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Shocker!!

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How does a team go from losing a battle for first place in a division 45-3 to winning an AFC Divisonal Playoff over the New England Patriots 28-21?  Emotion.  Well emotion and tight coverage.  The defense that we were promised between Antonio Cromartie and Darrelle Revis finally showed up.  The coverage was so tight the defenese was able to get to Tom Brady sacking him 5 times and had him uncomfortable and double clutching all night.  A defense missing Kris Jenkins and Jim Leonard hadn’t looked this powerful in many weeks.  They backed up the bravado and talk that had dominated the week leading up to the game.

Tom Brady couldnt find an open reciever for much of the night and he was getting hit like he had been by the Giants in Super Bowl XLII.  The Patriots handicapped their own efforts by beginning the day with Wes Welker on the bench for disciplinary reasons.  This backfired and kept them from establishing a rhythm although they moved the football on their opening drive they struggled in close.  First they forced Brady into an interception by linebacker David Harris.   The lack of a running game came that plagued New England all year showed up at the goal line on the next drive.  They tried to pass into the endzone resulting in an endzone drop by TE Alge Crumpler.  The chance to get their crowd into the game and raise self doubt in the Jets had come and gone.  All of this before we get to New England’s ill advised fake punt which led to a Sanchez to Braylon Edwards to make it 14-3 and an eery blanket of silence cascaded over Gillette Stadium.  More important the self doubt started to permeate that Patriot sideline.

The Jets were highly motivated to make amends for the embarrassing defeat a month ago.  The emotion of disliking your divisional rival.  Rex Ryan and his team turned the tables on the favored Patriots starting with all the trash talk that roped the Patriots into some uncommon ground.  No not this week, go all the way back to when Rex was at the podium and made the declaration that they were going after the Patriots.  That he hadn’t come to New York to “kiss Belichick’s rings” and the barbs didn’t stop there.  Getting under the skin of Bill Belichick is what Rex was trying to do when he said this game was personal about wanting to beat Bill and the Patriots.

With tactical dominance established defensively, the Jet were able to let their offense settle down and get into the game.  Mark Sanchez came of age with a solid performance throwing for 194 yards on 16 of 25 passing and 3 touchdowns. Dare we say he outperformed Tom Brady?  Yes he did and a rushing attack that complemented Sanchez with over 120 yards rushing kept the clock moving.  Once they started to believe as an overall unit the game was effectively over.  The Jets received an emotional pep talk from Dennis Byrd before the game and carried his jersey out to the pregame coin toss.  They channeled that along with wanting to make amends for their embarrassing defeat a month ago.  Add to that the doubting press, and an angry Jet closed ranks and took the field with something to prove.  Did they?? LOL  See you in Pittsburgh for the AFC Championship.

Steelers best Ravens again

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Steelers 31-24

Steelers beat the Ravens in the playoffs again, this time a 31-24 defeat in the divisional round.  The Steelers solidified they are the better of the two by winning a second time against their rival in the playoffs in three years.  What became evident as the game moved into the second half was the difference in the quarterbacks.  Ben Roethlisberger’s stature grew at the critical juncture of the game where Flacco seemed to wilt as though the game was too big for him.   Even when the Ravens were leading his throws were short and were quick dump offs to Ray Rice.  He challenged downfield a few times each throw was late and the defender was right there.  Once Ike Taylor was right in Derrick Mason’s hip pocket and the other Mason had to stop to break up what would have been an interception by William Gay.  Where was Anquan Boldin?

