Our Newest National Holiday

  

 
The stage has been set for America’s only sports related national holiday. Amazingly, my predictions regarding the games proved to be more or less correct. I guess picking the favorites will lead to that result a good bit of the time. In any case, in preparation for the greatest spectacle of the year, lets look back at the conference championship games and see what useful information we can glean.

-Jets 17, Colts 30

The Colts did what they always do. They took the other team’s best shot, stayed in the game, adjusted, and overwhelmed their opposition long enough to win. They usually win these games close, but they also usually play a much better team. Regardless of whether or not the Jets deserved to be in the game, they were a 9-7 team, and you are what your record says you are. The Colts might be beaten when they try this season, but the teams that came the closest were the good ones, not the hot ones.

Just the same, the Jets have to be happy that they got as far as they did. Lots of other teams had their opportunities and didn’t take advantage of them, and their future certainly looks bright. Great young quarterbacks, running backs, and corner backs don’t grow on trees, and with a bit of experience and a few more pieces they will be in position to have an excellent decade. Sanchez had his best game of the playoffs and looked as good as could be expected. The team gave up 30 points and only got 3 yards a carry, and that was never going to result in a win, but they made it a game for the duration, and that’s enough. For now.

One thing about the Colts is clear: they are not going to beat anyone running the ball. There just isn’t much point. Addai had a decent game, but the Jets weren’t exactly stacking the line against him. The team always has and always will live and die by the sword that is Peyton Manning’s arm. They go into every game believing that a mediocre defensive result is good enough because they know that in close games they will give up field goals while scoring touchdowns. Manning passed to whoever Revis wasn’t guarding like he was playing catch from the end of the second quarter on.

Perhaps the most important thing that came out of the game for the Colts happened after the game. No one seemed happy, or surprised, or particularly impressed. Nearly half of this team has done this before, and they know that second place is an awfully long way from first. They might lose Sunday, but it won’t be because they rested on their laurels.

-Vikings 28, Saints 31

I have made it abundantly clear in my articles leading up to this that I am rooting for the Saints for a litany of reasons. I will now add providing me with one of the most entertaining games I have ever seen to that list.

The storyline after the game was obviously the turnovers for Minnesota, and deservedly so. When you out gain a team by more than 200 yards, convert 16 more first downs, and commit 4 fewer penalties for 56 fewer yards, victory seems assured. Alas, that was not the case. I would argue, though, that this was not a case of choking, or a series of random turnovers that would not happen were the game replayed. They were, rather, examples of what we so often forget in sports: you are what you have always been, not only what you have been lately.

This means that the mistakes that arise in moments such as these are often not as bizarre as they may seem, but have instead been hinted at for quite some time. When Memphis lost to Kansas in the NCAA final in 2008, they did so primarily because they couldn’t make free throws. This had been an issue all season, but less so in the tournament. The problem surfaced at what would appear to be an inopportune moment, but what was more likely a correction in the numbers over a larger sample size. The 1986 Red Sox had bullpen issues all season. In game 6, their bullpen couldn’t get anyone out. It wasn’t a choke, it had been happening all season. It just manifested itself when it mattered most.

Similarly, the Vikings employ two certifiable turnover machines in Peterson and Favre, and they were going against one of the best defenses in the league at creating turnovers. Most of the fumbles were balls being punched away, a result of the Vikings holding the ball further from their bodies than is safe in order to try to gain more yards. The interception at the end of the game was particularly predictable. Favre has done this for the better part of a decade, whether it was against Carolina in ‘03, the Giants in ‘07, or New Orleans in ‘09. He simply doesn’t understand playing to the situation, and while that interception might have evened out with some of his better plays over the course of an entire game, when committed in a situation where it was simply unnecessary and there was literally no time to make up for it, his team lost.

