What Remains – The Wild Card Round Losers

We pick up where we left off on our discussion of the 31 teams who did NOT win the Lombardi Trophy with a look at the Wild Card round losers, who are more interesting than the ones who just missed the show anyway...


Cincinnati Bengals

Lost in their overcoming loss and limping to the finish of the season as a result is the fact that the Bengals were not, as some might have you believe, lucky to be in the postseason. They owned the AFC North, sweeping their way through the competition. So it is with an eye to a future based on the present that I say that this team is not a one hit wonder. This is because this team, long built on the sort of quick fix solutions promised by high profile passing offenses and flashy play in the defensive backfield, finally stumbled onto the ingredients of a consistent foundation. In luckily discovering the real Cedric Benson, the Bengals put together the 9th best rushing offense in the league, despite sub par years from Carson Palmer and Chad Ochocinco, not to mention losing the team’s only vertical threat, Chris Henry. In successfully developing Keith Rivers (finally getting some help from Dhani Jones) and Antwan Odom (8 sacks in six games) and bringing Tank Johnson into the fold, the team finally has the stable middle to take advantage of their wildly talented backfield defenders (Hall and Joseph’s 12 INTs prove they were just as good as the Bengals thought they were), leading to the 4th best defense in the league. Considering that there might not have been a more unlucky team than the Bengals this season, is there any reason to believe that the trend won’t continue upward next season? Hell, with this base, the team actually can start to give Carson Palmer the sort of vertical attack that the team still believes he’s capable of, bringing in Matt Jones as a third receiving option and making me lose my mind in anticipation as a result. In short, the Bengals made that most difficult of transitions, taking a necessary step back aerially to avoid remaining a spectacle and exchange a foundation of sand for one of stone. If the next season represents the natural progression of regaining that lost aerial step, the AFC North might be the least of the domains in which the Bengals gain dominance.


New England Patriots

Man, that Bill Belichick sure did fall off, right? Like when he instructed his defense to give up 35 points to Peyton Manning, and didn’t even trust them to win the game for him after following that plan to perfection. Oh, and the time that he drew up a play for Wes Welker to tear his ACL and MCL just one week before the playoffs, leaving him no time to work up a sufficient replacement. What was he thinking? Tom Brady is probably finished, too. Seriously, after last season, how many quarterbacks would you rather have running that system? Sure, statistically there are only eitght quarterbacks with better ratings, two of whom threw more picks, two of whom threw fewer touchdowns, six of whom attempted fewer passes, four of whom have ever even made it to one Super Bowl, and one of whom is Matt Schaub, but come on, anybody could have had Brady’s year this season, right? Did I mention that the New England system is a remarkably complex system that requires proficiency throwing both deep and short passes? Whatever, these guys are totally finished as a threat to the championship.

The point is that this is a 10-6 playoff team and division winner that, prior to losing their most reliable receiver and the lynchpin to their offense (we really need new metaphorical language for Welker’s role in that offense…), lost one game by more than one score to the eventual Super Bowl champions (for the record they lost three of those games by 3 points or less). The wind blows in the right direction on a couple of plays, and these guys get a bye week in the playoffs with a healthy Wes Welker. I’m thrilled that it didn’t work out that way, but I haven’t exactly bought a headstone for the Belichick-Brady era either. With minor tweaks to the defense, and a full year of healthier offense (including Moss in a contract year), these guys are going to be scary, particularly if they can get a running back platoon that forces defenders to stay at home in the middle of the field. Laurence Maroney is underrated, but he’s not good enough to be a feature back, and he’s certainly not giving the team enough to make up for the lack of burst from every other back on the roster. We forgot, because they made the playoffs, that this was a reloading year for the Patriots. Maybe that's why we hate them most of all.


Philadelphia Eagles

I caught myself writing about what a man of faith Andy Reid must be to remain so committed to Donovan McNabb. Shame on me. This isn’t a matter of faith, or reliance on the kind of universal truths that coaches so often lean on when making personnel decisions. Andy Reid is an empiricist, perhaps more than any other coach in the league, living off of experience and not off of notions of what should be or what could be. “Is” and “was” always win in those fights. In his career as a starter, McNabb has never finished below the top half of quarterbacks in terms of ratings, despite having had an elite wide receiver either once or twice, depending on whether or not you believe DeSean Jackson made the leap last season (68 receptions for 1167 yards and 9 TD). And yet for all of that, Reid and McNabb have exactly one NFC Championship to show for their statistical consistency.

