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We learned everything we need to know about this weekend's conference title games six weeks ago, right? After all, Philadelphia won at Carolina 25-16 in Week 13, and New England went on the road and handled Indianapolis 38-34 on the same day.
So now both the Eagles and Patriots get the rematches at home, only adding to their dominance. Ho-hum, let's get on with the Eagles-Patriots Super Bowl, a.k.a. The Bland Bowl, for what will be the most star-less Super Bowl ever.
Not so fast.
Philadelphia's
nine-point win was buttressed mightily by the worst showing in the long and
successful career of Carolina kick John Kasay, who missed three field goals
and an extra point (10 points, if you're scoring at home) on that sunny day
at Ericsson Stadium. The Eagles can hardly count on that kind of confluence
of events occurring again. Tickets
At the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, the Patriots built a commanding 31-10 lead,
then watched the Colts mount a furious second-half comeback. The game was decided
on that memorable goal-line stand made by New England, when Indy failed to score
despite running their final three plays from the 1.
But the Colts' short-yardage package was riddled with injuries at that point of the game (they lost two fullbacks, a tight end and a guard that day), and Indy has made the necessary adjustments since then.
"If we're healthy, we think we have a chance to score from the 1,'' quipped Colts coach Tony Dungy on Sunday when asked about his team's narrow loss to the Patriots.
Most important, we should all remember the lesson of this year's NFL season as we approach the title games with our hunches of what's ahead for Super Bowl XXXVIII: We don't know anything. The only certainty is uncertainty. It's all up for grabs and has been since day one. Can we just admit it, then shut up and watch what unfolds?
I didn't think so. But it needed to be said.
You're going to hear a lot this week about Peyton Manning having never won in Foxboro, with that 0-4 record on the road against the Patriots. But let's all try to ignore it. That number is just as relevant as pointing out that Manning had never won a playoff game heading into this postseason, and you don't hear anyone dredging that one up anymore.
If we have to compartmentalize Manning's past performances, let's just leave it at his being on fire in this year's playoffs, with eight touchdowns, 681 yards passing, no interceptions and a 156.9 quarterback rating in his past two games. He has led Indy to 10 touchdowns and three field goals on its 17 postseason drives, and the Colts have yet to punt.
And another thing: At 8-1 away from home, the Colts own more road wins than any other NFL team this year.
I don't know about you, but I think the Panthers are going to miss their lead running back against the Eagles more than the Eagles are going to miss their lead running back against the Panthers. Carolina's Stephen Davis has a quad injury and probably will be questionable this week. Philadelphia's Brian Westbrook will miss the entire playoffs after tearing his triceps.
Not to say Carolina's DeShaun Foster isn't a capable backup, because he's starred a couple of times this year when Davis had to leave the game with injuries, including his fine 21-carry, 95-yard effort Saturday at St. Louis.
But Davis gets his yards inside with the power running game, and that's where the Eagles have been most vulnerable on run defense. With Ahman Green ripping off 156 yards for Green Bay on Sunday, the Eagles have surrendered a 100-yard rushing performance in eight of their past 11 games (they are an incongruous 10-1 in that span).
Foster is more of an outside, around-the-corner threat, and Philadelphia's blitzing defense is better suited to stopping that kind of runner. Also, Foster's two best games this season have come in domes -- at Indy and at St. Louis -- on fast tracks that reward his speed. Davis is built more for the pounding, all-weather-style game that probably will unfold on Philadelphia's grass surface.
With both Duce Staley and Correll Buckhalter taking turns shouldering the load for the Eagles' backfield this season, Philly is more apt to carry on successfully without Westbrook than the Panthers are without Davis.
I have a problem with the logic behind ripping Chiefs head coach Dick Vermeil for not going with an onside kick with 4:22 left in the game and Kansas City trailing Indianapolis by seven points. The critics, and there were plenty of them sitting all around me in the Arrowhead Stadium press box, said that since the Chiefs' defense hadn't stopped the Colts' offense all day, Kansas City had a better chance of recovering an onside kick than it did of forcing Indy to punt for the first time.
OK, let's say that's true. And let's say that the Chiefs did try the onside kick, recovered it and then scored a touchdown to tie the game 38-38 on that drive. Using the same logic -- that the Chiefs' defense hasn't stopped the Colts all day, and thus won't -- then Kansas City would have had to call for another onside kick, this time in a tie game, either late in regulation or in overtime.
In other words, in order for Kansas City to win, the Chiefs' defense was going to have to stop the Colts' offense from scoring at least once on Sunday, whether it was from the vantage point of trailing by seven or being tied. The only loophole in that logic is if the Chiefs got the onside kick with four minutes to go, managed to run out the rest of the clock in the process of scoring the game-tying touchdown, and then won the toss and scored again on the first possession of overtime without the Colts ever seeing the ball.
You want to talk about improbabilities?
Granted, it wasn't an easy call for Vermeil. He couldn't rely on the percentages that normally would dictate, because his defense was having anything but a normal day. But in the end, he was going to have to get a stop out of his defense at some point if the Chiefs were to win. He chose to believe it would come earlier than later, but it doesn't change the fact that Kansas City probably still would have lost without making at least one defensive stand.
