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For as many consecutive years as there were when I was growing up and the Super Bowl was little more than one final NFC blowout of the AFC to conclude the football season year after year, last weekend was somewhat reminiscent of the occasionally superior Championship games. However, when two top seeds end up meeting for that final game and the meeting will involve a legendary quarterback leading the record-setting best offense in the league against the a dominating defense that has been celebrated as being the NFL's best all year, there's very good reason to be excited.
Make no mistake, the Seattle victory over San Francisco in the nightcap last Sunday will be long remembered as one of the greats (despite some very poor officiating, although more so for the Richard Sherman batted tip in the end zone that led to a game-sealing INT). The game this Sunday is leaving countless pundits and observers lacking confidence in declaring one team a likely victor. The game is simply that close. I'm looking forward to a thoroughly enjoyable Super Bowl, and can honestly say that I'll be happy for whichever team's players are taking turns hoisting the Lombardi Trophy.
Perhaps it was fitting that the first half to this season concluded in Cleveland, the new home (well, at least for this year) for Luol Deng. For the most part, the trade was only surprising in that the Bulls front office actually pulled the trigger on a deal. Too many times in recent years, it has seemed as though this organization clings to its own overvaluation of its own talent. All too often, the belief in players like Deng or Kirk Hinrich or name any other draft pick has led to many fans insisting that the team should not part with said young players because their ceilings will be just as high as a Kobe or a LeBron.
We know that Luol Deng's ceiling is not anywhere near that high, but his current floor remains pretty darn high as is. In Luol, Chicago fans were privileged to have a nightly solid effort from a team player who understood his role, played solid defense, and always kept his nose clean. In fact, Deng's numerous humanitarian efforts while a member of the Bulls cannot be understated.
I consider myself to be among many who were surprised to learn that Deng left Chicago as the fourth-leading scorer in Bulls history. Still, after being a steady contributor for nearly a decade in the Windy City, there was no denying that it was in the organization's best interest to obtain some sort of compensation while available before Luol became a free agent and earned a paycheck that Chicago could not afford to sign. We are now only halfway through a completely lost and unwatchable season, but the many draft picks that the Bulls got in exchange for Deng could give fans reason to be a little more optimistic. We have no idea what level of player former league MVP Derrick Rose is going to be when he returns to the floor, but the ability to sign new, young talent at more reasonable rates while Tom Thibodeau is still in charge (however long that lasts ... ) could help the Bulls contend again. One day.
Most everybody was right as the favorites emerged from a (at least compared to what we got during the Wild Card round) fairly lackluster set of football games last weekend in the Divisional Playoffs. Despite my sense that we were bound for multiple surprises, we instead arrive at what many believe will appropriately involve the four best teams in the NFL. As one of the sports radio callers put it the other night, "It's like two Super Bowl" today.
I'm really looking forward to finally relaxing after working six days, roughly 50 hours this week, and taking in two very intriguing contests. The Brady-Manning marquee "legacy" matchup has already been beaten to death, and the QBs will be the centers of attention throughout that game. But I'm probably looking even more forward to the nightcap in raucous Seattle where the game is likely to be decided by the better of two great defenses. Make no mistake, I'm thinking this is going to be pretty thrilling.
And this, of course, means that both games will quickly devolve into completely lopsided blowouts. Who knows? Point is, you could tell me that you're confident, you're "sure" that you know what two teams is going to be in the Super Bowl this year, and I would not argue with any of the four possible scenarios remaining. There are attractive reasons to believe that any of the four teams left could be on the field hoisting the Lombardi trophy in a few weeks.
All of this should make clear that I have no idea which teams are winning today, but I'll give it a guess anyway.
So, this is supposed to be bedtime, but I couldn't not post my annual guesses about what names are going to be read tomorrow morning when Oscar nominations get announced. I'll likely be limiting my thoughts in the picks only to explaining my omissions or expressing who I'll be saying I was going to/wanted to pick instead. Still, I made the graphics on Sunday while watching football, and while I was tempted to change some of those picks in reading the predictions of others, I'll just stick with what I already had.
As has been the case in recent years, I feel like I'm falling further and further out of the movie loop. I've seen a few of the potential nominees, but I'm guessing that it's highly unlikely I'll have viewed all the of the films by the time the awards are handed out. Of course, seeing the movies can have just as much negative impact on guessing as not seeing them (there's no real sentimental favorite thus far that I'm plugging in here despite odds being against him/her/it). Anyway, I'll probably return to this post again on Sunday to add reaction, regrets, and all that good stuff.
(UPDATE: While I typically make my nomination reactions a separate post, I've simply added my thoughts in blue to these initial predictions on a category-by-category basis.)
This weekend offers more than a few scenarios that we've seen before in recent years. Over in the AFC, both the Broncos and the Patriots are once again hosting Divisional Playoff games. The same two teams were widely expected to meet in the AFC Championship last season, but the "Mile High Miracle" of blown coverage helped Baltimore stun Denver and go on to New England. I had picked an upset last year in that conference, but unfortunately, I went with Houston knocking off the Pats. Once again this year, both the Broncos and the Patriots are considerable favorites to meet for an opportunity to go to the Super Bowl.
