NFL Divisional weekend preview

So, gathered in one spot, are my predictions for Divisional weekend in the NFL:

AFC Game 1 (Saturday afternoon): Pittsburgh over Baltimore
NFC Game 1 (Saturday evening):   Green Bay over Atlanta
NFC Game 1 (Sunday afternoon):   Chicago over Seattle
AFC Game 1 (Sunday afternoon):   New England over NY Jets

NFL Playoff previews: NFC Divisional game 1

Saturday, January 15 - NFC Divisional Game 1
Green Bay Packers (10-6) at Atlanta Falcons (13-3)

By the numbers:

Green Bay @ Atlanta

Team	W	L	PF	PA	Dif	Pyth
Green Bay	10	6	388	240	148	.757
Atlanta	13	3	414	288	126	.703

These two teams played one of the big games of the regular season, when the Falcons beat Green Bay in Atlanta in week 12. The Packers never led in the game, and Atlanta never had a two-score lead, with the team's alternating scores and the Falcons breaking a 17-17 tie with a 47 yard field goal with 7 seconds remaining.

But the Packers actually played better. There was one turnover in the game, an Aaron Rodgers fumble on the Falcons one yard line which was recovered in the end zone by the Falcons. If Green Bay scores there, they go up by a touchdown and the game probably plays out differently.

The Falcons did score more than the Packers did in 2010, but Green Bay's defensive advantage is larger than the Falcons' offensive advantage, as the Packers finished the season 2nd in the NFL in points allowed (behind Pittsburgh). They also finished 2nd in the NFL in point differential and Pythagorean winning percentage (behind New England).

Reason to pick the Packers:

Points allowed, point differential and pythagorean all suggest that the Packers are the better team.

Reason to pick the Falcons:

The Falcons have been excellent at home, they're coming off a bye, and Mike Smith hasn't had the kinds of late game tactical difficulties that Mike McCarthy has.

Green Bay wins if:

They can avoid the stupid mistakes, turnovers, tactical errors, clock management problems, etc., that has had them underperform over the past couple of years.

Atlanta wins if:

They can jump out in front early and control the pace of the game.

My Pick:

Green Bay

Thoughts on Wild Card weekend

With some important other things going on this weekend, I didn't see all of any of the games, with Baltimore-KC being both the least interesting game of the weekend and the only that I really saw in more-or-less real time. But there are a couple of odds and ends:

• Obviously, the Seahawks pulled off a huge upset. I had seen the halftime score on this one, and assumed that Seattle had jumped out to a lead and managed to keep it. I was shocked, when reviewing it on the DVR later, to discover that the Saints had actually jumped out to the lead. And scored a late touchdown. In between, Seattle beat them 41-10. Absolutely shocking. They scored 25% more points than in any of their regular season games. Even if you could envision the Saints' offense struggling without its running backs, how did they give up 41 to the moribund Seahawk offense?
  
  Part of that was a highlight run that we'll see for the rest of our lives, as Marshawn Lynch broke tackles from almost every New Orleans player on the field in the course of a 67 yard touchdown run that put the game away. For you young football players, this is why you keep your legs moving, this is why you don't arm tackle.
• I thought that the Colts mis-managed the end of the game. Badly. They were in field goal range and, instead of forcing the Jets to use one of their timeouts, they threw an incompletion that stopped the clock and preserved the Jets' first timeout, then later used on of their own preserving the Jets' second. And obviously, the kickoff return just killed them. It's a very different situation if Sanchez takes the field with one timeout needing 45 yards instead of needing only about 20 with two.
• I said last week that the Chiefs were a fraud team. This game would seem to have provided some validation for that position.
• The Packers-Eagles game should have been compelling. It finished close. But I never got into it, and have no comment other than it appeared to me that both teams were a) talented and b) sloppy.
• Three of the games went about the way that I envisioned, the obvious exception being in Seattle. I did expect the Colts to win, and when they got to the 36 with less than two minutes less, I was confident that they had. But they didn't, so I was 0-2 on Saturday and 2-0 on Sunday.

Let me just say one thing, as the week dawns, about the upcoming New England-New York re-rematch: I'm not predicting, I'm not talking trash, and anyone can win anywhere on any given Sunday, as we saw this weekend in Seattle. All that said, it's hard for me to imagine a scenario in which New England plays poorly enough on Sunday to lose to the Jets.

NFL Playoff previews: NFC Wild Card game 2

Sunday, January 9 - NFC Wild Card Game 2

Green Bay Packers (10-6) at Philadelphia Eagles (10-6)

By the numbers:

Baltimore @ Kansas City

Team	W	L	PF	PA	Dif	Pyth
Green Bay	10	6	388	240	148	.757
Philadelphia	10	6	439	377	62	.589

Unlike the other three games, the road team in this game does not have a better record than the home team. Like the other three games, all of the evidence suggests that the road team is, in fact, the better team. The Eagles advantage in points scored is dwarfed by the Packers advantage in points allowed, leading to a signficantly higher Pythagorean winning percentage. The same holds true over the last half of the season, as both are going in at 5-3 with a slight Eagle advantage in points scored and a big Packer advantage in points allowed and pythagorean winning percentage. On top of all that, they've already played this season, in Philadelphia, and the Packers won.

