Sunday, January 14, 2007

Be good to your kicker, and your kicker will be good to you.

This weekend's NFL divisional playoff games turned out to be more exciting than I had anticipated: three of the four games were decided by three points. In all four contests, the kicking game was crucial.

I was predicting a Chargers vs. Saints superbowl at the beginning of the week, but the Patriots came to San Diego and really gutted one out. Tom Brady probably played the worst playoff game of his career [mostly due to the Chargers agressive D], but he was able to pull out one last drive to get the Patriots in position for Stephen "Vinatieri Who?" Gostkowski's game winning field goal. Players of the game: Gostkowski [obviously]; Troy Brown for stripping the ball and forcing the fumble immediately after a San Diego interception to regain the Patriot's posession; and Marty Schottenheimer for challenging the official ruling on the obvious Troy Brown strip and blowing a time out that would have come in handy later. With the game tied and time running out, that allowed the Patriots to play it safe--run down the clock to about 1 minute left and attempt the field goal with the worst-case scenario being a missed field goal and going into overtime. The kick was good. Maybe if the Bolts had one extra time out, they could have put their kicker in a better position to tie the game [less than 54 yards out would have been nice]. I feel bad for the Chargers' loss after having such a great season. At the same time, I couldn't have been more thrilled with the Patriot's upset win. Sometimes you wonder if that team is really ever an underdog.

Now the Patriots will head out on the road, once again, to Indianapolis to play the Colts, who just upset the Baltimore Ravens by the grace and glory of Adam Vinatieri's leg [formerly property of the New England Patriots]. Wouldn't that be something if this AFC championship were to be decided by a game winning field goal?! My prediction: it's anybody's ball game.

What about the NFC side? Weather permitting, I think the Saints should be able to handle the Bears at Soldier Field. The lukewarm Seahawks offense was able to move the ball on the vaunted Bears' D. The Saints' offense has way more weapons than the Seahawks, and their defense should be able to force the Bears' Rex Grossman into making some bad QB decisions. But...the Saint's showed against the Eagles that they can give up some big plays. Still, I think the Saints should prevail.

Superbowl: Saints vs. ??????

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1 Comments:

At 6:54 AM, January 19, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Predictions (hopes):

Saints! And whoever in the AFC--Manning and Brady are like Steve Young and Troy Aikman...I just hope that game is good.

 

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