The Championship Games

Yeah, I know that I am at least three days late to the party on this, but I do want to put my 

worth in on this past Sunday's NFL Conference Championship games.  I will state that the doubleheader Sunday of the AFC/NFC Championship is one of my favorite sports days of the year, and in the 49ers v. Eagles and Bengals v. Chiefs, both games appeared to be attractive and exciting matchups.

Eagles 31- 49'ers 7

Well, as you have often read in this space, no sporting event ever comes with a guarantee, and never was that proven more true than in the NFC title game in Philly.

Only minutes into the game, on San Francisco's first offensive series and sixth snap, this happened:

Niners QB Brock Purdy, one of the better stories in the NFL this season, took an awkward hit on the elbow and was out of the game.  This put Josh Johnson, SF's fourth string QB into the game and, effectively, ended it.   The Eagles ended up winning 31-7 and would have probably won the game anyway, but here's something that probably wouldn't have happened. Down only 14-7 just before halftime and possessing the ball deep in there own territory, Purdy probably wouldn't haver fumbled, as Johnson did, seen the Eagles recover it, score, and take a 21-7 lead into the locker room at the half.

So, a highly anticipated game became a laugher and a blowout.  It happens, because as a wise man, or maybe a wise guy, always says, there are no guarantees when you buy a ticket to a professional sports contest.  Or watch one on television.

Chiefs 23 - Bengals 20

Unlike the NFC game, the Chiefs and Bengals delivered with a really good game in the nightcap.  Joe Burrow had a good but not a great game for him, and Patrick Mahomes, playing with a bad right ankle that severely limited his mobility and forced him to stay in the pocket, was excellent.  He proved that for all of the talk about Burrow and Trevor Lawrence and Jalen Hurts and Justin Herbert and Josh Allen, all of it justified, he, Mahomes, is the best quarterback  and might well be the best player in the entire NFL right now.

For all of that, though, the teams were tied 20-20, and it appeared that the game was headed into overtime when, with seconds remaining, Mahomes took off running and was forced out of bounds with :05 remaining when the Knuckleheaded gene that seems imbedded in the DNA of the Cincy Bungles (need I remind you of Vontaze Burfict and Pacman Jones in a similar circumstance in a playoff game with the Steelers a few years back?) kicked in in the form of linebacker Joseph Ossai that led to this:

Ossai pushed and shoved Mahomes to the ground when he was clearly, CLEARLY out of bounds.  Out came the yellow flags, and fifteen yards was tacked onto the play, and Harrison Butker kicked what was now a chip shot field goal to win the game for the Chiefs as time expired.  Ossai was devastated over his dumbshittedness, but he shouldn't feel too bad, because I'm betting that Butker would have nailed that field goal even without the fifteen yard penalty.

Thus, we had one game decided early due to a fluke injury, and another game decided, maybe, by a stupid and totally unnecessary penalty.  The Thrill of Victory and The Agony of Defeat encapsulated twice in the same day.

This now leads up to an interesting Super Bowl LVII in Glendale eleven days from now.  

These are some of the storylines that will be bandied about ad nauseam  between now and then....

• Andy Reid coaching against his old team, the one he took to a handful of NFC Championship games and one Super Bowl, that fired him.
• Two Black QB's starting in a Super Bowl for the first time.
• Two brothers, Travis and Jason Kelce, facing off against each other for the first time ever in a Super Bowl.
• Will Gronk really attempt to kick field goal in a Fan Duel commercial?
• Will Greg Olsen, now a dead man walking in the Fox booth now that Tom Brady has retired "for good", talk longer than Castro used to talk in one of his marathon speeches to the Cuban people back in the day?
• Rhianna

As I type this, the Eagles are 1.5 point favorites over Kansas City.  I think that the Eagles may be a better team than KayCee, but the Chiefs have an advantage in the most important position on the field in Patrick Mahomes at quarterback.  My inclination is that in what figures to be  close game, the team with the better QB is the one to pick, so I lean to the Chiefs at +1.5, but I'm not ready to put any cash on the line just yet.

Looks like a dandy matchup between two really good teams.  Can't wait.

Chiefs Win!

When the Chiefs took possession of the ball deep in their own territory with about eight minutes remaining in the game and trailing San Francisco 20-10, Joe Buck made the comment "Well, the Chiefs have the 49'ers right where they want them", referring to how the Chiefs had come back from double digit deficits in their prior two playoff wins.  It was a throwaway line for a cheap chuckle, but it seems that everybody's favorite play-by-play guy Buck was rather prescient, as the Chiefs proceeded to score a TD, force a three and out by San Francisco, score another TD, force the Niners to turn it over on downs, and then score another TD.  Presto change, a 10-20 deficit was now a 31-20 lead for Kansas City.  All in the space of about five or six minutes of game time.  It was pretty amazing as you watched it unfold.