Just glancing at the teams and records, you'd expect this to be the pick'em game of the weekend. On the contrary, virtually everyone that I've heard or seen has picked the Packers.

Reason to pick the Packers:

As noted, they're a better team. They're a much better defensive team.

Reason to pick the Eagles:

No team in football has more "explosion" potential, with Michael Vick and DeSean Jackson. We all saw them score 28 points in the last 8 minutes to beat the Giants three weeks ago.

Green Bay wins if

The Packer defense (and special teams) can prevent the kind of explosive big plays that beat the Giants.

Philadelphia wins if:

The Packer defense (and special teams) can't prevent the kind of explosive big plays that beat the Giants.

My pick:

Green Bay

Bonus question/answer:

Q:Which of the two head coaches, known for making egregious clock/game management blunders, makes the most egregious clock/game management blunder?
A: Mike McCarthy. They win anyway.

NFL Conference Championship Games

The matchup is now set for Super Bowl XLII, as the New England Patriots will face the New York Giants in Glendale, Arizona. The game is a rematch of the largest rated game of the regular season, as the Patriots went into New York and beat the Giants to finish the first 16-0 regular season in NFL history. Some "experts" thought that the Giants foolishly expended themselves and were doomed to playoff failure*, while others thought that it was the performance that pushed them into the playoffs with great momentum. Whether that game made a difference in the Giants season or not is unknowable - what is knowable is that in less then two weeks, we'll see these two teams again, in what will almost certainly be the highest rated television event of the year.

• There's been a lot of talk about how bad Tom Brady was yesterday. And he was - by his standards, it was an awful game. Here's one thing that's worth considering, though. When he threw his third interception of the day, to Antonio Cromartie in the end zone, he was 14-25 for 133 yards, with 1 TD and 3 picks (passer rating of 44.67) and the lead was 14-12. From that point to the end of the game, the Patriots had two more drives. One of them covered 67 yards on 8 plays and ended in a touchdown. The other covered 65 yards on 15 plays and consumed the last 9:13 of the game, finishing with the Patriots taking a knee. Over those two drives, Brady was 8-8 for 76 yards with a touchdown pass and no interceptions (passer rating of 145.83). That doesn't excuse the first 2 4/5 quarters, but when the team needed the quarterback to perform - well, he performed.



• The Patriots game was not a blowout. Obviously. But it's worth noting that New England took the lead for good with less than 2 minutes gone in the second quarter. The game looked close, for a long while, but the Patriots led for the last 43 minutes.



• And the Packers' season ends as a result of a Favre interception. Gosh, who saw that coming?



• In the four games before the New England game, Eli Manning was 58 for 125 (46.4%) for 709 yards with 3 TD and 4 INT (passer rating 59.1). In the next four, New England and three playoff road games, he's 75 for 117 (64.1%) for 853 yards, 8 TD and 1 INT (passer rating 105.1). I don't know what happened, but those are two very different quarterbacks. Is it real? Is it sustainable? Only time will tell.



• If I'm the Giants, I don't want a week off at this point. (I also really, really, really don't want to face the New England Patriots in perfect field and weather conditions.)



• My opinion of Philip Rivers went up significantly. He put together a really good performance in tough conditions, on two non-functioning knees.



• Just so the suspense doesn't get out of hand, I'll be picking the Patriots in the Super Bowl, to win and to cover. I think that they'll score 40+.

* - The relevant "expert" in question here is, obviously, me. Apparently, it was yet one more piece of NFL analysis, in a long line, which could not possibly have been more spectacularly incorrect.

Conference Championship Game weekend

I had a heck of a regular season picking the games. The playoffs, on the other hand...

There were four games last weekend. I got one (1) right against the spread. I got two winners. In none of the four games was I right both straight up and against the spread.

The good news is that this week, I've only got two games to get wrong.


San Diego at New England (-14) - Yes, the Chargers have played better over the last half of the season than they did in the first half. Yes, they've been even better than New England over their last 8 games. Before squeaking by Tennessee in the first round, however, that six game winning streak over the last half of the season was against bad teams. Oakland, Kansas City, Denver, Detroit. Overtime against Tennessee in a game where Vince Young got hurt. If you look at games against playoff teams, the Patriots and Chargers are each 3-0 since mid-November, and the Patriots have played better. And that's with everyone playing New England at a playoff level of intensity. We can, I suppose, throw out the first San Diego-New England game from this season. But the Patriots are, and have been, a much better team than San Diego, and when you look at the ancillary stuff (the weather, the injuries, the fact that San Diego will fly further on Saturday than the Patriots have in the last two months combined), there's no reason not to expect this to be a Patriots win. Which I do expect.

Pick: New England 38 - San Diego 17


NY Giants at Green Bay (-7) - Like the Chargers, the Giants have momentum. But let's be honest here - how much of a momentum advantage can either team have when you're in a Conference Championship Game? The Packers weather advantage would be greater against a warm weather team than it is against this one. Here's the deciding factor in this game for me - any quarterback (I'm looking at you, Eli Manning) can play a couple of great games in a row. What separates the greats from the "any quarterbacks" is the ability to do it consistently, over and over again. Could Eli have another great game this week? Yup, he sure could. And the Giants could go in to Green Bay and win. But that's not the way that I'm betting.

