Links

Just a few things I wanted to share with everyone. The first is easily my favorite part of every year's Super Bowl pregame coverage: Dr. Z's position-by-position breakdown of both teams. An absolutely invaluable resource for anyone who wants to know both teams' real strengths and weaknesses, even though he's picking the Giants this year for some reason.

Next, the Onion had an hilarious article spoofing hardcore sports fans. Um, I'm sure they were talking about everyone but me.

But mostly I wanted to mention the Onion as a segue to their awesome presidential candidate profiles, just in case you haven't seen them yet.

Can the Giants win Sunday?

There is only one question heading into Sunday's Super Bowl (4:30 Mountain, FOX): do the 12-6 New York Giants have a chance against the 18-0 New England Patriots?

The statistical evidence is pretty overwhelming: they probably don't. Don't believe me? Check out ESPN.com's invaluable NFL stats for yourself. Try finding a major category where the Giants finished ahead of the Patriots.

Good luck. The Patriots hold the edge in offense, points scored, defense, points allowed, passing offense, passing defense, average kickoff return yardage, average punt return yardage, and average yards allowed on kick and punt returns.

That leaves the Giants with an edge in rushing (134.3 yards per game to New England's 115.6) and a microscopic edge in rushing defense (97.7 yards allowed to 98.3), though they held a bigger lead in yards allowed per carry.

This leaves the upset-minded prognosticator searching for more esoteric justification. Perhaps the Giants want it more? Not bloody likely, considering New England's single-minded focus after the twin disasters of blowing last year's AFC Championship Game and being caught cheating in this season's opener.

Do the Giants have more momentum? That's another ridiculous idea. New York has played well in five straight games; the Patriots have won their last eighteen. Plus the Giants barely beat the Packers in their last game, a game Green Bay seemed desperate to lose.

But you can't fault a team when they win the NFC Championship on the road, especially on the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field. Indeed, I believe the Giants have had a season they can be proud of. But I also believe New England was the highest-scoring team in NFL history this year. Sports history teaches us that every underdog has a chance. Unfortunately for New York, it also teaches us that legendary teams usually steamroll their opponents in the Super Bowl. My pick: New England 40, New York 21.

A side note: I'm so giddy about the 1972 Dolphins fading into the history of the forgotten, I can hardly contain myself. In fact, I'm even happy about the Pats' cheating scandal now. Think about it: not only will the Dolphins fade off into the sunset, they'll lose their spotlight to a team that everyone knows cheated. The '72 Dolphins, whose combination of arrogance and bitterness puts them in the same likeability stratosphere as Mike Huckabee, won't even lose their place fairly. But in a few years, no one's really going to care that the Patriots had an aggresive approach to capturing game film. To me, the scenario that has played out is even cooler than some great team coming along and wiping Miami from the record books by winning each of its games by fifty points.

Happy Anniversary!

You do know what today is, don't you? Or, more accurately, what ten years ago was?

January 25, 1998?

You know, Super Bowl XXXII?

That's right, ten years ago was one of the greatest days of my life, when the Denver Broncos upset the Green Bay Packers 31-24 to bring the Broncos their first NFL championship.

You know how they say that for some big days, you remember every little detail for the rest of your life? Well, that's me with that Super Bowl. Like I remember:

1. Watching it at my best friend's house. The best part was when his mom, who had hitherto shown almost no interest in the sport, began rooting for Green Bay players to get injured. Do you remember Gilbert Brown, the gigantic Packers defensive tackle? The guy who no NFL team could run on, until the Broncos decided to, you know, try? The Denver offensive line began to wear him down, and it took him longer and longer to get up each play. Meanwhile my friend's mom's in the background, saying things like, "Please be hurt, please be hurt." Wow. I thought I'd cared, but all I really wanted was for the Broncos to win. I didn't mind if Brown could still pick up his kids some day.

2. The psychic. The Denver Post was printing about five hundred pages worth of Broncos coverage daily heading into the Super Bowl, and was beginning to run out of angles. (It was so awesome, though-I have many of those newspapers to this day.) Anyway, the day of the Super Bowl they asked a psychic in Denver for some predictions on the game. I don't remember reading the article, but I do recall some people watching the game saying it said Neil Smith would get an interception. (Since Smith was a defensive end, I have to admit, it was a pretty gutsy prediction. Also pretty stupid.)

Anyway, in the second quarter Steve Atwater breaks free on a blitz, destroys Brett Favre and knocks the ball free, which Smith recovers. Immediately debate ensues among some of the female members of the watch party about whether this fulfills the prediciton. I said then, and I say now: no freakin' way. Come on, a fumble and an interception are not the same thing.