Meanwhile, the top seed in the NFC involves a rematch of a lopsided rout from earlier this season when the Seahawks thrashed the Saints in Seattle. Of course, the Seahawks are again considered to be the favorites not only to win this weekend, but represent the NFC in the Super Bowl. However, it was only three years ago that New Orleans was presumed to be far superior to the 7-9 Seahawks in a Wild Card playoff game in Seattle. As it turned out, Marshawn Lynch went full-on "Beast Mode" and gave us the legendary crotch grab on the way into the end zone as the Seahawks stunned the Saints. So while Seattle won both of those meetings with New Orleans up in the Great Northwest, we know all too well that there's a real danger to reading too much into regular season meetings. Surely Sean Payton, Drew Brees, and the rest of the Saints learned some lessons and put up a better fight this time around, no?
There were certainly a few surprises last week as road teams took three of the four games, so it seems reasonable to assume we'll very well get an upset or two or three this week.
Well, that didn't take long. After an entire season of wondering and debating whether the Bears would bring back Jay Cutler, it turns out that the best quarterback in team history will still be wearing a Chicago uniform for the foreseeable future. Make no mistake, this is great news. Under Marc Trestman and now working with weapons like Matt Forte, Brandon Marshall, Alshon Jeffery, and Martellus Bennett—not to mention doing so behind an offensive line that was significantly improved from years past—there appears to be more than enough reason to be optimistic about this Bears offense going forward.
Now, that defense on the other hand ... Well, there's a lot of work to be done this off-season on that side of the ball. And the Cutler deal, while costly, doesn't completely prevent moves from being made. Rather, there's a number of other players on this year's team that Bears management will need to evaluate and decide whether it is really in the organization's best interest to bring back. Julius Peppers is probably one of the most expensive question marks on defense, and his virtual disappearance this season in terms of impact is not likely to have many fans shedding tears if indeed Chicago decides to part ways with the defensive end. Charles "Peanut" Tillman, who didn't finish the year after sustaining a triceps injury, would not be as easy to say goodbye to. Still, if he's unwilling to accept a hometown discount. And then there's just a variety of other positions on defense that need upgrades, possibly through free agency but more likely through the draft.
Again, a lot of work to be done this off-season.
Last year, the fourth-seeded Baltimore Ravens team began a Super Bowl run in the Wild Card round. The year before that, the fourth-seeded New York Giants once again went on to upset the New England Patriots. And in 2011, the Green Bay Packers were hoisting the Vince Lombardi trophy despite being a sixth seed.
So while the consensus right now seems to be favoring top-seeded Denver and Seattle to emerge from these playoffs, there's good reason to believe that it will in fact be one of the teams playing this weekend that ends this season as champions. Now I'm not quite ready to declare make any bold predictions this far in advance (I'm the guy who had the Lions winning it all this year, after all), but I'm not ruling out that there could very well be a team that emerges from this weekend as an attractive underdog to go with in the Divisional Playoffs.
While my initial seeds were a bit off (aside from Kansas City) in my pre-season predictions, I did have five of the six AFC playoff teams right and four of the six NFC teams. So there's still some hope that I can add a little more green to that page by year's end, but it seems like this season is sort of doomed to be a case of "I was close."
Hopefully my predictions are a little more right on now that I've got a better sampling of what these teams can do. We're preparing to head out of town this weekend, so at least posting my picks now will spare me the semi-annual attempts to post these picks from my phone or some other difficult situation caused by a combination of internet troubles and too much delay on my part. It also means that I'm likely to miss at least one game, but hopefully I can catch the best of the weekend action.
I suppose that I am perhaps entitled to feel somewhat disappointed by the Bears closing out the season with consecutive losses when a win in either one of the two final games would have resulted in this year's team winning the NFC North and going to the playoffs in Marc Trestman's first year. The fact that the defense was so abysmal on a legendary level probably spared fans the additional embarrassment of a nationally televised playoff loss. Of course, I'm the guy who picked the Lions to win this year's Super Bowl, so I'm still more saddened that after having such a golden opportunity this season, Detroit somehow found a way to screw it up.
And so yet another year ends with Green Bay heading to the playoffs while Chicago stays home. There was certainly a lot to like about the improvements that Trestman made to the Bears offense this season, but there is going to be a lot of much-deserved focus on improvements to the other side of the ball this off-season. The Sunday night blowout loss in Philadelphia was incredibly humbling, but the game-winning Aaron Rodgers TD toss in the season finale was again the result of a defensive lapse. We could sit here and marvel on how very close the Bears to winning the division this season, but truth be told, we should feel fortunate that the team was able to hang around in post-season discussion for as long as they did because of the lackluster competition. In any other year, the division should have been wrapped up in Week 14.
There's some people who will ask why we should be commending Trestman for going 8-8 when Lovie Smith was fired after finishing 10-6, but I'd still feel like the needle is pointing up for Chicago going forward despite the win-loss record.
