The No-Cares Bears

I feel some sort of moral obligation to make picks for the NFL Playoffs, even if the 49ers aren't involved. I suppose if I don't I might be subject to some sour grapes taunts but let's be real: The NFL Playoffs this season are going to be more about rooting against teams I don't like than anything else, and unlike the previous 3 years, I can't say I have too much of a vested interest in the whole thing. That being said, since there's no team for me to clearly root for, and plenty of teams that I don't like involved, expect a lot of snide comments and ridiculous barbs out of me while I make my picks for these next few weekends.

I suppose the one bit of solace I can take is that given how badly the 49ers played at times this season, it's probably better that they didn't make the playoffs because they stood a good chance of getting themselves bounced in an early round if they did make it, and in some ways, it's better to just not be there at all and count your losses at 8-8 than making it, getting beaten on Saturday afternoon and being "The Forgotten Team" in the playoffs like the Bengals usually are every year.

So, what is there this weekend?

Saturday, 4:20pm
Arizona Cardinals (11-5) at Carolina Panthers (7-8-1)
That the Panthers are here is by virtue of one of those little NFL quirks that gives the division champion an automatic home game, and another one of those little NFL quirks that the Panthers won a particularly awful NFC South with a sub-.500 record. But here they are, and believe it or not I think they actually have a good chance to win. The Panthers have been here before, they did win 12 games and scored themselves a 1st round bye last season (before the 49ers came to town and kicked them in the teeth), and they're facing a Cardinals team that started off 9-1 and were the darlings of the NFL before Carson Palmer got hurt, and then Drew Stanton got hurt, leaving them with journeyman Ryan Lindley at the QB helm which has kind of put their offense at a standstill. They do boast a good defense that should give Cam Newton and company fits, but I have the feeling that it won't be enough. The Panthers have the advantage of having muddled through a season where they didn't win a game for 2 months, but they won the games that counted, which ended up being their last 4 in a row, so believe it or not, the sub-.500 team is actually peaking which generally is a good thing to have happen when you're heading into the playoffs. I figure this is one of those games where the Panthers sort of lull their way to a lead, and this is one of those games where you look up and see it's the 4th Quarter and they lead by 17 points.
Pick: Panthers 23, Cardinals 9

Saturday, 8:15pm
Baltimore Ravens (10-6) at Pittsburgh Steelers (11-5)
This is one of the NFL's favorite masturbatory matchups, a rivalry game between two hated rivals, and they still want to give it that starch even if Ray Lewis isn't around to do his stupid Dougie Dance or whatever the hell it is. Somehow the Ravens are in the playoffs; they made it here as the AFC's #6 seed, the winner out of a consortium of teams that spent a majority of the season unable to get out of their own way. I believe this group included Buffalo, Houston, Kansas City, San Diego and even Miami was involved at one point, but it's the Ravens that are here, in spite of their best player being suspended in one of the NFL's stormiest scandals and Joe Flacco still looking like $120 million worth of wimpy (and if you think I'm still stewing over the Super Bowl from 2 years ago, YOU'RE RIGHT!). The Steelers have been the better team most of the season, Ben Roethlisberger has had a great year, as has WR Antonio Brown, but the issue for the Steelers right now is the availability of Le'Veon Bell, their Running Back who's proven himself to be of Frank Gore quality, but was injured late last week and is unavailable. This is a big blow to the Steelers, but even though they're forced to use one of their lesser backs, they still seem to me like they're going to advance here.
Pick: Steelers, 24, Ravens 17

