(1) Most of the talk about the Green Bay annihilation of Atlanta has revolved around the unbelievable performance by Aaron Rodgers. He was most certainly one of the biggest, if not the biggest, reasons why the Packers are playing for the NFC Championship. He accounted for four total touchdowns and posted the second highest completion percentage in a 300-yard passing game in NFL playoff history. He holds the NFL record for most touchdown passes thrown in a player’s first three career playoff games. He declared loud and clear that if people had not been willing to include him in the conversation about the elite quarterbacks in the NFL, then this virtuoso performance should provide the needed motivation. Nevertheless, I don’t think we should lose sight of the fact that the Green Bay defense thoroughly dominated the Atlanta Falcons. Clearly, Rodgers was brilliant, but a less than stellar effort from his defense could have turned this game into a repeat of the 2009 Wild Card loss to Arizona, where the Rodgers-led offense produced 45 points and still lost the game. Fortunately, the Green Bay defense was ready to continue their recent streak of dominating football. They stuffed Michael Turner and the Falcons’ running game (45 yards rushing) and turned Matty Ice into Matty Puddle of Water. The result was less than 200 yards of total offense for Atlanta, four turnovers and barely 20 minutes of time of possession. The Falcons looked like the sixth seed that had to win their last two regular season games and a wild card game on the road just to make it to this point. They didn’t look anything like the conference’s number one seed, which had an extra week to rest before preparing for the Divisional round. Basically, Atlanta seemed to have forgotten all of the good things they had done throughout the season and decided to channel all of the horrific teams that have represented the Falcons over the years. First of all, Atlanta had converted nearly 47% of their third down opportunities during the year, but they converted only three out of 10 on Saturday night. As a result, they only had 15 first downs when they averaged 22 first downs during the regular season. Secondly, the Falcons had the third lowest number of turnovers and the third best turnover ratio during the season, but they gave the ball to Green Bay four times and finished with a -3 turnover ratio. Finally, the Falcons never were able to get their 12th ranked rushing offense going against Green Bay. They averaged nearly 120 yards rushing per game, but the Pack held them to under 50 yards. All in all, the complete performance by Green Bay furthered demonstrated why I picked them to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.
(2) The Pittsburgh-Baltimore game was as chippy and hard-hitting as usual, but the uncharacteristic sloppiness by both teams detracted from the general quality of the match-up. Neither team was overly impressive on offense and they combined for five turnovers and nearly 170 penalty yards. In the end, the Steelers won the game because they have Ben Roethlisberger and Baltimore doesn’t. It is the same reason why the Steelers have beaten the Ravens seven times in a row with Big Ben starting at quarterback. His ability to thrive under pressure and make big plays at the biggest moments has been a tremendous advantage over what Baltimore has countered with. He doesn’t always look pretty doing it, but Big Ben delivers results, which is the bottom line metric in the NFL. The game against Baltimore was yet another example of Big Ben’s unique ability to stay focused, fight through adversity and emerge victorious on the other side. He played a mediocre first half with a QB rating of 81.6 and a critical fumble that Baltimore returned for a touchdown. Many quarterbacks in the NFL would not have had the mental toughness to recover from a bad first half and a 14-point deficit. Big Ben regrouped in the locker room and emerged even more determined to slay the big, bad Ravens. The result was a stellar second half that included two touchdown passes and a 116.2 QB rating. Big Ben’s most memorable play will be the 58-yard connection with little-used Antonio Brown to set-up the winning touchdown, but he made numerous key plays in the second half that allowed Pittsburgh to come from behind.
On the other side, Baltimore struggled offensively the entire game because Joe Flacco is still not ready to carry a team in the playoffs. Flacco is a solid NFL quarterback, but the brutal truth is that he is not the reason for Baltimore’s playoff success over the last three years. He has been asked to not lose games for the Ravens, while their strong defense and strong running game has led them to victories. In seven career playoff games, Flacco has completed just 53% of his passes. He averages about 150 yards passing per game and only 5.7 yards per attempt. Frankly, he has played horrifically in six out of his seven playoff appearances with the Wild Card victory over Kansas City being the lone exception. It is amazing that Baltimore has won four playoff games in the last three years with such a huge disadvantage at the most important position in football. Until Flacco steps his game up in the playoffs, the Ravens will never take the next step in the evolution from regular playoff participant to legitimate Super Bowl contender. I know that some Flacco apologists will point to the drops by Anquan Boldin and T.J. Houshmandzadeh and say that it wasn’t all Flacco’s fault, but these folks are missing the other 99% of the game where Flacco was unable to generate any offense. Even when Baltimore scored on offense, they were greatly aided. Their first touchdown came after a 33-yard pass interference penalty on Pittsburgh. Their second touchdown came after Rashard Mendenhall fumbled the ball inside Pittsburgh’s 20-yard line and Ed Reed recovered it. Finally, the only points they scored after halftime came after a decent return by Lardarius Webb set them up deep inside Steelers’ territory. In the second half, they punted or turned the ball over in five of their seven possessions. I can’t blame it all on Flacco but he is the biggest reason why they struggled. In the end, Pittsburgh is going to continue to dominate this rivalry until Flacco starts to match some of Roethlisberger’s heroics. If Baltimore is not careful, we might not be able to call this a rivalry too much longer.
(3) Generally speaking, I don’t like when teams spend too much time trash talking their opponent through the media. I like it even less when a team’s head coach engages in the trash talk. Nevertheless, I’m a little more tolerant of this behavior when the team that talks backs up there bluster. As a result, I don’t have as much of a problem with the N.Y. Jets today as I did last week when they were busy insulting Tom Brady and making the game a match-up between head coaches. The Jets backed up their comments with a redemptive victory over their arch-nemesis, the New England Patriots. Just like Atlanta, the Patriots had everything going for them in this match-up, but watched it all melt away in the most confusing game of the weekend. Statistically speaking, it appeared like New England should have won this game. They had more total yards, more passing yards, more first downs and more time of possession, but they still found themselves down 14 points with just under two minutes remaining in the game. Despite some of their statistical advantages, it still felt like the Jets were dominating the game. Perhaps the reason was that Tom Brady seemed more confused and frustrated than I had seen him in a long time. I believe the Jets dressed some 11 defensive backs (a ridiculous number considering teams can only dress 45 players total), which they deployed in a human cloud to force Brady to hold the football and settle for check-downs. The result of the Jets’ defensive strategy was that they held Brady to less then six yards per attempt and neutralized New England’s two-headed monster at tight end. Another byproduct of forcing Brady to be patient was that it allowed New York’s defensive line to apply pressure without blitzing. The Jets sacked Brady five times and hit him a handful of other times, which further contributed to his frustration. New York even managed to intercept one of Brady’s passes, which was the first time in over 340 attempts that Brady gave one to the other team. The Jets’ game plan was somewhat counterintuitive because you ordinarily want to give elite quarterbacks less time rather than more, but it turned out to be brilliant. In the end, New York avenged their most embarrassing loss of the season while New England saw their wildly successful regular season reduced to rubble.
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