Obligatory Super Bowl XLIII (That’s 43) Post

Whew!  Fortunately Mike Tomlin and the Steelers were able to beat the Chargers (and more importantly Norv Turner) handily and end the possibility of a Chargers – Cardinals Super Bowl.  I earlier confessed I’ve got a glass of Haterade out for the Cardinals, but that’s nothing compared to the 50 gallon drum of Haterade I have for any Norv Turner coached team.

We got a nice round of Conference Championship games eight days ago.  The NFC Championship featured a match-up of contenders for not just the Giants’ NFC title, but also the 2007-8 Giants’ role as plucky upstarts on a roll.  Ultimately, the Arizona nee’ Phoenix previously St. Louis and before that Chicago Cardinals as the disrespected, limping Champion of the rotten NFC West and making their first Championship game appearance in sixty years, prevailed over the hot Wild Card Philadelphia Eagles, led by their talented but often failing QB and HC combo, making their fourth Championship Game appearance in five years.  Final score Cardinals 32 Eagles 25.  Highlight here was the lethal sharp performance of the Kurt “It’s like I took off 2002-06 to rest” Warner to Larry Fitzgerald combination.  Warner’s bizarre and inspirational road to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH continues with a third Super Bowl apperance.  Fitzgerald started the season as the slightly better half of Arizona’s super WR duo (with the disgruntled Anquan Boldin) but has broken away as the best, having broken playoff receiving records (mostly Jerry Rice’s) for receiving yardage, receptions and TDs.

The AFC Championship game featured a more definitive favorite in the AFC North Champion Pittsburgh Steelers taking on their division rivals and runner-up the Baltimore Ravens.  The Steelers 23-14 victory featured the Steeler defense bringing Joe Flacco’s magic run as the first rookie QB to win two playoff games to an end.  Admittedly, Flacco’s postseason numbers were pretty grim even in victory over the Miami Dolphins and Tennessee Titans, but the Steelers made him look like a rookie, with three INTs, two to SS Troy Polamalu.  The game’s other notable moments were a terrible roughing the punter penalty against the Ravens and the brutal tackle by Steeler FS Ryan Clark on Ravens RB Willis McGahee.

On the penalty, Steeler P Mitch Berger had slipped and fell after punting the ball, and on the way down brushed against Ravens’ TE Daniel Wilcox.  As P often do, he rolled bounced away from the contact, hoping the draw a penalty.  Strangely, the Steelers got the fifteen yard “Roughing” penalty as opposed to the more plausible “Running into the Punter” for five yards.  Fortunately the Steelers failed to score, depriving Sports Talk radio hosts and sports bloggers nationwide of one more topic to grind on.  As for the tackle, McGahee caught a swing pass and was hit by Clark, knocking both men out.   Clark eventually got up and walked off the field while McGahee was carted off, but left the hospital the day after.   Clark, who was noted during his Redskins tenure for his intelligence and cover skills, not hitting ability, came in with his shoulder on to knock the ball out of McGahee’s arms.  McGahee lowered his head to try to get under the hit, but instead his head met Clark’s shoulder.

It’s but Day One of Super Bowl Hype Week and nothing goofy has happened yet.  The Steelers are the Steelers.  Even when they have maniacs on the team, those guys don’t do anything to embarass the team.   On the Cards side, hopes that Edgerrin James would recall whining about his role the week before the  Wildcard game, or that Anquan Boldin would elaborate on his supposed early, huffy departure from the locker room after the Championship Game were dashed as neither did anything of the sort during the serious sports media interviews today.  I think tomorrow is the general, “open” media day happens, when the sports journalists sit back and report on the various publicity stunt lunatics dispatched by radio shows and entertainment programs harrass the athletes and coaches with truly random questions.

I’m going to make a completely illogical prediction and give the wacky Cardinals the win over the better Steelers team.  Really, the facts tell me Pittsburgh should smash the Cardinals, but I’m feeling capricious in making this guess.

The Road to the Unaccept-a-Bowl

Yesterday’s NFL Divisional Playoff games, as well as today’s NFC game between Philadelphia and New York, have seen victories by the all the visiting teams.  A single road victory playoffs isn’t in of itself surprising; having so many in the same season is.  However a closer look at the Baltimore Ravens – Tennessee Titans and Philadelphia Eagles – New York Giants match-ups makes those upsets less surprising.  The Giants had been sputtering a bit down the stretch, while the Eagles were, with the weird exception of their sleepy 10-3  defeat by the Washington Redskins, hot and lucky to close the 2008 season.  Only the margin of victory (12 points, as Bad Eli Manning returned to the Meadowlands after being away all year) is really suprising.  The Titans and Ravens are fairly similar squads; ferocious defense, run-heavy offense and good special teams.  Games between those kinds of teams tend to be close.  That Baltimore does this with a rookie QB and HC is surprising, but having the classically dangerous Raven defense knock Titans RB Chris Johnson out of the game helps a lot.

