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NFL Championship Games


Stego

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-That thread ended too soon. The Tory Holt love was flowing like lava, and there is never enough of that.

-The Giants playoff inspired pass rush can beat ANYONE (alas, 2008), and Alex Smith isn't much of anyone. I foresee this game as a done deal early.

-The Patriots are on fire. And not just offensively.... if 80% of the defense that showed up for the Broncos game plays against Rice then this game will also be over quickly. The Patriots defense is the healthiest it has been all season. We've never seen what all of the 'starters' could do together before last week. It did not look like the 31st ranked defense to me.

Pats 34 - Giants 17

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I have a real hard time figuring out who I want to win between the Pats and Ravens. On one side, I hate seeing the Pats successful, on the other I hate seeing Flacco successful. I think the more interesting Super Bowl will be the Pats vs so I will end up having to root for the Pats.

If Brady plays like he did against Denver, that team is near unstoppable.

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I would like a Giants rematch but just to have the Pats in a Superbowl period would be good.

I was listening to sports radio this morning driving in and they were talking about the Vegas odds and how it is figured out. Fascinating and confusing. The short of it is you won't make very much money if you bet on the Patriots unfortunately.

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I have a real hard time figuring out who I want to win between the Pats and Ravens. On one side, I hate seeing the Pats successful, on the other I hate seeing Flacco successful. I think the more interesting Super Bowl will be the Pats vs so I will end up having to root for the Pats.

If Brady plays like he did against Denver, that team is near unstoppable.

I know you're a Bengals fan, and I would expect you to hate on the Ravens generally, but why the hate for Flacco in particular? I liked him at Delaware (since I went there and all), and hoped he would succeed in the NFL. Instead he has been average in almost every respect.

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A weekend of sorting baby stuff kept me away from the games, but to catch up...

If the winner of SF-NO had scored in the low 20s or teens, I'd say the Gints offense can put up enough and their D can stop Smith & co. Their putting up mid 30s? 24-17, SF.

With the targets Brady has, Baltimore runs into the same problem everyone else has - how do you cover two exceptional TE & Welker, with Branch, et al thrown in. Think this will be tight-ish for 3 quarters because of the Ravens D, but the no huddle wears them down in the end. 34-21 Patriots.

To set up a NE-SF Super Bowl where I will be the only person at the party wearing an SF Jersey. Same as the Baltimore - NE game. If Brady has his targets available to him (no injuries) I can see SF slowing them down, but I don't see them stopping them enough for the SF offense. Won't be record setting from scoring - 27-17.

Will be painful if that comes true as that would put Brady past Montana for all time wins with 17. And tie rings with 4.

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A nice defense of Belichick in Grantland today:

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7468068/charles-p-pierce-new-england-patriots-denver-broncos-divisional-playoff-game

Also, remember how I was bitching about how Rex Ryan's look-at-me act makes his players similarly mouthy and undisciplined? I pointed out that Belichick's players are as disciplined as he is when it comes to media relations. This writer agrees with me:

The problem, of course, is that, while Belichick's anarchy is evident on the field, behind the podium, he still behaves as though he should be planted on a hillside on Easter Island. Asked the other night about his use of Hernandez as a running back, and whether the talents of his two young tight ends constituted evidence of how the position had evolved, he drew on his profound knowledge of the history of the game, and replied, "Well, there have been a lot of great tight ends in the history of the league." The rest of the audio was lost in the clamor of a dozen crests falling.

This filters down to the players -- even the young ones, like Gronkowski -- until they all become fluent in conversational Belichickian, a weird patois of teamspeak and utter banality that you learn to speak in New England, or you go play somewhere else. Here, for example, is the genuinely irrepressible Gronkowski talking about the interesting night that his teammate Hernandez experienced:

"He did a great job. I mean, whatever role the coaches ask us to do, whoever it is, I mean, we all just work it out and that's what we do. ... Overall, what the coaches ask us to do, executing well, going out there, running the routes like the coaches ask us to do."

Please hit me in the head with a tack hammer now, please. Thank you.

This is what you get -- incredibly disciplined players, talking like automatons, but playing in a system in which almost anything is likely to happen on the field, as well as in a system that will gleefully exploit every misplaced comma in the NFL rulebook, which the NFL richly deserves to have happen to it. This has been the great conundrum of the New England Patriots under Bill Belichick -- a kind of blessedly refreshing football anarchy explained by its practitioners in stale terms that run the gamut from prosaic to sullen and back again. To concentrate on the latter is to miss the sheer artistry of the former.

