Everyone wants into the act.
Patriots owner Bob Kraft, a strong proponent of the New Meadowlands Stadium getting the Super Bowl in 2014, arrived in Texas and after seeing the snow fall yesterday, Kraft is thinking a cold-weather Super Bowl back home at Gilette Stadium would be a fine idea.
“I woke up this morning and my sweetheart said to me, ‘Wow, it’s snowing, we should have a game in New England,’ ” Kraft said. “When I supported New York and I will for a lot of reasons, now I’m thinking about it, maybe we should have a Super Bowl in New England. Maybe we should get on the list.
“We’ve got a lot of great things in Boston, Providence, New England,” he said. “We have the hotel rooms, we have everything. I love games played in the elements. You look at the kind of support and ratings we get for outdoor games and the real fans, we got ’em up in the third deck, they come. I think having the elements be part of the game is pretty special.”
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Packers WR Donald Driver
sat out practice on Thursday and yesterday was held out of team drills after tweaking a quadriceps muscle on Wednesday.
“I would be shocked if Donald Driver does not play on Sunday,” coach Mike McCarthy
said.
Everyone on the Green Bay injury report is listed as probable except for LB Erik Walden (ankle). He is questionable. If Walden cannot play, Frank Zombo
would start.
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Steelers starting rookie center Maurkice Pouncey
will not play tomorrow because of his high ankle sprain. Steelers coach Mike Tomlin
ruled out Pouncey and defensive end Aaron Smith (torn triceps) for Super Bowl XLV because neither was able to practice all week.
Tomlin said the center’s absence will not effect the game plan.
“Obviously he’s a quality player, and how it effects the game, no one knows,” Tomlin said. “But as far as what we do, we have a plan, and that won’t change.”
Undrafted center Doug Legursky
will start in place of Pouncey, who was injured in the Steelers AFC Championship win over the Jets. It will be Legursky’s first NFL start at center, and he will be facing Packers nose tackle B.J. Raji.
Legursky has made four previous starts at guard for the Steelers.
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The Packers took their much-anticipated team picture, with all the players on injured reserve in attendance.
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Kraft was very candid when asked what he thought led to his Patriots being ousted by the Jets in the divisional round.
“I don’t know, a good game plan?” Kraft said. “You got to hand it to the Jets. They came in and did a good job. If you think about it, we drove down the field those first two drives, I mean, Tommy
[Brady
] was unbelievable. He had seven, eight or 10 games without an interception and then that lazy interception [to David Harris
], they go down and they miss that field goal.
“[Then] we come down and drive right down again, we throw one in the end zone and it gets dropped, we get three points. We get the fake punt, which we hadn’t done all year, it gets bobbled. It was wide open, by the way, if we had executed it. We didn’t get the breaks and the Jets did a great job and we’re very sad.”
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Steelers OL Max Starks
, who is on injured reserve, said he badly wants to see his new teammate and former Cowboy tackle Flozell Adams
finally get a Super Bowl ring.
“A lot of us in this locker room have been here since 2004, 2005, and I wouldn’t say we’re numb, but we have an expectation level that we’re always going to be in the hunt for a championship, and now three out of six years we’ve had that opportunity,” Starks said. “Now to see Flozell in his 13th year, and he’s been fighting for this opportunity his entire career, come to Pittsburgh at the last minute, learn a brand new offense and then come to this point where he’s going back to Dallas where he started his career is awesome. You couldn’t write a better story for him.”
