Well, I guess it’s about time to wrap up the ol’ season here on FP, and I want to start by thanking Bob Noyes for having me this year, and allowing me to use various obscenity-laced tirades against, well, Jay Cutler.

One doesn’t have to look back very far to find me verbally assaulting the pick-prone sourpuss, but I have to say that he finished the year strong. If by strong, you mean good performances against division opponents late in the year. Albeit they were at home vs. the Vikings, whose road defense was atrocious at the time, and in Detroit, where they trampled the defeated, rotting carcass of the league’s dead-last Lions defense.

That’s a Rod Marinelli production, by the way. Yep, our new defensive coordinator. But I digress.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Chicago Bears front office.

Now, Cutler played a favorable two-game stretch to finish the season. But I’ve seen plenty of Bears QB’s fold up shop under just as favorable late-season circumstances, and Cutler didn’t. And I do think strides were made in the passing game the last two weeks, with the emergence of Devin Aromashodu, a guy lots of people – Jay Cutler included – liked in preseason, but who didn’t see the field until the year was well in the sh*tter. Bad move. I get that the receivers in Chicago were deep with young talent this year, but it really looks like the biggest, most polished option was kept in street clothes virtually all season long.

OH YEAH, THE SAINTS WON THE SUPER BOWL

I didn’t really think that i had much of a dog in the fight for the championship this year, but once the game started I was squarely in the corner of the Saints. It was a bit bandwagon, but it was just me and the wife watching, and you had to root for them. They were all so adorable.

BASELESS BRETT FAVRE SPECULATION SECTION

The Gunslinger’s been pretty quiet since after the NFC Championship game, only releasing a brief statement of thanks that sounded kinda like he thought he might be ready to come close to making the decision of whether or not he might finally be ready to begin considering whether the time had finally come around to deciding on if the time may finally be here that he’s got to sit down and once and for all come to a decision on either hanging ‘em up, or maybe staying on for one more shot. Good luck, Brett. The world will be ready when you are. I guess.

The only other Vikings rip I got is Bryant McKinnie getting kicked off the Pro Bowl team and then being douchey enough to host parties in Miami all week afterward, and twittering about it all the time. This was fairly nauseating on several levels. If you want to party in Miami all week, fine – I would too. But all you gotta do is just tell the NFC coach that you don’t want to play, like everyone else who made the Pro Bowl original starting roster. McKinnie already didn’t deserve the spot, and then he just stopped coming to practices, he was dismissed from the squad. Embarrassing.

The clock continues to tick on the new Vikings stadium deal that still doesn’t exist. And it doesn’t look like Brett Favre taking them to the conference title game gave the team much momentum to getting the state to pony up some cash, as some predicted it might. Outgoing governor Tim Pawlenty, who is expected to run for the Presidency in 2012, made no mention of money for a new stadium in his final budget proposal as Minnesota’s governor. With government spending and fiscal restraint such hot-button issues these days, a guy with presidential aspirations can ill afford to try to stick his taxpayers with a several hundred-million dollar stadium bill. He’s going to punt that issue right on down the line to his successor, and I don’t blame him. I do blame him for the state budget mess that led to there being no money at all for the stadium, but that’s another issue altogether.

If anyone is still listening (crickets…crickets), thanks so much for reading this season, and it’s been fun. I genuinely appreciate all the feedback and precious disposable time spent reading my material.

Oops. I let the whole two weeks between the Championship round of the playoffs and the Super Bowl slip by without a peep. It’s now Saturday afternoon, and no one is capable of stomaching any more prognosticating about what will happen in the Super Bowl.

So for your sake, I will keep my prognostication pretty short: Colts win, 30-27.

Peyton Manning will eventually figure out the Saints defense and win the game, blahblahblah. The score I’ve indicated would portend an exciting, close, hard-fought game, but I don’t know if that will be the case. I think Manning will simply be in control by the middle of the 3rd quarter, and even if both teams are moving the ball at will, the Saints won’t be able to overtake the Colts.

Look for the game to start decidedly slow. It could be 10-7 at halftime. The Colts’ eventual win will legitimize Manning and Indy; their Super Bowl 41 win over Chicago didn’t really count. The Bears were a one-hit-wonder and not a worthy matchup with the Colts’ offense. This time around they face a team who does at least one thing really well, as opposed to Chicago, who had a pretty good defense and that was about it. They could run but not in a dominating, game-winning way. Speaking of the Bears.

BEARS HOMER SECTION

The Bears finally caved and hired Mike Martz to replace Ron Turner as offensive coordinator. The whole situation reminded me of when a guy in high school really, really wants to date some girl, and she keeps turning him down, and it gets kinda pathetic because the guy just won’t give up, and then somehow the girl just kinda comes around and says, “okay fine, let’s make out.”

Will he improve anything? Maybe. Will he save Lovie Smith and Jerry Angelo’s jobs? Probably not. The Bears, even with improvement on both sides of the ball, are still a longshot to make the playoffs. The Packers look to be in the drivers seat to win the division, especially if Brett Favre decides to finally go away. I don’t trust Chicago to somehow nail down a wildcard spot.

I also don’t trust Martz to have enough of an impact other than maybe putting Cutler back another year when he has to learn another new playbook in 2011.

VIKINGS HATER SECTION

Oddly enough, I’m here to defend the Vikings in this column. Not once have I heard out of virtually any Vikings fan something to this effect: “Wow, that was a really fun season. Wow, that was a great NFC Championship game. Wow, that was one of the most dramatic, memorable games I’ve ever seen. Wow, Favre really took our team on a nice ride, and without him we would have been struggling to be relevant after about Week 5. Wow, these guys really played their hearts out but just weren’t able to overcome huge mistakes.”

What the @$&% happened to “Minnesota Nice”? I know, I know – it was all about the championship this year, but this season was an unbelievable success by NFL standards. Going into overtime of the NFC Championship game was no small feat, and while I know that Vikings fans felt entitled to at least a Super Bowl appearance, they should be at least a little bit grateful for being able to witness one hell of an exciting season.

If Favre comes back, which is of course impossible to determine, they’ll be a contender again. They have some work to do on the O-Line and their pass defense, and they better pray to the good Lord that EJ and Antoine both make it back for significant playing time. A snapped femur and a Lisfranc foot injury are problems. Will either lose a step? Henderson is young enough to recover completely, but Winfield may face some heat for getting old.

JETS HOMER SECTION

Rex Ryan flipped off some Dolphins fans at an Ultimate Fighting event last week, drawing criticism for being unprofessional. Hypocritical NFL analysts got all their undies in a bundle over it, while they would just as easily rip a coach for being too vanilla, never saying or doing anything interesting, or just being plain boring.

This is turning into a preachy “count your blessings” column – to all the pudwhacking NFL pundits out there, lighten up. It’s okay to get a kick out of Rex Ryan. He didn’t get in a fight, he didn’t spit on anyone (although it’s been reported that he got spit ON prior to the finger), he didn’t choke anyone or drive through a fast-food joint with no pants on. Enough with the faux-outrage.

Have a safe and happy Super Bowl weekend.

A cold sun rose over the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul today, groggy and hungover, smelling like stale beer from Bourbon Street or a 1st Avenue sportsbar. Viking Nation collectively rose and wiped the crusty defeat from their eyelids.  The season was over.   Minnesota was already close to being the Chicago Cubs of the NFL, and last night was their Bartman incident. And like any good fans in an NFL market, they quickly went about the task of placing blame.

THE OTHER SHOE

Some went after Favre for what may have been his final pass in the NFL, another NFC Championship game ended on an ill-advised throw just before the end of regulation. Many blamed Adrian Peterson for all the now-cliched fumbles. There was all the questionable calls by the refs. There had to be a reason that the Vikings went down in such tragic fashion – again.  For all the borderline replay calls, all the turnovers, all the late hits on Favre by the Saints defense, all the drive-killing blunders…the reason they lost was 12th Man.

Now, I know that I am a piss-ant spitball artist. Unfairly questioning coaching decisions is what I do, and I am summarily unqualified to do so. But the decisions made in the waning seconds of the NFC Championship game deserve to be dissected, interrogated, savaged, and burned at the stake.

How in the %$#&ing world do you come out of a timeout with 12 men in the huddle?  And after that, how in the $#%&ing world do you have Brett Favre executing a designed rollout pass-play, when he can barely walk, and have one of his targets be his go-to guy all the way across the other side of the field?

Both of those mistakes may have actually been someone else’s fault, but both fall on the head coach’s shoulders. It’s his responsibility to see that those things don’t happen.  Somewhere in between the 12th Man flag and the next play, either Favre or Chilly decided that calling that particular play was so cute and so unexpected that it had to work.  It was too clever not to work.  They must have thought, “Who would be expecting this kind of play?  It’s the worst possible play we could try in this situation!”

