Four Paragraphs About Four Games

Tennessee/Baltimore… yawn. Tennessee’s defense outplayed Baltimore’s, but the Titans turned the ball over three times, at crucial points in the game. I’m still not ready to crown Joe Flacco as anything great, especially since he’s essentially playing the role of Trent Dilfer for this year’s Ravens team. 11-of-22 for 161 isn’t exactly the stuff of legends.

I’m still searching for reasons why the Cardinals are legitimate. The Panthers probably feel like Marshall Van Cleef after being shot by Roy O’Bannon – “How the hell did that happen?” The team that was 3-5 on the road, 3-7 outside of their own division, 2-6 against opponents with winning records, and 0-5 on the East Coast played a team on the road, outside of their own division, with a winning record, on the East Coast, and not only won the game, but thoroughly dominated both sides of the ball. Carolina, who was 8-0 at home, laid maybe the biggest egg in playoff history. If you took the Cardinals +10, you were pretty happy. If you took the Cardinals and the money line, you were even happier.

The New York Giants and Eli Manning were exposed in the early game on Sunday afternoon. The Eagles proved that if you can force the Giants to pass, and you have a decent defense (that, for example, doesn’t leave a 5′9″ corner on an island to cover a 6′5″ Pro Bowler in the last minute of the Super Bowl), Eli Manning can’t beat you. It’s also worth pointing out that when my father can predict what plays you are going to run, and also what the result of running those plays will be, you might want to rethink your fourth down strategy.

OK, I admit I was a little worried when San Diego scored a touchdown two minutes into the late game against Pittsburgh, but a tiny bit of sanity returned to the NFL playoffs when the Steelers took the touchdown as a wakeup call and proceeded to dominate the rest of the game. Early in the third, with the Steelers driving, my dad claimed that if the Steelers scored a touchdown here, “the game [was] over”. When I reminded him that an 11 point lead with a ten minutes left to go in the third isn’t exactly a sure bet, he shot back with “The Chargers haven’t done a thing on offense since that first touchdown pass.” Touché.

How (And How Not) To Get Your Point Across

The Titans were the victims of some poor officiating when the men in stripes failed to call a delay of game penalty on the Ravens during a fourth quarter drive that resulted in a field goal. While the offense is generally allowed an extra second after the play clock hits zero, the time afforded Joe Flacco seemed excessive. Said Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher after the game:

“I’ve always maintained that there’s a human element in the game as far as officiating is concerned. [They're] going to make mistakes; it is part of our game. But this particular mistake was unacceptable. There is no excuse for it, it was a mistake, and it was a costly mistake. It was not the reason we lost the game, but it was a mistake, an error.”

Pay attention to that last sentence: it wasn’t the reason they lost the game. Contrast that with Dwight Freeney’s assessment of the officiating in last week’s Colts-Chargers game:

“Those were the worst [expletive] calls I’ve seen in a long time … To have a game of that magnitude taken out of your hands, it’s just disgusting. It’s not like they made one [expletive] bad call — it’s three calls, in overtime … They need to start investigating some other [expletive].”

Freeney was fined $20,000 for his comments, which is the equivalent of you and I being fined one item off the Extra Value Menu at Wendy’s. Frankly, the trend of blaming something other than on-field performance for a loss is getting old hat. Joey Porter claimed that the only reason why the Patriots beat the Steelers while he was there (note: this happened multiple times) was because the Patriots were cheating. This was sort of a common them among football players after the so-called SpyGate Incident (in which it was revealed that every NFL team cheats, but only one got caught). It continued even after SpyGate, as Porter insinuated that the Patriots had found another way to cheat in going 16-0 (but didn’t give an explanation as to why a team that cheated to go 16-0 could lose the Super Bowl), and the Baltimore Ravens chalked up their regular season loss to the Patriots in 2007 as a conspiracy on the part of the league to keep the Patriots undefeated.

It’s OK to criticize officiating – it’s seldom perfect. But it’s almost never the reason why one team loses and the other team wins.

Stupid Challenge #1

It’s pretty clear that coaches still have no idea when a challenge is prudent and when it’s a dumb idea. Both Tom Coughlin and Norv Turner turned in dumb challenges yesterday.

Coughlin’s challenge came with 13:03 left in the game. The Giants, trailing 20-11 and in need of two scores, came up short on 3rd-and-3 and decided to challenge the spot of the ball. This would have made sense had it been a fourth down play, with the Giants turning the ball over on downs. But it was third down, and everyone in the stadium knew that if the challenge failed, the Giants would go for it on fourth down.

The Giants lost the challenge, tried a quarterback sneak on fourth down, and Manning got stuffed (oddly enough, Coughlin didn’t challenge the spot this time around). To add insult to injury, the failed challenge cost New York its second timeout, leaving the Giants with one timeout left, without the ball, and still needing two scores.

Stupid Challenge #2

Norv Turner made a similar challenge under even dumber circumstances. Coughlin’s decision at least had some desperation behind it. Turner challenged a spot with 13:42 left in the second quarter with the score tied 7-7. The ruling was upheld, and the Chargers lost a timeout. It was only their first of the half, so it was no big deal, right? Wrong. The Steelers duped the Chargers into taking their second timeout by pretending to go for it on fourth down, and then San Diego was docked their final timeout when Shaun Phillips was injured during a Steeler drive near the end of the half. When San Diego got the ball back with :40 on the clock, they had no timeouts to work with, and had to retreat to the locker room down three at the half.

San Diego’s only play of the third quarter resulted in an interception, and Turner made a wise decision in challenging the play, because it wasn’t clear whether it was an interception or an incompletion (in fact, the replay was probably ruled an interception only because that was the call on the field). It was a good time to challenge, but he lost it, and because of the boneheaded challenge in the second quarter, the Chargers lost the ability to challenge for the remainder of the game.

In retrospect, maybe that was a good thing.

And Finally…

In case you haven’t heard… the Arizona Cardinals will be hosting the NFC Championship game.