In case you missed it, my Grandstander prediction post on Saturday ended with these words: 

"Oh, yeah, the Chiefs to win it in a high scoring affair.  An MVP for Mahomes, and good Guy Andy Reid finally gets a win in the Big One."

I believe I had that!

Some other quick comments.....

Mahomes was not as sharp and spectacular as we have become used to seeing.  He was off target early, and he did throw two interceptions, but then there were those final eight minutes.  It reminded me of John Facenda's line about the Steelers in the Super Bowl IV highlight film.  Allow me to paraphrase.....(imagine Facenda's Voice-of-God tones with NFL Films music playing in background) "Patrick Mahomes wasn't always great.  He was only great when he had to be."

Commercials.  To be honest, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention.  I liked the "Pahk the Cah" commercial for some self-parking car.  I didn't realize until I read in the paper this morning that Molly Ringwald was in the avocado commercial (need to look that one up).  It seems that MC Hammer is going to finance his entire retirement by playing the washed-up, forgotten, 15-minutes-of-fame guy in Super Bowl commercials; nice work if you can get it.

After watching Shakira bumping-and-grinding and J-Lo pole dancing, I made the following comment on Facebook:  "Next year the NFL should just hire fifty or so people from the porn film industry and let them have at it on the stage for the half-time show."  Four seconds of Janet Jackson's exposed bosom seems so long ago...and so innocent!

The Chiefs not only won the game, but they easily covered the 1.5 point spread, which gave me a winning ticket.  In football wager that I made at the Rivers Casino this football season, I finished with a record of 27-18, a winning percentage .600.  If only those wagers were for $500 or $1,000 each, instead of my usual five or ten bucks (twenty on the Super Bowl!), I'd be leaving for Hawaii tomorrow morning.  It was a fun experience making these legalized wagers throughout the season.  It certainly added to my interest in many of the games, even with my penny ante wagers.  I'll look forward to doing it again come next season, although I am under no illusions that I will be able to duplicate such successes come 2020.

Despite the travails of the Steelers this year, I cannot recall enjoying a football season quite as much as I enjoyed this one.  I will miss it now that it is over.  True, the XFL opens up this coming weekend, and I suppose that I will give it a shot, but, C'MON, MAN, I have no high expectations for that.

I will end this post as I usually end my Super Bowl wrap-up posts.....Pirates pitchers and catchers report in nine days!!

Super Bowl Prediction

Like many of you out there, I, too, am looking forward to the annual exercise in bacchanalia that is the Super Bowl.  As is my custom, I will not wear myself out by watching the five or six hours of pre-game bullshit that will be shown on Fox, ESPN, or other networks.  As has been our custom, we will either head out to the movies in the afternoon, or watch one on TV to "prepare" for the game.  I will probably tune into the Fox telecast around 6:00 to catch a bare minimum of pre-game hoopla and then settle in to watch the game, which is set to kick off at 6:30.

I am offering one interesting "prop bet" for your consideration:

The Over/Under on number of Vituperative Comments about Joe Buck Across All Social Media Platforms has been set at 1.7 Billion (with a B) Snide-Snarky-Hateful Comments.  I'd definitely go with the OVER on this one.

As for the game, I am looking forward to a competitive and exciting game.  Great defensive team in San Francisco.  Explosive offensive team in Kansas City.  The 49'ers can run.  The Chiefs have perhaps the best and most exciting offensive force in football in quarterback Patrick Mahomes. 

I think it's going to be a fun game to watch, and I'm calling it for the Chiefs to win their second Super Bowl, and even fifty years after they won their first one in Super Bowl IV....

(Allow me to interrupt here with a personal memory.  I watched the Chiefs defeat the Vikings in that long ago Super Bowl on a black and white TV in a dormitory at Slippery Rock State College.  Lots and lots of water under many bridges since then.)

....okay, where was I?  Oh, yeah, the Chiefs to win it in a high scoring affair.  An MVP for Mahomes, and good Guy Andy Reid finally gets a win in the Big One.

Enjoy the Game, everyone.

Championship Sunday Reflections

Random thoughts on this past Sunday's NFL Championship Games.....

• Without question, the single most dazzling play of the the weekend, if not of the entire season, was the 27 yard touchdown run by Patrick Mahomes that (a) put the Chiefs ahead 21-17, and (b) effectively ended the game.  We are seeing a passing of the torch in quarterbacking in the NFL (a subject of a future Grandstander post whenever I get around to organizing my thoughts on the topic) with a new wave of young and exciting QB's getting ready to take over, but there can be no doubt as to who the best of the New Wave is, and that is the Chiefs' Patrick Mahomes.

