2007 NFC Championship Game: Giants vs. Packers

Some thoughts:

  1. The game was cold–I think the announcers said the third coldest game ever played;
  2. I recall this Giants team not being that great, especially on offense, but they actually were decent for a large portion of the game. I had low expectations of Eli, but he looked solid for the first three quarters. Then again, he had three balls that could have been intercepted. The first one went to straight to a DT–but it wasn’t easy to catch; the second was a bad throw that was intercepted, but a penalty by GB negated it; and the third was a throw on a post that went through the hands of a DB–arguable if it was easy or not.
  3. But the Giants controlled the ball for most of the game. Packers scored quickly on one possession, which might have helped the Giants. Still the ball control wasn’t decisive–the Packers could have won this, maybe should have. Then again, if the Packers did a better job of ball control (They didn’t run much), it might have made a big difference.
  4. A big reason they lost was Favre’s INT in the OT. It was an inaccurate throw, and this set up the game winner for the Giants. Favre made a terrible decision/throw in the second half that the Giants picked up. But the Giants DB fumbled on the return and the Packers recovered, near the Giants goal.
  5. Giants kinda looked sloppy at times. In addition to the fumble above, they also fumbled on a kick return, but luckily recovered it. They had some drops, too, but the weather could have been a factor. I think their kicker missed two FGs, including one at the end of regulation that could have won the game.

The Stupid Coin Flip Problem

I’m really not that interested in talking about this again, but I read a passage (about an entirely different topic) that made me think about this. Here’s the passage:

You can flip a coin 100 times and have it come up tails 60 times. It’s an unlikely result, but it happens. About 3 percent of the time, you’ll get 60 or more tails.

You can flip it again the next day, and it can come up tails 60 times again. This is possible, and no doubt has been done before. (Again. Don’t do this. It is so boring! Read more football instead. That’s a good use of your limited time on our doomed planet.)

If you flip the coin 100 times for 100 days, though, you’re not going to keep getting tails 60 percent of the time. Regression, the most powerful arm of probability, will tug the percentage back toward 50 percent. It just will. It doesn’t have a choice, and neither does the coin.

I’ll go over what stands out in the comment below.

Solve the Brewster’s Millions Challenge

Montgomery Brewster could receive a lot of money if he could overcome one challenge–namely, he had to spend $30 million dollars in one month–basically $1 million a day. In the challenge, I believe only a smart percentage could be given away. Additionally, if he bought or did anything of value, the value would be added to the remaining balance. This was from a movie, that most of you know, and maybe the amount would be different now. In any event, I like thinking about ways I would overcome this challenge. How would you solve this challenge?