Do the Packers still have a chance to win the Super Bowl if Aaron Rodgers has an average game?

Some would say with confidence that outside of Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers is the single most important player to his team in the NFL.   I would be hard-pressed to say that those “some people” are wrong. You could certainly argue that despite being a first round draft pick Aaron Rodgers has had to work twice as hard to earn the respect of Packers fans.  Against all odds, Aaron Rodgers greatly exceeded the expectations that would be laid before him.  I could be like every other blogger and discuss the obstacles and distractions that Brett Favre created, and how at even such a young age Aaron Rodgers was able to prosper with stats like the following: Having the highest average QB Rating in NFL History! He has the lowest career interception rate at a stunning 1.43 percent!  I could talk about the amazing post-season he is having!  Above all, the media, owners, and players depict him as possibly the classiest player in the league, and I believe he will soon probably take the roll from Peyton Manning as being the face of the NFL.    Due to #12’s recent success there is absolutely no way the Steelers are going to let Aaron Rodgers drop back for 5 seconds to throw the ball down field. Blitzes will be coming from every angle. This post will about the “other players” that need to step up to neutralize the aggressive style of the Steelers defense.

Over the history of the NFL there is a very common trend among successful post-season teams.  They are able to run the football, and control the time of possession. The packers finished the regular season 24^th in rushing yards, with James Starks ranked 47^th in the league running as an individual.  Then, Mike McCarthy called upon what he proclaimed “our most talented back.” The rookie James Starks came out of nowhere. With his ability to run with both speed and power he is a very difficult back to tackle.  Also, we cannot forget about Wisconsin’s newly found favorite power-back.  On short yardage downs you can hear the roars from the crowd KUHHHHNNNNNNNN.  John Kuhn is a very strong running back with the ability to push a pile of big defensive lineman backwards.  If the packers can get both these guys rolling, it will certainly make a statement that they are not afraid of running the ball against Pittsburgh’s “steel curtain.” 

Outside of the Aaron Rodgers, it’s no secret that the two veteran leaders on the Packers offense are Greg Jennings and Donald Driver.  I feel like these two players have been around since I started playing MADDEN on Sega Genesis!  They may be old by Wide Receivers standards, but they certainly do not play like it.  Both players have huge big-play capabilities.  Quick passing and yardage after catch will be essential if the Packers want to be the side raising the Lombardi Trophy at the end of the game on Sunday.  The Packers will certainly have to rely heavily on the athletic ability of Jennings and Driver to make the first tackler miss in order for the Packers offense to keep the chains moving. 

In conclusion, Aaron Rodgers will need to get the ball out of his hands quickly in order for the Packers to be successful.   Along with consistently running the ball, quick passing, and relentless Wide Receiver screens, the Packers have an excellent opportunity to be raising the Lombardi Trophy at the end of the day, and Aaron Rodgers can give a little wink into to the TV and let Brett Favre know the packers and doing just fine. 

5 Things I Learned from the AFC Championship Game

by Andrew Neumann

After talking about the NFC Championship in Friday’s column (scroll down right quick-like and read that one first if you haven’t yet) it would make sense to cover the AFC Championship. Or as it was known all week to people outside of Chicago and Green Bay, the main event. Never before can I remember a Championship week where one game was so much more heavily regarded than the other. The only recent example that springs to mind in 2006, when New England matched up with Indianapolis in the AFC, while Chicago played New Orleans in the NFC. But at least that year had the whole post-Katrina Saints storyline to it. This year, the NFC had Green Bay favored on the road and no one particularly excited about it.

Not that the AFC teams were seen as that much better, just that it was a sexier match-up (I promise that’s the last time I refer to a football game as ‘sexy’ on this blog). Green Bay opens as the favorite in the Super Bowl, so it proves that the hype for the AFC game over the NFC game was about sizzle, not substance.

