NFL Playoffs

I spent my last week of freedom before school starts doing, you guessed it, watching the NFL playoffs. So here are my thoughts for the games:

Seahawks-Redskins-
Shawn Alexander fumbles twice and leaves the game with a concussion within the first 10 minutes of the game, and the Seahawks fumble the ball away a few more times during the game and still manage to have a fairly easy victory. How? Mark Brunnel. Yeah I think I am going to rip on him somemore, only because it is now funny to watch him play and I hope he sticks around. I felt bad for Clinton Portis, he was banged up all playoffs and had not shot of success. The basic blueprint to stop the Redskins is double Santana Moss, keep an athletic linebacker on Chris Cooley and stack your remaining 8 guys on the line of scrimmage. You're going to stop the run and Brunnel may get lucky at beat you once (which he did on that 50 yard pass to Chris Cooley). It was ironic how the only Redskin touchdown came from Brunnel throwing into triple coverage, only to have the ball bounce off the hands of a Seahawk DB and into the hands of Santana Moss. The rest of the game was ugly for him, he doesn't even have the arm strength to throw balls away! How many of his throw away passes were almost picked because he couldn't get them to sail out of bounds? Plus watching the play break down and seeing Brunnel have to run might be one of the 10 greatest thrills in sports history. Bottom Line: Seahawks defense had a good game, but lets see how they do against an actual offense.

Broncos-Pats- Jake Plummer is one win away from a Super Bowl. Reread the last sentence and let it sink in. I never thought I would hear that. I must say thought, take away the phantom PI penalty and the turnovers and I think Denver has about 3 points on 100 total yards, their offense did not look that great. Twice all they had to do was go one yard for a score, and two other times they got gift field position in the red zone. So I am not sure how they will do against the Steelers. I want Jake to win it all thought, and they have the defense to do it. As for the Pats, they lost but its not all that bad. It was not there year, no team has ever one three straight super bowls. I think they are still a force though, although I think they need to draft a running back because Corey Dillion is creeping up on his age 10 years on one year, year.

Colts-Steelers- What a great, exciting game. I am extremely happy to see the Manning family crash and burn. I must say, for some reason, Peyton Manning just can not win big games. Everyone will hype him up during the regular season but I do not think he has what it takes. The Steelers did a great job of blitzing him, if that was a tecmo super bowl game Pittsburgh's entire D would have been on excellent. Troy Palmalou (did I spell that right?) had an amazing game. He was everywhere, did everything I would not be surprised if he somehow cured cancer during the course of that game. Also on that overturned INT call? That might have been the worst playoff call I have ever seen, I mean that was terrible and the ref's explanation of why he overturned it made no sense at all. How do you not get that play right? The Steelers rebounded nicely, but that Jerome Bettis fumble was shocking. I mean I was shocked! Who saw that coming? The Bus doesn't fumble like that. Nick Harper recovered and almost took it to the house before he was tripped up by Big Ben (you remember Nick Harper got his knee cut by his wife the day before the game, Justin says that stopped him form returning it all the way.) Anyway when the colts kicker came up to try to tie the game I annouced to the store (I was at work, at this juncture in the game I was not even trying to help customers) that he was going to miss because he was not clutch and of course he did. I was proud of myself for predicting that, but looking back it was not that big of a prediction. Everyone knew the colts kicker would miss, he is less clutch then Peyton Manning (if that his possible). Good to see Peyton throw his offensive line under the bus after the game. Leave it to Peyton Manning, a great leader as long as he is winning but when the going gets rough, Peyton starts to point the finger. That might be a reason he never wins the big win (sounds a lot like Dan Marino eh?).

Panthers-Bears-
So predictable the outcome was. Hyped defensive battle, yet don't those always turn into 23-21 type games. It was good to see the Bears strategy for stopping Steve Smith was to leave him WIDE OPEN (okay so on both those plays the DB fell down but that kills the joke). There is no doubt in my mind the Panthers will beat the Seahawks. After all I did pick them to win it all before every other media member jumped on their bandwagon. Its the Panthers year.

Well that is all I got. I am really looking forward to not watching the colts next Sunday.
Later Kids