I watched no football yesterday

One of the outcomes of divisional playoff weekend is that Patriots fans were left with no one to root for. Chicago and Green Bay are two of the three NFC teams to have beaten New England in the Super Bowl. Pittsburgh and the Jets...well, the only thing worse than watching the Steelers go to another Super Bowl would have been watching the Jets go.

Obviously, the Jets losing was the best-case scenario once yesterday arrived. But a football game in which the best case scenario is the Pittsburgh Steelers winning to go to the Super Bowl, where they'll face either Chicago or Green Bay, is the stuff of which nightmares are made. For this Pats fan anyway. So I didn't see any football yesterday. And may not watch the Super Bowl, either. That Patriots loss (which I still don't want to talk about) really ruined the football season for me, and the sooner it's over, the better...

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: AFC Divisional game 2

Sunday, January 16 - AFC Divisional Game 2

New York Jets (11-5) at New England Patriots (14-2)

By the numbers:

NY Jets @ New England

Team	W	L	PF	PA	Dif	Pyth
NY Jets	11	5	367	304	63	.610
New England	14	2	518	313	205	.767

OK, let's get this right out in the open to start with - this game scares the hell out of me. Not because I think the Patriots can't win, but because I can't see how they can lose. I've seen set-ups like this before, and there's virtually no upside to this game, emotionally, for a Patriots fan, while the potential downside is devastating. As wonderful and exhilarating as it is to win as a big underdog, losing as a big favorite is a bigger downer. So the possibilities that I see, as a Patriots fan, are devastation or relief.

Looking at the numbers here, we can see that Patriots had a much better regular season than the Jets did. It's pretty good to outscore your opposition by 63 points - it's historic to outscore them by 205. (There have been two teams with a 200+ point differential since the 2001 Rams - the 2007 Patriots [again, this game scares the hell out of me] and the 2010 Patriots.) There's a big gap in pythagorean percentage, obviously, and while the Jets allowed fewer points, there's only a marginal difference which is dwarfed by the points scored difference.

But there's more, that's even more compelling. Football teams change over the course of the year, and seldom more than this Patriots team did. When the Jets handed the Patriots one of their two losses this year, Logan Mankins was holding out and Tom Brady was forcing the ball to Randy Moss, while Danny Woodhead and Deion Branch hadn't been added or integrated yet. Gronkowski and Hernandez and McCourty had all played one NFL game. They changed the team after week four with the Moss and Branch trades, and took about a month to adjust, climaxing with a loss in Cleveland in week nine that left them at 6-2. Since then...

Last 8 games

Team	W	L	PF	PA	Dif	Pyth
NY Jets	5	3	185	174	11	0.536
New England	8	0	299	125	174	0.888

Of course, one could argue that those numbers are skewed, a little bit, because New England hammered New York in week 13, 45-3. So, just for kicks, let's pull that one out.

Last 8 games without 45-3 game

Team	W	L	PF	PA	Dif	Pyth
NY Jets	5	2	182	129	53	0.693
New England	7	0	254	122	132	0.850

The Patriots haven't simply been a better team than the Jets over the past two months, they've been a vastly superior team. For all of the talk of the Patriots' defensive weakness and the Jets' defensive strength, the Jets allowed only 9 fewer points for the season, and 49 MORE over the last half of the season. Even without the 45-3 drubbing, the Jets allowed more points per game over the second half of the season than the Patriots did.

The fact is, there's not a single thing that you can point to as a legitimate reason to believe that the Jets win this game. It inevitably comes down to "any given Sunday" and "the Patriots barely beat Green Bay [a better team than the Jets]" and "they've got a puncher's chance." All of which is true. And none of which is a good reason to expect the Jets to win.

But the last time I saw a playoff game be this much of a mismatch, the Seahawks beat the Saints. The last time before that, the Giants beat the Patriots. This game scares me, because despite the fact that there's no reason for it to happen, it could happen, and the potential for pain from the Jets talking, the NY media and the national media gloating about Belichick/Brady failing, is enormous.

Reason to pick the Jets:

I can't find one.

Reason to pick the Patriots:

They are a much better team, with a better coach, a better QB, a better defense, and playing at home.