The real issue was the stature of Ben Roethlisberger and how the magnitude of the event doesn’t phase him, in fact he thrives in it.  Anymore late game heroics its time to talk about him in the John Elway mold.  He’s won late games in the regular season, playoffs, and the Super Bowl XLIII pass to Santonio Holmes with seconds left is one of the greatest throws in history.  Yesterday as the Steelers got the ball back, I joked on my facebook page; “If you want to know why I voted Ben Roethlisberger #2 behind Tom Brady, watch this”.  Its become that common place. You saw the confidence in his eyes as he walked onto the field.  The epitome of swagger, and in his body english, spirit, and words engenders confidence in his teammates.  As Coach Tomlin said ‘he doesn’t blink and his teammates follow him’. Enough said…

So where does Baltimore go from here? They need a quarterback exchange.  A trade for Kevin Kolb would be the ideal situation.  The Steelers aren’t about to go anywhere.  They are one of the oldest teams in football but look at this young , speedy recieving corp they are putting together. Ben is still young and most of the defensive stars are in the middle of their career.  Flacco’s confidence hasn’t improved and in a league with Aaron Rodgers coming of age yesterday, Matt Ryan, Sam Bradford, Josh Freeman, Mark Sanchez and all these young quarterbacks coming on, he needed to have shown more improvement. Yet his confidence even hampered the way the Ravens coaches with the play calling.  Ray Lewis is near retirement and new leaders have to emerge and Flacco struggles there as well.  You have to get another quarterback, Ravens I hate to say.

A friend of mine told me that I might be over reacting and then I had to remind him of David Woodley.  A young quarterback for the Miami Dolphins who took his team to Super Bowl XVII. Even though he had his issues that had coach Shula replace him on occasion, he had a lead at halftime yet could only complete 1 pass in the second half in a 27-17 loss.  Now he could have stayed with Woodley, instead he drafted Dan Marino 3 months later.  Know when you have seen enough.  When it comes to Joe Flacco I have.

National Championship Thoughts

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As the days of the game neared, I found myself worried that there was too much time in between the last games played by both teams and this National Championship on January 10th.  This is way too long a layoff and the rhythm from both teams was off terribly.  There was a stat that “Super” Cam Newton only had 28 yards of total offense then finally warmed up in the second quarter gaining  258.  Same could be said for Oregon’s offense.  They were positively anemic until a Thomas to Maehl 81 yard bomb when pinned to their own goal line to show some signs of life and eventually scoring themselves.

Why are we playing this game on January 10th in the first place?  The very arguement against a playoff was borne when we were only playing until January 2nd or 3rd at the latest?  Hyping the game for 37 days to me seemed to dissipate the excitement for the game rather than enhance it.  We sports fans started wrapping our minds around NFL playoff games, looking forward to NBA basketball heating up after football is over, paying for Christmas, etc.  Its alot like being a youngster and your girlfriend goes away for the summer.  You lose that feeling and can’t get it back. Don’t worry, just like your ex, they didnt either.  We did get some pyrotechnics in the second quarter and we slept through much of the second half. The issue is we didnt get the game we were promised, we only recieved a little more than the second quarter when it came to teams in rhythm.

I’d like to say the defenses steppped up but that was only the case when it came to Casey Matthews forced fumble. Even the goal line stances seemed to be about playcalling that was out of sync more than overpowering defense. SEC fans will say that it was a show of their conferences  dominance on the line of scrimmage yet they were stymied at the goal line also. Yet we had a surprise MVP in Dyer who had a dominant last drive. Was it me or was that Emmitt Smith balance and power he showcased?  Fairley was easily the night’s best defender and disrupted Oregon’s offense the entire evening.  Cam Newton and LaMichael James weren’t the stars of the night although Newton had a few moments. Dyer and Fairley were the difference in Auburn’s 22-19 victory.

To the victor goes the spoils, so we will celebrate the SEC’s 5th National Championship in a row right now.  Tomorrow is another day.   We need to get the game back to a January 2nd game.  Once we made it past two weeks we started to forget about the game and the teams were no longer playing at an optimum level. We were subject to a sloppy game that didn’t have a good flow to it.  I want to see a championship game where the teams are as I remembered them a few weeks ago.  The further we get away from the New Year’s weekend lessons the impact of the game as an event.  Hopefully we will get a playoff system soon if we’re going to be this far past the new year.  If we do that we’ll have teams playing through that time and a better championship game then we saw last night.