• What the Tennessee Titans did to close their season, make it into the Playoffs as the final wild card team, and then defeat both the Patriots and the Ravens on the road, was remarkable.  Mike Vrabel should be the Coach of the Year because of it.  It was great story.
• The Titans fell because the Chiefs were able to take Derrick Henry out of the ballgame, and they did so not only with the explosiveness of Mahomes and his receivers, but by controlling the ball themselves and eating up a lot of the clock on drives.  San Francisco, take note.
• If the 49'ers-Packers NFC title game had been a prizefight, the refs might have stopped in midday through the second quarter.  Vince Lombardi must have been rolling in his grave watching the Packers defense get shredded by the 49'ers.
• Aaron Rodgers (much like Lamar Jackson the week before against the Titans) rolled up lots of gaudy passing numbers in the second half, when the game was already lost, but he came up small in the first half with an interception and two lost fumbles that led to a 27-0 halftime lead for San Francisco.  His facial expressions and body language throughout that game were those of a beaten man.  Very un-Rodgers-like.
• Raheem Mostert.  I must confess that up until Sunday, I had never heard of this guy, and with good reason.  In the last two years, he has been cut by six different NFL teams, and the 49'ers are his seventh team.  This past Sunday, however, we saw him rush for over 200 yards and score four touchdowns.  There is a very strong likelihood that he will never even come close to another day like that again in his career, but for one day, and maybe one day only, he was a reincarnation of Jim Brown and OJ Simpson rolled into one.
• Mostert went to Purdue University where he also ran track and was a teammate of my friend Stephanie Bonk, so I can claim two degrees of separation from him.

So this leads us to a very interesting Super Bowl match-up in two weeks.

After watching the playoffs for the last three weeks, I don't think that there is any doubt that the two best teams survived and are advancing to Miami.  This leads to the final Grandstander Confidence Rankings (GCR) of the season:

1. Chiefs
2. 49'ers

San Francisco is a very good team, and if any defense might be able to contain Mahomes, it might be this one.  The Niners can also run and control the ball, to the point where QB Jimmy Garoppolo only had to throw eight passes in the game on Sunday.  That could serve to keep KC and Mahomes off of the field, but the same was said about Derrick Henry and the Titans going into the AFC title game, so the Chiefs know how to play defense, too.

It is an intriguing match-up, to be sure, and I won't give an official prediction until closer to Super Bowl Sunday, but I will restate my long held belief:  When in doubt, go with the team with better quarterback, and we know who that is.

Lousy Teams in the News

What I am about to write about falls in to the category of Old News, but I just can't resist.  At the NFL trade deadline last week, the League's two lousiest teams were very much in the news.

First off, the San Francisco 49'ers, now 0-9, made a trade with the New England Patriots and obtained quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.  Interesting deal, and God knows, the Niners needed a QB, but then coach Kyle Shanahan announced that Garoppolo would not be starting right away, and, in fact, it was highly possible that Garoppolo might not even play until NEXT season.

I will remind you that the 49'ers were 0-8 at the time of Shanahan's pronouncement, and are now 0-9.  Can anyone explain the HC's logic in this matter?  Can anyone explain why anyone would actually buy a ticket to see the 49'ers play?

Then there are the Cleveland Browns.  The quarterback travails of the Browns since they came back into the NFL in 1999 are well documented.  In an effort to improve themselves, the Browns had apparently made trade with the Bengals to obtain Cincy's back-up QB, A.J. McCarron.  Word is that the folks in the Browns front office and football staff were celebrating this deal and congratulating themselves over be able to pull this off, except for one minor detail.  They neglected to file the necessary paperwork with the League office prior to the deadline, so....No Deal.

As Bryce Harper might put it, that is a clown franchise, bro.

Of course, one might wonder just how good McCarron would have been anyway since the Bengals were willing to send him to a division opponent, but of course, these are the Bengals we are talking about.  In the end, you might say that the big winner in all of this was McCarron, since he doesn't have to go to Cleveland and play for the Browns, but, on the other hand, he is still stuck with the Bengals.

Let me end with this little proposition wager.  If I set the Over/Under for combined wins for the Browns and 49'ers at 1.5 for the rest of the season, how would you bet?  I would bet the Over because it is hard to go 0-16.  However, if I set it at 2.5, I would definitely go Under.

My Super Bowl Pick

I currently hold a 4-6 record with my NFL post-season predictions, so I am guaranteed, for the first time in three years of doing this, a losing record in this prognostication department, but I'm going to give you my thoughts anyway.

First off, I am looking forward to the game.  I think it is a match-up that has the potential to be a very entertaining football game.  The opposing quarterbacks, Colin Kaepernick and Joe Flacco, have easily been the most dominant players in this playoff season. and they have certainly earned the right to be on this big stage.  I am somewhat surprised to hear so many people here in Pittsburgh, some of them close friends, who profess to be football fans, say that they have no interest in the game, and probably will watch very little, if any, of the game.  I don't get it.  If you are a pro football fan, why wouldn't you want to watch the Super Bowl, especially one that appears too offer an exciting and competitive match-up?