New York wins if

They can hold the ball for 35+ minutes while scoring 28+ points.

New England wins if:

They play a decent game.

My pick:

New England

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: AFC Wild Card game 1

Saturday, January 8 - AFC Wild Card Game 1

New York Jets (11-5) at Indianapolis Colts (10-6)

By the numbers:

NY Jets @ Indianapolis

Team	W	L	PF	PA	Dif	Pyth
NY Jets	11	5	367	304	63	.610
Indianapolis	10	6	435	388	47	.567

The Jets finished with a better record than the Colts while playing a tougher schedule. The Jets were, by the numbers, a significantly better defensive team. They have a better winning percentage and a better pythagorean winning percentage.

They also have Mark Sanchez playing QB.

The Colts have won their last four, going into the playoffs on a high note after a midseason struggle, while the Jets are only 2-2 over the last month.

Reason to pick the Jets:

They have a better defense and put together a better record against a tougher schedule.

Reason to pick the Colts:

Peyton Manning. Mark Sanchez. 'nuff said...

New York wins if:

They can score without asking Mark Sanchez to do much.

Indianapolis wins if:

Peyton Manning plays like traditional regular season Peyton Manning, not like traditional "throw-the-ball-to-the-other-team-in-the-playoffs" Peyton Manning, the defense plays moderately well and Pierre Garcon actually catches balls that hit him in the hands.

My Pick:

Indianapolis

New England Patriots 45, New York Jets 3

To be honest, I'm having a little trouble digesting this one...

• If the Patriots defense had been better this year, that would have been comfortable at the end of the first quarter. As it was, it wasn't until the Patriots scored on the first play of the fourth that it really felt over.
• There were a lot of indicators that the Patriots would win last night, but many of them are ambiguous, at best.
  
  • Comments from Tom Brady that he didn't understand the Jets defense before but was confident that he did now.
  • The swagger of the Jets, combined with how quickly and severely their attitude reportedly changed when Leonhard was hurt.
  • The reports of comments from New England players, none made publicly, that they knew that they were going to win.
  • The lack of a single Jet victory over a good team, save for the week 2 win against New England, in a game where Tom Brady kept trying to force the ball to Randy Moss.
  • New England's offensive efficiency since adjusting to the Moss and Branch trades.
  I thought that the Patriots would win, but certainly didn't expect that final score.
• I didn't think of it as being that big a blowout (42 points!) until hearing commentary late in the game and post-game. There are two reasons for this:
  
  1. 2007 changed the mental conditioning for many of us as to what, exactly, a football game looks like. I know that teams don't march up and down the field, and win by four+ touchdowns on a regular basis. But while I "know" it, I've seen it happen - I've seen this show before, and it doesn't come as a surprise. And it doesn't feel "historic" or, in some ways, even noteworthy. The Patriots have had long stretches of offensive efficiency so productive that I'm somewhat jaded by it, still.
  2. There have been so many games, in the past couple of years, that looked just like that one, half-way through the third quarter. This team, since Brady's return from the knee injury, has on several occasions gone up on teams, way up on teams, only to see the defense give it back late. Think Indianapolis last year. Or Indianapolis this year. Or Pittsburgh this year. If you don't trust your defense, then there's no lead that you're really comfortable with. If Sanchez throws touchdowns instead of picks on those two red zone drives in the second half, it's a very different game.
• Tom Brady's last four games: 91 for 124, 1203 yards, 13 TD, 0 INT, 138.6 rating. He may actually be playing better than he did in 2007, and is the clear favorite right now to win his 2nd NFL MVP award. And I hope that Patriots fans understand and appreciate what they're watching, because what we're watching right now is special - it won't last forever, and we're not likely to see it again...


• One of the reasons that Belichick is a great coach, according to his former players, is that he is able to tell them what's going to happen in a game. "If you do x, y will happen." There's a tremendous amount of trust, and that makes people very coachable. They believe what he tells them. Well, the defensive performance last night was very good, and that young, fast, athletic defense is starting to learn and to trust. A lot of what happened is a result of Sanchez not being very good, but some of it is the defense really starting to come to grips with what they've been taught. There are going to be more bumps along the way, but they're getting better. I expected them to be better in December than in September - I think we're seeing that.