If it was Favre making that call, it’s on Chilly to stop that kind of thing from happening. The coach has to have enough control to prevent it.  If it was Childress making that call, then he deserves to be tarred, feathered, and fired.  I’ve harped on it so much all year that I am sick of saying it, but it’s true: Brad Childress is a f*cking moron.

There were so many bounces and calls that didn’t go the Vikings way, and those instances will be remembered and rationalized by those irrational Vikings optimists out there. The irrational Vikings fatalists will write it off as another cursed run at a Super Bowl title.  The aspect that makes it gut-wrenching, even as a Vikings hater, is that they still were in a position to win despite the crap calls and the fumblitis. As Mike Tice once famously said, “Brutal. B-R-U-T-A-L. Brutal.”

To listen to anyone carve up Favre for losing the game is an insult to being a football fan. That guy left everything on the field in a game in which he was practically sodomized on national television. He came back when he was 40 and took a team that was going nowhere into overtime of the NFC Championship game, and gave you a season that you’ll never forget for it’s drama and storybook heroics, and that’s how you show your gratitude? If you’re a Vikings fan and you blame Favre for that loss, you’re an asshole. He played well enough to win that game. Blame all the other f*ckups on that roster and coaching staff, but don’t blame Favre. He did his part.

THE OTHER FOOT

It is only a matter of time before Favre starts his annual waffling over retirement. If the 2007 NFC Championship game left him with a bad enough taste in his mouth to come back, I wonder how his silver dragon-breath is tasting this morning?

He had kept the Ol’ Gunslinger trapped away in the closet virtually all season. Then it kicked the closet door down at the worst possible moment, and charged out like Butch and Sundance.  Guns blazing, wild, fearless, suicidal, and unmoved by the consequences of his actions.  It cost him a shot at the ultimate redemption, the real Hollywood ending to his career.  And yet, the loss wasn’t his fault.  It was Peterson’s.  That has to be motivation to give it one more shot.

Now, Vikings fans are going to be hung out to dry like the Packers fans they once loved to ridicule. Now it’s them hanging on every nuance Favre leaks out to Ed Werder or Jay Glazer or Joe Buck. The QB cupboard at Winter Park is pretty bare without No. 4. If it isn’t Brett, next year looks like the result of a missed opportunity and a closed window, instead of one last chance at glory.

The best decision management can make is not to take a stand one way or the other, until they absolutely have to. Let Favre make his choice, and then let him flip-flop around. The only scenario in which Favre would be forced into a decision is if the Vikings try to trade for Donovan McNabb.

Perhaps a more pressing question for the organization is what to do with Adrian Peterson.  Talk-show radio rubes called for a trade or his head or both, but the Vikings have no reason to cut a guy still on his rookie contract and unlikely to reach too many incentive clauses next season.  And honestly, what is Peterson’s real trade value after the Saints game?  No team is going to give them a first-round pick for a guy who put the ball on the carpet three times (yeah, the botched handoff was on him too) in the biggest of spots.  At a ridiculous minimum, he’s a guy you’d certainly rather have on your team than not.

But he’s a liability.  Vikings fans clenched their asses awkwardly every time he was handed the ball after his 2nd fumble.  I guess if you’re the Vikings, you see if you can get anything for the guy and if not, get Albert Young off the practice squad and try to do what the Jets and Ravens did with a bevy of talent at RB.  Speaking of the Jets…

JETS HOMER SECTION

When the Jets were up 17-6 in the 2nd quarter on Sunday vs. the Colts, I knew what Jets fans were thinking.  I’d been there before.  In Super Bowl 41, the Bears, my Bears, were up 14-6 on Peton Manning and the Colts, and I convinced myself that they’d be able to pull off the upset.  I was wrong.  And as this game started to slip away from the Jets, their fans came to the same sobering realization.

When Manning has everything clicking, he’s virtually unstoppable.  Darrelle Revis did his job and held Reggie Wayne to 3 catches and 55 yards, 0 scores.  But once Manning started to figure out the rest of the Jets’ talented secondary, it was over.  But there is much to look forward to if you’re a Jets fan, in fact, losing this game to the Colts, which is totally excusable, is better than going to the Super Bowl and losing there.  It leaves the team hungry instead of deflated.  The Jets will be a force in 2010.

contact: nick.thomas@flyingpigskin.com

The above photograph has not been digitally altered. That’s Brian Baldinger, and that’s his pinky. Look at it.

