So I Guess I Was Wrong Again

I neglected to mention on Wednesday that January 12 was my first Blogversary for this all-too-heavily trafficked site. It's ok if you forgot to buy me a present. I can't blame you for perhaps getting distracted by what was, perhaps, one of my more depressing entries, but the good news is that since today happens to be my half-birthday -- at 25 1/2 I'm pretty ancient now -- you still have the time to buy me a present. It's the least you can do after all the trouble I've gone to to bore all of you for the past 12 months.

One might say I already got a present yesterday when Cam Newton announced he was entering the NFL Draft (what, he didn't think he'd be eligible at Auburn next year?), but if none of you can find it in your hearts to be so generous, however, I'll manage to be ok because I got a gift of sorts already this week in the form of my tickets to next month's Knicks-76ers game in Philadelphia, a venture that will knock Team No. 38 off the list and get me one step closer to that ultimate goal of way too many stadiums than the average person should see -- though considering the Sixers and Flyers both play at the Wells Fargo Center, I guess I've actually seen this arena already.

Regardless, Feb. 4th in Philadelphia should be an exciting day, if for no other reason than the fact that the Knicks, by some remarkable mystery, continue to to be good and this will mark the third city I've seen them in outside of New York. And considering how mediocre the Sixers have been this season, I've managed to snag rather decent seats at a stiff discount from the face value price.

Go me.

Of course, I've had some difficulty actually seeing the new tickets with all of the egg on my face from last Saturday, and if you're wondering what egg I'm talking about you either didn't read my entry on picks last week (extremely likely) or didn't watch the Seahawks stunning upset win over the Saints last weekend (let's be honest, you just didn't read my blog entry). But the long and short of it was, I think the Seahawks are a terrible football team. Still do, actually. And yet they knocked off the defending-champion New Orleans Saints in a first-round playoff upset that is, well, really pretty damn remarkable.

How remarkable?

Well, suffice it to say, and I know Giants fans will consider this blasphemy, trust me, I am one of them after all, but I might go so far as to say this might be the biggest postseason upset of the last decade if not ever. Yes, I know the Giants were up against what was probably the greatest football team I ever saw in Super Bowl XLII, and pulled out a dramatic victory if there ever was one, but let's remember a few things. For one, the Giants were pretty damn good that season. They were 10-6 that season, which most years is at the very least decent enough to get you into the postseason if not a respectable showing. In addition New York had had some dominant performances that season and at one point won six games in a row, which is nearly as many as Seattle won the entire regular season. Lastly, it is hard to ignore that the Giants nearly beat the Patriots in the final week of the regular season.

While the Seahawks were home and the Saints were flying across the country and were battling injuries, there was never an indication that Seattle with its 28th-ranked offense was capable of outscoring one of the top offenses in the League. And that's because, and last Saturday aside, I will stand by this, the Seattle Seahawks are a terrible football team. Seriously. They are terrible.

How terrible are we talking? Well, according the editor of FiveThirtyEight.com and general statistics wiz Nate Silver, the Seahawks are the worst NFL team to ever make the postseason in a non-strike year, and might possibly be the second worst playoff team in the history of professional sports. God bless the 1952-53 Baltimore Bullets. To put an even finer point on it -- possibly the finest point -- one analysis in Silver's article showed these Seahawks would be just three-point favorites over the 2008 Detroit Lions. And if you need any refresher on that team, they were pretty horrendous.

Of course, given all that, I'm sure they're going to whoop the Bears in Chicago this weekend -- they beat them there once already -- just to make me look like a fool again, though if you go back and look, I did, in fact, say the Seahawks would win against New Orleans last week. The details beneath the heading are just fine print. You don't need to read those.

Besides, y'all can give me credit for correctly tabbing the other three games last weekend, including wins by two six-seeds, right? Or at least I can distract you with this excellent representation of Marshawn Lynch's game-sealing touchdown run, which just might be the greatest in NFL postseason history.



In any event, you're not here to read my rambles. You're here to see some picks. Picks that will probably be wrong. Heaven forbid I keep you from that. So here we go.

