Are you ready for some FOOTBALL - Playoff Edition

[Arrian]

Success will do that. Although I must say that the Pats fans around here aren't arrogant. I put this down to location (CT). Arrogance in sports here just doesn't fly. You've got fans of:

Yankees
Red Sox
Mets

Pats
Giants
Jets

Bruins
Rangers
Islanders (?)

Some basketball teams, but I could give a **** about BB, so I won't bother listing...

And of course bits and bobs of others (the aforementioned Redskins fan, etc).

If you want to get along with your coworkers, you can't get too puffed up about your team. Things were even civil right after the 2003 and 2004 ALCS's.

-Arrian

[Donegeal]

Originally posted by Arrian
I sit next to a Giants fan and a Redskins fan. Much of the office roots for the Patriots (fair number of Giants fans, though). Now everyone's team is done, heh.

-Arrian

Hehehe... most of my co-workers are Packer fans. I had the pleasure of hearing "The Bears Still Suck" polka over the department radio.... They gave LOTS of grief last night. I didn't mind. I deserved it. I talked ALOT of crap the last two weeks...

[Japher]

Yeah, but Green Bay really sucks! At least the Bears had the top ranked Defense and got to the playoffs. The Bears would actually be good if the could get a QB that was halfway decent.

What does Green Bay have? A fumble fvck for a RB, a QB that smells of moth balls, and Defense that forgets what their job is? Whatever. Green Bay fans have no room to talk, they're even worse than my Niners!

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Japher
Had the Bengals played the last 3 games of the season they might have not needed to play the first round. Also, that play might not of went down that way.

I know, a lot of ifs. But I'd rather blame the Bengals than the Steelers. Especially since I now live in Cincinnati and am sick of people blaming Pitt for just playing hard.

Actually you should get your facts straight before trash talking the Bengals...

If the Bengals had won their last two regular season games they STILL would be playing Pittsburgh due to Denver's better divisional record...

As for resting players, apart from Palmer who did start the KC it was only really the D that got rested - Palmer was used lightly because he'd picked up a slight groin injury and they didn't want to aggravate it.

Therefore destiny or what have you wouldn't have been deflected from what happened in the second play of the game...

Only Kimo knows whether he meant it or not, but it just looks like a freak accident to me.

Initially they were on top of the Steelers even without Palmer, but I think that the enormity of his injury caused their confidence to ebb as the game wore on and for me the sucker punch was the muffed field goal which seemed to herald a return to the Bengals of old...

But don't you dare imply that Palmer's injury is the Bengals fault...

Assuming Palmer can bounce back, the Bengals will be back - bigger and better than ever!

So far everything has gone according to my predictions this season - apart from the sickening Palmer injury...

Kinda reminds me of the horrific game ending injury to Tim Krumrie back in our last Superbowl...

[Wycoff]

The NFL acknowledges that the ref blew the Polamalu call

[Arrian]

Well that's good. That was blatantly blown.

-Arrian

[Wycoff]

I'm a huge Steelers fan, and that call almost gave me a heart attack.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Wycoff
The NFL acknowledges that the ref blew the Polamalu call

The NFL does have a backbone!

[pchang]

Having a backbone would involve forcing a replay of the game from that point had the Steelers lost.

[Jon Shafer]

No, having a backbone would be admitting that had Indianapolis actually won the game.

[Jaguar]

Well, every single one of the teams I was rooting for lost. I hate this postseason.

I didn't get to see the Colts game to the end, and I didn't get to see da Bears at all.

One of the more interesting moments of the Colts game, IMO, was the 4th and 2 play, where Manning had just missed another pass, and had something like a 65 QB rating on the day. Dungy sends the punt team on, Manning waves them off, and Dungy doesn't argue in the least. No other quarterback has that sort of authority.

I checked later for the Bears score. I turned on a sports station, and although they weren't displaying the score, they showed that Grossman had 41 attempts. From that alone, I knew the Bears lost, both a cause and effect of throwing too much.

I don't care how much you're down, give the ball to Thomas Jones over and over. Rex Grossman is not your savior. He's not a great quarterback. He's not even a good quarterback. He is decent at best. Don't think you can throw a long ball.

Morons.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Actually I will say that Grossman was playing well. He just threw one pass too many. They should have ran more, but the pass got them back into it.

Though that doesn't excuse the passing so much so early.

[Jaguar]

The "run the ball a lot" strategy isn't applicable for all teams, but it's really how Chicago is supposed to play the game.

They should have taken a shot downfield once every quarter or so, just to keep the safeties back a little, but Jones has dealt with 9-in-the-box before.

Experienced coaches don't stop running the ball the moment they're down a score or two.

[-Jrabbit]

Grossman was good in the middle half of the game, but really stunk it up in both the 1st and 4th quarters. That's not good enough in the playoffs.

But at the heart of it, the Bears were victims of their own poor game planning, compounded by Carolina's excellent coaching and execution.

Chicago is not *quite* ready for prime time. If they're relatively healthy, the Bears will be an interesting team to watch in 2006.

[Imran Siddiqui]

And perhaps they need someone to say "**** the gameplan, triple cover Steve Smith!"