Pretty exciting weekend of football. Here are my thoughts on all the games:
1. Baltimore at Denver. A very cold game at Denver where the Broncos were heavy favorites. A story within the story was the play of two of the greatest players at their respective positions with Ray Ray going after Peyton Manning. Manning was having an MVP caliber season and proving he was worth the price Denver paid for him as the Broncos were playing great football down the stretch and were the #1 seed in the AFC playoffs. Game really came down to the final minute with Baltimore down by seven with less than a minute left. It looked desperate and the crowd was roaring as they could feel the victory coming. CBS flashed to Ray Ray on the sideline and it looked like he was praying and reflecting on his career and reconciling that this might be the last time he suits up. Right after that, Flacco throws a deep ball down the right sideline and inexplicably the Denver safety allows the WR to get behind him who proceeds to catch it and run in for a game tying TD. INEXCUSABLE!!! How the safety let that guy get behind him is unbelievable. The game ended up going to OT and with both teams getting opportunities, it ended up coming down to a poor decision by P. Manning rolling to his right and making a rookie type of mistake by throwing across his body for an INT. Ravens got a few yards and ended up kicking a game winning FG silencing the shocked Denver fans. Too bad for Manning but congrats to Ray Ray as he lives for another week
2. Green Bay at San Francisco. Game can be summed up pretty easily…the Puckers had no answers for Colin Kaepernik. Pretty embarrassing performance by their defense. Kaepernik rushed 16 times for nearly 200 yards. INEXCUSABLE!!! The Puckers were clueless on the read option. On Kaepernik’s one long TD run on the read option, the GB contain guy looked completely lost. Just embarrassing. What was also amazing and Aikman mentioned this during the game was how Dom Capers had his defense play. He had the secondary lock on in man coverage and sent pressure. Once Kaepernik avoided the initial pressure, the Puckers DBs all had their backs to him as they were chasing WRs down the field. It left Kap with wide open space to run for big yards. Just poor coaching. Rodgers was able to be too effective as the SF D line overpowered the GB O line and Rodgers didn’t have many opportunities to allow plays to develop. Again, weaker coaching as GB never tried to get their ground game going and they should have adjusted to shorter/quicker passes as their O line couldn’t protect Rodgers long enough for deeper routes. GB was largely overpowered in the game.
3. Seattle at Atlanta. Really a tale of two halves. Atlanta jumped out to a 20-0 halftime lead in which Seattle had a couple of opportunities to score but failed on questionable decisions including midway through the second quarter with the score 13-0, Carroll opted to go for it on 4th and short deep in Atlanta territory instead of kicking a FG. They failed to convert and Hotlanta ended up scoring another TD to make it 20-0. On the ensuing Hawk drive, they marched down the field and again instead of going for a FG before the half, they went for it with no timeouts and Wilson got sacked and they came away with no points. Still, in the second half, it was all Seattle as they bounced back and made it a 27-21 game with two minutes left . Wilson engineered a late drive that was capped off with a Lynch TD to take the lead 28-27 with 31 seconds remaining. The Atlanta players and fans were shocked and silenced. Atlanta got the ball for one last chance and after a decent kickoff return, Ryan threw a deep out close to midfield and called timeout. The next play was a pass to reliable Tony Gonzalez in the middle of the field inside the Seattle 35 yard line. With 13 seconds left and no timeouts, Atlanta brought out Matt Bryant and as is fairly typical, Seattle called time out just before Bryant kicked to ice him. Bryant still got the kick off and it sailed wide right. After the timeout, Bryant got a second chance and he did not disappoint sending the kick right down the middle for an exciting last second victory.
4. Houston at New England. This is the game I paid the least attention to so I can’t comment much. Pretty dominating performance by Brady and the Pats. Only real points of interest I can provide are that Gronkowski broke his arm again and is done for the remainder of the year. Finally, pretty amazing that New England has been able to sustain their level of success for as long as they have. It’s almost impossible in today’s NFL but somehow they have managed to do it. It all starts with Brady and his ability to lead his team to victories. He is arguably the greatest QB to have ever played given his success. I think there is an intimidation factor that opposing teams feel when playing Brady and the Pats as Brady can get his team to play with a fire and confidence that stems from him and allows his team to will victory over the opposition.
In the end, we find a couple of decent championship games next week as San Francisco will visit Atlanta and Baltimore will head to New England with the winners of the respective games facing off in the Super Bowl. Hard to believe another season of football is almost done.
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