The 2011 NFL Season has been a treat. The summer lock out seems like ages ago after the regular season held perhaps more excitement than any other in recent memory. With no training camp, Cam Newton came in and played shockingly well in Carolina on his way to setting the all-time record for rushing touchdowns by a quarterback in a single season. The Packers nearly went undefeated until a Romeo Crennel coached Chiefs knocked them off; then their playoff run ended before it started. And, of course, no recap of the 2011 season would be complete without mentioning Dan Marino’s record of more than a quarter century being broken by Drew Brees (and by Tom Brady).
The postseason has been no different. With the exception of the Atlanta Falcons (and the Broncos in the divisional round), each team has played at a level to make every game competitive and exciting. When one team excelled, their opponent stepped up to plate and hit it out of the park, too. When other teams underperformed, so did their opponent so those game could go down to the wire as well.
Unfortunately I only got to watch parts of the wild-card games live, so I missed out on the true excitement from Tim Tebow’s overtime win, T.J. Yates’s winning the duel of rookie quarterbacks against Cincinnati, and Drew Brees out-Breesing Matt Stafford.
The only game I predicted incorrectly in the divisional round was my prediction that the Saints would knock off the 49ers in an instant classic. I like to give myself half-credit for predicting a truly exciting game, but the 49ers took care of business and Alex Smith finally justified that #1 draft pick in 2005. I never expected the Broncos to be close, but what the Patriots did to Tebow was just wrong. These playoffs could have ranked among the best ever if we had even had a chance of another edition of Tebow Time.
The Giants knocked off the Packers, and I have my gut to thank for that correct prediction. I’ve ignored my gut before, when it told me to predict my Terps to win the National Championship in 2002 before the season began and when it told me to pick the Giants over the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. I went with it this time and it paid off.
The Texans receivers struggled against Baltimore, but then Yates wasn’t fantastic either. But that was still a pretty exciting game as the Ravens squeaked by with yet another postseason win for Joe Flacco and Ray Rice.
Jim Harbaugh has had a fantastic season and is absolutely deserving of Coach of the Year honors, but rookie coaches don’t usually have the kind of success he’s had, and Giants put a stop to it last weekend. I don’t know what it is with New York, but December and January have ‘Giants’ written all over them. The Manning family has their 4th Super Bowl appearance in six seasons, and a chance for ring number three.
Meanwhile, Tom Brady had a lackluster performance against Baltimore, but the Ravens failed to capitalize for most of the game. Then, two jaw-dropping moments ended the game as a potential game-winning touchdown pass by Joe Flacco was dropped in the end zone just before Lee Evans got his second foot down. Then Billy Cundiff rushed onto the field and more than missed the game-tying field goal. We were denied a second overtime conference championship game and were awarded a rematch of the Super Bowl XLII.
This past weekend I turned on the Pro Bowl for a little while, but the uninspired play early in the game quickly turned me off and reminded me why nobody watches it. I got to see some fantastic replays after the game, such as Brandon Marshall’s 3rd of four touchdown receptions when it bounced off two defenders, off his own knee, and into his hands while on the ground in the end zone.
Now we have just one game left. I watched a 9-minute video of Eli Manning speaking to reporters yesterday and look forward to a chance to see more as videos from today’s Media Day as the week progresses. As those of you who read my blog last year know, I never make my Super Bowl prediction until I use Madden the morning of the game, and I have only been wrong twice in the past. In fact, last year I correctly predicted the Packers final score and was only five points off for the Steelers.
Of course, it should be noted that the two Super Bowls I have incorrectly predicted both involved the Giants. I picked the Giants to beat the Ravens in the first Super Bowl I ever predicted using this method and my game of Madden predicted the Patriots to beat the Giants in 2007, leading to me ignoring my gut as I mentioned before.
My point in bringing that up is that though I am 9-2 in Super Bowl predictions, I am 0-2 when the Giants are involved. However, I finally found a real good custom difficulty setting that I’ve been playing with this season and have it pretty much perfect, so I’ll be changing the parameters of the game slightly from previous predictions and hopefully that will lead to a more accurate result this time around.
If I don’t post again until the morning of the Super Bowl, be sure to either come directly here for that prediction or ‘like’ Puff on the NFL on Facebook to see when that post goes up. Enjoy Super Bowl week and thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment