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Greetings, Raider fans! It's been an eventful week for all of you I'm certain, what with the Mark Davis chicanery and tomfoolery going on. It is my opinion that none of the current assistant coaches deserved even a single year more, let alone multiple years. Dennis Allen deserves another chance to see what he can do with some actual talent on the squad, but if we're supposedly getting all these great players why let them go to waste with useless position coaches? While you have spent the week yelling about ginger Prince Valient Mark Davis' supposed ineptitude, I have been sending nasty messages to the Great Beyond for only getting one game right on Wild Card Weekend. Mr. Beyond is nonplussed, but assures me that he has had more time to prepare this weekend and to get things right this time. We'll see about that.
"Oh you're back again. Three more weeks of this I see. Well here we go. The Colts march into Foxboro this week after taking care of business against the Chiefs. By "taking care of business" I mean "injuring three of the Chiefs' best players and barely escaping with a win in a game in which they had no business even being within 20 points". Injuries are a hell of a drug, eh Andrew Luck? Against a JV secondary you and T.Y. Hilton can look pretty good. Against a defense missing most of its top talent, you look like John Elway against the Browns. This week will not be so pretty for you. The Patriots will not stop scoring in the second half like the Chiefs did. They will not let up. They are missing a lot of their top players, but they still have Tom Brady which is more than enough to beat the likes of you. They have no wide receivers, they have no defensive tackles, they have one defensive back worth his weight in Spam but they are still 12-4. You will give them a game, Andrew, you will try hard and make plays with your legs and run around like a buttmonkey and make ridiculous throws and make Jim Nantz fondle himself on national television. You will fight honorably, you will fight bravely, and you will lose. Patriots win, 46-37.
Congratulations San Diego, you waltzed into Cincinnati and beat the worst playoff team I've ever seen, one who thinks the entire season is 16 games long and anything after that is technically part of the Pro Bowl. Mai Thais for everybody! We're all gonna get leid! Marvin Lewis is a good coach, a no-nonsense sensible kind of guy, so I don't understand why the personality of his team changes in the playoffs. They are so mistake-prone they look like the 2005 Raiders in the first round every year. I called Andy Dalton a dweeb last week, but I am now ready to say he is a goober.He is the Tony Romo of the AFC without the personality. Does Dalton even have a personality? He might be a malfunctioning robot. "Love... does not... compute."
As for the Chargers, they are going to go to Denver after having defeated them just a few weeks ago. This will be the third meeting of the two teams this season. I am of the persuasion that in the third meeting of teams, the best team will win. That's Denver this year. Furthermore, it will be in the mid-fifties for temperature this weekend in Denver. That's not cold enough to make Manning bothered. He will have plenty of time for failure later on in the year. Broncos win, 38-28.
The Saints barely escaped the unfriendly confines of Philly last weekend because of two things: They threw the ball well late in the game and Philly's defense is a work in progress. Against Seattle, neither of those things will be true. Seattle's defense is the best in the league without question and Drew Brees will not be able to sling the ball around with impunity. Richard Sherman is just waiting, begging Brees to throw the ball anywhere near him. Earl Thomas is doing the same. Usually when a team plays the Saints, the big question is "who will cover Jimmy Graham?" This week the answer is "it doesn't matter". Everyone in Seattle's defensive secondary is a superlative talent, and while they may not be able to cover him straight up (because nobody can) they are more than adequate to schematically handle whatever the Saints try to throw at them.
What Seattle will throw at the Saints is Marshawn Lynch, Russell Wilson, one of the top offensive lines in the game, and the best home-field advantage in all of sport. Seattle's fans are the sort of obnoxious that you can only come by after having shed a long-held inferiority complex and replacing that with total insufferableness. How can you tell that a person is a Seahawks fan? Don't worry, they'll tell you. They will leave out Dave Krieg and Brian Bosworth and the systematic wasting of Steve Largent's career, but they will wax eloquent about how screwed they were by the refs in Super Bowl 40. They would be right about this, but they won't shut up about it. You might think that a Super Bowl title will placate them, but you'd be wrong. These people root for the Mariners willfully and had the Sonics stolen from them by a corrupt cowboy. Seattle fans are basically cold, depressed Red Sox fans and their arrogance will truly know no bounds if someone doesn't beat the Seahawks. God save us all, but nobody will. Seattle wins, 26-17.
Last week the Packers got done by the Niners just like the Eagles got done by the Saints- a heartbreaking home loss on a last-second field goal. However, unlike the Saints, the Packers played like hot garbage the entire game and were lucky to be in it at the end. The Niners dominated that game from start to finish, despite being held to seveal field goals after first-and-goal situations. The Niners defense was as good as ever, sacking Aaron Rodgers several times and limiting a focused Eddie Lacy to under 100 yards when a lesser team would have let him go for over 200 with the way he was playing. Great effort by Lacy, but too bad for him Colin Kaepernick completely owns the Packers. Every time they play him, they take their turn in the barrel. They act like they've never seen him play before. I know Green Bay isn't the most affluent of communities, but I'm fairly sure they have a film projector in town somewhere that they could watch Kaepernick video on.
The Panthers, on the other hand, have seen Kaepernick before, but not with his full complement of weaponry. The first time these teams played this year, Carolina won 10-9 on the road, but San Francisco was without Vernon Davis or Michael Crabtree and I'm pretty sure Aldon Smith was still on Dr. Drew's Celebrity Hot Tub. This week, the Niners will be at full strength and will be playing in front of Carolina's fans, who don't really know what to do with football now that UNC and Duke's basketball seasons are on. Where's Coach K? I don't see him anywhere. Is that Dean Smith? No, it's just Ronald Curry. Or Cam Newton, same difference.
Tickets sold out quickly for this, the Panthers' first playoff game in many years, but the fans will leave disappointed. Until the Duke game on Monday night against Virginia. Niners win, 19-13."
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