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NFL Conference Championships

Well, I know I didn’t watch any regular season NFL games this year, but here’s my take on the two Conference Championship games anyway. And let me tell you, it’s pretty darn cool to be surfing the web while watching the game on TiVo, so I can look up the stats and rosters.

Patriots-Colts

Don’t really like either team, so I wasn’t really rooting for anybody in this one. Yeah, I know Bill Belichick used to be an assistant coach for my Giants, but that was before I started following them.

Anyway, Peyton Manning seems similar to Kerry Collins. He looks great when the O-line gives him plenty of time to get in a good rhythm. Otherwise he looks very mediocre. I give Ty Law a lot of credit for blanketing Marvin Harrison and for some of those acrobatic picks, but Manning clearly panics a bit when he’s pressured. I don’t know if it’s because New England has a good defensive line or because Indy has a poor offensive line, but you’re just not going to win too many games if the other team can consistently pressure your QB with just four pass-rushers. That’s a big reason why the Raiders got clocked by Tampa last year.

New England should have put that game away much earlier but horribly mismanaged the clock. First off, Brady’s end-zone pick was simply inexcusable. Heck, why were they throwing the ball in the first place? They needed just a field goal to make the lead bigger than two touchdowns and effectively end the game. Even worse, with the lead cut to seven and New England getting the ball back after the unsuccessful on-side kick attempt, there was only 2:27 left on the clock, but instead of running the ball three times, they threw two incomplete passes, allowing the Colts to get the ball back before the two-minute warning. Inexcusable. And when New England got the ball back yet again within field goal range, what the hell was with that naked bootleg? That near-fumble could have been disastrous.

But it was all moot because Manning never got going. Also, Indy’s defense never made the right adjustments. New England doesn’t have much of a running game, so they make their living all day with the short to medium-range passes. Well, it looked like Indy put up a zone that was perfectly willing to concede those passes. Not a real inspired game-plan there.

But their punter, Hunter Smith, made a real heads-up play by kicking the ball out of the end zone on the botched snap for an intentional safety (and I think special teams gaffes in the playoffs are probably a symptom of the higher turnover caused by the salary cap). I’ve seen punters in similar situations try to throw a pass with disastrous results. Smith clearly made the right decision, giving up just two points instead of at least a field goal and probably a touchdown. And kicking a rolling football is no mean feat. You can clearly see him concentrate on getting the footwork right before he kicks it, making it look easier than it probably was.

Eagles-Panthers

Well, as a Giants fan, I didn’t want to see the Eagles in the Superbowl, and of course I like Carolina’s head coach, John Fox, so my allegiance was pretty clear in this one.

Not as much to say here. Seemed to me that the Eagles live and die by McNabb, and once he went down, they didn’t really have much of a chance. But they would have been in this game if it weren’t for their defense letting them down completely. Philly safety, Brain Dawkins, was close enough to prevent Carolina’s first touchdown, but got turned around and overran the underthrown ball. Inexcusable, and he knew it (and I think the cornerback made the same mistake). And of course, four or five Eagles had shots to stop backup running back DeShaun Foster from scoring that late TD and failed miserably (or is Foster really that good?). And Carolina, unlike New England, put this game away by running out the clock, so that was that.

I just don’t know why we didn’t see more of Duce Staley. The guy’s a stud, and seemed to be the only thing working in the Eagle offense, and they weren’t that far down that they had to abandon the running game.

Thoughts on the Superbowl

Well, I’m not a fan of the salary cap, as I mentioned in the comments section of this post. We end up with mediocre teams playing uninspired football even in the playoffs, and I think this year is no exception. Both teams have mediocre offenses and good — but not great — defenses. Carolina has the better running game, but New England has the better run defense, and New England has the better passing game, but Carolina has the better pass defense. Like most of these playoffs, it’s just going to come down to which team plays less badly.

If I have to pick, I guess I gotta go with New England. They seem to have the better defense (especially when it comes to creating turnovers), and I think Brady is a lot less likely to choke under pressure than Delhomme.

And while I haven’t followed football closely, I think maybe New England built their team right. Most teams hang on to a few superstars and plug holes the best they can to make their run (and do this every year). But New England appears to have built a team on a pretty broad base of inexpensive talent and thus has less star power, but also less turnover than most other teams. But that’s just my impression.