Here are 5 Things I Learned from the AFC Championship Game:

Quick Note: If this article is shorter than Friday’s, it’s because I just cut my fingernails and typing hurts my right index finger. But it’s Super Bowl time, need to gut it out and play through injury).

1. Football Teams Are Like Characters in Greek Mythology

In Greek mythology, all the protagonists have one fatal flaw that keeps them mortal, preventing them from ascending to a Godlike status. Football teams are no different. Sometimes the flaw doesn’t seem like a bad thing, but will ultimately cause the hero just as much grief as it pleasure. The Patriots fatal flaw in 2007 was arrogance. The same thing that inspired them to hammer teams 56-7 when they could have pulled their starters out, the same attitude that caused them to get to 18-0, was also the thing that caused that last game to end in disappointment. They simply knew they were better than the Giants, and no gameplan, no pass rush, no guy catching the ball of his head were going to derail their destiny, until it did.

There are many things that can be a team’s fatal flaw: laziness, unjustified faith, selfishness, selflessness, relying on talent, relying on coaching, relying on luck, relying on Tony Romo. But the Jets fatal flaw is one that often gets discounted: pride.

I’m not talking about arrogance again, which would be taking other teams too lightly. I’m talking about taking too much pride in who you are and what you’ve accomplished. Now I doubt there’s any Jet player or coach who consciously thought, “We Beat the Patriots in Foxboro, we can beat Pittsburgh easily” but when you constantly hear a team talking about being the best, that’s just as troubling. In Vince Lombardi’s first season with the Packers, he said “Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly pursue perfection, knowing full well we’ll never get there.” It seems to me that Rex Ryan’s attitude was more “Gentlemen, this team is perfect unless we do something to screw it up.” That attitude probably helped the team this year, as they won a ton of close games against weaker teams, because they knew that they should win the game. But in Pittsburgh, the sense was that they thought the only thing standing in their way was themselves. Unfortunately, Pittsburgh is a team that can create some problems for you, whether you believe in them or not. They almost pulled off a miraculous comeback, but before they realized they were playing the Steelers, and not their own destiny, it was 24-0 and just a bit too far to catch up.

You should believe you’re capable of being the best, not that you’re the best already.

2. There’s Not A Team In The NFL Good Enough To Take A Half Off

This one’s simple. The Jets didn’t play any football until about the 1:30 mark of the Second Quarter. The Steelers didn’t play any offense in the second half until the 1:30 mark of the Fourth Quarter. The Jets lost because got down 24-0 instead of 17-0. Pittsburgh would’ve lost if they made one more mistake. You’d think that, up 24-0 at home and 30 minutes from the Super Bowl, any team would be able to eat enough clock where the issue is never in doubt. But the Steelers seemed to be doing everything they could to lose that game in the Second Half. Conversely, the Jets, victorious in Pittsburgh a month earlier, and coming off a road victory over their archrivals, came out like the JV team scrimmaging the Varsity.

3. It’s Better To Let A Guy Go A Year Too Early Than A Year Too Late

Willie Parker, Jerome Bettis, Antwaan Randel-el, Joey Porter, Alan Faneca, Santonio Holmes,  Clark Haggans,  Kimo Van Oelhoffen, Jeff Reed, Duce Staley, Larry Foote, Bill Cowher.

These are all guys the Steelers have allowed, or in some cases, told to walk since their first title in 2005. This included Joey Porter, who had been the backbone of their defense previously and Santonio Holmes, the MVP of their Super Bowl win in 2008. True, some of these guys retired, but the Steelers didn’t exactly beg them to stay either.