The outlier for me this weekend (so far) is the Arizona Cardinals 33-13 beat-down of the Carolina Panthers.  I knew of only two football pundits, USA Today’s Jim Corbett and ESPN’s Keyshawn Johnson, who picked the Cardinals.  I was among the many who considered the Cardinals frauds.  They won a pathetic NFC West with a mere 9-7 record.  They used a pass-heavy but run-incompetent offense, always a risky balance for the post-season.  Their two December losses were ass-whoopings by playoff contenders: 35-14 from the Minnesota Vikings (whom I also considered frauds) and 47-7 from the New England Patriots.

What the Cardinals had going best for them was their lethal passing offense and a defense that was pretty good at generating turnovers, if not so good against the run.  This was a bad situation against the Carolina Panthers.  The 2008 Panthers were a typical Carolina playoff team: good pair of RBs, solid defense, QB-play a bit above Strangleball levels.  Offensively, the strength of the DeAngelo Williams – Jonathan Stewart RB combination compensated for a rather yo-yo-like season from QB Jake Delhomme.  Typifying this was Delhomme’s performance against the Cardinals going into the Panthers’ bye week (20-28-248-2TD-0INT, 1 fumble) and his game after the bye versus the anarchic Oakland Raiders (7-27-72-1TD-4INT) which the Panthers won anyway.  Furthermore, the Cardinals had some comically bad record playing on the East coast of the USA.  All this pointed to a methodical 20-6 beating by the Panthers.

Saturday night, however, the Cardinals defense used its’ ball-hawking (cardinaling?) skills and got Delhomme to put up a game much like the Raider game, (17-34-205-1TD-5INT, 1 fumble) on the way to victory.  This combined with the Eagles 23-11 defeat of the defending Super Bowl champions has lead to the unthinkable (for anyone not a blind Cards homer or bizarre contrarian) NFC Championship game in Glendale, Arizona.  I’m picking the Eagles; I’ve got my glass of NFC Playoff Haterade out for the Cardinals and haven’t been convinced to pour it down the drain.

Over in the AFC we could have a similar scenario should the San Diego Chargers (and more unacceptable, Norv Turner) beat the Pittsburgh Steelers and host the AFC Championship game against the Ravens.  The Chargers also won their crappy conference with a 9-7 record.  They also slid down the stretch, but did so in November.  They went 4-0 in December, strangely eeking out a 22-21 over the Arena League-quality Kansas City Chiefs but otherwise pounding their opponents.  They took advantage of a 1-3 December by the Denver Broncos, culminating with the Chargers crushing the Broncos 52-21 at the end of the season for the AFC West title.   Rather unlike the Cardinals, they have a balanced offense and, on paper, good RBs.  However, LaDanian Tomlinson is likely at the end of his superstar years in the NFL and I’m unsold on Darren Sproles as a full-time back.  Sure, Sproles was a starter in college, ran the ball a lot and was good.  Yet that was college; some of the defenders Sproles faced in the Big-12 are in the NFL, but they’re now working with the best guys over the last ten years from every college in the U.S. and Canada.

Getting back to the point, the Chargers were my AFC Fraud team, mostly due to my Norv Turner hatred, but managed to beat the previously surging Indianapolis Colts on the road last week.  Now I’m envisioning a Super Bowl with my two remaining Fraud teams (with the Vikings early and proper dismissal from the playoffs) playing for the Lombardi Trophy.  In abstract, it actually could be a good game, but this hypothetical Unaccept-a-Bowl will likely pass the previous Tampa Super Bowl, joyless Super Bowl XXXV, as the one I mostly ignore.  At least watching the horrifyingly awesome 2000 Ravens defense maul the Giants was a bit entertaining, as was the awkward feeling of Ray Lewis winning MVP.

As I post this, it is halftime and the Steelers are up 14-10 over the Chargers.  Go Mike Tomlin and the gang!

Not a Total Loss

Only the world’s most poorly updated football (American-style) blog would have its’ first post in months be, on the day of the BCS Championship Game and a couple days before Round Two of the NFL playoffs, about the Arena Football League.

So middle of last month the Arena Football League announced the 2009 season would be suspended. The backstory was that the owners couldn’t agree on bringing in an additional investment group for the league. If I would dig around some, like maybe in the comment boards at Arena Fan or something, I’d try to find out what’s going on, at least in the fan rumor mill. It was fishy when long-time commissioner David Baker resigned a couple days before the Arena Bowl in July of 2008. I doubt it was so he could concentrate on negotiating a contract for his son Sam, a first-round draft pick of the Atlanta Falcons.

I’m quite annoyed by this development. I’ve just moved to New York and was looking forward to spending the odd Spring weekend riding the LIRR out to Uniondale and watching the New York Dragons. However, things aren’t a total loss. The Arena League’s developmental league, af2, is still in business! Hard to believe the penny-ante league originally built out of the corpses of the original Xtreme Football League (not to be confused with the sadly departed XFL) and the Indoor Football League, running in mid-to-small-sized American cities would keep going while it’s parent shut down. Then again costs are a lot lower for them. I just need to see which one of my friends I can convince to go to Albany with me to catch the “rebranded” Firebirds, nee’ Conquest.