NFC
(1) Atlanta over (6) Green Bay
Does anyone else think it's almost unfair that these two teams have to face each other while the Bears and Seahawks try not to cross swords in the powder puff bowl? Probably. I really won't be surprised if either team wins this game, but the Falcons and Matty Ice are nearly unbeatable at the Georgia Dome so I'll give them the nod. Either way, I expect whomever takes this one to be representing the NFC in Dallas next month.

(2) Chicago over (4) Seattle
This just has disaster written all over it, doesn't it? I could feel like I'm falling into the trap on this one by relying on the truth that the Seahawks are not good at football. After all, who else could inspire multiple Mario Bros.-themed Youtube mashups? But come on. I'm not stupid. The Bears may be one of the weaker No. 2 seeds we've seen in a while, but they're better than Seattle. Go ahead. Prove me wrong again.

AFC

(6) NY Jets over (1) New England
Yeah, I know, this one is ballsy. But have you seen today's New York Post? Really. Have you seen it? These people have outdone themselves in a way I never thought possible. And if this brilliant piece of, yes, art, doesn't tell you that the force is, in fact, with the Jets, then you either don't have faith in upsets or haven't noticed how amazingly close this back page comes to duplicating all three Star Wars special edition movie posters while taking in elements from nearly each film. Seriously. Somehow this has topped both Hothlanta, and the latest Death Star trench run. Somehow this has actually made me almost forget about Antonio Cromartie's all-too-honest assessment of Tom Brady, or Wes Welker's rather clever press conference from earlier this week. So yeah, let's go with the Jets, I guess. Why not?

(2) Pittsburgh over (5) Baltimore
It's kind of remarkable that with two great teams facing off who also happen to hate each other, no one really seems to have noticed that this game is being played. Sure Sportscenter gives it five or so minutes every hour, but come on. This is probably the best matchup of the weekend and it's almost as if it isn't happening. Well, maybe that's an exagerration, but it is happening, and I really have no idea who'll win, but I'm still bitter at Baltimore for some football game that happened like a decade ago, so... I'll go with the Stillers.

I bet five people at most got through that whole screed. No matter. The fewer of you that know I was wrong on Monday morning the better. Happy football everyone.

Funny Story: The Giants Beat The Seahawks This Year. By 34 Points. In Seattle.

I suppose I ought to start this by saying I don't believe the NFL should forsake its divisional breakdown. Divisions are necessary for creating a structure that enables an easy schedule rotation and fosters rivalries and fan interest. Also, I haven't done the math, but I'm fairly certain the odds of one team beating another on the road by 34 points, and then winning 43% more games during the course of that season, staying home while the pounded 7-9 division champ takes aim at a Super Bowl is pretty close to about a bajillion to one.

Oh, but that's why they play the games. Or at least that's why the Rams and Seahawks did whatever it was they did Sunday night to send at least one atrocious team to the playoffs.

Yes, some of you out there might have noticed that I'm a teentsy bit bitter about how the 2010 New York Giants season wound up, and before I continue I will acknowledge that the Giants had three chances to seal a playoff berth and were unable to do so. But let's be real. The Giants finished 10-6 this season, which, while hardly spectacular, is usually more than enough to get a team into the annual postseason tournament. And failing that, I think it's fairly plain to see that the Giants are better than the Seahawks.

The 7-9 NFC West "Champion" Seahawks.

Lest I put too much focus on the fact that, even with Seattle being a markedly difficult place to play the Giants absolutely beat the living shit out of the Seahawks earlier this season, let's remind ourselves that the Seahawks are 7-9. They lost more often than they won this season and yet somehow are actually in the playoffs. In fact, and this is where it gets fun, the only way Seattle can go down in the books as having finished the 2010 NFL season with a winning record is by winning the Super Bowl.

Call me a skeptic, but I don't see that happening.

Still, I don't want to give you all the impression that I'm crying foul over what has befallen my beloved G-Men, nor am I taking it as an opportunity to blindly throw arrows at people for my own amusement. Apparently, neither are the people in charge, either. I accept the fate of a team that looked like world beaters with roughly two games and eight minutes remaining in its regular season. One that still had its fate in its own hands despite an absolutely spectacular meltdown only to lay an egg in Green Bay in Week 16. One that could have still made it courtesy of an absolutely brilliant effort by a Chicago Bears defense were it not for the astonishing ineptitude of Chicago's offense Sunday. At this moment I will point to the Bears having a 3-0 lead in the third quarter and an interception returned to the Green Bay 15 yardline, which the Jay Cutler company somehow managed to turn into zero points.