Pick: Green Bay 27 - New York 17

Week 13 - NFL picks

I'll update this tomorrow morning, but wanted to get the Packers-Cowboys pick up before tonight's game...



Green Bay (+7) at Dallas - Robin Williams is an incredibly talented comedian, but he can be tough in a film role. It is too easy for him to go over the top and back around the other side, too easy to lose focus and end up distracting from what should be going on. But when he gets good direction and editing ("Good Morning, Vietnam" or "Aladdin") the results are marvelous to behold. Relevance? Bret Favre is Robin Williams, and Mike McCarthy is the director that he needed. He's staying on script, the interceptions are down, and the Packers are a real team, which I wouldn't have believed before the season started. Both of these teams are 10-1, and you don't get to 10-1 without being very good, but it's hard to tell how good, because the NFC, as a whole, is still relatively week. The Packers are playing the AFC West, which is down, the Cowboys are playing the AFC East, which is awful except for the Patriots, to whom they lost. So these are good teams, clearly the best in the NFC, but how good? I've gone back and forth on the winner here (picking Green Bay to beat the spread is fairly obvious, I think) and in the end, I trust the Green Bay defense a little bit more than the Cowboy defense. So Green Bay wins a close one, 34-31.

UPDATED WITH SUNDAY'S PICKS....

Atlanta at St. Louis (-3) - This used to be a division rivalry. That wouldn't make it any more exciting.

Buffalo at Washington (-5.5) - Interesting matchup of the two teams that have faced the most difficult emotional situations in the NFL this season. The Bills started the season losing a teammate to a potentially crippling injury during week 1, and the Redskins just lost a teammate as Sean Taylor was murdered. I cannot pretend to have any idea how either of these teams will perform this week. All things being equal, I believe that Washington is a better team, but not a lot better. I don't trust either Buffalo quarterback but I also don't trust Washington's quarterback. Forced to make a call, I'm going to pick Washington playing emotionally high and winning by a touchdown or more, but I wouldn't bet a plugged nickel either way on this one.

Detroit at Minnesota (-3.5) - That these two teams are still relevant to the playoff discussion is really all one needs know about the NFC. Detroit has collapsed, and unless they turn it around, they will not remain relevant much longer. That doesn't mean that Minnesota's a great bet, just a better one this week. There is not a potential result from this game that would surprise me.

Houston at Tennessee (-3.5) - Don't know. Don't care. Flipped a coin, heads came up - obviously, home team Tennessee is the eary pick here.

Jacksonville at Indianapolis (-7) - The Colts are wounded. The Jaguars beat them last year. There are a lot of people thinking that Indianapolis takes their third loss of the season this week. I don't think so. Colts win by 10.

N.Y. Jets at Miami (-1) - I said earlier that I wouldn't end up picking Miami any week even though I expect them to win a game. Well, I changed my mind. I expect them to win this week, at home, against a Jets team that followed up a shocking home win over the Steelers by getting blown out at Dallas. This won't be a blowout, it won't be a treat for the eyes, you won't want to watch it, but for the Dolphins, it'll be the greatest game ever as they remove that 0 from the win column.

San Diego (-5.5) at Kansas City - When these two teams played in San Diego earlier in the season, I got it wrong. I'll probably get it wrong again this week, but I'm staying on the Chargers (or, rather, off the Chiefs).

Seattle (+3) at Philadelphia - The Eagles played the game of their season on Sunday night. They won't duplicate it. Seattle wins outright.

San Francisco at Carolina (-3) - The fact that I, however briefly, even considered San Francisco in this game is an indication of how far Carolina has fallen. I will not be shocked if the 49ers win, but they've been so pathetic, last week's victory-that-should-have-been-a-loss notwithstanding, that you just can't take them, regardless of how poorly the Panthers have played.

Cleveland (+1) at Arizona - The Browns should not be underdogs in this game. If you lose to San Francisco, you should forfeit any right to be favored again.

Denver (-3.5) at Oakland - Mediocre vs. sub-mediocre.

Tampa Bay (+3) at New Orleans - If the entire NFC West and NFC South went away, the quality of NFL football would increase by 25%.

N.Y. Giants (-1.5) at Chicago - The Giants are a better team than the Bears, despite being blown out by Minnesota while Chicago was winning a thriller against Denver last week. That doesn't mean that they'll win, though that's clearly the way that I'm picking. I absolutely could see another NY meltdown, it wouldn't shock me, it wouldn't surprise me. But that's not what I expect. If it does happen, they'll be done.

Cincinnati at Pittsburgh (-7) - There have been various noises out of Cincinnati to the effect that they've got it figured out, they've got it together, they're going on a run, they're going to win out and go to the play-offs. You can believe it, if you like - I don't.

New England (-20.5) at Baltimore - Will the Patriots cover? Probably. Will they win? Almost certainly. Can the Ravens offense outscore the Patriots defense? Ah, that's a good question...