The formula for Pittsburgh has been simple: Big Ben, Hines Ward, and Troy Polamalu and Defensive Coordinator Dick LeBeau are the core. Other guys like Heath Miller, James Harrison, Ike Taylor, Aaron Smith and Max Starks are the next rung down- essential guys. Almost everyone else is replaceable. A lot of teams would have ponied up big money to retain guys like Porter or Faneca, who went after those big post-title contracts that get handed out. After all, if you just a won a Championship, you do whatever you can to keep everyone, right? Wrong. The Steelers have put a system in place that wins games. It’s better to cut a guy loose and watch him have some success elsewhere- like Santonio Holmes, then it is to sign a guy to a big, long-term deal and be stuck paying him after his value has run out.

The difficulty in this is figuring out the 6-10 guys who are indispensable. For instance, it’s hard to imagine the Steelers would have has this same success if in 2004, the Steelers had decided to re-sign Free Agent Plaxico Burress, and let Hines Ward go. Ward was threatening to hold out in 2005, and at the time, many would have said the Pittsburgh’s future lay with Burress. But they knew which guy fit their core the best, kept him, and let Burress go. Even though Plax had success in New York, Hines Ward went on to be the Super Bowl XL MVP and arguably the greatest Steeler Wide Reciever of all time.

4. Enough With Heinz Field Hosting Everything in Pittsburgh

By my count, Heinz Field has hosted 12 Steelers games if you count preseason, 6 or 7 University of Pittsburgh football games, high school football playoff games, and a Hockey game in the past few months. Unfortunately they couldn’t squeeze in a monster truck rally the night before the AFC Championship. Heinz Field, which sports a natural grass surface, gets more use than any other field in the league. And with a 6:30 kickoff and temperatures in the teens, the playing surface during the most important game of the year was at various times bad and awful. I know that a field in Pennsylvania in January isn’t going to look like the 17^th green at Augusta, but maybe if we stopped hosting Altoona v. North Harrisburg in the High School Playoffs for the whole month of December,  pro athletes vying for a chance to go to the Super Bowl wouldn’t be slipping all over the damn field.

5. Parity in the NFL? Not in the AFC

(Look for a column later in the week that explores this issue in more detail)

In the last 10 years, there have been 10 different NFC Champions. 62.5 percent of the conference has gone to the Super Bowl in a 10 year period. Of the 6 who haven’t made it, 2 have been to the NFC Championship game, 3 have been to the second round, and one is Detroit.

Know how many different AFC Champions we’ve had in that same time period? 4.

And if we take out Oakland in 2002, we’re looking at New England 4 times, Pittsburgh 3 times and Indianapolis twice. Only 5 other teams have been to the Championship game.  On the other hand, 6 teams have not won a playoff game in the decade.

It’s been a decade dominated by 3 teams, which is not that uncommon, except when comparing it to the current state of the NFC. There have been good teams in the NFC, teams that have been relevant for a while. Philly went to 4 NFC Championship games in a row. Seattle won their division and got to the Divisional round all 3 years. The Bears received a Bye 4 different times. But no team has put it together quite like the Big 3 in the AFC, which is surprising given the competition. Next time, we’ll take a look at both conferences, how Pittsburgh, Indy, and New England have managed to stay dominant, and look at Dynasties that weren’t in the NFC, and why 2010 finally knocked the Chargers out of the discussion in the AFC.

Is it a big surprise the Steelers are in the big game?

 

Love him or hate the guy, Ben Roethlisberger is a warrior.   In his first 7 seasons he has made the playoffs 5 times.   At the young age of 27 Big Ben is playing a week from Sunday with a chance to win yet another Super Bowl. He is as good as any quarterback when it comes to keeping a play alive.  What is even scarier from an opposing defense standpoint is that even when you blitz him, the first guy to get to him usually can not bring him down alone, which leaves a defense very vulnerable to a big play.  He is going for his third super bowl at the young age of 27!!!  That would tie him for the lead among active quarterbacks.  Despite harsh sexual assault accusations, he has managed to concentrate on the game of football, and being a young leader on a veteran, championship-caliber team.