I accept all of this. Because sometimes a team just has to take responsibility when it had the chance to leave its fate up to itself rather than chance.

But goddamnit it's frustrating to see the Seahawks in the playoffs when the Giants beat them in their own building by 34 points and won three more games. Like crazy frustrating. Unfortunately, those are just the breaks of the NFL sometimes. Those are the rules. Fair is fair. Besides, we're all a little better off when a stellar quarterback like Charlie Whitehurst gets to start in the playoffs, right? Yes, I thought so.

There are a few positives to all of this however -- or at least I'm trying to convince myself of that. For one, I can now watch the NFL playoffs free from the fear that I might suffer some tremendously horrifying heart attack, which, let's be honest, is always possible when the Giants are involved. Another positive is that I somehow went 8-8-0 last week in my football picks, meaning I finished the season with a winning mark of 127-120-10. What we can assume from that is, well, that I miscounted my games once because that adds up to 257 and there are only 256 games in an NFL season. In the interests of fairness, we're going to assume that I gave myself an extra win, meaning I correctly predicted 126 of the NFL's 256 games against the spread. I was correct a whopping 49.2% of the time. Not anywhere close to statistically significant either way, nor large enough for me to feel comfortable ever trying to make my living betting on football.

Hot damn Vegas is good.

In addition, the following bizarre statistical anomalies this year have reassured me that it was just a strange year, which we'll all agree to forget ever happened come February 7th.
-- The Giants and Buccaneers both finished 10-6 and did not make the playoffs while the 7-9 Seahawks did.
-- The Seahawks went 3-7 in their last 10 games.
-- The San Diego Chargers had the No. 1 ranked offense and defense in the League and did not make the playoffs. This can only partially be explained by the fact that nine punts were blocked in the NFL this season, and the Chargers gave up five of them.
-- The only team in the NFL to go undefeated in its division was, you guessed it, the Oakland Raiders. They did not make the playoffs.

Also, the final positive is that with the regular season over I can now know for sure just who the Giants will be visiting next season so I can start to plan potential trips to see a few new stadiums. This, of course, assumes there will be a season next year, and commissioner Roger Goodell came out today to say "Goddamnit, there will be." As it stands, I've had the Giants' 2011 visits to New England and San Francisco pegged as potential stops for some time, but the news that New York will also be visiting New Orleans and Arizona in addition to their divisional foes is intriguing. I won't know when, exactly, those games will be happening until April, but consider them all marked as potential destinations. And if you happen to live in any of those destinations, or are interested in traveling with me to them, well, we'll be talking. It's the least I can do to distract myself from the fact that I won't really care who wins any football game for the rest of the season. Well, except for the fact that I'll be rooting for whomever winds up playing the Eagles. In this case, the Packers.

Odd as that may be, I can at least respect the tradition of Green Bay and the fact that they aren't an annual rival of the Giants. Plus Lambeau Field is kind of awesome, so the Pack wins points for that.

I'll give you a full rundown of who is going to win this weekend and the rest of the playoffs later this week, when I've had the time to think about it analytically, but in closing, I'll give you a sneak peak of just what we'll be watching when Super Bowl XLV kicks off on February 6th.

Yep. You guessed it. Seattle vs. Kansas City for all the marbles.

Let's face it. It's the matchup we all wanted to begin with.

NFL Picks Week Ten: In Which I Forget About Thursdays

Boy those NFL Thursday night games sure do throw a wrench into things, don't they? When the NFL decided to inexplicably begin its Thursday Night Football slate two weeks before Thanksgiving, when one traditionally begins to associate Thursdays with football, the League may not have accounted for the frustrating lapses in setting fantasy football lineups and, er, weekend football picks.