Sunday, 1:05pm
Cincinnati Bengals (10-5-1) at Indianapolis Colts (11-5)
This is a matchup between two teams that need to put up or shut up. The Bengals need a win here because they've made the playoffs every year for the last 4 seasons, and every year, they've played like schmucks and lost their first game. Generally, it's because their Quarterback, the wildly uneven Andy Dalton, has turned the ball over some ungodly number of times. The Colts need to win simply to prove that they're a more cohesive team than just some middling players with an extraordinarily talented Quarterback, Andrew Luck. Last season, the Colts were well on their way to getting embarrassed at home by Kansas City before Luck sprung to life and spearheaded a big-time comeback, and then the Colts summarily got their asses handed to them the following week in New England. Injuries play a role here too, since Cincinnati may be without Receiver A.J. Green, who was concussed last week in Pittsburgh. Indy's top receiver, T.Y. Hilton is also banged up but seems more likely to play. Tossup games like this seem to come down to running games moreso than the Quarterbacks, and here the edge goes to Cincinnati, simply because the Colts have no running game to speak of and have to rely on Luck, whereas the Bengals have a two-headed attack with Jeremy Hill and Giovani Bernard, and this could well tilt the edge in their favor. A tough call for certain, but I'll take a gamble and go with the Bengals to win their first Playoff game since the Boomer Esiason era.
Pick: Bengals 34, Colts 30

Sunday, 4:40pm
Detroit Lions (11-5) at Dallas Cowboys (12-4)
This is also a real tossup game between a pair of teams that haven't had Playoff success in a long time. Dallas has won all of one Playoff game since 1997 and the Troy Aikman/Emmitt Smith regime. Detroit hasn't won one in about as long as Cincinnati has, which takes them back to when Barry Sanders was toting the rock for them and their QB was Erik Kramer (a halcyon era indeed). To compound matters, that's the Lions only postseason win in the Super Bowl Era. Dallas has had a surprisingly good season, primarily because they decided their best way to go about things was to run DeMarco Murray into the ground, eat up the clock in a majority of their games, and not try to let Tony Romo have to do too much. Romo has had a fine season for once in his life, and so the prevailing thought is that maybe he's over that general A-Rodism that overcomes him in big moments. The worry about the Cowboys is that they've been consistently mediocre in spite of a wealth of talent for so many years, that you had to think that one of these years, they might actually get out of their own way and win some games. This could be one such year, but I'm not really buying it. The same could be said of Detroit, who can match Romo with Matthew Stafford, equal parts talent and stupidity, and can match Dez Bryant with Calvin Johnson, and their RB tandem of Reggie Bush and Joique Bell. The Lions also have a much better defense than Dallas, and they'll have the added benefit of having Ndamukong Suh playing this week, his suspension for stepping on Beautiful Aaron Rodgers last week having been overturned. I suppose either team could come away with the win here, but I see Detroit's defense stepping up and making plays in such a way that I don't think Dallas' defense is capable of doing. Plus isn't Romo way overdue for a real stinker of a performance? Finally, this is the 4pm Sunday game, usually a marquee matchup where something weird usually happens and things never go quite the way you'd expect it to. I see a close game, but a late Romo turnover will tilt the scales in Detroit's favor while Jerry Jones turns a Coughlin-esque shade of red.
Pick: Lions 30, Cowboys 20

So, there you have it. Enjoy the weekend if you can, and don't sit there watching these games in a mostly dark room sullenly stewing like I probably will.

Another One for the Ages

Yes, he was indeed in.

And with it, another frenetic 4th Quarter flurry of both teams simultaneously finding their rhythms saved yet another Super Bowl from unraveling into an unmemorable mess.

For the better part of the first 3 quarters, this Super Bowl seemed quite a bit like last year's version. That is, a rather unmemorable blur. Sure, there was a bit of excitement generated by James Harrison's electrifying 100-yard interception return, but for the most part, there wasn't anything memorable going on. Pittsburgh's defense had held strong, Arizona couldn't get into any sort of a rhythm offensively, and Pittsburgh's offense basically was doing the absolute minimum needed to win the game. With a 20-7 lead, it seemed more or less academic: Pittsburgh would grind out the rest of the game and win a rather unremarkable Super Bowl.

