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It only figures that after I talked about how long it had been since we had a good ol' fashioned Super Bowl blowout when making my final pick, that's exactly what the endlessly hyped big game ended up being. We had been led to believe that the game would certainly be a lot closer at the half—or hell, even at the end of the first quarter. Instead, Seattle dominated from start to finish and capped off a wildly successful year.
While I did indeed have the Broncos losing the Super Bowl when I made my original predictions this season, I only had the Seahawks going as far as the NFC Championship. For one reason or another, I believed this would finally be the year that the Detroit Lions broke through in the biggest way. So, oops. I was right about a Rodgers injury impacting the Packers negatively, but Detroit never capitalized.
Looking back on all of my picks, Detroit was one of only two division winners I was incorrect about this year (with the Cowboys blowing an opportunity to win the East in the season finale). Overall, I had 15 of the 32 teams in their actual final spots (getting the orders exactly right in the NFC South and AFC West, but having absolutely none of the teams in the NFC East) and correctly predicted nine of the dozen teams that made the playoffs (five of the six in the AFC and four of the six in the NFC).
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.
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.
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.
While not yet technically eliminated from the playoffs, it seems to be a safer assumption that this first season of the Trestman era will end immediately after Week 17. For me, it's more or less what I expected coming into this year, although the loss to the Vikings in Minnesota that concluded this most recent quarter of the season was more discouraging than anything I could have imagined. Much of the week on Chicago sports radio has been spent calling to question the logic of attempting a 47-yard field goal on second down in overtime. Indeed, for a guy who has seemingly been as smart and analytically aware as Marc Trestman has seemed to be all year long, his defense of the decision left a lot to be desired. Then again, perhaps a poor defense is the best summary of this Bears season.
The team continues to deal with a set of highly consequential injuries to arguably two of its most important players on the two sides of the ball in Cutler on offense and Briggs on defense. There's been plenty of bright spots on the offense this year (for once), what with Matt Forte's continuing efficiency, Alshon Jeffery breaking out, and Martellus Bennett being a tight end who can actually, you know, catch. Oh, and that McCown guy's been pretty effective too. The defense, however, is even more dreadful than my initial fears about depth led me to fear they would be. Never in my lifetime can I recall Chicago having a league worst run defense.
I don't doubt that the team will continue to battle in these final four games, what with the North being similarly pathetic and underwhelming. Oh, and Jay Cutler has a payday coming up.
Even during the conclusion to the last quarter of the season, there were signs that this year's Bears defense was going to be one that was going to struggle. Still, it was hard for me to imagine that Chicgao's D would be as awful as it has been, and things only got worse this past quarter when Lance Briggs became the latest player to sustain an injury. Oh, and Jay Cutler went down too.
I was preparing to search for a very frumpy-looking Marc Trestman photo to use for this quarter's graphic after the team suffered a convincing loss to New Orleans, came up with on the losing end of a shootout with the woeful Washington Redskins, and barely beat a then-winless New York Giants. Then suddenly, lo and behold, this past Monday night in a game that the rival Packers were supposed to basically have wrapped up by the end of the first half, an incredible thing happened: Green Bay's star quarterback was not only sacked, not only suffered an injury that forced him from the game, not only will miss several weeks of action, but all of this was the result of a play by much-maligned first round draft pick Shea McClellin.
Not only did the Bears pull off a stunning upset on Monday night to stay above .500, but Chicago now sits in a three-way tie for first place. With Jay Cutler expected to return in a matter of weeks, the playoffs still seem like a very real possibility for many fans. Perhaps that's fair, but I say slow down. After all, the Lions were my Super Bowl pick. Still, there is one Wild Card out there.
For as long as I've been a Bears fan, the team's identity came largely from its defense. From fans to coaches, the football team has long lived in the enormous shadow cast by the 1985 World Champion defense. Ever since then, there's been constant whining about the improvements that need to be made to various components of the offense, but fans could always seem to take comfort in the quality of the team's defense.
Of course, it seems like I've been saying for the past few years that the defense is aging. The window was closing. And now this past off-season, iconic linebacker Brian Urlacher retired after the Bears supposedly "low-balled" him by giving him a modest offer. The amount is kind of trivial since in his previous season, the man did not really play like he did a decade ago in his youth. Oh, and no other team wanted him.
Meanwhile, the defensive-minded Lovie Smith didn't get an offer from anybody after being let go, and his replacement Marc Trestman has been referred to as a "quarterback whisperer" for the success he's had working with numerous top QBs around the NFL. This once again gave some Bears fans reason for optimism about the offensive prospects, for once. And now four games into Trestman's first season, it's still taking a little getting used to. The defense most certainly isn't as good as it has been in years past, but the offense may be more potent than its ever been. In today's NFL, that could make this team a real contender.
But it's not that easy, of course. Nothing ever is.
A whole variety of new faces in new places this season in the NFL, but what difference will that really make? Some of last season's strongest teams appear to have gotten even better and most of the initial picks I've seen thus far seem to have either the Broncos or the Patriots as the pretty clear favorites in the AFC. Over in the NFC, the opinion is a little more mixed, as the conference has a number of teams that could be contenders, but the Packers and the 49ers seem to be popular choices.
This is now my fifth year of making NFL predictions, and my track record really isn't that great. Ever since the first year of making picks in 2009, the only season I had more than half the teams in their correct final spots, I've had a fairly lousy track record at doing this. Nonetheless, making predictions is more or less what this blog has become entirely dedicated to and I'm anxious to see how this NFL season plays out.
I'll attempt to take a few risks this year so this doesn't look like another version of the average of everybody else's predicted finishes, but ultimately I think that it's probably smarter to go with the consensus in the AFC and relegate the surprises to the NFC. That almost certainly means the opposite was true.
