How We Saw Week 17

Every Sunday for the last 17 weeks, I have ridden on the emotional roller coaster that is the NFL. I have cheered at the Patriots’ goal line stand, jeered at the Cardinals’ last-second touchdown, cried with Favre’s spectacular pass, roared at Moss’s lateral for a touchdown, and been humbled by Harrison’s unbelievable catch. 

I guess it’s not so bad. I’m now in New York and, after experiencing one grueling Sunday stuck watching the Jets and Giants on television, I guess life without the NFL in New York is a lot worse than life without the NFL in Los Angeles. With two local market teams here in the Big Apple, I can see why people without a satellite dish in LA aren’t so keen on bringing a local team back to the City of Angels. 

Still, with my old friends 3,000 miles away, I’m sad today that the NFL season, a staple of my life the last four months, has come to an end. 

It’s the only professional league where the regular season is so much more exciting than the playoffs. Sure, you can have some great playoff games. But, in the regular season, every Sunday you get more games than you get the entire month of January. Watching one game at a time (and let’s face it – they’re often duds) just isn’t as fun as flipping from the Rams-Eagles game to watch your fantasy receiver play in the Cardinals-Chargers game. 

Even when things don’t go your way, it’s a great game. I’m in this annual pool where you have to pick, in August, how every division will finish and you pick how the playoffs will pan out. My gutty picks this year: the Patriots, Ravens, Texans and Vikings to win their respective divisions. 

You can imagine how I felt when that last-second pass from the Cardinals’ Josh McCown found a receiver on Sunday. 

Win or lose, good or bad, I don’t watch this game to be right or wrong, I watch because it’s beautiful. The acrobatic catches, the last-second scores (be they for or against me), and yes, the great celebrations – they all add up to the most wonderful league in the greatest sport in the world. 

There is lots of talk now about the MVP of the League. To me, the talk is a bunch of crap. There is only one guy who has, every week, carried his team. Jamal Lewis rushed for the second most yards in League history, he had 12 100-yard rushing days, and tacked on another 205 yards receiving. McNair and Manning had fine seasons; but, for a running back, Lewis had one for the ages. 

Be it Manning, McNair, McNabb, Lewis, Lewis, or Brady, the Award is irrelevant. To me, several people helped make this NFL Season a special one – and to those people, I say thank you: 

To Joe Horn, for making me laugh; 

To Brett Favre, for making me a convert; 

To the Three Chuckleheads in the Sunday Night Booth, for giving me hope that I, too, could be calling NFL games someday; 

To Brandon Lloyd, for making the best reception I’ve ever seen; 

To Matt Millen, for opening his big fat mouth in the locker room; 

To Jeremy Shockey, for opening his big fat mouth off the field; 

To Bill Parcells, for shutting up Jeremy Shockey on the field; 

To the Baltimore Ravens, for making me so right; 

To the Houston Texans, for making me so wrong; 

To David Carr, for taking off his helmet on the sidelines and letting all the world see his chiseled features, those beautiful brown eyes, and that winning smile; 

To Warren Sapp, for keeping his helmet on; 

To Jon Gruden, for silencing the most over-rated big-mouth in the League; 

To the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, for having to swallow humility; 

To Dom Capers, for going for it on fourth down; 

To Dan, for happily putting up with my love of this game;  

To Jim, Jim Allen and Brent, for making the NFL so much fun; and 

To Bill Belichick, for again showing us the beauty of winning without flash, the importance of the team concept, and the impact a good leader can have on a group of head-strong men.

--I’m not much into myths or fate, but there did seem to be some kind of divine intervention at work for the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. To win the NFC North and make the playoffs, the Packers needed to beat Denver, which they easily did, 31-3. But Green Bay also need 3-12 Arizona to beat the Minnesota Vikings. It seemed like a classic mismatch—Arizona’s worst-ranked defense against the Vikings’ top-rated offense. With two minutes to go, the Vikings led Arizona, 17-6. Then the roof caved in. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune Web site simply labeled it “The Collapse:”

• 2:00: On fourth-and-1 at the Vikings 2, Arizona QB Josh McKown hits tight end Steve Bush for a touchdown.

• 2:00: Arizona recovers an onside kick at the Cardinals' 39.

• 1:54: On first-and-10 at the Arizona 39, Denard Walker is called for a 30-yard pass interference penalty.

• 04: On fourth-and-25 at the Vikings' 28, McKown hits Nathan Poole for the game-winning touchdown.

It was a stunning ending, with Poole catching a pass in the end zone while being pushed out of bounds by two Minnesota defenders. The officials went to the replay booth to see if Poole kept control. They ruled that he did and 1,000 miles away the fans in Green Bay went crazy—The Packers were in the playoffs. There are 57,600 seconds per team in an NFL season, and the Vikings led the division for 57,599 of them, but not the final one, the one that most counted.

