Saturday, January 06, 2007

NFL Wild Card weekend - 01/05/2007

NFL playoffs are here and it's a great time of the year. There seems to be a lot of potential for upsets this season. Part of this is due to the fact that the NFC is a dump. Nobody knows who's better – Dallas or Seattle? Phily or the Giants? Nobody knows. Chicago and the Saints should make it to the NFC conference game easily. I think the Saints take that game and get to the Super Bowl. As for the wild card games, I think Seattle and Phily behind Jeff Garcia should make it through. Somebody has to win these NFC games :-)

The AFC is where it's at. Better teams, great games and some upset potential there as well. Both the games are pretty intriguing. KC @ the Colts. Couple of years back, these 2 teams played a phenomenal playoff game where nobody punted and the Colts won because they had the ball last. This one should be a little different, but equally good. KC's offense may not be that potent now, but they got LJ and the Colts cant stop the run. The recipe to beat the Colts is to run the ball, milk the clock, score some points and more importantly, keep Peyton off the field. So a lot of experts are picking the Chiefs to upset the Colts because they can run the ball. But here's the catch. The ebb-and-flow of a game is lot more of a factor in football than in other sports. So all the theories on the Colts run defense notwithstanding, the Colts can still win it easily if the Chiefs don't establish the run early and often. It's not like the bad run defense is the only thing the Colts have. They also have a potent offense and the World's best quarterback. So if the Chiefs have a couple of 3-and-outs early and turn the ball over to Peyton, he will drop 14 or 21 points on you before you blink. Then LJ and the rushing attack becomes a moot point. So if you really want to beat the Colts, you got to establish the run early and also play some decent defense to stop Peyton at least a couple of times. This upset is not a guarantee, but the Chiefs have a shot at it. Colts are definitely in trouble. So much so that they couldn't even secure a bye week after that great start. But they still got Peyton Manning.

That bye week belongs to San Diego and Baltimore. New England is playing the Jets in the other game. I hate the Patriots, but it looks like they might quietly score another Super Bowl here. I don't trust Marty and San Diego or Baltimore and their offense all that much, though I would love to see LT win it all. With the Colts in all this trouble, I am afraid the Patriots can win it all again. The goos news is, people think Eric Mangini has something going for him against Bellichick and they expect an upset by the Jets this weekend. I like Chad Pennington and would love for this to happens, but I don't think it will. Lets enjoy the games and see what happens.

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