Divisional Round, Pt. I

Four teams are done until (at least) the 2011 season. Eight teams remain, the four winners from last week and the four teams who earned at least one home postseason game and a Wild-Card bye. I decided not to write earlier in the week about the first round games. Instead I will use a brief analysis of the winners as I discuss my picks for this weekend, the Divisional Round of the 2010 NFL Postseason.

Game 1:

Saturday, January 15, 2011
4:30pm – CBS

Baltimore Ravens @ Pittsburgh Steelers

The Ravens scored a convincing 30-7 victory last Sunday against the Chiefs in Kansas City and will look to earn another big road victory against division rival Pittsburgh in another postseason game. Kansas City was never really in the game last weekend. Flacco looked good in one of his better games of the season, and Cassel didn’t. But the reason Cassel didn’t look impressive was because of the Ravens defense. They forced five turnovers, three of them Matt Cassel interceptions.

The defense continues to be the strong side for Baltimore, but their offense isn’t looking too shabby either. Though not at the level of some other NFL offenses, the Ravens have been playing very well on both sides of the ball in their past five games, all of them victories. But the Ravens focus this week has been on the loss they suffered just before these five straight wins. The last team to beat them is the same opponent they take on this weekend, but last time Pittsburgh got it done in Baltimore. Now the Ravens have to find a way to beat their division rival at Heinz Field, which is very doable, as shown by their week 4 victory in Pittsburgh.

Don’t expect too much to be different than the two regular season meetings between these two teams. This very well could be another game where neither team scores more than 20 points. It will no doubt be another defensive battle as it always is with these two teams. They have two of the best defenses in the league and they know their opponents better than just about anyone knows them.

The decisive factor in this game could very easily turn out to be Ben Roethlisberger. When you have two defenses like these, you know two things: 1) the ground game is going to be very hard-pressed to get anything going, and 2) the Quarterbacks are going to have to be the ones to lift their team to the Conference Championship game.

Joe Flacco has done it before, but not when Big Ben is directing the Steelers offense. He came close in the narrow week 13 loss, but a decision to pass late in the game that lead to a Flacco fumble forced by Troy Polamalu gave Roethlisberger enough time to throw the winning touchdown pass with under three minutes left.

I’m going to say it now, before I even give my score prediction, so I can defend my opinion briefly. I think the Steelers will win. Flacco is much easier to rattle than Roethlisberger and I think that is what this will come down to. The chances of the Ravens defense shaking up Ben before the Steelers defense gets to Flacco is small. This may sound funny, but I think if the Ravens opt to kick the ball off to start the game, they may have a better shot of winning. Certainly there are too many other factors to say that this could be a make or break decision, but here is my thinking on this. Giving the ball to Roethlisberger before Flacco means that Ben will have had the ball one more time than Flacco throughout the first half. This gives the Ravens one more opportunity before the Steelers each time to get to Roethlisberger and if they can do so before Flacco gets rattled, it could swing the advantage toward Baltimore.

(I apologize for that last paragraph, I know that was a bit difficult to read as I had trouble reading it myself, but I can’t figure out a better way to word it.)

My pick:

Pittsburgh beats Baltimore, 20-14