3. While I'm mentioning Atwater, one of the things that stood out was his playing the absolute game of his life on the biggest possible stage. Though the Broncos would repeat as Super Bowl champs, at the time they had enough veterans that it felt like it could be the team's last real shot of the Elway era. And Atwater was magnificent, delivering crushing hits all over the field. I'm pretty sure the box score credited him with about six tackles, but they were six serious tackles and several punishing blows, which helped throw off the rhythm of Green Bay's passing attack. (At the time, unlike last weekend, this was no small accomplishment.)

Atwater was one of the most entertaining defenders of his era (just ask Christian Okoye), but it already feels like he's forgotten, except when every young Broncos safety is compared to him. He made eight Pro Bowls, and was on the NFL's All-Decade team for the nineties. I don't know if he'll make the Hall of Fame, but his performance in that Super Bowl deserves to be remembered.

4. Of course I remember Terrell Davis, who had 30 carries, 157 yards, and three touchdowns, despite missing most of the second quarter with a migraine. An MVP performance, and the three touchdowns set a Super Bowl record. I can still see myself leaping off the couch and saluting after one of his touchdowns. Could have been on the last one, but the Packers stepping aside to let him score wasn't that exciting.

5. John Mobley knocking away Favre's fourth-down pass to clinch the victory.

6. John Elway finally winning the Super Bowl. In the third quarter, the Broncos took a 24-17 lead, then recovered a fumble on the ensuing kickoff. Elway went for the end zone on the next play (the offense was so gutsy back then), but was picked off by Packers safety Eugene Robinson. Just when everything was going our way. I don't think I ever have felt or will feel worse for a millionaire or NFL superstar than I did at that moment. You just knew then that if the Broncos lost, all the blame was going to fall on Elway. And everyone who'd become a Broncos fan that month was going to keep on ripping the guy.

Instead, we just remember his third-down dive, where he gave up his body to make the first down. And that was a sweet play, one that Shannon Sharpe said convinced him the Broncos would win. But given the circumstances, with a championship on the line, isn't it more remarkable that some quarterbacks wouldn't do the exact same thing?

What are your favorite memories of Super Bowl XXXII?

* * *

Cool links to check out today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXXII

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/nfl/superbowl/32/

http://www.nfl.com/superbowl/history/recap/sbxxxii

http://www.nfl.com/superbowl/history/boxscore/sbxxxii

Conference Championships Outlook

No hype, just fact: Sunday's AFC Championship Game (3 p.m. Eastern, CBS) is about as historically significant as a game can be before it starts.

First, the challenger: the San Diego Chargers, winners of eight games in a row. The Chargers were just 20th in offense and 14th in defense. In terms of scoring, though, they ranked fifth in both categories, which is pretty good.

Except that the New England Patriots, who had the NFL's first 16-0 season, were fourth in scoring defense and first in points...that's first in total points, all-time.

Here's the thing: if the Patriots win, and go on to take the Super Bowl, one of the factors in the "greatest team ever" discussions will be their playoff performances. Did they dominate? Did they make any memorable comebacks? Did they set any records?

If the Chargers win, it's the NFL's biggest upset of the decade. It might be the biggest in the major team sports, too, at least in this country. Do the 2004 Pistons compare? I loved that Finals, but I don't think so.

And by the way, do you want star power? Let's see, NFL MVP Tom Brady, a.k.a. the Quarterback of the Decade, is going against LaDainian Tomlinson, last year's MVP and the Running Back of the Decade. This might be the best matchup of its kind since the NFC title game in early 1985, when Walter Payton's Bears played Joe Montana's 49ers for a spot in the Super Bowl. (The 49ers won, which helped propel the Bears to the 15-1 year the season after-shades of New England's loss to Indy in the playoffs last year.)

(In other words, I expect Tomlinson to play.)

In my mind, the only possible way this game is a disappointment is if the Chargers blow out New England, like 35-3 or something, and it's over early. Actually, even then I wouldn't want to miss a play. New England 35, San Diego 24.

The nightcap is only the NFC Championship Game (6:30 p.m. Eastern, FOX). Any superstars in this one? I count two: Brett Favre, and an ice-cold Lambeau Field.

Let's start with the weather report: it doesn't call for snow on Sunday. However, they do predict a high temperature of 5º that day. And this is a night game. Does that sound like it could be memorable?

