NFL Thoughts: Championship Weekend

Bears 39 / Saints 14
Well I predicted a Bears win but I didn't see a blowout coming. Sort of sad to see for me. I was rooting for the Saints (like a whole lot of other people outside of Chicago) but I wasn't into the whole "team of destiny" crap. That's not a dig at the City of New Orlean's. It just means I think God has more important things to worry about. Still I would liked to have seen a closer game. Unfortunately, the Bear's defense just wasn't going to allow that. Damn them. They were aggressive and did what they do best: take the ball away. Turnovers killed Brees and his team. On the flip side, Grossman did what he needed to, namely hanging onto the ball. True, he pretty much sucked for almost 3 quarters. But then he got hot late in the 3rd quarter and made a few more key throws in the 4th quarter. When your defense was playing as well as Chicago's' was yesterday, that's all you need. So what if the Berrian TD was lucky and should have been intercepted by a better corner. Believe me after watching the Patriots for the last 5 years (and the Colts this year), you tend to understand how important luck is in the post-season. One other thing, what the hell was Reggie Bush doing taunting one of the best defensive players alive? I mean Urlacher is going to be prowling the middle for years to come and certainly Bush will quite literally be running into him again. What a dumb-ass high school type celebration. If I was Sean Payton I would be in his grill helping him understand how he just gave even more motivation to a dangerous defense.



Colts 38 / Patriots 34
First of all I didn't even watch this game until I knew who won. Why you ask? Well even though I'm a Ram fan, the Colts are the team I've been pulling for in the AFC for the past few years. I'm also about the biggest Patriots hater out there. Ever since they beat the Rams in a Super Bowl they had no business being in, let alone winning---and considering the Colts previous habit of coming up small in big playoff games (a couple against the Pats) I just couldn't stomach another 4 hours of agonizing twists, especially if it ended badly. So yeah I wussed out and watched my tivo version after I knew the score. Although the joy would have been much more intense watching it live, I found a certain satisfaction knowing that with a minute left Brady wasn't going to perform a miracle. And yet, a part of me (the non-rational part) thought, "dammit, they gave him too much time--he's going to win this thing". I found it really weird though that late in the game, both teams ran the ball on a third and long play. Really weird. Also strange was the luck factor. When the Patriots got an insanely lucky break with a goal line fumble and recover for a TD everyone had to be thinking, "well here they go again". But then the Colt's get the exact same break later in the game. The Pats also had a couple of other missed interceptions and near fumbles. What's going on? These bounces usually go their way. And maybe had the game been in New England they would have. Home field doesn't always mean victory but in the case of both games yesterday I would say it had a huge impact.