The NFL wildcard weekend featured a lot of wildness. With New England and Denver on a bye and with no New York teams in the big dance, the top billing went to the San Francisco-Green Bay matchup on Sunday and it didn't disappoint. Colin Kaepernick has had an up and down season, but one thing he always seems to be able to do is run against the packers. He rushed for 98 yards in just 7 attempts. Thats efficient to say the least. Aaron Rodgers and Eddie Lacy did their best to make this a close game, but Kap led the niners on a game winning drive and bled the clock all the way down to zero leaving no time for A-Rod to do to the Niners what he did to the Bears last weekend. It was a frustrating day for the Packers as they lost for the fourth time in two years against the Niners with two of those losses at home and two of them in the playoffs. Harbaugh seem to have their number and it's because of the superior defense at his disposal. The Packers have the better QB, but he can't do it all. The defense has to seal some running holes and they didn't do it today. Now the Niners goto Carolina.
The other California team went into Cincinnati and kicked off what promises to be an horrible off-season for Andy Dalton. Dalton had a horrible second half and threw 2 interceptions in this game. I wouldn't call this a big upset since the Chargers have been on a role lately and the Bengals and Dalton have had many question marks hanging over them anyways. But both games today featured California teams going into cold weather stadiums and coming out victors. The Chargers are next going into Denver for their third contest this season. Road teams have won both games this season and Peyton Manning will be in almost as much trouble as Andy Dalton if Rivers and the Chargers get over him on the road next weekend. For all the records Manning smashed this year - which nobody seems to care about a whole lot anyways, his playoff credentials are still in some scrutiny and he needs to at least get to the Super Bowl this year, if not win it. He has a hot San Diego team coming in and it should be another close playoff contest for us fans. Nothing's easy this time of the year in the NFL.
If todays' games were fun, yesterday's games were wild. The Saints got the road monkey off their back with a great win in Philadelphia. The Eagles were a lot of people's trendy pick, but the Saints actually flexed their defensive muscle to get the job done. In fact, until New Orleans cornerback Keenan Lewis suffered a head injury in the third quarter, the Eagles offense was non-existent. DeSean Jackson got untracked a little bit after that injury and the game got tight. Now the Saints get to goto Seattle again and get some revenge for the playoff loss a few years back - the game where "Beast Mode" was actually born. And I feel like they have the defense for it. But the craziest game of the weekend was the one where Andrew Luck had to go beast mode to come back from 28 points down to win at home. The Chiefs and Alex Smith played well enough to win despite a string on injuries during the game including one to their main man Jamaal Charles. But in this era of amazing and stress-free quarterback play, Luck was not going to be contained with T.Y.Hilton running wild by his side. It's going to be very interesting to see what he can do next weekend in New England against Tom Brady. Fast and predictable growth for Luck from a wild card loss on the road in year 1 to divisional round against Brady and the hoody in year 2.
2 comments:
Indy has had some amazing comebacks this season after digging themselves into big holes. So has New England who have had their fair share of victory-from-the-jaws-of-defeat games themselves. I think whichever team has the lead at half-time should be very afraid! ;-)
Haha. Thats funny Magesh. So you are saying the team that wins the first half will be well-positioned to lose the game :-)
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