Mike Tomlin is one of the very few head coaches in the league that is loved by many and hated by nobody.  If people knew his track record his reputation would only be enhanced.  He started his career as the defensive backs coach with one of the greatest defenses I have ever witnessed. The 2002 Tampa Bay Bucks, who would win the super bowl the following year. Later he became the Vikings defensive coordinator in his first year making them the sixth best defensive in the league. Finally he was hired as the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers after Bill Cowher decided to take a hiatus from coaching.  In his first year with the Steelers they ranked number 1 in overall defense.    I expect Mike Tomlin will be the coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers for a very long time, and along with Big Ben, will have the opportunity to set some Super Bowl records in the process.

In my opinion a football team is a big puzzle. It consists of pieces in which can be made with  all shapes and sizes, which can be measured in both quantitative and qualitative terms. The Pittsburgh Steelers are 7-1 this year on the road.  Besides talent, to be successful on the road your team needs to have the “intangibles”.  These qualities are difficult to describe, but are universal to the common football fan.  The Steelers display these qualities as well as anyone.  When both teams are traveling a pretty similar distance, you can count on many sports betting enthusiasts (who will all out during the super bowl) using these two factors to predict the outcome.  These qualities combined with the stellar coaching of Mike Tomlin, and fearless play of Big Ben, it is no surprise to me that the Steelers are playing one week from Sunday, for another Super Bowl. 

On a final note, you can count on seeing a relentless Steelers crowd in Arlington Texas next Sunday.  There are not many professional teams in the world that travel better then the black and yellow, blue-collar, Steelers fans.  In my opinion, if Troy Polamalu can make an early big defensive play, the Steelers fans will get loud, and have a great chance of winning yet another Super Bowl.  

Housekeeping Note

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-Neumann and Kyle

What I Learned on Championship Weekend (Part 1)

by Andrew Neumann

Championship Weekend is really the last stand for NFL die-hards. After 17 weeks of Sunday games from early afternoon until well after midnight, the first 2 rounds of the playoffs provide us with games all day Saturday and Sunday each week. By comparison, Championship weekend is paltry. Only 2 games, which don’t begin until 3:00PM. But the stakes of each game, with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line, more than make up for the diminishing quantity of remaining games.

These are games that are still played on someone’s home turf, in front of real fans, and most importantly, not watched on television be people who “Only care about the commercials.” Because make no mistake, as much as the championship game of the NFL should be the highlight of any football fan’s season, you’ll spend most of your Super Bowl Sunday being forced to “try this new salsa recipe” or rolling your eyes while your friend tries to explain to his girlfriend the difference between an incomplete pass and a fumble.

So Championship Sunday remains the last refuge of the real fan. While not the smorgasbord of 14 games a Sunday in November with Sunday Ticket presents, the fact that good teams are going at it for a shot to play in the game that will ultimately be ruined by your horrendous buffalo wing and 11 Heineken induced bathroom excursion that takes up the whole 3^rd Quarter, is reason enough to take notes.

Here are 5 things I learned from the NFC Championship Game, with 5 on the AFC tomorrow.

1. The Bears Are What We Thought They Were- Fortunate.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the Bears stunk, or that they didn’t make some of their own luck, but looking back; practically everything broke right for the Bears this year. They got that Calvin Johnson call in Week 1, which was the right call, but still was a break for the Bears. They then won their next 2 games by 10 total points to get to 3-0. In fact, 7 of the Bears 11 wins this year were by less than a touchdown. The only teams they beat handily? Minnesota twice, Carolina, and Detroit. Looking to be in a dogfight for a Bye with 2 weeks to go, Philly inexplicably drops a game at home to the Vikings, being Quarterbacked by Joe Webb. The Bears are locked into the 2 Seed.

Then, in a huge upset, the 7-9 Seahawks beat the defending champion Saints in the first round of the playoffs. So the Bears were in the NFC Championship game this week, simply by beating the worst playoff team in history in the 2^nd Round. And since the Packers hammered the top seeded Falcons, the game is in Chicago.

