Time to Eat Crow

It's not often that I am wrong with 3 out of 4 picks. In fact, it's hard to do. Of course impossible things always seem to happen when we are dealing with Timothy Richard Tebow and he was one of the reasons I was wrong with 3 of my road picks this wild card weekend in the NFL. Tebow has been proving many experts and their theories and pontifications wrong. Today he added one more theory to the list - NFL playoff overtime rules have changed. Not today and not under his watch as Tebow ended the game and the Steelers season in overtime with not just one possession, but just one play. It was a 80 yard bomb down the middle - the middle left vacant by the Steelers secondary as they crowded the line of scrimmage expecting another 1-St down run. Tebow hit Demaryius Thomas in stride and he did the rest. With the new rules, each team gets a possession if the first score is a field goal. But it's still sudden death if that score is a TD or a safety. Tebow time today produced a TD in 11 seconds and made the new rules irrelevant.

The other team still deserves a possession in my opinion and this rule change is a step in the right direction, but only a small step. May be this game will force NFL to expand the new rules even further. But all that's neither here nor there. This game was all about Tim Tebow. He played a superb and complete game. This was not one of those games where he looked like a deer in the headlights for 3 quarters and pulled out some weird magic in the last 3 minutes to win the game. This was almost the opposite and Big Ben actually had to bring the Steelers back from behind to tie it in the 4-Th. Tebow was great from the beginning to the end. He did make some mistakes and missed some throws as always, but he also made some terrific plays - to the tune of 316 passing yards, 50 yards rushing and 3 TDs. Those are some superstar numbers. Coach John Fox deserves a lot of credit. Not only did he finally unleash Tebow and satisfy his boss, John Elway, but he has also been steadily figuring out ways to use him right throughout the season. Not easy considering that his previous QB was very different from Tebow.

In this game, Fox had Tebow throwing long balls almost exclusively. Brilliant strategy as Tebow may not be the best thrower or reader of defenses. So just don't have him throw those intricate, short passes down the crowded middle. Instead, go for the longer routes which are safer, especially since the Steelers like most other teams crowded the line of scrimmage to stop Tebow and the run and most outside receivers were just single covered. And credit Tebow for hitting almost all of those long balls beautifully. 316 yards on 10 completions proves my point. At one stage in the game, I was wondering if Tebow even attempted a pass less than 30 yards. Big Ben was brilliant as always, but was hobbled. In addition to all the injuries coming in, they lost a couple of key players during the game and they couldn't overcome all of that. I could use that and the fact that they still almost won the game as an excuse for my bad pick, but I won't. Honestly, I would have still picked the Steelers even if those injured guys were all out coming into the game. I thought Ben and Troy would be way better than the Tebows and they were not. So I have to eat crow. Speaking of Troy, I am a big Polamalu fan, but he looks done. Was he even in this game?

I picked Atlanta and Cincinnati to win on the road as well. It turns out that all road teams lost and the wild card weekend eliminated all wild card teams too. So both the home court advantage and the playoffs seeding are alive and well up to this point. Atlanta was an abomination today. That team will be going to Green Bay next weekend if only they knew how to rush for a measly yard when they really need it. In a season where the coach got in trouble for going for it on 4-Th and short against the Saints and stalling, he did that twice in this playoff game and the Falcons stalled both times. They can't do 3-Rd or 4-Th and 1 and it's mind boggling given all the talent on the roster. Giants abused them on both sides of the ball and left Matt Ryan and Mike Smith with a lot of questions. Now the Giants get to go challenge the defending champions in Green Bay. It will be a fun game, but that's a tall order for anybody. In the AFC, Cincinnati went into Houston and their immaturity and inexperience got exposed on the road. The Houston rookies outplayed Cincy's rookies and won behind another solid outing by Arian Foster - 153 yards, 2 TDs. How do guys like Arian Foster and Isaac Redman go undrafted?

The 49'ers will be hosting the Saints next weekend in probably the most intriguing of the match-ups. It's all offense versus all defense. Saints and Drew Brees are putting up ridiculous numbers week in and week out. 400 yards is becoming the norm for this guy even in blowout victories. That used to happen once in a while in the old NFL only when good QBs were chasing a big deficit. Now, any decent QB can drop a 400 on you and of course Brees is great. Drew Brees is becoming a legend and civic treasure much like Marino, Elway, Montana and Manning. He might even be ahead of Brady on that front. He is the man behind that offensive machine and that city. But despite all the gaudy numbers, this offense doesn't look to me as special as the "greatest show on turf" Rams or the Vikes with Moss and Carter or even the Patriots when Brady threw for 50 TDs. I feel like the Saints offense is as much a product of today's rules as they are a product of an innovative offense or phenomenal talent. Also the fact that there are 3 or 4 other offenses this year that are not far behind the Saints takes some bloom off of that rose. I look at it as proof number 12551 that the offensive game has changed and gotten a lot easier that this Saints team could put up those kind of numbers. Proof number 12552 would be that Tim Tebow threw for 316 yards in his first playoff game. But let's not suggest anything even remotely critical of Tim Tebow right now.