One Game Left

Well, I was wrong in both my predictions for this week. I was firmly convinced that New Orleans would take advantage of a lax Bears defense and I thought that the beast that was the New England Patriots would be too much for the Colts. Obviously, I don’t know what I’m talking about, but that’s okay.

I didn’t pay as close attention to the NFC Championship game. I find sloppy games rather boring and the New Orleans ineptness was particularly difficult to watch. Then, the Bears failing to take advantage of it were also a little disappointing. Realistically, the game should have been 24-7 at the half, with the Bears just grinding down the Saints for the rest of the game. If the Bears punter had not done such a good job of pinning the Saints to such poor field position, New Orleans could very easily have come back and won the game. But the Bears finally wore out the Saints defense and poured it on at the end. Congrats to the Bears for making the Super Bowl. Hopefully their defense plays as well there as it did yesterday.

The late game was very nerve racking for me. In the NFC game I really didn’t care who won. On the AFC side, I was really hoping the Colts would win just so we wouldn’t have to hear any more slurping of the Brady-Belichick duo and so we wouldn’t hear any more of the “Peyton can’t win the big one” talk. At first, I was despairing that my prediction would be right, especially after Manning tossed that interception for a score and the Pats were up 21-3. Mrs. X and I switched it over to watch the Simpsons rerun after that. But the Colts drove the field for a field goal right at halftime and having noticed that and knowing that the Colts would get the ball to start the second half, I decided to give the game another chance. I was glad I did and I started getting my hopes up once the Colts managed to tie it up. I was sure the Pats were going to find a way to pull off another last minute miracle, just as they had done so many times before. In fact, after the Colts tied the game at 31, I commented to Mrs. X that the Colts had left too much time on the clock and that the Patriot would go ahead with little left on the clock. I was partially right. The Pats committed a procedure penalty that forced them to kick the go-ahead field goal with more time left on the clock than they wanted (just over 2 minutes). I actually started to believe the Colts were going to win after they added the extra point to force the Pats to get a touchdown. That meant Brady had to be more aggressive and could play into the Colts strength of a secondary. I actually thought the Pats would drive near the 20 or 30 and have Brady throw into the endzone as the game clock expired to see who would win. But, instead a pick was thrown and the game ended.

Early on, I’m leaning towards the Colts in the Super Bowl. I’ve maintained that the AFC was better than the NFC and I think that Rex Grossman will make a couple of bad throws against the Indy defense that will allow the Colts to dictate tempo. Of course, I could be completely off and the Bears will dominate the game. We shall see in 13 days.