Blog Posts For Tag: Steelers

No Bears, no Packers, no Saints, no Chargers oh my! What will Week 5 behold without two of the classic football franchises and what may be the NFL’s best football team. We can do without the Chargers until the last five or six weeks since that is when they start playing for real and making there annual improbable playoff run. This week definitely has some interesting match ups, but there are plenty of blowouts on the horizon to boost the fantasy numbers.

The first week of football is great for two reasons. The first is that you get to watch 10-plus hours of football. I know I woke up at 7:00 in the morning because I was so freaking giddy to sit on the couch for 10 hours. It somehow seems ridiculous that I could get so excited to play an invalid for the day. The second reason is that suddenly you have real stats to compare and make educated guesses and bets for Week 2. Below are my guesses, with scores compiled by some miraculous mental operation that takes into account stats, injuries, the latest Vegas lines, and useless emotional allegiances.

It seems fitting that Super Bowl XLIII came down to the final minutes of the fourth quarter. The best games build tension until the final minutes when a few memorable drives define whole careers. This season’s 27-23 victory by the Pittsburgh Steelers over the Arizona Cardinals will go down in history as one of the best in history. It had two momentum changing drives in the final three minutes and a safety to boot.

Super Bowl!!! After this incredible season in which the chi of the year was changed with the injury of Tom Brady, the NFL season has come down to a game between the 14-4 Pittsburgh Steelers dominating defense and the 12-7 Arizona Cardinals tremendous passing attack. To end it all, I have a few predictions to make.

Eddy Curry began his career as a big boy for the Chicago Bulls with a lot of potential. Now he is a big man for the New York Knicks with the world around him falling apart. He has dropped out of the rotation, been accused of sexual harassment by his former male limo driver, and recently found out that his former girlfriend and mother of his three-year-old son has been murdered.

Does great offense trump great defense? Anybody in Chicago who watched Michael Jordan terrorize the league’s best perimeter defenders every night would say so. Anyone who has watched Alex Rodriguez win intense battles at the plate for the New York Yankees against Cy Young winners would say so. Anybody who remembers the smooth skating of Wayne Gretzky would say so. So, in this upcoming Super Bowl will the explosive Cardinals offense be able to overcome the dominating Steelers defense?

Now that the only high seeded team left is the Pittsburgh Steelers I think it is official that all bets are off. Say what you will about the Steelers defense, the offense has been inconsistent and the playoffs, especially the conference championship, is no time to test your defenses ability to carry a game.

The experts are dumbfounded and I am looking back at most post Friday and wondering how I could have been so blind. Surely, everybody in the Carolinas and Tennessee assumed they were going to have another week to find NFL Playoff tickets. Three of the four favored teams lost this weekend. The Ravens started out by surprising the Titans 13-10, then Cardinals embarrassed the Panthers 33-13, and the upsets were capped off by the Eagles delivering the emotional defeat of the New York Giants 23-11. Only the Pittsburgh Steelers were able to take advantage of home field advantage in a 35-24 win over the San Diego Chargers that was much more one-sided than the score reveals.

Yes, the Florida Gators won their second BCS championship with a 24-14 victory over the Oklahoma Sooners. The season’s end was of course embroiled in the controversy, for the sixth time in 10 years (I thought the new system was supposed to clear up the confusion not further institutionalize it). There are loud voices of outrage…again.

This time the argument is that the Utah Utes have been robbed of the college championship for the second time (the first time was in 2004). Luckily my preference for the professional game really pays off this time of the year. It is not a bowl committee deciding which single game decides the “best” team, but NFL Playoff tickets that will give a definitive answer.

There are only two games that need to be talked about after this last week. They are not the useless contests between the Bengals and the Browns or the 49ers and the Rams. No, they are the match ups between the league leaders.

Without the question, the biggest game this week has to be the New York Giants-Carolina Panthers game on Sunday night. It has the two top tiered teams, it has something worth playing for (the number one spot in the NFC side of the postseason), and it has a big market team playing (the Giants).

This week played out like the typical Thanksgiving weekend. It started Thursday with a trio of blowouts. The Tennessee Titans, Dallas Cowboys, and Philadelphia Eagles put their opponents to shame like the Grandma’s mashed potatoes did to the new wife’s attempt to cook and contribute to the family.

Two months ago, the AFC was written off to the New England Patriots. Then Tom Brady went down with a season-ending injury and it was like a completely different universe was born.