Conventional wisdom, then, starts to point toward the sort of “reasoned truths” that come from statistics failing to line up with reality, in this case that McNabb (or both Reid and McNabb) aren’t “winners”. How stupid can we possibly get? Are Eagles fans so blind as to not realize that they root for a team that has missed the playoffs just twice in the last decade? Whatever doubts you may have concerning the “truths” that govern McNabb’s future, don’t the numbers make the case that he’s the best chance that team has of winning a title? Right or wrong, Reid’s decision to stay with McNabb isn’t some crazed vision of a prophet; it’s the sort of cold calculation for which we praise forward thinkers in both this and every other professional sports league. It’s a match problem, not a magic show, and until the formula starts spitting out different numbers, the Eagles aren’t spitting out different names.


Green Bay Packers

These guys are going to crush the NFC next year. Their quarterback is the fourth best in the league, and tied for the league lead in sacks, which, though somewhat his fault, tells me that he’s not just on the verge of greatness anymore; he’s arrived (the 8.20 yds/attempt is CRAZY considering he threw 541 passes). Ryan Grant, after looking lost for so long, pulled it together for a respectable 1253 yards (and 4.4 yards per carry), giving Rodgers the support his offensive line won’t. The receiving corps might be the quickest in the league, creating an aerial assault that reads like a Street Fighter command (keep tapping pass to activate the HUNDRED HAND SLAP!). Meanwhile, did you guys realize that this was the second best defense in the league? Because I forgot somewhere along the road to a gut punch of a 51-45 loss to Arizona that this was the second best defense in the league (and FIRST against the rush!!!).

Give me one good reason why this isn’t the prohibitive favorite for the NFC next season? Did you forget that Aaron Rodgers is a veteran at this point? That Ryan Grant is a versatile back that can attack in multiple ways? That they have a hyper-talented group of linebackers, none of whom is over the age of 28? A tweak here and there on the offensive line, and this isn’t just a good offense; it has the chance to be as good (and younger) than the same Saints unit that just won the Lombardi Trophy. One of these days, Aaron Rodgers is going to beat someone over the age of 35, instead of giving them career defining games (the two Favre losses, the loss to Warner in the playoffs), and we'll finally recognize just how good this team is.

Offseason Moves You Missed - The Return of Matt Jones

Matt Jones has a problem to which anyone who has failed young can relate; people think he’s older than he is. For the record, Jones is 26. He’s not sick. He hasn’t bounced from team to team. He’s played four seasons, and has missed one year due to disciplinary issues. His last season was his best as a pro, and in just 12 games Jones had career highs in receptions (65) and yards (761), putting up a pace that, over a 16 game season, would have given him over 1000 yards. He stands 6’6”, weighs in at 218 pounds, and was last measured running the 40-yard dash, the standard for receiver speed, a test usually dominated by mighty mice at WR, in a stunning 4.37 seconds. He is an inch taller, and 2/100ths of a second slower than Calvin Johnson, easily one of the top three receivers in the league.

He’s also temperamental to his own detriment, has horrible judgment when it comes to illegal substances, and has always had trouble matching his gifts to the circumstances in which he has found himself. He is, even in the most optimistic light, a head case.

But again, he’s 26. There are just two receivers in the top ten that are more than a year younger than Jones (Steve Smith and Sidney Rice are the trivia answers). Fine, he’s had problems realizing his incredible potential (though I would argue he was on his way there in 2008), but isn’t it worth it for a team, if not the league as a product, to see if this kind of undeniable, unique talent can fully express itself on the field? And if he’s too old to bring it all together with a second chance, finally getting his potential to function in his reality, then what the hell are the rest of us doing? That first dream job out of college that turned out to be a bust? The first creation you really cared about that was resoundingly panned? That first big relationship that ended in a gut wrenching train wreck? You can disapprove of the mess Jones’s bad judgment and worse attitude have made of his opportunities to this point; I do, too. But I’m pulling for Matt Jones, because there’s a part of me that gets Matt Jones, that wishes him the same second and third chances that I’ve gotten and will likely need again. I have to believe that if everybody is honest, we all kind of get Matt Jones.



