What A Football Weekend!

Well, you couldn't have closed out 2022 and begin 2023 in any better fashion, football-wise, that what we were treated to this past weekend.

Let's start with the College Football Playoff Semi-finals.

I can recall that in past years, like last year, these semi-final games have tended to be one sided and just not all that good.  Not so this year.

First game, TCU 51 - Michigan 45.  Explosive offenses.  Tremendous quarterback play, and a game that went to the final minutes.  Plus, Jim Harbaugh gets beat.  At the end of the game, my thought was, "Top that game, Georgia and Ohio State."

Well, they did.  Georgia 42 - Ohio State 41.  Explosive offenses.  Tremendous quarterback play, and a game that went down to the final three seconds before it was decided.

Currently, Georgia is a 13.5 point favorite in the CFP Championship game.  The Over/Under is set at 62.5 (bet the OVER).  Regardless of the point spread, if you have no dog in the fight, how could you not be rooting for TCU against the SEC behemoth Georgia?   Should be a whale of a game, and I can't wait to see it.

Then came Week 17 of the NFL.  I confess to missing all of the afternoon games yesterday for various and sundry reasons.  I know that it featured an amazing Tom Brady Performance, an amazing Aaron Rodgers Performance, a crushing victory for Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars, and an OT win by the 49ers.  Would have loved to have seen them all, but I didn't, but I did see yet another classic in the epic drama that is Mike Tomlin's Steelers vs. John Harbaugh's Ravens.  This one won by the Steelers 16-13.

It was won with :54 remaining when Kenny Pickett passed...

...to Najee Harris in the end zone....

...for the game winner.  It was a tremendous throw as Pickett had to scramble to his left to avoid being sacked, and an even more tremendous catch by Harris.  It also marked the second week in a row where Pickett led the team on length-of-the-field drives in the closing minutes of the game to win it for the Steelers.

The Steelers playoff hopes, amazingly (remember that they were 2-6 at one point), are still alive.  They need to beat the Browns at home next week, but are dependent on two other games going their way, so it's a long shot at this point.  This season, it should be remembered, was not going to be about W's and L's or deep playoff runs.  It was to be about the replacement of an 18 year vet Hall of Fame quarterback and the development of first round pick Kenny Pickett into the QB of the Future.  That story has yet to be written, of course, but it seems to be trending, as Neal Huntington used to put it, upward.

One last comment on last night's game.  However, you may feel about Chris Collinsworth as an announcer  - I happen to like him, but I know that many consider him a football version of Tim McCarver - he does know football, and a couple of comments he made last night were noteworthy to me.  One, he made a number of favorable comments about LB Robert Spillane, two, he said that Pickett's TD pass to Harris was worthy of anything Patrick Mahomes does, and three, he compared Pat Freiermuth to Travis Kelce.  That is some pretty serious company.

Already looking forward to next week.