Football, Coaching Decisions, and the Final GPR

 This scene from earlier this season will 

be repeated on Super Bowl Sunday

The NFL's Conference Championship games served to produce a Super Bowl match-up made in Heaven, 43 year old Tom Brady against Young Gun Patrick Mahomes.  The greatest quarterback of all time against the greatest quarterback in the NFL today.  It was problematic from the outset that an NFL season would be completed in 2020, and that it will culminate in this head-to-head contest has to be beyond the wildest dreams of Roger Goodell and the Punjabs who run the NFL, not to mention those of us who watch and follow the game.

Simply put, there really are no words left to describe Tom Brady and his accomplishments, so I won't even try.  Simply remarkable.

Nor will I go into trying to summarize the two games yesterday.  If you follow the game, you already know.  However, I simply have to comment on the two pivotal coaching moments in the NFC game.

First, with :20 remaining in the first half, the Bucs are facing fourth and four at midfield and send out the punt team to end the half and head into the locker room up 14-10.  After a time out, Bruce Arians says "screw that", Brady hooks up on  short pass to get the first down, then, with :08 remaining, Brady hits a bomb down the sideline for a touchdown and a 21-10 lead.  On Facebook I commented, "I wonder if the Packers will ever be able to recover from that dagger that Brady just plunged into them."

Next, with 2:06 remaining, the Packers trailing by eight points, 31-23, it is fourth and goal on the Bucs' eight yard line.  With presumptive MVP Aaron Rodgers at QB, only eight yards away from a chance to tie the game and go into overtime, HC Matt LeFleur elects to kick a field goal. And we all thought that Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash made the dumbest coaching move of the year in Game Six of the World Series.  Granted, Green Bay had all three time outs remaining, plus the two minute warning, but they were also putting the ball back into the hands of Tom F. Brady.  Did anyone in the world possibly think that Brady wasn't going to be able to bleed the clock and end that game?  Congrats on losing by only five points instead of eight, Coach.

It's going to be a long, long time until LeFleur lives that one down.

This leads us to the final Grandstander Power Rankings of the season.

1. Chiefs
2. Buccaneers

These should probably be labeled 1 and 1a, only because Tom Brady is at the helm of the Bucs.  At this point, I lean towards the Chiefs over the Bucs in the Super Bowl, but in the end, when it's time to put actual coin of the realm on the line, will you be able to actually bring yourself to bet against Tom Brady? We shall see.

End of an Era?; Playoffs Thoughts; CFP Prediction

Wow. Just wow.

The Steelers were behind 7-0 fourteen seconds into the game, 28-0 after the first quarter, 35-10 at the half, and ended up losing 48-37.  They put a scare - maybe - into the CleveBrownies with an abortive comeback effort, they had closed the gap to 35-23 at one point in the third quarter, but in retrospect, the game was over when Maurkice Pouncey's first snap of the game sailed over Ben Roethlisberger's head and turned into a Cleveland touchdown.

Lots of introspection needs to take place, and lots of questions need to be asked as the Steelers begin to move on and prepare for 2021, but here are two of them:

1. The team at one point stood at 11-0 and then lost five of their next six games, and looked very bad in doing so.  What in the hell happened and why?
2. Was last night the last time we will see so many Steelers in Black & Gold, including their seventeen year veteran Hall of Fame quarterback?

These and other questions are best encapsulated in the photo that is atop this post.

********

Other observations...

Bills 27 - Colts 24.  This first game of the six game weekend was easily the best of the bunch.  Buffalo now becomes, to me at least, a sentimental  favorite to advance to the Super Bowl.  And was this game the Last Hurrah for 2004 Draft Class QB Phillip Rivers?

Quarterbacks Standing Tall.  Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Baker Mayfield, and, most improbable of all, Taylor Heinicke of the Washington Football Team.  For reasons I won't go into here, the WFT has become a team of interest to me, and I have recently become friends with many fans of the team. Their performance against Brady's Bucs on Saturday was a valiant one, and while Heinicke probably isn't a long term answer for them at QB, he played one hell of game on Saturday.

Quarterbacks Coming Up Small.  Russell Wilson, Ryan Tannehill, Ben Roethlisberger, and Mitch Trubisky.  I was planning on going into a full scale rant about the awfulness of Trubisky and the Bears, but in light of the Steelers performance last night, I figure, screw it, I have no room to talk.

Resting Players.   Last year, the 14-2 Ravens rested Lamar Jackson and other players in week 17, had a bye week, and then came up well short in the opening round of the Playoffs.  Last week, the Steelers treated their Week 17 game with the Browns as a pre-season game, resting Roethlisberger, Pouncey, T.J. Watt, Cam Heyward and others.  Now there were many reasons for that awful performance last night, but you will not convince me that taking the week off, essentially, last week wasn't among them.  Clearly, they certainly didn't gain anything by resting those guys.  It will be interesting to see how the Chiefs and Packers come out of the chute next week after their weeks off.

Okay, now who do I root for?  So the Steelers are out, so what team(s) do I attach myself to for the duration?  In no particular order, I'm going to be rooting for these teams going forward:

• Chiefs - How can you not root for Patrick Mahomes?
• Bills - They've been down so long you just got to root for them, right?  And a $20 bet on them winning the Super Bowl made a few weeks ago at 12-1 odds is a pretty nice incentive, too.
• Packers - Aaron Rodgers. Like Mahomes, how can you not like the guy?  Plus, an historic franchise, and my new Wisconsin friends Steve Ozbolt and Karen Kaminsky.
• Ravens - Yeah, I know that they are a bitter rival of the Steelers, but I like them (now that Ray Lewis is gone).  A solid organization, a good coach, and another really good and charismatic QB in Lamar Jackson.
• Sorry, like the Bills, the Browns have been down forever, and they also have a charismatic young QB, but I can't bring myself to root for them.  I just can't.

Good for what ails you.  At halftime of the Steelers game last night, when all hope appeared to be lost, and a feeling of doom pervaded, I took myself to the kitchen and fixed myself one of these.

Yessir! A root beer float can cure a lot of ills!

********

A terrific football weekend comes to a conclusion tonight when #1 Alabama meets #3 Ohio State in the Championship game of the College Football Playoff.  In trying to come up with a prediction, it comes down to the question of which Buckeyes team shows up.  Will it be the one that looked good but quite ordinary in beating Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship game?  Or will it be the team that thoroughly thumped and eviscerated Clemson in the CFP semi-final?  If it's the former, then it's an easy call for Alabama.  If it's the latter, then it becomes a bit harder, but on the theory that you can't ever go wrong by picking for Nick Saban, I'll call the game as a win for the Crimson Tide.  They are 8.5 point favorites, and as of this writing, how I'm gonna bet on it becomes a closer-to-gametime decision.