American Football Spectacular: Wild Card Wknd 2006, 'You're In The Saddle Now'

Jacksonville vs. New England
Saturday, January 7, 2006
The Battle Of The Arcs
Momentum. In American football, it's an ineffable thing. It can't be quantified in advance, it can't be measured or summed, it can only be spoken of with certainty after the fact. And momentum is everything when it comes to the Battle Of The Arcs between Jacksonville and the defending champion New England Patriots.

The Pats had a hard early part of the season, losing a bunch of players to injury. With all the running backs of consequence injured, San Mateo's Tom Brady hauled the team on his back and willed them through the middle portion of the season. Now the Pats, as is their way, are getting healthy and peaking at the right time. They won four of their last five, dropping their last game against Miami by resting their starters, and 'cause Miami's Head Coach Nick Saban wanted it more. But here comes New England down the stretch into the playoffs again, and even with a patchwork secondary ranked 31st in pass defense, nobody wants to play them.

The Jags on the other hand, have had a weak weak weak schedule since Week 09 (HOU, BAL, TEN, ARZ, CLE, IND being the one exception, SF, HOU again, TEN again), so it's almost impossible to know how they'll react to a competitive matchup. The Jags are an anomalous team to begin with. Hewn in the hard-nosed image of their Head Coach Jack Del Rio, a former linebacker, Jacksonville fights hard, but they don't always fight smart. Their reputation is that of playing to their opponent's level -- winning games they shouldn't win, and losing games they shouldn't lose.

Now, besides attempting to regain inertia, JAX also regains starting QB Byron Leftwich from a broken leg. So how will they respond in Foxborough after so long without useful games? Can they correct their downward arc? There is no surety, but from the outset, it doesn't look good for the Jaguars.

Applicable Metaphor: Mike Jones' quotation "You don't work, you don't eat. You don't grind, you don't shine." What Mr. Jones (famously reachable at 281 330-8004) meant is that accomplishment is directly tied to hard work. This is true. How it applies to this matchup is that though both teams are hurting in their secondaries, this cold weather game will be won on the ground. How healthy is the Jag's Fred Taylor really? Can the mangled Pats O-line stand its ground against the fearsome Jacksonville defensive line? We'll see who shines.

Carolina vs. The New York Giants
Sunday, January 8, 2006
The Battle Of The Streaky
Who what? This is a game that can only be predicted in saying that it cannot be predicted. Here's why: no one yet knows which teams will show up to play.

Seemed like throughout the middle of the season, sports journalists were falling all over themselves to write stories about "this week is the week that Carolina takes control of the NFC." Then the Panthers dropped games to Chicago, Tampa Bay, and Dallas. Carolina's Head Coach John Fox has labored mightily through yet another odd season for the Panthers: he lost Kris Jenkins, one of the league's best defensive lineman, for the year with an injured knee. He has seen WR Steve Smith emerge as one of the most explosive playmakers in the NFL this year, even with opponents' defenses concentrating on him. He's seen the decline of RB Stephen Davis, who classily stepped aside for his understudy DeShaun Foster. Just another wild Panthers season. So who's gonna show up? The team that smashed the Patriots and twice blew out the Falcons, or the team that fell apart in Chicago, and lost out by the barest of margins against the Cowboys?

On the other side of the equation, the New York (American football) Giants have also survived a tumultuous season that saw the twin emergences of Eli Manning at QB & Osi Umenyiora (pronounced OH-see YOU-man-you-a) at DE opposite perennial Michael Strahan, the death of owner Wellington Mara, and a grip of career games from Tiki Barber. A discounted team entering the season, the Giants flashed surprising offensive firepower from Manning The Younger and Tiki, but couldn't put away the Seahawks in a close game due to kicking problems, and dropped a late-season game to a desperate Washington team.

Now, with a bunch of LBs injured, can this mixed-bag of a team get past the NFL's ultimate streaky franchise?

Both teams will try to whack about the other's QB as much as possible. Both sets of defensive ends are amongst the cream of the NFL. Tellingly, Fox was the DL Coach for the Giants during their last Super Bowl run.

Applicable Metaphor: Eminem. As AFS' Uncle Steve said regarding Em, "When he's on, he's really on, but when he's not..." Then he laughed to complete his point. And so go both these franchises. When they're "on" they can compete with the best the NFC has to offer. The question then becomes will they be on or no?

Pittsburgh at Cincinnati
Sunday, January 8, 2006
The Battle For The AFC North

The Bengals hadn't won their division since 1990, but this year they have. Surging under Head Coach Marvin Lewis, Cincinnati won a whole bunch with an grind-and-shoot offense, and a opportunistic defense. CIN
had the best turnover difference in the league at +24 and enters the playoffs in a position they're not used to...well, being in the playoffs.

Pittsburgh is accustomed to wearing the crown, having won the AFC North in 2004, 2002 (post NFL realignment), and 2001. Hugely-jawed Steelers' Head Coach Bill Cowher has kept his franchise competitive for a long time with his uniquely Pittsburgh style of play (see first paragraph above). PIT lost a bunch of games this season that they shouldn't have. QB wunderkind Ben Roethlisberger was out for a bit, and the Steelers had to shuffle their running backs. Splitting their season series with Baltimore, and losing to Jacksonville on a Tommy Maddox miscue both arguably shouldn't have happened.

The Steelers were forced to run the table to get into the postseason past Kansas City and San Diego. They've basically been playing playoff football since the December 4 loss to the Bengals.

Now the rematch of the upstarts against the hungry former division champs is set. Both teams finished 11 and 5, but CIN had the tiebreaker. Cincinnati are underdogs on their own field despite having won the Week 13 game.

Just as there's nothing more pathetic than an emo song gone awry, there's few things more pathetic than a ball-control team that can't keep the ball. Cincy is gonna try to put points on the board quick to make PIT play from behind. In a cold Paul Brown Stadium, we will see which defense acquiesces first, and which team can claim to be the best in the AFC North this
season.

There's gonna be quarterbacks wearing gloves on their throwing hands in this one. Bless you, o cold weather football, bless you.

Applicable Metaphor: The song "Afghamistam / Micaragua" by the band Botch from its EP "An Anthology Of Dead Ends."
One long song stretched across the last two tracks of their final EP; it's about driving over the pass to Tahoma, and ostensibly regarding the fact of the track being the band's last song. There is a moment in the song where after a lull, the track breaks open like a herd of Clydesdales bursting from a snow-swept barn in slow motion. "RIIIDE!" bellows singer David Verellen as the song thunders downslope. This sort of inertia is what one can expect from the running game on both sides of the ball in the PIT vs CIN matchup; two of the league's best "big backs" in Jerome Bettis and Rudi Johnson churning out yards on the ground. Look for plenty of well-intentioned tackles to get broken off like politicians' promises. That's entertainment. That's American football.

Next time on your American Football Spectacular: Summations from your Bay Area college and NFL teams, more playoff fodder, and glee.