As for the divine intervention, I wonder if Brett Favre’s recently deceased dad, Irv, had something to do with it. That’s as good an explanation for such a shocking choke that I can think of.

Brett Favre summed it up best:

"I've been around people who have lost a family member, lost someone close to them and they say that person is there watching or angels, whatever," he said. "I would say two weeks ago I really didn't believe in that but I would say we better start believing in something. The odds were against us and they were really against us at the end of Arizona's game.

"It's just unbelievable. Sort of like I felt in the locker room right now. Everyone was cheering and all that stuff and I said, 'It's hard to cheer because this is so unbelievable. It's beyond my comprehension.' I hadn't ever been a part of anything like this. I don't know what it is but right now I'm riding it."

--Minnesota became only the second team in history to start 6-0 and miss the playoffs. The 1978 Washington Redskins were the others. Vikings fans, who have seen their share of misery, saw it as part of a trend. "This is a classic Vikings loss," one fan told the Star-Tribune. "Classic Vikings. How do you lose a game like that?"

--The Vikings have only themselves to blame. They led the league in total penalties and lost games to San Diego, Oakland, the New York Giants and Arizona, all of whom finished 4-12.

--Speaking of chokes, how about St. Louis losing the home-field advantage by laying an egg at Detroit? This is the second year in a row that Philadelphia has backed into home field; they didn’t take advantage last year and we’ll see about this time.

--The Packers enter the playoffs on a roll. They’ve won four in a row and six of seven and Favre is playing at a high level. Grady Jackson has really helped their defensive line and Ahman Green is one of the best backs in football.

--The worst quarterback I saw all season was Drew Bledsoe on Saturday. I’ve always been a huge Bledsoe fan and still think he has the talent to be a winner. But he’s look shell-shocked all year and says he has lost the internal clock that tells him when to get rid of a ball. The result was a ton of sacks and a league-high 10 lost fumbles.

Bledsoe has a weak offensive line and so-so receivers (Eric Moulds was hurt much of the year) and he doesn’t have the ability to left a team around him. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Bills dump Bledsoe and see him wind up with former coach Bill Parcells in Dallas. They went to a Super Bowl together and Parcells may see Bledsoe as another reclamation project like he had with Vinny Testaverde with the New York Jets.

--It was fun watching Eric Dickerson on ESPN as Baltimore’s Jamal Lewis was making a serious run at his single-season rushing mark. Lewis finished 40 years short and Dickerson, via a remote, held up a sign that said “19 years and counting.” Dickerson set the mark in 1984. It was nice that E.D. did not try and pretend he wanted Lewis to break his mark. Honesty is the best policy.

--My vote for playoff frauds are the Dallas Cowboys. They are only 3-4 down the stretch and their offense is the most boring in football. Parcells has done it with mirrors.

--In the end, it was the same old Bengals. They had a chance at the division, but couldn’t beat Cleveland, a team that had mailed it in a week earlier. One play summed it up: When QB Jon Kitna took a sack at the end of the half and the clock ran out. Had Kitna simply thrown the ball away, Cincinnati could have tried a 30-yard field goal in a close game. Overall, though, I was impressed with the job first-year coach Marvin Lewis did. Expect him to shore up the defense next season and make the Bengals a serious playoff contender.

--Remind me to not watch one second of the heavily promoted new Fox reality series, “My Big Fat Obnoxious Wedding.” They may have hot a new low, not an easy thing to say about Fox.

--Nice to see the league’s hottest (in all ways) kicker, Mike Vanderjagt set a record for consecutive field goals (41) and win the division for the Indianapolis Colts on the same play. Vanderjagt is certainly confident, as witness his comments about the final play. “I said to everybody on the sideline, 'We're about to kick a field goal to win the game, the 41st in a row, to win the division; does anybody want this?' " Vanderjagt said. "I was kind of joking. 'Anybody want to go ahead and kick it?' I knew the ramifications of the kick. No question."

--Wild Card Picks:

Tennessee over Baltimore. The Titans can pass the ball, something that gives the Ravens trouble. Anthony Wright is a joke at QB for the Ravens. Titans 23, Ravens 17.

Indianapolis over Denver. I know the Broncos beat up the Colts a week ago, but Indy can consider it a mulligan. Peyton Manning gets his first playoff win. Colts 31, Broncos 27

Carolina over Dallas. Stock up on the caffeine ‘cause this one will be a snoozer. Panthers 9, Cowboys 3.

Green Bay over Seattle. How can anyone pick against the Pack right now? Also, Seattle is 2-6 on the road and Favre has only lost one home playoff game ever. Packers 27, Seahawks 14.