And so, when everyone realized the Falcons were playing the Ravens last night about 90 minutes before kickoff, it set off a furious mad scramble around the world to make sure all the appropriate lineups were set and bye weeks had been avoided. In the case of one NFL beat writer I know, the thought of making sure Matt Ryan was starting in place of the bye-week bound Philip Rivers completely slipped their mind. And such is the nature of those newfangled Thursday games.

Yes, those of us who watched were treated to one of the most tremendous games we'd see all year, as the Ravens managed an impressive fourth-quarter comeback only to see it unravel on a stellar final minute drive that was called by Ryan's touchdown pass to Roddy White, but because it was Thursday, and with a stunningly small amount of pregame fanfare, most of us didn't notice and the whole thing felt somewhat artificial.

But at least the Falcons were wearing those totally sweet throwback uniforms. Even if they weren't their sweetest throwback uniforms being displayed here by wrestling superstar Goldberg during his brief NFL career.

So if we're going to get down to brass tacks here, I suppose I should just be open and blunt about these things. I entirely forgot to set up a list of this weekend's picks while I was recounting every painful loss I've ever witnessed as a sports fan, and the result is you all may or may not consider my pointless crusade to predict every NFL game this season entirely botched.

That would make you a nitpicky jerk, but you'd have your argument.

In any event, if you find it in your hearts to somehow forgive me for my lapse in judgment I will admit to you that I would have picked the Ravens over the Falcons to begin with anyway, and thus am willing to accept a loss on my season record because I'm just so damned honest.

At least I can take some solace, maybe, in the Giants this weekend, who have to opportunity to completely end the Cowboys' season once and for all with a 4:15 kickoff at Meadowlands Stadium. If you're looking at the line ESPN.com is showing today you'll notice the Giants are 14-point favorites. I'm going to pick them because the Giants have the No. 1 total defense and the No. 2 total offense in the League, I'm still riding a high from last week's 41-7 whupping of Seattle and the Cowboys haven't resembled a football team in weeks. And because I'm a homer. But I'm still kind of thrown by the fact that the Giants are 14-point favorites, which I'm fairly certain I've never seen in my life. This makes me extremely anxious and convinced they won't win, let alone cover, but such is the state of things for both of these teams.

Hopefully, my anxieties are proven ridiculous.

Last Week: 8-3-2
Season: 63-59-8 (Back over .500!)

Baltimore (Who knows?) over ATLANTA
NY GIANTS (-14) over Dallas
Detroit (+3) over BUFFALO
Minnesota (-2) over CHICAGO
NY Jets (-3) over CLEVELAND
INDIANAPOLIS (-7) over Cincinnati
Tennessee (-2) over MIAMI
TAMPA BAY (-7) over Carolina
Houston (+1) over JACKSONVILLE
Kansas City (-1) over DENVER
ARIZONA (-3) over Seattle
St. Louis (+6) over SAN FRANCISCO
New England (+5) over PITTSBURGH
WASHINGTON (+3) over Philadelphia

There it is, everyone. Enjoy the football.

1995 NFL Mail Bag: The Seattle Seahawks

Football nerds like myself might have taken large note yesterday with the news that Seahawks left tackle Walter Jones announced his retirement after 13 seasons. The left tackle is one of the more unsung positions on the field, or at least it was until the widespread release of The Blind Side last year, but the Seahawks, upon the announcement that Jones was retiring, were quick to regard him as one of the greatest of all time. And given some obscure but no less valid statistics, they probably have a point.

After all, the man was called for holding nine times. In his entire 13-year career.

That's just plain nutty. Almost as nutty is the fact that, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter, the Seahawks have already retired Jones' No. 71, rather than simply waiting for the season opener or a nationally televised showcase at some point this year. Then again, considering that former Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren called Jones the greatest offensive player he ever coached -- and Holmgren coached Joe Montana, Steve Young, Brett Favre and possibly the greatest player of all time, Jerry Rice -- perhaps this type of thing is warranted.

The Seahawks wasted little time in Jonesing up their website, with direct links to both Washington governor Christine Gregoire's declaration of Walter Jones Day, and, my favorite part, a video of Walter Jones highlights. The highlights are my favorite part for the simple reason that I couldn't fathom how one can edit together a highlight reel for a left tackle that lasts three minutes and 22 seconds. And yet, somehow the Seahawks did it.

