An Aussie friend of mine asked me if there were any big games this week, (meaning last week, the final week of the NFL season) and I gave an absurdly curt, "Not yet." I told her that since many of the teams had nothing left to play for, they'd be benching their bigger named players. And since there were many teams who had no chances of making the playoffs, they might not give their best efforts although at least those teams would not be benching their better players. It is my opinion that a team that has no playoff position to play for AND a team that is already in the playoffs and has nothing like home field advantage to play for, should BOTH play their best players the entire game if nothing else to exhibit fan appreciation. But this rarely happens on the last week of NFL season... I told her this week would be shyte and the NEXT week would have all the big games.
Well, as it turned out, the week that just passed will be the best week in the NFL this year and I'm calling it now. NO WAY can another week top this! NO FRIGGIN' WAY!
So there you have the topic sentence/intro, if you don't like the NFL, you might want to continue on with your surfing, but I warn you, you won't find anything so dramatic even if you are watching previews of the Bachelor. And if you are... he was a football player anyway, so there!
But seriously, I may have never wished more to be unemployed than this past weekend. And only after the fact! That's what's so crazy about this. I was asked by my erstwhile Aussie pal Amber if there were any big games last weekend. I said there were only two. Two! The only two meaningful games I thought were the Chargers/Raiders and the Ravens/Steelers. We all KNEW those two were win or go home. But I was sadly mistaken. There were many big games. The Saturday games went as planned. The Chiefs beat the Broncos as they should have, though it was a bit closer than I'd have thought and the Cowboys beat the Eagles as they were supposed to, though it was a MUCH bigger blowout than I'd have thought. Still, the expected results made me think all would go as planned for the weekend games. Boy was I wrong!
One of the things I hadn't planned on was one of the worst teams in the league, maybe THE worst... the Lions (3 wins and 13 losses) pulling out all the stops and basically going full on Madden NFL '22 on the top seeded team in the league (13 wins and 3 losses) the Green Bay Packers, AND BEATING THEM 37-30! I mean they were faking punts, running stunts and flicking all the fleas on the field! It didn't always work for them, but THEY WON! Now Rodgers was taken out and replaced by Love, as we all expected, but Love did well! And STILL the mighty Packers lost! This game was an absolute PLEASURE to watch! For an all or nothin' guy like me, it just proved what I've always thought, that if you just pour on the offense, the defense won't be able to take it. Even the worst team vs. the best. I encourage you to watch the game, or at least the highlights. It's about as entertaining as you can get.
But did it end there? Oh no! The only team WORSE than the Lions this year was the 3 and 14 Jacksonville Jaguars. And they were playing the 9 and 8 Colts with by far the number one rusher in the league, Jonathan Taylor, who has 1811 yds of rushing this year (2nd place is Chubb with 1259) vs. the 23rd out of 32 running defense. Slam dunk, no? Well... NO! Taylor still got his yards but the QB for the Jags, a guy I think will be a STAR in the NFL, big nose Trevor Lawrence had his best game ever. Probably cuz he just didn't give a shit. Much like the Lions. Running, scrambling, throwing where it wasn't "safe," he lead his team to victory and gave them (and the fans) something to look forward to next season. 26-11 Jags.
Right there two of the best games I've seen all year. But wait! There's more! I'm a big fan of the New Orleans Saints. This season they lost the guy that made me a fan - Drew Brees - but I still root for them after all these years. And they won their game. They had a shit year because they lost Brees, but it woulda been great to see them get into the playoffs without him. Winning gave them a chance. All that had to happen was for the 12 and 5 Rams to beat the 10 and 7 49ers. Seems like a good possibility... Well watch this:
Cooper Kupp had been carrying my football pools all year, (one of the three WON) and he was set to bust the all time records for a receiver set by Megatron, Calvin Johnson. Kupp was a lowly 3rd round pick in 2017 though. Could he surpass all expectations? And more importantly to Saints fans like me, could he help the Rams win and could the Saints sneak into the playoffs? Now, "sneak" is not the correct word because they HAD beaten the Falcons 30-20 earlier in the day with the scary defense that has become their calling card since they don't have the offense Brees provided. Cam Jordan is now the man!
