BY PETER HOUSTON – FAN FUEL BLOGGER
What a weekend of NFL playoff football. After the letdown that was the Wild Card weekend, the divisional round made up for it, and then some. There was a bit of everything: huge comebacks, last second touchdowns, kick returns, clutch interceptions and A LOT of offence.
Without further ado, here’s what we saw and what we learned in the divisional playoff weekend:
You’ve got to be kidding me: Baltimore ball at their 23, 1:07 left on the clock, no timeouts, needing a touchdown to tie. And they get it.
How. Do. You. Let. That. Happen. Denver.
Rahim Moore took an atrocious route to the ball and then did an even worse job of judging it and next thing you know Jacoby Jones is walking into the endzone to send Baltimore and Denver to overtime. Absolutely inexcusable. Then Peyton makes a poor decision in overtime and ends up throwing a pick that costs his team the game. Ray Lewis lives to play another day. And the man is still making a huge impact on defence, leading his team for the second straight week in tackles, this time with 17.
Imagine I were to present you with this scenario: Denver plays Baltimore at home after beating them fairly easily in the regular season. They control the line of scrimmage on offence and defence. They also score twice on special teams. Peyton Manning’s stats at the end of regulation are 24/37 for 261 yards with three touchdowns and one interception at. Who won the game?
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Peyton’s gone cold: For whatever reason, he simply can’t win in the playoffs when the temperature is below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. After the loss on Saturday, his record is now 0-4 in those games and he has thrown four touchdowns and nine interceptions. The man will probably go down as one of the best quarterbacks ever, but the fact still remains that his career playoff record is 9-12.
Tip of the Kaep: It was a gutsy move by Jim Harbaugh, and it paid off. After Alex Smith went down with an injury, Harbaugh handed Colin Kaepernick the starting quarterback job in week 11. And he didn’t disappoint. Against the Packers Saturday he threw for 263 yards with two touchdowns and ran for 181 (a playoff record for a quarterback) with another two scores. The 49ers have probably been disappointed for the last four years that they didn’t draft Rodgers in 2005, but they weren’t last night. Kaepernick simply outduelled him. Packers defensive coordinator failed to come up with any type of sane game plan for Kaepernick, and he made him pay. Green Bay spent their first five picks in the 2012 draft on defensive players and will probably spend at least that many on them again in 2013.
Game of the week: There must have been an inordinate amount of heart attacks in Seattle and Atlanta Sunday because the finish to that game was absolutely wild. Just when you thought Russell Wilson had ended it with 30 seconds to go, Matt Ryan gets the Falcons into field goal range. And just when you thought Matt Bryant’s field goal ended it, Atlanta botches the squib (I hope they weren’t going for an onside kick) and Seattle has a shot of getting in field goal range. They fail to do that but get off a last second Hail Mary that is intercepted in what can only be described as poetic justice for Packers fans. That is what playoffs are all about.
Atlanta has a lot of work to do if they want to have a chance in the NFC championship. First of all, they either didn’t watch any tape from the Redskins-Seahawks game or they just missed the memo that getting pressure on Russell Wilson is the way to stop him. They rarely blitzed and the pass rush from their defensive line was atrocious. It looked like they were counting steamboats before going after Russell Wilson. He was able to scramble and run effectively all day. He was also able to find a lot of open receivers (wasn’t that hard) and average 10.7 yards per completion. Atlanta needs to seriously address all of those issues if they want to have any chance against Colin Kaepernick.
Tomato cans: Houston was who we thought they were, which was not good enough to keep up with the Patriots. Or in Dan Shaughnessy’s case, tomato cans. I thought the game was going to be a little closer than it was, but it doesn’t appear there’s much that can stop the Patriots’ offence right now. Houston did manage to put up 28 points but didn’t really get anything going on offence until the game was out of reach. New England did an excellent job of bottling up Arian Foster and forcing Matt Schaub into some bad throws.
At this point, I’d put the Patriots as Super Bowl favorites and would say San Fran will come out of the NFC. Can you imagine the over/under in that game? 86.5? More?
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