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 1

Saturday, January 8 - NFC Wild Card Game 1
New Orleans Saints (11-5) at Seattle Seahawks (7-9)

By the numbers:

New Orleans @ Seattle

Team	W	L	PF	PA	Dif	Pyth1
New Orleans	11	5	384	307	77	.630
Seattle	7	9	310	407	-97	.344

So we start with the easiest one. Yes, it's in Seattle. Yes, the home crowd is loud. Yes, it's a long trip for the New Orleans Saints. Yes, it was (relatively) competitive when these two teams met a month and a half ago, with the Saints winning at home by only 15. (OK, that's a stretch. It wasn't really close...)

But the Saints have a much better record, built on a better offense and a better defense. They've scored more, allowed fewer, and done it against a tougher scheduler. The Seahawks, on the other hand, are in the playoffs solely because they're in a four team division with three other bad teams. Seattle did win last weekend to earn its way in, while the Saints lost in a game that obviously didn't mean anything after halftime. Any other week you want to choose, the Saints were better from that week to the end of the season than the Seahawks. There's a reason why the road team is an 11 point favorite.

Reason to pick the Saints:
Better team, better QB, better coach, better defense.

Reason to pick the Seahawks:
Beyond the standard "on any given Sunday" cliche, there isn't one.

New Orleans wins if:
The sun rises in the east.

Seattle wins if:
Drew Brees slips on a patch of ice upon exiting the Saints' team bus, and breaks his arm while also knocking Sean Payton down and causing him to be rushed to the hospital with a concussion so that he misses the game.


¹ - For football, the exponent that seems to provide the best pythagorean winning percentage is 2.37. So the formula is (PF^2.37)/((PF^2.37) + (PA^2.37))

Super Bowl XLIV

I started watching late, but watched almost all of the football game. I missed a few plays after the start of the 2nd and 4th quarters, and the Colts three-and-out after the Saints failed to score just after the 2-minute warning of the first half. I didn't watch any of the ads (though I've now seen a couple on-line and have been profoundly unimpressed.) I also saw not a single second of the pre-game, half-time and post-game shows.

But I saw almost all of the football.

• Let's get this out of the way, right up-front - I derived an unhealthy amount of pleasure from the fact that the Saints essentially iced the game on a Peyton Manning interception returned for a touchdown. Manning's a great QB, possibly the greatest QB ever, but the coverage of him borders on hagiographic, and I tire of it. Throwing a pick-six with his team down seven and driving, inside four minutes to go in the Super Bowl - I enjoyed it. It speaks ill of me, I think, that I reacted that way, but I did.
• Along the same line, I enjoyed Reggie Wayne dropping a ball on fourth down that would have given the Colts a TD and a chance to on-side kick.
• Happy for Drew Brees, who seems like a good guy. And happy for the Saints.
• One of the things that we enjoyed about the pick-six in my house is that it meant that Brees didn't have to throw the ball again, leaving him tied with Tom Brady for the most completions in Super Bowl history, rather than passing him.
• And good for Sean Payton, who played the game to win. There were people criticizing the decision to go on fourth down in the second quarter - I loved it. (I didn't necessarily love the play call, though - they'd already demonstrated that they were having trouble getting outside, but that they could move the line off-tackle.) And settling for the field goal there would very likely have resulted in a bigger half-time deficit, as the Colts would have played differently if they're received a kickoff at the 25 than starting at their own one.
• Loved, loved, loved the on-side kick. The Saints went in to win, and did.
• I've heard some people putting goat-horns on Pierre Garcon for a key drop. I don't know which drop they're talking about. Looking at the game play-by-play, there are two "Manning pass incomplete to Pierre Garcon" plays. One was in the middle of the first quarter with the Colts at the NO 20 and no score, which resulted in a fourth down and a Colt field goal for a 3-0 lead. The other was halfway through the 2nd quarter, with the Colts at their own 28 with a 10-0 lead, and resulted in a 4th down and a punt. Was there another one that the play-by-play mislabeled? It's hard to see that either of those plays cost the Colts the game. So despite the fact that I saw almost all of the game, I hear that talk and don't know what they're talking about.
• One of the questions that has kind of floated around in the ether this season is this - what, exactly, is Jim Caldwell doing as the coach of the Colts? By all accounts, Manning's running the offense, including, from the looks of it, whether they're going on fourth down or punting. Which decisions is Caldwell making? Is he just staying out of the way? How much of their success was a result of Jim Caldwell making decisions, and how much was him just letting the players and position coaches do their things? Unanswerable from the outside, and maybe he did everything just right. But the only difference between looking "calm and placid" on the sideline, and looking like a deer in the headlights, is the scoreboard. Caldwell transitioned from the former to the latter after the Manning pick.
• Can we stop the "maybe the Colts are really the team of the decade for the 'aughts'" talk now? I don't see how they can even pass Pittsburgh for second.

