell said Friday that Stallworth would be reinstated after the Super Bowl.

The New England Patriots are 10-1 to win Super Bowl XLV to be played next February in Dallas, according to bodog.com. The Indianapolis Colts are the favorites at 13-2 and the San Diego Chargers are second at 8-1. The Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints are tied with the Patriots at 10-1.

Kick these stats around:

San Diego kicker Nate Kaeding had missed three field goals all season. He then missed all three of his attempts against the Jets in the AFC semifinals.

Kaeding had made 69 straight inside 40 yards, but missed from 36, 40, and 57 yards as the Chargers were upset.

Five years earlier, in San Diego's 2004 wild-card playoff game against the Jets, Kaeding missed a 40-yarder in overtime, and New York went on to win.

Now let's look at the 23-year-old Hartley.

Suspended for the first four games of this season for using the banned drug Adderall, it wasn't until December that Hartley was able to win his job back from veteran John Carney.

In the Saints' final five games of the regular season, Hartley made 9 of 11 field-goal attempts, with the longest being just 38 yards.

But, with the pressure on in the postseason, he was 5-for-5 -- all of them from 40 yards and beyond.

After nailing a 40-yarder in overtime to beat the Vikings in the NFC championship game, Hartley became the first kicker in Super Bowl history to boot three field goals of 40 yards or longer, drilling the ball through the uprights from 46, 44, and 47 yards as the Saints upset the Colts.

He did not, however, make the onside kick at the outset of the second half that the Saints recovered and turned into a touchdown. Credit for that goes to the Saints' rookie punter, Thomas Morstead.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The New Orleans Saints' win over Indianapolis gave the Super Bowl its highest overnight ratings in 23 years.

That means, when final figures are released by the Nielsen Co. later Monday, there's a strong likelihood the game will be the most-watched Super Bowl ever. Last year's game between Pittsburgh and Arizona has that distinction, with 98.7 million viewers.

The quick measurement of the nation's 55 biggest media markets gave the New Orleans-Indianapolis game a 46.4 rating. Last year's game had an overnight measurement of 42.1. A ratings point represents 1,149,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 114.9 million TV homes.

The overnight ratings figure was the largest since the 1987 game between the New York Giants and Denver Broncos.

The top-rated market was New Orleans, as might be expected, but the second highest wasn't Indianapolis. It was Washington, where a paralyzing snowstorm presumably kept many residents at home and in front of the TV.

Meanwhile, Dorito's was a big winner in a measurement of interest in the commercials played during the Super Bowl. TiVo Inc. said the snack company's ad featuring a boy telling a man to keep his hands off his chips and his mom was stopped and played back in 15 percent of homes with the digital video recorder.

The secretly filmed CBS promo with David Letterman, Jay Leno and Oprah Winfrey came in second, followed by the Snicker's ad with Betty White and Abe Vigoda flattened in a football game.

Let's see now, Saints coach Sean Payton is gutsy and brilliant for calling an onside kick to start the second half, but Bill Belichick's a dope for having his Patriots go for it on 4th-and-2 at the N.E. 28 in the waning minutes at Indianapolis -- is that right?

I commend Payton for having the guts to make the call that caught the Colts by surprise and resulted in a touchdown. But, had it backfired, Indy would have had the ball in New Orleans territory at the outset of the third quarter with the distinct possibility of turning their 10-6 lead into a 17-6 advantage. Remember, the Colts did get into the end zone on their first possession of the second half.

Payton's decision was arguably more risky than what Belichick did. There was no reason for Coach Hoodie to think that, with Tom Brady at QB, and receivers like Randy Moss and Wes Welker, as well as Kevin Faulk coming out of the backfield, his Patriots couldn't pick up two yards, which would have wrapped up the game.

It was clear to Belichick -- and should have been to everyone else watching the game -- that, if Manning got his hands on the ball again, there was a very good chance that the Colts were going to score. So why not rely on his offense to put the game away?

After all,Belichick had seen his defense give away the 2006 AFC championship game at Indianapolis, when the Colts overcame a 21-3, second-quarter deficit and drove 80 yards in the final minutes to the winning touchdown. He'd also seen the New England defense fail to contain the Giants' comeback in the closing minutes of Super Bowl XLII, when they spoiled the Pats' perfect season with an 83-yard TD drive.

Belichick made the right move in trying to clinch a victory by going for it on fourth down at Indianapolis. I said it at the time, although many of many colleagues in the sportswriting business, along with a goodly number of irate fans, differed vociferously.

Many of those same colleagues, and fans, now are proclaiming how smart, how bristling with bravado, Payton is for calling for the onside kick -- strictly because his gamble panned out, and Belichick's didn't.

All are wire photos:

Tom Brady -- four Super Bowls, three titles, two MVP awards.

And he would have had four wins had the New England defense not allowed the Giants to drive 83 yards in the final minutes of Super Bowl XLII, after Brady capped an 80-yard, late-game, touchdown drive with a 6-yard TD pass to Randy Moss.

Peyton Manning -- two Super Bowls, one win, one MVP.

And he might have had two wins except that, unlike Brady, when the Colts needed him to lead a game-tying drive in the fourth quarter against the Saints, Manning threw an interception that was returned 74 yards by cornerback Tracy Porter for the decisive TD in a 31-17 New Orleans victory.

Manning is, without question, one of the NFL's all-time greats -- a sure-fire, first-ballot Hall of Fame selection. But, if you had to take one quarterback to play a championship game, would you really take him over Brady?

Indianapolis Colts star Dwight Freeney is active for Sunday's Super Bowl and was working out on the field less than two hours before kickoff at Sun Life Stadium.

Freeney did some running and even tried a spin move on his sprained right ankle. He didn't appear to be limping, waving to the crowd as he headed back to the locker room Sunday.

The defensive end hasn't practiced since tearing a ligament in his ankle late in the AFC championship game two weeks ago.