Bob Ford: Sitting out another Super Bowl, Reid talks just tinkering

Here we are, Thursday of Super Bowl week, and maybe the country is secretly captivated by the game that will take place in Indianapolis on Sunday between the Giants and the Patriots, but if so it is a pretty well-kept secret.

There is more buzz about whether Ron Paul will get his own reality series once the Republican primaries are over, assuming it is possible they will end someday.

We know that on Sunday evening people will gather to watch the game, if only to put a dent in the annual glut of guacamole, which, if not consumed, will turn brown in the fridge and eventually grow fur. That the matchup between the New York Eli Faces and the New England Brady Clefts isn't much more appetizing doesn't really matter. It is the Super Bowl, and as Andy Reid reminded us the other day, getting there is what the National Football League is all about.

Reid had just emerged Punxsutawney Phil Bengtson-like from a long soujourn during which he decided what the Eagles are all about, too. As far as you could tell, Reid determined that the defense just needed a little more time to coalesce and the offense just needed to stop giving the other team the ball.

Both of those might well be true, particularly the part about the defense. It can be dumbed down a little and turned into a bend-don't-break unit that keeps you in the game without doing anything that spectacular.

That is a fair representation of the formula for the Giants and Patriots, whose defenses were ranked 27th and 31st respectively in the league for total yards allowed. They were 26th and 32d for first downs allowed, and 29th and 31st for passing yards allowed, and both were in the bottom third in the NFL for red-zone defense.

So, where did all that mediocrity on defense get them? In the Super Bowl, of course, which, just to reiterate, is what the National Football League is all about.

Despite the folderol surrounding the retention of Juan Castillo as defensive coordinator, and the inability to land Steve Spagnuolo, and the hand-wringing about poor Nnamdi Asomugha being forced to play more zone defense than he likes - as if he were being asked to play in flip-flops or something - despite all that, Reid kept coming back to the offense during his Tuesday news conference.