• There's been a lot of talk, chatter, speculation that the Patriots defense was just not a "championship-caliber" defense, that they couldn't win a Championship this year. With four games to go, which NFL team is better positioned than New England? Who looks more impressive? Who's got a better record, against better competition? They've beaten every other top AFC team already, with the exception of the Chiefs. Is Kansas City a better team? I don't think so. Are the Falcons? We may well find out. I don't see any AFC team more likely to go to the Super Bowl than the Patriots.

Dumbest use of challenges EVER!

Third play of the game, the Bengals' Laverneus Coles catches a pass, makes a move, and fumbles the ball. Jets recover. The network goes to commercial. 90 seconds later, they come back, and THEN Marvin Lewis throws his challenge flag. On a play about which there wasn't a hint of a shred of doubt that the call was wrong. 1st timeout gone. 1st challenge gone.

12 minutes later, the Jets complete a pass on third down into Cincinnati territory. The first replay reveals that the receiver clearly got both feet down. Marvin Lewis throws his challenge flag. On a play about which there wasn't a hint of a shred of doubt that the call was wrong. 2nd timeout gone. 2nd challenge gone.

The officials could make the worst call of the history of the sport in the 4th quarter, or the 3rd quarter, or the 2nd quarter and there's not a thing that the Bengals could do about it.

Now, I happen to think that the challenge system stinks. The coach has no idea what angles there are, what video is available, and whether a play is right or wrong. There are people upstairs with video, and if the NFL is going to use replay, they ought to use replay on questionable calls, period, whether the coach throws a red napkin on the field or not.

But under the current system, you've got to be a little bit judicious. The first one, well, that's a huge play, so I can see if you think that there's a chance. If your coaches haven't seen the video, well, you may not realize that there's no chance. But the second one wasn't close to being a big enough play to waste the last challenge on.

May I be allowed one "I told you so?

Me, September 14, 2007, on the Patriots being stripped of a first-round draft pick for violating an NFL rule on camera position and usage:

There are a lot of people who are thrilled to have an opportunity to play whack-a-mole with [Bill Belichick]. So we are treated to the "Beli-cheat" headlines, and all of the people that he's beaten over the years revelling in the "well, of course he beat us - he was cheating!" after-the-fact rationalizations. This story is very different if it's the Houston Texans or Minnesota Vikings. And the punishment is, too. Why is the punishment different? Because you don't have the punishment issued by the commissioner after a week of every media member hammering on how tough the commissioner is, and how hard he's going to be on this transgression. The media spent the week ensuring that Goodell had to either hammer the Patriots or get hammered himself.

CNNSI.com, yesterday, after the Jets were fined for violating a rule on information disclosure:

The NFL assessed $125,000 in fines to the New York Jets and former coach Eric Mangini on Wednesday for violating the league's rules on injury reporting with former quarterback Brett Favre last season.

The Jets failed to place Favre, now with the Minnesota Vikings, on the injury report during the final month of last season even though he had a torn biceps tendon.

The league announced it had fined the Jets $75,000, and Mangini and Jets general manager Mike Tannenbaum $25,000 apiece. Mangini now coaches the Cleveland Browns.

I now allow myself one "I told you so!" Roger Goodell screwed up. What he did to New England was massively unfair, and it was clearly massively unfair. As I noted at the time, Denver's violation of the salary cap rules to keep John Elway cost them only a second round pick. Does anyone want to argue that New England's "crime" was somehow worse? Anyone?

I didn't think so.

There were those who said that the Patriots got no significant unfair advantage from their rule violation. To which the responses were, "well, it was against the rules anyway" and "if there was no advantage, why did they do it?" So to any who might say that the Jets got no significant unfair advantage from their rule violation, "well, it was against the rules anyway" and "if there was no advantage, why did they do it?" If there's a compelling case to be made that what New England did was somehow worse for the game, or competitive balance, or fairness, or anything else, I'd love to see that case. I don't buy it.