The New York Giants are heading into this game against Green Bay on a modest hot streak. Let's keep in mind, they played the Patriots close, and then won two playoff games, which is nice but not Earth-shattering. (The AFC teams both have winning streaks at least four times as long.) I can't decide if they're overhyped, or if I'm the only one who can't see how good they are.

One possible bright spot for the Giants in the cold: while they haven't run the ball especially well in the playoffs, they were great in the regular season. They were fourth in the league with 134 yards per game on the ground, and picked up an impressive 4.6 yards per carry.

I'm not sure I'm sold on the Packers, either, but one of these teams has to make the Super Bowl. I really hope it's Green Bay. Green Bay 25, New York Giants 17.

Sunday: A day of upsets

Chargers over Colts: I missed most of this game, but tuned in to see L.T. and Philip Rivers on the sidelines and San Diego ahead. How cool was the upset? Two years ago the No. 1 seed Colts lost to Pittsburgh in the first round, and today with homefield they again lost their first playoff game. So you'd say they choke, except last year they won the Super Bowl. Still, which one is the fluke? And do you think Peyton will ever make it back to THE big game?

Giants over Cowboys: This was a good game, too (a great weekend for football all in all), though I found my mind wandering by the end. It was a weird upset, because the No. 1-seeded Cowboys didn't really play that badly. They did have a few plays that seemed bigger in retrospect, things like dropped passes, but it's impressive that the Giants were able to knock them off on the road.

My favorite thing about this weekend was how well most teams were passing the ball-pretty much every team had some success through the air, which helped keep the games from looking sloppy. Just made it feel like high-quality football. Tony Romo's 18-for-36 game gave him the worst completion percentage of the weekend, though. He's weird to watch because, as always, a few of his passes were just perfectly on target, but then sometimes he'll toss one while he's moving around and it just gets away from him. Last year, I felt his share of the blame for Dallas' loss was too big. But it'll be interesting to see what the public and media response is this off-season, which for the second straight year will be longer than most Dallas fans anticipated.

Saturday's divisional games

Packers over Seahawks: A fun game to watch, if you like the Packers. I turned the TV on when it was 14-0 Seattle. That was the high point for Seattle's postseason, since the Packers ended up winning by 22.

I was stoked to see Favre play so well, and he played so under control. He didn't take any dumb chances, but he still had a cool Favre play, that one when he was falling forward avoiding a sack and flipped the ball ahead to tight end Donald Lee for a first down.

But mostly it was just cool to see Favre playing with such passion and to see a playoff game in Lambeau in the snow. I know a lot of people are waiting for Favre to retire, and I know the Packers haven't been very good in recent years, so maybe it doesn't really matter if he stays or goes. But Green Bay is professional football, you know? I'd hate to see Favre retire and have such a prominent franchise fade from the national scene. I couldn't help thinking about that during the game.

Patriots over Jaguars: As any idiot or sane monkey could have predicted, the Patriots defeated the Jaguars. (I do NOT think it's impressive that I called this game. I do think it's amazing that anyone got it wrong.) The Jaguars played the Pats pretty neck-and-neck in the first half, though, which I guess gives them an Eli Manning-like moral victory. (Now watch Manning beat the Cowboys tomorrow and have everyone wonder on Monday what I meant by that...obviously I'm talking about the 16-0 game where the Giants kept it close.)

The Jaguars' vaunted running game picked up 80 yards on 22 carries. Lawrence Maroney of the Patriots had just as many carries, but picked up 122 yards and a score. Tom Brady had the best completion percentage in playoff history, which is kind of a dumb stat but neat for him, I guess.

Forget the stats, though. The Patriots had a bunch of sweet plays, like the fake-snap-to-the-tailback that ended in a touchdown pass, or that play where it looked like Brady was throwing it away but instead threw it to Donté Stallworth for 53 yards, or maybe Stallworth's last first-down catch, where he dove for the marker on third down and helped kill some clock at the end. I'm just glad today was such a great day for football.

NFL Divisional Round predictions

I've always thought rules like, "One of the home teams will lose in the second round, you just have to figure out who it is" are stupid. Even if they're true. I'm not going to predict some random overmatched team will get lucky just so I can say I went out on a limb. Some years there's a team that's clearly ripe for an upset (think Colts of the early 2000s vintage), but this year no one falls into that category.

The fact is this year's NFL was made of haves (New England) and have-nots (everyone else). Seriously, though, the top two seeds in both conferences have seemed set for months, and I see no reason why they shouldn't all be favored in their games this weekend. Once again I predict all home teams will win.