2. Jay Cutler is Whatever You Think He Is

There might not be a more enigmatic player than Jay Cutler. One game, he’s playing catch with DeAngelo Hall in an embarrassing loss to the Redskins. A month later he’s making all the right plays as the Bears stun the red-hot Eagles. On Sunday, he was either pulling a LaDanian Tomlinson (milking an injury so you can miss the Championship Game) or suffering from a torn MCL and being held off the field by the doctors. Cutler is one the few QB’s who could come out of the NFC Championship game, and people are seriously wondering whether he was benched. Trying to figure Cutler out is ultimately going to be impossible, because there’s nothing to figure out. He’s every bit the artist he is at his best, and every bit the clown he looks like at his worst. He’s a fiery leader of his teammates, and a self-absorbed asshole who literally cares only about himself. Equal parts Ryan Leaf and Peyton Manning.

3. The Packers Are A Better Dome Team

As much as people love talking about the Frozen Tundra and showing footage of the Ice Bowl, this current Packers team is suited best for indoor ball. With their offense clicking on all cylinders Sunday in the first half, and seemingly on their way to a blowout, all of a sudden the momentum died. In fact, the only points scored by the Packers in the second half were on an Interception return from the Nose Tackle. It’s because the Packers are playing with roughly their 8^th string Running Back, have lost their starting Tight End, and feature Wide Outs best suited for the deep route. Even the defense, with speed guys like Clay Matthews Jr. are really better suited for a mild climate. Now that they’ve survived the hostile climate of Soldier Field, they go play indoors at Cowboys Stadium and can run the same kind of game-plan they had last week in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome. That’s bad news for Pittsburgh.

4. A Punter Can Win You a Game

Maybe I didn’t learn this on Sunday, but I was reminded of it. I’ve had a rather rough year with my Punter, Matt. I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but my patented move of “Predict something horrible all year and you’re either miserable or wrong” was never more true than with “Matt Dodge will cost the Giants a game this year.” What I didn’t realize is he would cost us the game, the 2 seed, the Division title, the Playoffs, and many hours of sleep, all with one swing of his horrible, awkward leg.

Anyway, where was I, oh yeah the Packers. Green Bay’s Punter Tim Masthay neutralized Chicago’s biggest weapon, Punt Returner Devin Hester all day Sunday. Masthay punted 8 times, with an average of 41.8 years. Chicago had 4 returns of 38 yards. Total. Only 16 of them came from Hester.  On a day when neither offense did much in the second half, a Punt Return TD could have changed the whole complexion of the game. But Punting in the cold, in the wind, Masthay didn’t let Hester get even a moderate return off. Thanks Tim, for restoring my faith in Punters.

5. Seeding Is Becoming More and More Meaningless

Know how many times the NFC’s #1 Seed failed to reach the NFC Championship game in the first 36 years of the NFC? 0. Know how many times it’s happened in the last 4 years? 3.

It used to go like this: A few decent teams would lock up on Wild Card weekend. There’d be some good games and some exciting finishes. Then, the top seeds in each conference would kick the hell out of everyone the next week and we’d see 1 v.2 in the Conference Championship Games. Not anymore.

In 2005, the 6 seed Steelers went on the road 3 times, won 3 times, and won the super Bowl. In 2007, the Giants did the same things from the 5 seed. The Packers have won 3 in a row on the road to get to the Super Bowl from the 6 seed. In both 2006 and 2008, one conference lost both their Bye teams in their first playoff games. This year, both 6 seeds beat both 1 seeds.

I think this speaks to the overall parity of the league, rather than a need to change the system. But in the next few years, don’t be surprised to see teams worrying less about seeding, or even winning their division, once they wrap up a playoff spot. 2009 ’s 1 seed v. 1 seed Super Bowl notwithstanding, recent history suggests it’s more important to be healthy than it is to be the 1 Seed.