Patriots and Cardinals Advance

Off the top of my head thoughts on yesterday's NFL Playoff games.....

• I thought Rob Gronkowski was supposed to be injured.
• Why would any team win the coin toss and then choose to defer, thus giving the ball to Tom Brady and the Pats to start the game?
• When Brady hit Gronk for a TD on that opening drive, I posted this on Facebook: "The Chiefs will not lead at any point in this game."  I believe I had that.
• That was a marvelous, textbook, time consuming touchdown drive that the Chiefs engineered in the fourth quarter.  Only trouble is that it consumed too much time and the Chiefs were down by fourteen, not seven, points at the time.  What could Andy Reid have possibly been thinking?
• A lot of the so-called experts said that the Patriots were vulnerable in this game.  Sure didn't look that way to me.

• For about three and one-half quarters that Packers-Cardinals game was a bit of a snoozer.  But then...WOW.  A game like that is why you follow sports.
• For those first three and one-half quarters, was it a function of really good defense, or a couple of inept offenses?
• I admit that I didn't see the Cardinals all year, but if Carson Palmer played like that all year, how did they win thirteen games?
• In winning that game last night, Palmer may well have been the luckiest player in the NFL all season.  Especially after that fourth quarter interception in the end zone that he lobbed up to Green Bay.   That was a certifiably awful throw.
• Did you notice that the Cardinals started to make things happen when they decided to start throwing the ball to Larry Fitzgerald?
• That game tying drive that Aaron Rodgers put together, with no time outs, less than a minute to play, and after being sacked back to the two yard line, and included not just one, but two unbelievable Hail Mary passes, will be forgotten because the Packers lost the game, but that was just Amazing and Unbelievable with a capital A and a capital U.
• How in God's name does a defense allow Larry Fitzgerald to be standing all by himself with no defender within 15 yards of him?  In overtime of a playoff game no less.

And not to pick on the zebras, but how can that guy screw up a coin flip? Also, and this isn't the Officials' fault, but the endless debates and reviews on what is or is not a "Catch" are totally ridiculous and absurd.  That it was even subject to debate both on one Fitzgerald reception and the Green Bay reception that tied the game was, well, I hate to use the same world twice in the same paragraph, but it was absurd!  And we have seen that dance in almost every NFL game this season.  Something really needs to be done about that.

Looking forward to that Steelers-Broncos tussle today.  More so than how an impaired Ben Roethlisberger will play today, it will come down to this: Which version of the Steelers defense will show up today, and which version of Peyton Manning will show up for Denver?

#HereWeGo.