With the four remaining teams, this weekend’s games could be as exciting as the Super Bowl itself. Without any ado, let’s get to the preview.
Game 1:
Sunday, January 22, 2012
3:00pm – CBS
Baltimore Ravens @ New England Patriots
I really haven’t gotten a chance to watch as much coverage of either conference championship game as I would have liked to this week. However, early in the week a friend of mine, a Ravens fan, said something that surprised me slightly, though once I thought about it, it made sense. He told me the Patriots had not beaten a winning team all season. Though with a quick check of the standings I found that to be accurate, I decided to do a bit more digging, just for arguments sake.
This regular season, the Patriots played just two teams who finished with winning records, the Giants and the Steelers, losing to them in consecutive weeks in the middle of the season. Their other loss came to the 6-10 Bills early in the season. All 13 wins came against teams who finished the season with 8 or fewer wins. However, in games against teams who had winning records coming into the matchup, they were 4-1 (5-1 if you count their win against the 9-8 Broncos last weekend). While three of those games may be considered mute because they were in the first 5 weeks of the season, New England was 2-0 against such teams after week 8 (the Jets were 5-3 and the Broncos were 8-5 coming into their games against the Patriots in weeks 10 and 15 respectively).
Of course, as I said this was all just for arguments sake, none of this ultimately has any affect on how this game will be played. Both teams are in for a real challenge.
The Broncos defense laid an egg on Saturday, there’s no way around it. All season, Tebow was gaining headlines for his late-game comebacks, but it was the defense giving him enough opportunities to orchestrate those drives. Though New England looked very crisp on offense, I refuse to believe that they performed that well against a Denver defense that was up for the task, especially considering the Bronco’s defense did pretty decently against Brady in their regular season meeting.
The only issue for the Patriots will be their defense. The Ravens faced one of the better defenses in the league last weekend, and though they didn’t exactly take care of business, going from facing the Texans to the 31st ranked defense during the regular season could make a big difference.
Surprisingly, it’s the Raven’s defense I’m most concerned about. It’s a great unit, yes, and Ed Reed is expected to be good to go after a very scary late-game play that looked much worse than it turned out to be. But Tom Brady can pick about any defense when he’s at the top of his game, and good performance or not for the Broncos, he looked very on top of his game on Saturday. If the Ravens can’t put some serious points on the board and put the Patriots in a deep hole heading in the 4th quarter on Sunday, I have little doubt that Brady will put something together with the weapons he has.
The Ravens will have their hands full with Gronk, Hernandez, and Welker. Expect Branch to get some looks with the other three receiving most of the focus. And I fully expect Green-Ellis to be splitting playing time pretty evenly with Danny Woodhead; Belichick would be silly not to give Woodhead significant playing time in this matchup.
But, it is fully possible that if it turns into a shootout, the Ravens can keep up. The Patriots passing defense is not nearly as bad as Green Bay’s was, but Ray Rice will either have a field day, or at the very least do well enough to open things up for the pass to be successful. As long as Joe Flacco is up to winning a road playoff game for the fourth consecutive season, the Ravens have a great chance of winning this game.
Unfortunately, I still don’t fully trust Joe Flacco and I fully expect him to be the deciding factor. The Patriots are 12-3 all time at home during the postseason. They were 11-1, then lost to the Ravens and Jets in consecutive seasons. They are coming off a big win and I don’t expect them to start another slide so soon. I don’t have enough confidence in Flacco and I have a ton in Brady.
My pick:
New England beats Baltimore, 38-27
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