Speaking of second-guessing losers, if the Packers defend a game-deciding fourth-and-26 pass from Donovan McNabb to Freddie Mitchell on Sunday in Philadelphia, everybody thinks Green Bay head coach Mike Sherman is 3-for-3 on his tough fourth-and-1 calls in the playoffs. Or make that 3-for-4, since running back Ahman Green was stuffed by the Eagles on a fourth-and-goal from the 1 with two minutes to go in the first half.
In last week's overtime thriller against Seattle, Sherman twice went on fourth-and-1 in the fourth quarter and won, giving the ball to Green both times. In this week's overtime thriller at Philadelphia, he opted to gamble once on Green without success and then played the percentages the second time around, choosing to punt the Eagles deep and make them drive about 60 yards for a game-tying field goal.
It's probably too much to ask for Packers fans to be objective, but I think Sherman proved last week that he's willing to be bold and deserves the benefit of the doubt this week. From gutsy to gutless is a very short trip for NFL head coaches.
Tennessee's Jeff Fisher was the only losing head coach this weekend who avoided the dreaded second-guessing endured by his counterparts. And just so we're square on this front, to repeat, I think the Rams' Mike Martz was the lone head coach who really dropped the ball in terms of late-game strategy.
Martz went out of character when he had the Rams run the clock down to three seconds for a game-tying Jeff Wilkins field goal at the end of regulation, rather than allowing his powerful offense to take at least one shot at the end zone and a game-winning touchdown. But Martz clearly didn't trust the game being in quarterback Marc Bulger's hands at that point, and that doesn't bode well for Bulger's longterm future in St. Louis.
Six words of advice for Martz if he ever faces the same situation: Be true to thine own self. No matter what, you're going to get ripped if it doesn't work out, so you might as well follow the go-for-the-jugular instincts that got you here to begin with.
If you're a realtor in the Kansas City area and you didn't give Chiefs defensive coordinator Greg Robinson a call Monday morning, you'd best consider selling insurance, because you've got no instincts for your current gig.
There are scapegoats offered up all the time in the NFL. And then there are times when a relationship just plain doesn't work anymore and needs to be ended. And that time has drawn nigh for Robinson's employment in Kansas City. Not even Vermeil's well-developed sense of loyalty should stand in the way this time.
Against the judgment of many, Vermeil brought Robinson back last offseason, believing that new acquisitions such as Shawn Barber, Vonnie Holliday and Dexter McCleon would fortify the Chiefs' defense. The K.C. defense showed us what it can do when it has two weeks to prepare for its playoff opener. Absolutely nothing.
"We added some players in the offseason,'' Chiefs general manager Carl Peterson said after Sunday's defensive debacle. "We thought we improved our defense tremendously. In the end, it turns out, we did not.''
When Vermeil announced last week that he and his entire staff would return next season, Robinson was included as part of that package plan. But you have to believe that will be revisited. Robinson's contract expires in February, and not even the ever-optimistic Vermeil can sell him to Chiefs fans or the media at this point.
Not only is Kansas City the first team to lose three consecutive playoff openers after earning a first-round bye (in 1995, '97 and '03), but the Chiefs also are the first team to open a season at least 9-0 and fail to win at least one playoff game since the 1975 Minnesota Vikings turned the trick.
That year, the Vikings started 10-0 and finished 12-2, but visiting Dallas beat the Minnesota 17-14 in the first round of the playoffs on that infamous Roger Staubach Hail Mary pass to receiver Drew Pearson.
Oh, the miseries of being a Chiefs fan. In the 1990s, Kansas City head coach Marty Schottenheimer built a team around his stellar defense, which was led by Pro Bowl linebacker Derrick Thomas. The only problem was, when the playoffs rolled around every year, the Chiefs couldn't score with the likes of Steve Bono and Elvis Grbac at quarterback.
So now Kansas City's Vermeil has Trent Green and one of the most potent offenses in the league, and upon reaching the playoffs this season, the Chiefs' defense turned into Team Turnstile against the Colts. That's gotta drive 'em wild in the heartland.
The Rams entered the weekend with a 14-game home winning streak, dating to late September 2002. The Chiefs took a 13-game unbeaten streak at Arrowhead into their matchup against the Colts, last losing at home in mid-October 2002.
Those were the NFL's two longest active home winning streaks. But in one weekend, Carolina and Indianapolis wiped both of them out, at opposite ends of Missouri, no less. Both the Rams and Chiefs were their conference's No. 2 seeds.
The Rams' and Chiefs' failures marked the first time since 1995 that the divisional round featured more than one home team losing. In 2002 and 1998, all four teams with a first-round bye won at home in the second round. The other years featured three out of four divisional home teams winning.
Just as they did this year, the Colts in 1995 used an upset at K.C. in the divisional round to crash the AFC title game. Indy was seeded fifth in the AFC that year but won 10-7 at Kansas City. In the NFC in '95, No. 3 Green Bay won 27-17 at No. 2-seeded San Francisco, before losing to Dallas in the NFC title game -- the Packers' third consecutive season-ending playoff loss to the Cowboys.
Quote of the weekend: From Carolina offensive left tackle Todd Steussie, when asked if he and the rest of the Panthers knew they were playing in a "special game'' late in their 29-23 double-overtime NFC divisional-round win at St. Louis:
"I guarantee you the guys in the Rams' locker room don't think it's too special right now. Until you win, I don't think you can look at it in such a way while you're playing. But in hindsight now, yeah, it's pretty neat.''