Given the retirement of, arguably, the greatest player in the franchise's history, today seems as good a day as any to open up the ol' mail bag and see what the Seattle Seahawks deemed appropriate to send my way back in 1995.

The package itself is a fairly nondescript envelope with a return address from Kirkland, Washington, which I found somewhat peculiar since it wasn't in... "Seattle". But It's hardly unusual for teams to hold main offices outside their actual home cities these days, so I ought not to get too worked up. What I did find somewhat unusual however, is that most teams will include some sort of description of their team's history, an informational magazine, a media guide or a yearbook.

Or at the very least a letter thanking me for my interest.

But the Seahawks, apparently, had no interest in those frills in 1995. Perhaps that's because they didn't have much of a history to boast about at the time. Seattle was seven years removed from its last playoff appearance and wouldn't get its next one for four more years. At the time the Seahawks had yet to appear in a Super Bowl, and their uniforms were still in that somewhat garish, blue, green and silver phase.

So as a result, I received no letters or historic recounts, but I did receive two very nice posters, one of which I was particularly excited about being legitimately autographed until that preconception was dashed this very morning. But more on that later. The first poster was a bold and proud declaration of the Seahawks as "The Defense of the 90's", which featured the always enormous Cortez Kennedy tackling some poor defenseless running back from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

This poster is awesome in kitschy fashion for a few reasons. For one, and most obviously, those uniforms sported by the tangerine bedecked Bucs are fucking great. So bad, they're good in retrospect, which is probably why the Buccaneers chose to break them out again this year for a few games in lieu of their regular tasteful duds. Another thing that catches my eye is the proud title of "The Defense of the 90's", which, for a few reasons, seems like a bit of wishful thinking.

For one thing, this poster was produced during the 1994 season, which you can note from the NFL 75th anniversary patch sported on the jerseys of both teams. It was worn all season by every team in the League. At that point, the Seahawks were in the midst of quite the playoff drought. In fact, they were 23rd in the League in total defense that season according to NFL.com's statistics. The next season the Seahawks would drop to 25th. During the course of the 1990s, Seattle finished in the top ten four times and never higher than eighth. And while Kennedy, an eight-time pro bowler, is certainly one of the great defensive tackles of his era, the only other player of note on that defense, according to the poster itself, is Sam Adams, who was a rookie at the time, and while Adams would have a solid career, his best years came with the dominating defenses of the Baltimore Ravens in the early 2000s, with whom Adams would win Super Bowl XXXV.

So yes, "Defense of the 90's" might have been a bit of a stretch, though that goofy font is fun.

The other poster I received was an autographed shot of running back Chris Warren from Seattle's win over the Houston Oilers on December 11, 1994. Aside from knowing that I could win a free autographed football from Schuck's Auto Supply and KIRO 710 AM, I always thought this poster was awesome because from the day I got it I could have sworn it was actually autographed and not just printed on. I came to this conclusion, because, as best I could tell, the autograph itself appeared to reflect light in a way that was different from the rest of the poster, meaning it must be ink and not gloss.

Of course, this morning, my weekend house guest, Jessica Guerrero took a look at the poster as I was explaining to her my glee as if I were still nine years old, and she came to the conclusion that the autograph was actually printed like the rest of the poster. By her logic, there were no signs the poster had absorbed any ink nor any flawed inconsistencies that one would find in handwriting.

This was a disappointing revelation, as I had lived the last 15 years under the assumption that the Seahawks were one of the few teams to send me something of any real, appreciative value. Sure, Chris Warren is no Hall of Famer, but with three consecutive Pro Bowl appearances in the mid 1990s and 7,696 rushing yards to his credit, he is one of the more underrated backs of his time.

But alas, my possessing his real John Hancock was not meant to be. Somehow I will manage to strive on. It's nice outside, and it is Friday. Perhaps that will help. We can only hope.

In the meantime, I will simply just take solace in knowing that the Seahawks, despite their "Defense of the 90's", managed to go on to bigger and better things.

Happy Friday, everyone.