NFL Championship Weekend

Odds and ends on the NFL's just concluded Championship Weekend...

• We finally got a good game. Saints vs. Vikings was a bit sloppy to be a classic, but it was competetive all the way through, with some great plays as well as some really bad ones.
• I've said before that Brett Favre is one of the most overrated great players in NFL history. I've said that no quarterback ever did more to keep both teams in the game. One play doesn't provide proof that either of those things is true, but it's hard to argue against either of them this morning.
  
  Look, the best QBs will sometimes throw bad picks. And there are a lot of things that cost the Vikings the game, including a very questionable (OK, BAD) pass interference call in overtime. That said, Favre did what he's done so many times before - he cost his team dearly because he was undisciplined and threw a ball that he should not have thrown. Scrambling to his right, throwing across his body into coverage. Had he run five yards and gone out of bounds, the Vikings would have lined up for a game-winning field goal with less than 10 seconds left in the game. But he didn't. He had a clear path to pick up that yardage and go to the sidelines, but he threw the ball into triple coverage instead, and the Saints picked it off. End of drive. End of game for the Vikings offense. End of season for Minnesota.
  
  Maybe they wouldn't have been there without him. But that's the essence of Brett Favre's career - lead his team to the brink of success, and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
• Has there ever been a worse penalty than the Vikings' 12 men in the huddle? Coming out of a timeout? It moved them out of field-goal range and set up the Favre interception.
• The Vikings put the ball on the ground six times, and lost three of them.
• The overtime rule is just plain not fair. I know the arguments - defense and special teams are part of the game, those players get paid, too. And the team winning the toss only wins about 50% of the time. (I don't know that that's still true.) Those arguments would carry a lot more weight if you ever saw someone win an OT coin toss and choose to kick. But you don't. The advantage of having the ball first in a sudden-death period is a significant advantage, and everyone knows it.
• I wanted the Saints to win, and I'm glad that they did, but they had a lot of help from a) the Vikings, b) the officials and c) the coin.
• The AFC Championship game was painful in that there was no way both teams could lose. While it's always good to see the Jets lose, I would have derived more pleasure yesterday from a Colts' loss. Oh, well...
• The Colts played very well after the two-minute warning of the first half. It took them a little bit of time and a couple of blown coverages to wake up, but once they did - well, the second half was not competitive.
• For the Boston media Chicken Littles claiming that the Patriots dynasty is over, the Patriots were 1-2 against the two teams in the AFC Championship game, with the two losses coming on the road by 6 and 2 points, the loss to the Colts being a loss by mere inches resting on a questionable spot by an official. There's no reason whatsoever to think that they aren't going to be one of the top teams in the AFC again next year.

UPDATE: One more thing I meant to mention. The play on which Brett Favre's ankle was injured should have been flagged. He was hit below the waist from behind, in as dangerous a play as a DL could make in that situation. It was unacceptable, and I couldn't believe that it didn't get called - it should have.

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...)