10:14 PM – well, this sucks

An all-in-all disappointing last week of the season was capped off with the revelation that next week’s wild-card round of the NFL playoffs would be pitting three of the exact same matchups against each other.

If you scroll down to the beginning of this entry, you’ll see how I foolishly expounded the virtues of in-conference games the last week of the season. This would be the counter-argument.

If you’re the NFL right now, you’re kind of pissed. Not too many casual fans of eliminated teams are going to tune back in to see Bengals-Jets, Dallas-Philly or Packers-Cardinals for a second straight week. Despite re-runs the ratings will no doubt still be high, but the games are a lot tougher to hype when networks and radio and newspapers have been hyping the same product for a week already.

Thanks for reading this week, see you soon.

7:05 PM – Who is Jamaal Charles?

I’ll admit I missed the boat on this guy. Apparently he was a badass Texas RB who ranks fourth all-time at the University behind Ricky Williams, Cedric Benson, and Earl Campbell. He’s reached 1,100+ yards this season for the Kansas City Chiefs despite not getting double-digit carries until Week 10. Today he ripped the Denver Broncos for 259 yards and two scores, fueling K.C.’s 44-24 upset and knocking Denver out of the playoff hunt.

Huh. Never heard of him.

4:57 PM

The true playoff picture is starting to make sense with the NFC finally taking some kind of recognizable format-friendly shape. Here’s a very premature prediction:

1 New Orleans
2 Minnesota
3 Dallas
4 AZ
5 Green Bay
6 Philly

Philly could have finished as high as two and as low as 6, that’s insane. All they had to do was win today, and right now they’re getting handled by the Cowboys. It would be a memorable comeback if the Eagles somehow go win this game.

2:35 PM – Live Bears Homer Section

Chicago just went up 27-20 on Detroit in their meaningless, pitiful contest, and Jay Cutler is slowly putting together a decent game. A road win will help leave a good taste in everyone’s mouth this offseason, especially after last Monday night’s season-best performance. Tough to say if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Positives have abounded the last two weeks in Chicago, and that was almost impossible to imagine after their 31-7 loss at Baltimore three weeks ago.

Don’t get me wrong – last week’s shocker over the Purple was not only brilliant, convincing, and a bleepin’ barrel of monkeys to watch, it was equally as satisfying to watch them eff up Minnesota’s playoff positioning. But these two wins (if the Bears pull this off today) CANNOT be factored into the future of this coaching staff.

Today’s game in particular has exemplified so many of the repetitive issues that Lovie Smith’s regime has been plagued with: star receivers like Calvin Johnson being allowed to run unchallenged (averaging 16 yards per catch today), not getting full potential from the talent at the runningback position and inflexibility by the offense as a whole. Screen passes being called on 3rd-and-forever. Running up the gut on 2nd-and-forever.

Jay Cutler is giving interviews before the game about how he’d like to be rolled out of the pocket more – why, before the final game of the season, is this still an issue to the point where Cutler is willing to bring it out in the open like this? Why doesn’t the coaching staff (and that includes Lovie Smith, he’s the boss) believe getting Cutler to throw on the move is a good idea? What’s the brilliant philosophy behind that rigidity? Obviously Cutler has told Turner this in meetings. Turner hasn’t implemented much that utilizes this concept. Why not? If there’s a good reason for it, tell us.

On defense, it seems like Smith’s philosophy was at odds with itself all year. The recipe for The Cover-Lovie is as follows:

- Keep the passing game in front of the d-backs and never give up the deep ball.
- Generate pressure from the front four defensive lineman without excessive blitzing.
- Let the safely-positioned defensive secondary jump routes on passes thrown under pressure.
- Always, always, always go for the ball when tackling a ballcarrier.

While Smith was successful at completing the first and last elements of his scheme, the middle two steps didn’t happen consistently enough to yield meaningful results. At times, Smith had to blitz too much (as he had to do all last year) to get any pressure on the QB, and most of the time it still didn’t do the trick.

With the defensive backs all playing soft on the receivers, an unhurried QB will sit back and complete easy passes all day long.

Too many times this season did the Bears defensive backfield get picked apart too easily. And I honestly don’t think that too much fault can lie with the players – they were being told to play a style that was against their nature. Cornerbacks and Safeties want to play up on their opponents and be aggressive, even if the rules are not in their favor. Instead, Chicago’s defensive backfield was told to essentially allow completed passes in front of them and go for the tackle and strip afterward. It conceded completions all over the field, all season long. And Lovie’s defenses always have. Bears fans are too accustomed to seeing opponents march up and down the field, and have been conditioned to expect the defense hold them out of the end zone. It’s a silly philosophy, and while I like Lovie Smith as a head coach, he needs to play more straight-up defense. It’s not the Cover-2 that is to blame, it’s the overall defensive mantra Smith employs that needs to be scrapped.

Bears win, Cutler finishes the season on a high note. This is a good thing, no matter how much I personally detest Cutler. Some final thoughts on the Bears season, and on Cutler specifically:

Cutler’s attitude has actually been somewhat commendable considering the circumstances.
He’s been working with a lot less talent around him and a lot more stupidity above him than he had in Denver. He’s been a lot less of an outright jerkoff than I figured he would be. Although there is two reasons for this, which would be, A.) He sucked, and B.) a $30 Million contract extension through 5 games will ease a lot of tension.