Baldinger is currently an analyst for the NFL Network, and the producers must have told the guy to go overboard with the obnoxious gesturing with his horrifyingly mangled digit. He sarcastically waves it around inches from the camera lens, making you want to sit out your coffee, or oatmeal, or the beers from the night before (author’s note: I am approximately the gabajazillionth online wise-cracker to make a joke about Baldinger’s finger making them throw up).

JETS HOMER SECTION

I wrote before the season started about Rex Ryan’s championship bloodlines, but I didn’t know until recently that Buddy Ryan was also the linebackers coach on the 1969 Jets team that beat the Colts in the Super Bowl. Brash, talkative, colorful, aggressive and intense personalities seem to gravitate towards the Ryans. Think about all the players these guys have been around: Joe Namath, Mike Ditka, Reggie White, Jim McMahon, Ray Lewis, the ‘85 Bears and all of the 70’s Viking defenses, the list goes on.

I know these types of personalities exist on every NFL team, but these guys are some of the cream of the crop. It wasn’t always amicable, like when Buddy threw a punch at fellow Oilers coach Kevin Gilbride during a Monday Night Football game. Ditka and Ryan either didn’t speak or were close to blows most of the time. Buddy was not always a likable guy, but Rex seems to be more…jolly. Maybe that’s because he’s f*cking enormous.

I’m getting pretty anxious for these games to start today. No noon games anymore. Never a good sign. I admit that I am pretty burned out on Favre-a-sota and all that, and I can’t wait for Jared Allen to go back up his tree and spear varmints or whatever it is that he does, but it’s all gonna be over in two weeks. That sucks.

I was watching a replay of a 90’s NFC Championship game (I want to say 1995, but could be wrong) between Green Bay and Dallas, and it was amazing how bad Brett Favre looked early in that game. Talk about being too amped. His first five throws at least went rocketing over everyone’s head, and I mean everyone – a 10-yard out-route on the sideline went into the stands. I’m not exaggerating. Some fans probably had to be carted out of the stadium after the first two Green Bay possessions. But then he settled down and laid one of the most beautiful passes I’ve ever seen right into Antonio Freeman’s stride for a touchdown. I marveled at it until I remembered just how much I HATED Antonio Freeman. Seriously, f*ck that guy.

contact: nick.thomas@flyingpigskin.com

There are no stats left to sift through. There are few meaningful arguments left to be presented. The four NFL teams left standing this week have proven themselves worthy of our respect and adulation.

All four teams, even my hated Vikings, have positive stories and characters that demand attention. For me to further lament the Vikings’ success would come off as little more than post-Christmas-Minnesota-winter malaise. I’ve covered that ground extensively in this medium already. Here’s some “Minnesota Nice” for you to chew on: I like Percy Harvin. I like Brett Favre. I like Adrian Peterson (even though he kinda sucks right now). I like Sydney Rice. I like(d) EJ Henderson. I like his little brother, Aaron Henderson. I like Antoine Winfield. I like Leslie Frazier.

So, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? Not so fast.

There is no way that this Minnesota Vikings team goes marching in to New Orleans and comes away with a win. There just isn’t. Not gonna happen. They are simply not very good on the road. Their offensive line isn’t very good on the road. Jared Allen is no good unless he’s one-on-one with a tight end, or against a backup tackle with no help. That means Vikes lose. Here’s the score: Saints 36, Vikings 23.

On to my plucky Jets team. There’s so many things I like about New York, and what I like most is that the goodness that exists there will be in place for some time. They have positive leadership in Thomas Jones, Mark Sanchez, Kerry Rhoades, Darrelle Revis, Bart Scott, and pretty much the whole offensive line. This team will be around for a while, and I can’t wait to be a full-fledged Jets fan next season. But this ain’t their year.

I think that the Jets matchup well with the Colts. If there is any team capable of really making Peyton Manning uncomfortable and breaking his rhythm, it’s the Jets. But I can’t see it happening. Colts 27, Jets 20.

I’m not the only one who follows the philosophy that this weekend is really the premiere weekend of the NFL. I was raised on 90’s football, when almost every NFC Championship game was 49ers-Cowboys, and it was always the best game of the year. The winner of that game got to go cream the Bills in the Super Bowl, and that’s just how it was.

Here’s to hoping that both games are worthy of sitting through the commercials. Cheers, football fans.

contact email: nick.thomas@flyingpigskin.com