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I hate Brady. With a passion. However i am the first to admit he is the greates QB alive. If he ties with Montana he will be the greatest ever. As a G-Man fan i refuse to allow this to happen, I doubt that Baltimore can stop the Pats, Flacco kind of sucks and the defense (although impressive) wont stop Brady. San Fran could beat us, but i refuse to admit that. So in the end it will be NE vs NY, as we all knew. Lets go Eli! Going to have more rings then his bro at the end of the year!!

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I know you're a Bengals fan, and I would expect you to hate on the Ravens generally, but why the hate for Flacco in particular? I liked him at Delaware (since I went there and all), and hoped he would succeed in the NFL. Instead he has been average in almost every respect.

I hate everyone on the Ravens but Flacco is the one I can least respect. I know a lot of people give him crap but he's successful despite himself and that annoys me. I don't mind players like Brady, Brees, Rodgers being successful because they're awesome but when Flacco rides the running game/defense and is successful, it pisses me off. It's nothing more than jealousy.

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I hate everyone on the Ravens but Flacco is the one I can least respect. I know a lot of people give him crap but he's successful despite himself and that annoys me. I don't mind players like Brady, Brees, Rodgers being successful because they're awesome but when Flacco rides the running game/defense and is successful, it pisses me off. It's nothing more than jealousy.

I guess it depends what you mean by successful. Nobody really thinks he's a great quarterback, and plenty don't even think he's a good quarterback. While the Bengals can be envious of the success the Ravens have had in the Ray Lewis era, I don't see much to envy in Flacco, and you guys may very well have a better qb than baltimore already.

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I can't really see Baltimore beating New England as an upset, not after watching the defenses of SF and NY handle Green Bay and New Orleans. And the Ravens have proven several times that they can get into Brady's head and mess up his rhythm.

It all depends on if they treat Gronkowski like just another pass-catching TE who should be spied on occassionally or like the legit receiving threat that he has become.

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It all depends on if they treat Gronkowski like just another pass-catching TE who should be spied on occassionally or like the legit receiving threat that he has become.

I doubt very much that anyone underestimates Gronk these days. Whether they can actually stop him is another question, but he won't catch them by surprise.

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Pats 34 - Giants 17

Wait, didn't you pick the Ravens to beat the Pats in the AFC title game?

Not that I disagree or anything, but I want to tress in the last two weeks all the Pats did was beat, potentially, the second-worse playoff team ever. The Pats secondary is still so bad that it could not cover a bed with twelve sheets.

I just want to keep this all in perspective as I start sticking needles in my Joe Flacco doll.

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A nice defense of Belichick in Grantland today:

http://www.grantland...al-playoff-game

Also, remember how I was bitching about how Rex Ryan's look-at-me act makes his players similarly mouthy and undisciplined? I pointed out that Belichick's players are as disciplined as he is when it comes to media relations. This writer agrees with me:

That was a fun read. But a defense? Against who?

Think there's only three kinds of fans left in the NFL:

1) Fans who've come to respect Belichick and wish he coached their team

2) Fans who hate Belichick but wished he coached their team

3) Pats fans

The only charge left is that he has created Belichick speak in where nothing of interest or even human sounding is ever conveyed by him or his players, but even that is mollified by the fact that I don't think anyone thinks he's dull anymore after Bill Belichick: A Football Life.

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I guess it depends what you mean by successful. Nobody really thinks he's a great quarterback, and plenty don't even think he's a good quarterback. While the Bengals can be envious of the success the Ravens have had in the Ray Lewis era, I don't see much to envy in Flacco, and you guys may very well have a better qb than baltimore already.

Part of Flacco's problem is that he pouted a little about not getting respect as a QB. When they were asking him about the Houston game last week, he said something like, "Well I'm sure if we win you guys will say I had nothing to do with it." Well, yeah, Joe, because your defense and your running game have been carrying your ass. And true enough, that win had very little to do with him.

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Think there's only three kinds of fans left in the NFL:

1) Fans who've come to respect Belichick and wish he coached their team

2) Fans who hate Belichick but wished he coached their team

3) Pats fans

Are there Jets fans who wish Belichick coached their team? I know the answer, I just want to get some of you fuckers on record. ;)

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I doubt very much that anyone underestimates Gronk these days. Whether they can actually stop him is another question, but he won't catch them by surprise.

As a fan of a team whose defense regularly forgets about legit pass-catching threats at TE, I know how easy it can be.

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As a fan of a team whose defense regularly forgets about legit pass-catching threats at TE, I know how easy it can be.

Me too. I don't understand it but it seems to happen every game. It must be because our LBs and Safeties suck in coverage.

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