Then, rather quickly, something changed. Arizona suddenly found their feet, or rather, found their air, sending Kurt Warner back to pass and, and they were moving the ball, and Warner was threading the needle and Larry Fitzgerald was getting open, and the Cardinals were in the End Zone. Pittsburgh went into their Prevent Offense, sending their runner up the middle. Problem was, they hadn't been able to establish a running game at all to that point, and then when they really had to, they couldn't get it going. This would eventually screw them completely in a rather stunning turn of events within about a minute late in the 4th quarter. Pinned back at their own goal line, Pittsburgh couldn't run themselves out of it, and then managed to penalize themselves into a Safety that made the score 20-16 and gave Arizona the ball, and one more chance to try to strike.
And strike they did.

If Larry Fitzgerald hadn't already cemented himself as the premier Wide Receiver in the NFL, he certainly had to with his performance down the stretch in this game. And his 64-yard touchdown, in which he not only managed to split Pittsburgh's safeties to the point of embarrassment, but also turned on the jets and simply outran them to the End Zone could very well have been the enduring image from this game.

I watched the game at a rather sparse party, where beer was plentiful, but food was in short supply. By the 4th quarter, things had pretty much dispersed. Only 5 or 6 of us remained. I resorted to texting a friend, and we began talking about Kurt Warner, and his ubiquitous series of Chunky Soup commercials. I surmised that if the Cardinals held on to win, we would be subjected to Kurt Warner doing those nauseating commercials for the rest of our lives. Perhaps the alcohol had severly impaired my thought process. Or maybe I'd just had enough of Kurt Warner. Either way, I wasn't pleased with the prospects.

But Arizona's pass defense, which had been a liability late in the NFC Championship, and which I figured would be their downfall in this game, couldn't hold up their end of the bargain. Playing in an awful zone formation, the Arizona secondary basically allowed Roethlisberger to pick them apart, moving the Steelers smartly down the field despite an almost-deathly holding call, putting them in prime position to strike, and then hurling the dagger, a picture-perfect strike to Santonio Holmes to cap off their victorious march.
Thus, the enduring image from Super Bowl XLIII was not Fitzgerald. The aftermath would not be a lifetime of Kurt Warner's Chunky Soup. Instead, we're left with Santonio Holmes, his toes hanging onto the ground for dear life, catching the pass and capping off a fabulous game, the kind of Super Bowl that the Super Bowl should be, but rarely is; the kind of Super Bowl that this game almost wasn't for about 2 3/4 quarters.

Thusly, the NFL season comes to a close. Time to turn the page. In New York, I think Baseball season has officially begun.

THE BIG GAME!!!

This is probably going to be very brief...

Ever notice how, more often than not, advertisements and shops and whatnot will not refer to the Super Bowl as the Super Bowl? I know it's got to do with the fear of some sort of copyright infringement, but it sort of removes the spirit of the game. Instead, all over the place, there are signs and advertisements not for the Super Bowl, or Super Bowl parties, rather, they look like this:

"PLACE YOUR ORDERS FOR THE BIG GAME!"

"YOUR OFFICIAL BIG GAME HEADQUARTERS!"

"BIG GAME PARTY HAPPENING HERE!"

We may as well just not call it the Super Bowl anymore. Instead, it's just the Big Game! And so, today, in The Big Game XLIII, we have the Arizona Iced Tea and the Pittsburgh...Whatever the hell they have in Pittsburgh. Rivers? Steel mills? A horrendous airport? I don't know.

The game should be pretty much scenery to the hoopla, it usually is. The stupid hype week usually kills whatever rhythm the teams have, so more often than not, the first half of the game turns into a rather epic crapfest. Look at last year's game. People call it the most exciting game ever, but how many people forget that for 3 quarters, the game was a mess, a 7-3 mishmash of punts and incomplete passes. I guess today could just as easily go the same way. I could talk about the high-powered offense of the Cardinals, or the sterling Defense of the Steelers, but I'm not going to tell you anything you didn't already know. These games tend to come down to who can control the ball and play better defense, and I think Pittsburgh can do both better than Arizona will be able to.

My pick: Steelers 23, Cardinals 14

And by Tuesday, most of you will have forgotten that the Cardinals were even playing in the game.

Enjoy THE BIG GAME, everyone!