336 completions gives Jay Cutler the Bear’s all-time season record, and close to 3,600 yards will put him 2nd all-time. 27 TD’s puts him 3rd.

But he only had three 300-yard games, not even good enough to beat Bill Wade’s record of four in 1962. He did beat ol’ Billy Wade in one category though, and that would be picks. 26 interceptions is good for 2nd all time, and beats Rex Grossman’s worst season by 6 INT’s. 7 of those were in the red-zone and took points off the board. They cost Chicago games. They should be blamed on the QB most, who needs to protect the ball and be more accurate when it counts.

I will make the argument that Chicago’s WR position is the deepest on the team. I like what I’ve seen from the wideouts this season, including everyone’s favorite whipping boy, Devin Hester. He catches the ball out in front of his body with his hands, plays the sideline well, and has been reliable when thrown to. Like the rest of the Bear receivers, he has had very few drops all year.

All of these WR’s would play well in sound offensive systems with accurate passers. The Bears can still achieve that, but without draft picks to build a new offensive line with, it’s going to be a while before we see that. But it was nice to see the offense play good football late in the year, much better than still trending downward into repugnancy.

1:44 PM

Picking the Giants to beat the Vikings today is turning out to be my worst prediction all year, even worse than taking Tennessee to beat San Diego over Christmas. As of this update the Vikings are ahead 31-0, and the Giants look desperate to go home and forget this year. It’s kind of an odd switcheroo, usually this season the team that has had something to play for has come out flat and listless against the team with nothing to to gain from winning.

Case in point would be the New Orleans Saints, who are losing 17-3 to Carolina and are ready to go into the playoffs with no momentum and no positive vibes. They will end the season on a three-game slide if they don’t cobble something together.

I still think my reasons for picking the Vikes to lose (coaching idiocy, shoddy line play) are true and will kill them in the postseason, but the Giants are beaten and broken, and Eli Manning needs to shave. He looks like a dirty Louisiana rat-boy with that patchy excuse for facial hair.

12:40 PM

There are only two inter-conference games being played today, Washington at San Diego and Tennessee at Seattle. Otherwise, all other games are in-conference, and many of them are of big consequence. It’s a muddled playoff picture in both the AFC and NFC, but it’s a compelling and competitive one, and if the matchups were done on purpose by the NFL schedulers than bravo. And if it was merely by accident, the NFL should learn from this.

While none of the relevant games are yet worthy of comment this early in the day, Saints-Panthers, Steelers-Dolphins, Vikings-Giants, Packers-Cardinals, Eagles-Cowboys and Jets-Bengals all will feature playoff-caliber teams playing at full bore, no resting. That’s fantastic.

11:49 AM – FOX Sports continues to be everything I hate about life

I just decided to switch over to those same jock-sniffing crank-yankers over on the Fox Pregame Show, and they confirmed their status by featuring, ten minutes before gametime, comedian Frank Caliendo, who at this point is as sick as everyone else is of seeing him.

Really? Does his John Madden impression still do that much for people? There’s only so much we can all take, but apparently the majority of TV-watchers out there have a far greater tolerance for hearing the same joke over and over and over again than I have.

11:10 AM

I love how Michael Irvin always bounces back.  He’s now on the NFL Network’s pre-game show and is featured regularly throughout NFLN’s programming, and it would have been hard to imagine him being so media-prominent back when he was a player on 90’s Dallas Cowboys.  Irvin’s image back then couldn’t have been worse, even by today’s Wide-Receiver-Troublemaking-Diva standards.

For those who may have forgotten, Michael Irvin was caught in a hotel room on his 30th birthday with a huge pile of cocaine and a nice crop of ah…female escorts.  He showed up to his court-date wearing a tasteful full-length mink coat, pleaded no contest, and paid his $10K fine in cash.  He was involved in a bizarre confrontation with a teammate over a barber-shop chair at the team’s facility in 1998, when Irvin ordered guard Everett McIver out of his seat as if the man were Irvin’s prison-bitch.  What happened after McIver refused to get up was never made clear, but the man twice Irvin’s size came out of it with a two-inch laceration on his neck and a rumored six-figure hush money settlement.  Then there was a false charge of sexual assault that was completely heinous and fabricated (the accuser did time for perjury), but did nothing to help the man’s image.  He was arrested again on pot charges 4 years ago while employed by ESPN.

On the actual playing field, Irvin was brash, flamboyant, loud-mouthed, and despised by virtually everyone who hated the Cowboys, which was then and still is everyone who isn’t a Cowboys fan.

But now, Irvin is a pretty likable, competent game analyst, which is pretty hard to find these days.  He’s not as boisterous as he was on ESPN; he’s settled into a wiser, more senior-ly role on the NFLN.  But you know something else will happen with this guy, and then he’ll be doing Comcast Regional coverage back in the Dallas area for a sixth of the salary.  I hope not though, because he actually is a tolerable alternative to the jock-sniffing crank-yankers over on the network stations.

Tags: flyingpigskin, michael irvin, NFL week 17 live blog, nick thomas, pregame show