All of that is to say that I am absolutely thrilled that Matt Jones is going into training camp as a Cincinnati Bengal. I’ve made no secret of my soft spot for Matt Jones, and this year’s Bengals team was as good a story as you’ll find in the league. Marvin Lewis and Mike Brown, who were raked over the coals for years (and deservedly so) for placing too much responsibility on youth and personally flawed veterans, finally saw their youth mature and rein in their more troublesome veterans. The result was a team that, prior to the tragic death of physically talented and personally troubled receiver Chris Henry, had the talent to go toe-to-toe with any of its peers and the sort of chip on its shoulder that made it a scary competitor. The highlight of all of this was RB Cedric Benson, who had been unceremoniously dumped from Chicago and was all but blackballed from football before a desperate Bengals squad brought him in to kick his tires. Last year, Benson finished with the 8th most rushing yardage in the league, and was the centerpiece of a Bengals offense that was once entirely based on streaky passer Carson Palmer.

In Benson, we see an example of what the Bengals, and I, hope can become of Matt Jones. Jones represents the sort of big, athletic target that the Bengals need from their second or third option, creating a matchup nightmare when he’s performing at full speed (as he was in his last NFL season). Furthermore, with no other teams remotely interested, he has arrived at his last opportunity for redemption. For a receiver with his physical gifts, this could mean everything (examples: Moss in New England, Edwards in New York…). Meanwhile, he also finds himself paired with a quarterback that Jacksonville can only dream about, with an offense that isn’t afraid to open up vertically and a coaching staff that isn’t too lazy to develop offensive talent (the verdict was in on Del Rio two years ago…). If Cincinnati can do what they did with Cedric Benson (and on another note, they deserve all the credit in the world for how they were helping Chris Henry progress before his death), there’s no reason that Matt Jones, arguably the most talented project player they’ve taken in so far, can’t also have his second, more important act take place in orange and black.

PS: And by the way, yes, I've read the report. Take into account the following: coaches ALWAYS bristle when the front office forces players into their roster, regardless of whether it's a good move or not, and they NEVER like seeing a physically gifted player who will likely replace a personal project coming into camp. "I don't care how fast his 40 time is" reminds me of an ostrich with his head in the sand. Consider me unfazed.

It's More Fun When It's Personal

(photo: NY Times)

I’m still trying to figure out what last night did to the legacy of ONE OF THE GREATEST QUARTERBACKS TO PLAY THE GAME, but I’m less confused as to what it meant for one of the most incredible teams to take the field. As such, I’ll start with the positive, and we’ll sift through the issues of individual defeats versus careers and legacies versus achievements and the role of blame in all of this tomorrow.

The measure of a great team isn’t its ability to play to its strengths, but its ability to play to its opponent’s weakness. There wasn’t any doubt going into Sunday night that the Colts had the most talented players in the Super Bowl, and there wasn’t any doubt watching the game for the first half. Peyton Manning threw an excellent first half (like I said, we’ll get to this later…), Wayne and Clark were giving their individual matchups fits, and Dwight Freeney even had an important sack on his injured ankle.

Then, the kick. Sorry, The Kick. If we had The Catch in 2007, we have to give this one credit for being just as unexpected and wildly successful, and certainly better executed. The Kick was everything that made the Saints win. It was unexpected, and yet perfectly situated to the game they were playing (read Peter King’s Monday Morning QB to understand how the Colts’ special teams habits played a role in the decision). It took an entire team operating on the same page, and forced the Colts to rely on their weakest link (enjoy the UFL, Hank Baskett). Perhaps most importantly, by the time the Colts realized what was happening, it was already too late to control the damage, as the ensuing panicked scrum revealed.

