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Here's the YouTube of Tatum's hit.  Best view is the slo-mo at 0:38.

In his autobiography They Call Me Assassin, Tatum says that Oakland had the lead, but that Minnesota caught fire and was mounting a dangerous comeback.  "We needed to cool them down," he wrote, and he'd been looking for a way to do that for half a quarter or so.

On the play to White, Tatum recalled, "I got my chance.  The ball came over the middle ... I could have easily intercepted."  Instead he delivered the hit.

Tatum gloated, "While Sammy was down, he kept screaming, 'I can't see!  I can't see!' and I knew that he couldn't hear the things I was saying to him.  His teammates, however, could."

In They Call Me Assassin, Tatum reveals that there is a subtext in every NFL game that runs this way.  If one team can establish itself as the bully, can impose a factor of intimidation, then its chances of winning go wayyyyy up.

Understand, now.  It's not that anybody in the NFL is a pansy.  What happens is, per Tatum, "When you inflict enough pain on a man, eventually his will to win is going be warped."  We all go out there wanting to win.  But sometimes a broken bone, or a fractured eye socket, or whatever, can distract you from your pre-game intentions.

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I've seen a lot of analyses of Super Bowl 48 -- will Manning's noodle arm hold up in the wind?  Will his audibles matter when the Seahawks play only two defenses?  Will Russell Wilson finally start running? etc etc etc etc

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But I haven't seen any that put their finger on the real issue.  "Seattle needs to put somebody on a stretcher to win," says Bill Romanowski.

The 49'ers are completely outside this consideration.  They suffered two gruesome injuries against the Seahawks, to say nothing of the spectacular losing play to Crabtree, and the 49'ers were still spitting and snarling as they left the field.  When the Seahawks and 49er's play, it is the 1976 Raiders against the 1976 Raiders...

The Saints are not nearly AS hardcore as the 49er's are.  And it showed in the results.

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It's funny that Sherman reacts to the "thug" insult.  That was exactly the word applied to the 1972-78 Raiders, but it wasn't applied to the Steel Curtain of that era (Mean Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, etc.).  The Raiders were called "thugs" precisely because of illegal and dirty play - their violence was often unrelated to the flow of the play on the field.  

Richard Sherman is absolutely THE least violent member of the Seattle Seahawks' defense.  Why is he a thug?  Once again, the media has inverted the truth 180 degrees.  That is the defining element of thuggery, the violence.   

Still, if a "thug" is a criminal who takes what he wants confrontationally, and with violence ... well, except for the criminal part, that's exactly what the Seahawks do.  It was Pete Carroll's plan, from the time he got here, to build a team of thugs. Sherman and Wilson are almost the only Seahawks who do not fit the description.  Oh, and Hauschka :- )

The Seahawks have been putting the beatdown on NFC teams all year.  All NFL teams are tough, but most teams' will to win can be warped.  Not following the AFC, I have no "feel" for whether the Broncos' will to win can be warped by violence.  

I doubt that they are impervious to intimidation.  Do you know why?  If they were, Romanowski wouldn't be characterizing this as a Raiders vs Vikings type game.  I do know that Peyton Manning has lost a disproportionate number of playoff games.

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One of the 3 or 4 things I'll be watching most closely, during Super Bowl 48, is whether the violence has any effect on the Broncos' will to win.  According to Bill Romanowski, that factor will be not only important; it will be decisive.

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