However, since I rode that formula to a successful and coinfliplike 2-2 record last week, I'm going to break these games down in order from most likely to least likely to be an upset:

1. Giants at Cowboys (2:30 Mountain, Sunday, FOX): The Giants have a few factors going in their favor. First, since they play near New York and have strung together two good games in a row, everyone in the country thinks they are a run of historic proportions. So their confidence has to be up.

Second, they are facing the Cowboys, who beat them twice this season, and hey, it's not often you lose to the same team three times in the same season. (My favorite example of that rare occurence came in 1999, when the Tennessee Titans, two weeks off the Music City Miracle, beat the No. 1 seed Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC Championship. The Jags finished the year 15-3, with all three losses coming to the Titans. At the Super Bowl a reporter asked Titans coach Jeff Fisher what it had been like to have four home stadiums in four years, and he responded with the classic, "Well, some would say we've had five home stadiums in four years, if you count Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville." Man, I hate the Jaguars.  Anyway.)

More to the point, the Cowboys make me nervous. Yes, they finished the year 13-3 and beat the Packers in their only meeting. So they might have been the class of the NFC (congratulations, that George Halas Trophy will really be something), but aren't there clearly two AFC teams with Hall of Fame quarterbacks standing between the Cowboys and a Super Bowl victory? So why did they take their foot off the gas and coast the last week of the season? Will that and the bye week have been too much rest? I don't know. I'm also nervous for Dallas because their coach is Wade Phillips, who was on the receiving end of that Music City Miracle. But the Giants have Tom Coughlin, who I've never met but seems like a beady-eyed dictator and who led Jacksonville to those three losses to the Titans, so who knows what'll happen?

Also, New York had a better record on the road (7-1) than Dallas had at home (6-2).

2. Seahawks at Packers (2:30 Mountain, Saturday, FOX): I love Brett Favre, but he's a big reason the Packers could disappoint this week. Check Wikipedia. I certainly did, and in this millenium he's thrown 9 playoff TDs to 14 interceptions, which is actually a little better than I would have guessed. I love the guy, but he's obviously become inconsistent in big games.

Good thing for him that the Seahawks are only kind of good. To win, they'd need a big game from Matt Hasselbeck, who's fantastic but whose supporting cast can be unhelpful.

3. Chargers at Colts (11 Mountain, Sunday, CBS): The Chargers beat the Colts in their only meeting this year, a game in which they intercepted Peyton Manning six times. Also, they have the best running back of the decade. Hmmm, if this is the third-most-likely upset, one of these home teams is definitely going to lose.

Anyway, while San Diego was hot late in the year (they're on a seven-game winning streak), Indianapolis was hot basically all season long, except for a two-game blip when they lost to New England and San Diego. Could those losses, to two of the best teams in the AFC, mean the Colts have reverted to their prior ways under pressure? It's possible, but I spent way too much time saying Peyton Manning would never win it all and I feel like it's too early to stop giving him his props. You can probably tell how badly I want to stop, though, right?

4. Jaguars at Patriots (6 Mountain, Saturday, CBS): The Patriots were 16-in-frickin'-0 this year. They're not losing in their first playoff game.

Fun fact: The Patriots outscored their opponents by 315 points this year. Carolina, Atlanta, San Francisco, St. Louis, Buffalo, the Jets, Miami, Baltimore, Tennessee, Oakland, and Kansas City didn't even score 315 points by themselves this year. (Led by the incomparable Jay Cutler, the Broncos weren't much better, scoring just 320 points.)

Jacksonville was seventh in offense this year; New England was first. Jacksonville was twelfth in defensive yardage allowed; New England was fourth.

On the other hand, Jacksonville is really good on the ground (almost 150 yards per game) and the Patriots are theoretically vulnerable there, giving up 4.4 yards per carry. Of course, New England has had such huge leads this year that it's mostly academic.

If it comes down to a shootout, though, don't forget the breakout game last week of superstar Jags QB David Garrard, who completed almost forty-three percent of his passes, picked up 140 yards though the air, and threw a touchdown pass against just two picks. The overrated Tom Brady had four times as many picks, if for some reason you choose to compare his entire season just to Garrard's last game. So yeah. Look out for the Jaguars.

NFL Playoffs: Opening Weekend Predictions

I guess it's officially "Wild Card Weekend", but it's kinda dumb to call half of the division winners wild cards. Anyhoo, since I left this to the last minute you get no justification for my picks:

Saturday:
Redskins at Seahawks: Seahawks
Jaguars at Steelers: Steelers

Sunday:
Giants at Buccaneers: Buccaneers
Titans at Chargers: Chargers

Go home teams!

P.S. Also, the Patriots will win the Super Bowl.