Well, I have to be honest, the Saints did much better than I thought they'd do without Brees. Just the whiff of the playoffs was better than nothing for hard-hit Saints fans like me. The best part of the season was when Drew Brees was on the panel of an NFL broadcast and was the only one to correctly predict the Saints to beat Brady and the damn Bucs. That alone made this season a good one!
Shoulda listened to him. Look at his record!
So how did the game go? Well, Cooper Kupp had a great game! He was sensational! But not quite enough to break all those records we were hoping for. Although, the Rams kept my hopes for the Saints hanging on until overtime... but eventually lost. I'm still pretty happy with the Saints' season.
On to the two games I thought would be the ONLY two games that were meaningful. Steelers/Ravens had the look of an old time slobberknocker and it lived right the fuck up to that! These two clubs were evenly matched. I have relatives who are die hard Steeler fans, so I was cheering for the black and gold. But the Ravens were a team I had respected all year long only losing by a little if the lost at all. It was a probable Steelers win (9-7) against a Ravens 8-9, but I knew the Ravens were MUCH better than that. I also knew that the Steelers were not as good as that. This, I predicted, would be a good one. And I was right. It went to OT. A play by TJ Watt early EARLY in the game may have been the diff. How the hell did he come up with that fumble recovery? Unbelievable!
It was a defensive slash boring as shit affair except for Roethlisberger to Claypool, but... the drama here was Ben Roethlisberger being in his last game (probably). And he won it. In OT with a field goal the Steelers won it.
However!!!! I use the triumvirate of exclamation points to draw attention to what I thought was probably the most interesting of the games. You couldn't guess if you even tried to guess the reason it was the piece de resistance of this already highly entertaining weekend of football!
Because of the usual ridiculousness of ifs ands and buts associated with every final week of every NFL season, there are some miniscule scenarios that can sometimes bring high drama to a game. The last game included one of them, although it was highly, highly, FUCKING HIGHLY unlikely to happen. I would never have placed a bet on it happening. Ever!
The scenario to which I am referring is the super incredibly highly unlikely, never in a million years scenario for the final game of the season, which had everyone in the NFL football world watching it, ending in a tie. How often does that happen? I mean really? Do you want to know? I know the answer. Let me mix another drink before I tell you. Cuz you probably know what I'm going to tell you here. Why would I go this far to set up something if I wasn't going to tell you exactly what you think I'm going to tell you?
Okay, I'll tell you. It's 7.2%. That's how often NFL games since 1920 have ended in ties. So why do I make such a big deal? Well, as is always the case, there is a very complicated and complex possibility of outcomes of the final week of the season that is HIGHLY unlikely, but possible, and at the same time very intriguing. You see, if the final game of the year, 9-8 Chargers vs. 10-7 Raiders, played in Las Vegas, the home of the Raiders were to end in a tie, then all hell would break loose and both the Chargers and Raiders would make the playoffs and the victorious Steelers would be out. After ALL THAT EFFORT!
I have to be honest, I was voting for a tie in this one since both the Chargers and Raiders were more exciting teams than the Steelers, but I didn't think there was any chance of that happening. I actually thought, based on what I'd seen from both teams during the season, that despite their records, the Chargers were a BETTER team and they'd beat the Raiders even at home! So this one had some drama for me, for my Steeler fan family members and for all the football fans watching the final game of the season. It didn't disappoint.
Probably the most dramatic game of the day in fact. You know what, I can't even. I'm going to just give you the highlights, though if you don't know, they will still be super gravitas!
BOOOOM! That was the best game of the year I think! Even though I wanted the Chargers to win it and wanted Cooper Kupp to set all kinds of records, the Raiders were the better team! What a great game!
And so ends the NFL regular season. I am licking my chops at some of these post-season match ups!
Who knows? Maybe I'll make another post.
Take care sports fans!
No comments:
Post a Comment