Nice start to '09

FOOTBALL THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

Some random thoughts on the Wild Card round of the NFL playoffs and the bowl games thus far of 2009:

-Whosever idea it was on the Cardinals coaching staff to throw a flea-flicker in the first quarter against Atlanta deserves a hefty raise. The play, though defended pretty well, worked to perfection, giving ‘Zona an early touchdown lead. But maybe more importantly, the trickery took the Falcons out of their game plan, as it seemed for the rest of the contest they were unsure what was coming next from Kurt Warner and Co.

- I kind of thought USC was going to destroy Penn State in the Rose Bowl, and for a while, that was the case. But give the Lions credit for playing hard all four quarters and (sort of) making it a game by the end. Still, that epic second quarter by the Trojans, where they took a 7-7 game and made it 31-7, couldn’t be overcome by PSU. USC quarterback Mark Sanchez looked like a future All-Pro, and man oh man, how I would love to have Trojans safety Taylor Mays on the Bears next year.

-What a game between the Colts and Chargers. Back and forth, good offense, good defense, clutch special teams; for a Wild Card game, it had it all. It seemed to me that Indy was going to pull it out, because for a long stretch of the game, San Diego couldn’t do anything offensively. But then Phillip Rivers got hot, the Charger defense started caving in on Peyton Manning and Darren Sproles broke some nice runs, pushing the game to overtime and finally into the win column for the S.D. I’m guessing a lot of folks in central Indiana are going to try to blame the refs for this one, with all the penalties that were called. But really, blame the Colts running game. With no threat of pounding the rock, the Chargers were able to go right after Manning, and a big sack at the end of regulation forced a punt, giving the ball back to the guys in the powder blue jerseys and ending the season for Indy.

-Big props to Utah for manhandling Alabama and finishing the season 13-0. It’s too bad the BCS determines before the season even began that it would be impossible for a non-BCS league team to play for the National Title.

-Can you believe that last year the Chargers’ running backs were LaDanian Tomlinson, Michael Turner and Darren Sproles? That’s a grand total of three running backs who were better than anybody on the Bears in 2007. Insane. And the stupid thing is, the Bears obviously took Garret Wolfe in the ’07 draft thinking either he would be like fellow Northern Illinois runner Turner or similar to Sproles, who like Wolfe is 5 ft. 6. Unfortunately, neither ended up coming true.

-What happened to New Years Day? When I was growing up, the day was reserved from wall-to-wall football. Now there is maybe one good game on, and that’s if we’re lucky. I’m not a fan of having 35 bowls, or whatever the number is these days. But if your going to have that many, put more than five on the day that everybody associates with college football. 2009’s slate was embarrassing and really makes the entire sport look bad.

-In case you’ve been chilling with Osama in a cave for the past seven years, here’s a news break for you: the Baltimore Ravens defense is really good. All day long versus Miami, the Ravens got after Chad Pennington and forced the Miami QB to make bad throws, intercepting him four times. Safety Ed Reed had two of the picks, including one returned for a touchdown, proving that he’s the best safety in the NFL (at least until Pittsburgh’s Troy Polamalu plays next Sunday).

- All the talk that USC should be voted as National Champ because of their big victory inn the Rose Bowl is garbage. The Trojans would have been playing on Thursday if not for their own problem with taking a nap against conference opponents. Two years ago it was Oregon State and UCLA. Last season, the Trojans fell to Stanford and Oregon. And then this season, with the best defense college football has seen in a long time, USC once again couldn’t win at Oregon State. Sure, Pete Carroll’s crew is playing well now, just like they do every other January. But thanks to a down year in the Pac-10, ‘SC has only two really big wins on their resume, September 13 over Ohio State and Penn State in the bowl game. In comparison, both Oklahoma and Florida have had several big wins over the past four months that exceed anything the Trojans have done. There is no doubt that USC is good, but they can’t be rewarded for not peaking until it’s too late.

-Both the Falcons and Dolphins lost this weekend, but they still had tremendously successful seasons. Considering where they were a year ago- Atlanta had just lost their coward coach to the Univ. of Arkansas and their most popular player was sitting in jail, while Miami was 1-15 and without any clue what they were doing. To go from that to being in the playoffs is a great achievement.

-Did anybody really believe that the Vikings were going to win that game on Sunday afternoon? I know the Eagles aren’t that great of a team, and Minnesota was at home. But with Tarvaris Jackson under center and a banged up D, it seemed like a real long shot that the home team would pull it off. And with Adrian Peterson only breaking one big run the entire game, it was impossible for Minnesota to score enough to keep up with the Eagles.

-This weekend provided one great game (Indy-S.D.), two average games (Atlanta-Arizona and Philly-Minnesota) and one boring one (Baltimore-Miami). But next weekend, when the best of the best go at it, there should be four great games, one reason why its the best full weekend of football of the year.

-Coming later this week on the blog will be a previews of the National Championship game and the Divisional round of the NFL playoffs.