Cameras on the sideline

It was my contention, right from the start, that a) the Patriots weren't doing anything that was out of the ordinary for NFL teams in taping the Jets and b) the reaction and punishment were wildly out of proportion to the offense. Clearly, they broke the rules, and punishment was appropriate, but the punishment inflicted was, in my mind, excessive in the extreme.

And the evidence continues to support that position. Yesterday on WEEI Michael Holley spoke of, and today Newsday is printing, the story that the Jets were taping the Patriots illegally in Foxboro last year.

According to league sources familiar with the situation, the Jets were caught using a videotaping device during a game in Foxborough last season that resulted in the removal of a Jets employee. After Gillette Stadium officials saw him using the recorder early in the game, he was told to stop and leave the area. He had been filming from the mezzanine level between the scoreboard and a decorative lighthouse in an end zone. The camera was not confiscated by the Patriots or stadium security.

Why did the Patriots videotaping in week 1 become a huge story? Was it because they were doing something unbelievably corrupt that warranted the condemnation it received? No, it was because the Jets, rather than just removing the camera, chose to go the NFL with it, and the Commissioner, spurred on by the football media, over-reacted with that draconian punishment.

NFL week 2 wrapup

Eventually, they actually played football this weekend.

• The biggest shock of the weekend took place in Cleveland. If you'd asked me on Friday to order the teams in the NFL on the likeliness of them scoring 51 points, Cleveland would have been 32nd on that list. I didn't see much of the game, and don't know how, exactly, that happened, but given the chance of betting my house on Cleveland scoring over/under 50 this past weekend, I'd now be homeless.


• There's not much to add to my earlier comments about the Patriots/Chargers game. New England dominated from start to finish. San Diego is (probably) still one of the very good teams in the league, but they were absolutely not competitive in Foxboro.


• Did Donovan McNabb ever deserve his reputation and status? Does he give the Eagles the best chance to win now? How long will it be before they score a touchdown?


• Tom Coughlin came in as the disciplinarian to fix the Giants. To make the dumb penalties stop, to keep the players on the field, to run a tough defense. I have affection for Tom from his days at Boston College, but the kindest thing that you can say about his tenure in New York right now is that, on that list, he's 0-3. What's more clear is that the players have completely tuned him out. They're just waiting for him to get fired, and see what happens next. At least, that's how it looks to me.


• I'm developing a level of skepticism about the Baltimore defense. If they were what people think they are, they wouldn't have let the Jets drive down the field with a QB making his first NFL start and tie the game inside the last two minutes. What's that? They didn't? Well, yes, they did. The Jets just failed to score the points. McCareins dropped one touchdown, Clemens overthrew a second. No credit to the Baltimore defense.


• I think that the Saints are a) not as good as they were expected to be and b) better than they've played so far. I'd still bet them in that division.


• When looking at the schedule for week 3 before the season, Indianapolis at Houston would no have jumped out as a game of interest. And even after week 1, well, everyone understands that Kansas City's bad, so what did it mean that Houston started 1-0? But Carolina is still a hyped team, and Houston went in and beat them handily. Now, this game looks like a real measuring stick - what are the Texans? Are they real? Are they a threat?


• So the New York Jets cheated this week, breaking an NFL rule to gain a competitive advantage. When do we suppose that the $500,000 fine for Mangini and loss of a first-round draft pick will be announced? (I'm not holding my breath, but, for consistency...


• My best analysis of the week (tie):
  1. Houston (+7) at Carolina - AFC 98-pound weakling kicks sand in the face of NFC bully. Carolina played a good game in St. Louis last week - I'm betting that they can't do it two weeks in a row. Houston with the upset.
  
  
  2. San Diego at New England (-4) - ...let me keep this short and simple - the Patriots are a better team, they have better players, they have better coaching, and they'll win this one by a touchdown or more.


• My worst analysis of the week (again, there's an embarassment of riches here): The lock of the week. Cleveland spent 7 weeks of training camp choosing the quarterback who gave them the best chance to win. And then benched him after 1 half and traded him after one game. Cincinnati covers this if they score 8 or more. I vote "more." Instead, Cincinnati scored 45. And lost.


• For the week:
  7-8-1 against the spread
  9-7 on winners
  (No, I'm not giving up my day job and moving to Vegas any time soon...)