For the entire second half, the Colts looked lost. Manning saw blitzes when he expected coverage, and looked boggled whenever the Saints sat back and let their speedy backfield (aided by world-class athlete at MLB Jon Vilma) take away his easy checkdowns. Where the first half had been a game of simply slowing down the attack, the second half saw the Saints shifting seamlessly between three defensive game plans (standard four man front, all out attack, and everybody dropping into zones), preventing Manning from ever getting his offense into a set rhythm. What we all saw as choking was simply a quarterback with a need for process and repetition being denied both, and the culmination of the confusion was Tracy Porter bursting through the Colts offense with the football, waving it in the air and dashing into the end zone to put the final nail in the coffin for the Colts. Certainly, the Saints had the talent to attack with the sort of all out blitz schemes Gregg Williams loves, but instead they let the Colts come to them, waiting prepared with the weapon that the Saints weren’t most comfortable with, but the one that, if they could make it work, would be most deadly.

The same can be said of the offense. Eight different receivers had catches, and seven of them had multiple receptions. The Colts, expecting an aerial assault, instead found themselves fighting a protracted land war against an offense that made short passes look as routine as handoffs. Devery Henderson, in particular, killed the Colts on in the short rage, averaging 9 yards per catch, but more often making the sort of 4-6 yard grabs that number two receivers eventually drop. When the Colts did shift the defense down to Henderson, Colston crushed them over the top (seven catches for an 11.9 yard average). When they dropped back, Reggie Bush and Pierre Thomas brutalized them on flats and circles (93 receiving yards, 10 catches, and a TD between them…Thomas was always safe, but Bush may have earned a contract to stick around with that and his 25 yards on 5 rushes). And when everything seemed most bottled up, when the options were finally processed into the Tampa 2 matrix, it was Jeremy Shockey (what were those picks you got again, Giants?) with the 2 yard dagger. Watch that route (another beautiful first move by Shockey, I might add) and the Colts defense just looks bewildered, unable to match up because they simply don't recognize the attack (odd, for a team that uses Dallas Clark so similarly). Shockey lining up at WR might as well have been The Kick all over again; in every aspect of the game (their kicker drilled three 44+ yarders like they were chip shots), the Saints executed a second half game plan designed to hit the Colts in every place that their methodical, bend don’t break, process the game style of play would suffer the most damage.

All of this, of course, would have been impossible without Drew Brees Brees was the reason the Saints could attack the Colts the way they did. At the root of their southpaw game plan was the need for Brees to be surgical, quick, and near perfect with his passing. He was all three (32/39, 288 yards for a perfectly suited 7.4 YPA and 2 TDs). His trademark speediest reaction time under center let him pick the appropriate target in the blink of an eye, and was the biggest reason why the Colts had that deer in the headlights look on the field. Watching him cry and kiss his son after the game, I wondered if Drew Brees had been angrier than we all thought. I’ve made no secret of how I didn’t care for Brees’s team chants reminiscent of a frat party, or the smug talk of destiny (seriously, the Sean Payton-Drew Brees marriage has to have rocketed up the list of perfect Coach-QB matches, right?). Then again, watching Brees finally relax, I remembered that we’re talking about a guy who was told to go away by his team in the prime of his early career, having amassed Pro Bowl caliber stats, and was only offered a sure starter’s gig by a rookie head coach taking over a loser New Orleans Sains team that had one foot in San Antonio. That sort of disrespect has to go somewhere, right? Manning, Brady, and the rest of the elite quarterbacks in the league never had to deal with that, so maybe I was too quick to view Brees’s outward intensity as unbecoming of his status; maybe he just had a bigger fire to let burn. So while watching Manning rid himself of the burden of chasing a legacy would have been nice, Brees’s victory should be no less satisfying to anyone who has watched him play. Because behind all of the talk about lifting a city and carrying a team of destiny, this meant something to Drew Brees. I wonder if his son will look back and realize that this was the moment when all the team chants and rituals, the indignation that had been bottled and channeled into various team-oriented outlets, and Drew Brees’s sense that he was meant, even destined to be great, all paid off. For all of the doubts we expected to see Manning kill, maybe the ones Brees finally overcame were the truly pressing ones, gnawing not at history but at the man himself, and maybe his freedom is the most satisfying ending after all.

The Super Divide

Over at the Norman Einstein's (where Cian, formerly of Fuhbaw, runs the corner), I had the opportunity to put together a Super Bowl preview dealing with the Colts, the Saints, and the future of the league hanging in the balance (it tends to do that around these parts...). Check it out.