Easy Out
The Tournament field is set. The Bucs are probably going to lose Sunday. There, I said it.
Anyone Seen the “Mo”?
If December momentum is worth anything in the NFL playoffs, the Bucs are doomed. I guess we’ll find out Sunday at 1. The Giants come to town with a 7-1 road record, but they’ve played .500 ball over the last half of the season. Still, I don’t have much confidence as a Buc fan that the team will need to plan a trip to Dallas or Green Bay. The only teams with a winning record that these Bucs defeated are the Titans and Redskins. The Titans being a team who are in the playoffs only as a result of Tony Dungy’s largess (that or he was resting players). And the ‘Skins having earned their way into the playoffs on raw emotion following the death of Sean Taylor. Our next best vanquished opponent would be the 8-8 Cardinals. That’s not really a good thing.
TALB is not a fan of taking games off. Dallas basically wrapped up home-field on November 29th with their victory over the Packers. Since then they’ve gone 2-2, including a one point win over the Lions. They have this week off. Essentially the Cowboys will take the field next weekend having not cared about the outcome of a contest for seven weeks. Should they draw the Redskins in round two, they could be in for a long afternoon. The Bucs, as evidenced by their actions on the field of play, haven’t seemed to care about the outcome of a game for the last two weeks. I would feel better had the games been more like preseason than what we saw, complete utter lack of any will to win. Would it have been so bad to have the first team play 3 quarters against the 49ers? Or a half against Carolina?
The Giants will end up with a long week, and are coming off a game in which they had to fight for 60 minutes. I’m thinking they’ll be on their way to Green Bay next week.
Tournament Picks: Wild Card
Redskins over Seahawks (Saturday 4:30 PM NBC)
Giants over Bucs (Sunday 1 PM Fox)
In the NFC, I think the wild-card teams have the “mo” more so than the division “champs”. Both of which rode fairly weak divisional competition to their respective titles. While the wild-cards are playing their hearts out right now.
Jaguars over Steelers (Saturday 9 PM NBC)
Chargers over Titans (Sunday 4:30 PM CBS)
The Jags are probably the third or fourth best team in the entire NFL right now. And as recently as three weeks ago they put their pimp hand down against the Steelers, at the Big Ketchup. I’m going with the Bolts because the Titans are in only because the Colts weren’t playing to win. Had that been the case, we’d be talking about the Browns over the Chargers and a wild-card sweep. But they weren’t, and we’re not.
16 Down, 3 To Go
The Patriots completed their perfect regular season Saturday night. And more power to them. But they’re not done yet. Win the Super Bowl, or it’s been for nothing.
Next: (Wednesday) Bowl time