New Orleans had much more trouble on offense than I expected. I assumed that with Brees’ quick release, the front four would be rendered ineffective and Brees would find open targets. This held true, but in reality, Brees could rarely complete a pass for big yardage, and the running game was as ineffective as one would expect against the defensive tackles of the Vikings. Their defense was good enough, creating turnovers while giving up huge chunks of yardage, and their special teams managed not to hurt them, although Bush certainly came as close as one can without doing so.

The real story of the game has to be the unbelievably bad overtime rules the league still uses. At the beginning of overtime I turned to my friends and asked how much more excited they would be in this were college overtime rules. To a person they all agreed that it would increase the drama of the game considerably, and be an infinitely more fair system than essentially flipping a coin for what is often an automatic win, and if nothing else an extremely significant advantage.

I understand the desire to end games reasonably quickly in the regular season, but can’t the league take a cue from the NHL and at least play the entire period? Wouldn’t it have been more interesting (and fair) to see Brett Favre with the ball in his hands again? How would creating a system where football, and not a game of chance, determined the outcome? The fact that this system still exists is a testament to the power of institutions to cling to the familiar when all evidence points to a clearly superior solution. Alas, we will have to settle for one of the best games in recent memory and a conclusion that, while exciting, should have been made all the more so by a rebuttal. Alas, such is life.

-Saints vs. Colts

I have considered this match-up endlessly because I find both of these teams to be mercurial juggernauts. The Colts have won every game they have tried to win, but they look more methodic than dominant in doing so. The Saints have lost two games they tried to win, and at times looked as though they were an unstoppable force, but too often they have let bad teams pretend to be their equal. They rely far too heavily on the mistakes of their opponents, and the Colts are not a team known to make such mistakes.

In the Colts favor is the seeming boredom that goes with their success. Teams have them for as long as they possibly can, then Peyton rides in on a white horse and leads his team to a win, no matter how little time or how great a deficit he is faced with. The seemingly routine way in which they take the other team’s best punch, adjust, and then lock them out of the game is jarringly consistent, in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen. The Patriots of ’07 were a team that had unanswerable threats. The Colts are a team that answers threats and then unleashes their own.

The Saints have very little in their favor, but they do seem to have two claims to superiority. First, they beat the Patriots by a score of 17-38, a game that they clearly knew they needed and subsequently dominated. Those Patriots had dominated the Colts the week before, and by all rights should have won the game. Judging by mutual opponents is a solid indicator of success when match-ups are not a mitigating factor, and in this case I feel confident that the results of those games are indeed significant.

Second, the Saints have played considerably better teams than the Colts in the playoffs. The Vikings are certainly better than the Jets and Ravens (and by a considerable margin), and the Cardinals may be as well. The Saints will not be surprised by the speed or precision of Manning and the Colts, and they have certainly faced offenses with better balance. Their ability to defend the pass, while similar to the Jets in that they have one dominant corner and a far less effective one, is very good, and the basis of their defense. Manning may be better than Favre, but his receivers aren’t better than those of the Vikings, and in any case he isn’t that much better.

Conversely, the Colts have not seen a passing attack like this one is some time, and certainly not in the playoffs. The Saints receivers have most assuredly had their shame session and resolved to have a better game this week than last. Brees will not have nearly the same kind of pressure he face against the Vikings, and the running game should be able to provide better support as well.

Amusingly, much of this goes back to the second article I wrote for this site. The Patriots went for it on 4th and 2 and didn’t quite make it. The Colts made them pay, and incidentally set statistically correct football back more years than I care to count. They ruined what should have been a monumental moment in the course of football history, and I was so incensed that I felt compelled to write. Combined with their indifference towards perfection, karma, then, would appear not to be on their side, and who could possibly have better Karma that New Orleans? I believe in Karma, if for no other reason than it’s a comforting thought that people will get what is coming to them. For that reason, amongst a litany of others, I’m picking the Saints. Karma, and my heart, say it’s the right choice. I want it. They need it. It just makes too much sense.

My head, though, says Colts. It does that when teams win every game they actually cared about. Go figure.

Image via NFLtouchdown.com

You can email Chris with questions or comments at TheSportsKiosK@gmail.com