As to the game itself, I will be rooting for the Forty-Niners.  I really couldn't care less that this will mean that they will tie the Steelers with six Super Bowl wins.  Hey, all you Steelers Nation folks, that doesn't lesson the Steelers accomplishments, and it doesn't really affect YOUR life one way or the other.  I like Jim Harbaugh, despite his tendency to go berserk on the sidelines, Kaepernick is a very exciting player to watch, and I will show my own Black & Gold Bias here by not wanting to see the Steelers most bitter rival, the Ravens, win the big one.

That said, my call for the winner of the big game?

I'm calling for a Ravens win because of the play of Joe Flacco.  He has certainly made a believer out of me, not only for his play in these playoffs, which has been stellar, but for his body of work over the last few years.  Need I remind anyone that he is 3-1 against the Steelers over the past two seasons?  And like it or not, I think there is something about this "Let's Win It for Ray Lewis" fever that seems to be enveloping the Ravens.  Yeah, it's way over the top, but so was the Jerome Bettis Fever that gripped the Steelers on their Super Bowl run in 2005.  It's hokey, corny, and hard to take for the non-fans, but sometimes, it is meaningful for the team involved.

(By the way, the closest thing that I have to an NFL Insider tells me that Lewis is a "good guy." Respectful to the game, a class act and a true leader on the field, and that the "praise-the-Lord" bit of his is genuine and not something he just turns on for the TV cameras.  This doesn't make me do a 180 and become a big fan of Lewis, but it does temper my opinions somewhat.)

So there it is: RAVENS over the Forty-Niners come Sunday in Super Bowl Whatever the Roman Numeral Is.

The Games of Sunday

Someone made the comment on Facebook that NFL Conference Championship Sunday is better than Super Bowl Sunday, and it is hard to argue that point.  The games of two days ago are certainly a case in point with two home, higher seeded (one a #1 seed at that) teams losing and NOT SCORING a point in the second half of each game.  Remarkable.

And here's an amazing fact about the upcoming Super Bowl of which you might not be aware.  The opposing coaches are brothers!  Can you believe that?  Two guys born of the same parents, who grew up in the same house, are actually going to be coaching against each other in the Super Bowl.  I can't believe that no one has mentioned that before.

Anyway, some thoughts and comments on the two games on Sunday, many of which I had previously shared on Facebook.....

• Concerning the results, the Bad News: Two more weeks of Ray Lewis b.s.  The Good News: We won't have to see a thousand or so shots of Bob Kraft in the Owner's Box during the Super Bowl.
• Before you point it out to me, yes, I know I went 0-for-2 on my predictions for these games.
• As mentioned in my pre-game comments, the Atlanta coaches certainly did figure out a way to stop Colin Kaepernick from running all over the place on Sunday.  Too bad for them, it turns out that Kaepernick is a pretty good passer, too.
• I saw Julio Jones did more for the Falcons in three quarters than the Steelers "Young Money" troika of Wallace-Brown-Sanders did all season.   
• The ease with which Frank Gore could get in the end zone when the 49'ers were inside the ten made me wonder if the SF offensive line is THAT much better than the Steelers line, or were the Steelers running backs that much worse than Gore.
• While I did believe that New England would beat Baltimore, I did feel that Baltimore had a reasonable chance to win.  That they won with such dominance and comparative ease amazes me.
• Even though he was on the losing side, Wes Welker is an amazing football player.
• Did you catch the look of complete disbelief on Tom Brady's face in the fourth quarter, particularly after throwing that interception that sealed the deal for Baltimore?
• Speaking of Brady, am I the only guy who thought that his foot was aimed just a bit too high on that Baltimore defender when he slid towards the end of the first half?  Ty Cobb would have loved it, but Czar roger should relieve him of some cash, in my opinion.
• When Matt Ryan threw that incomplete pass on fourth down from the 10 yard line late in the game, how many of you flashed back to Neil O'Donnell against the Chargers in the '94 AFC Championship Game?
• So, Bill Belichick goes true to form and refuses an interview with CBS after losing the game.  (a) Stay classy, Coach, (b) aren't coaches REQUIRED to do such interviews with the NFL's network partners?, (c) if so, will coach Bill be fined by Czar Roger?, (d) Shannon Sharpe now becomes a folk hero, and (e) to take another point of view, did we really miss anything by NOT hearing from Coach Bill?
• Contrary to many Pittsburghers, I do not find the Harbaugh Brothers repellent, in fact, I kind of like both of them (even if I don't care for the Ravens), and I think the Brothers Coaching Against Each Other is a pretty cool story, even if it will get beaten to death over the next two weeks.
• I also know that despite what they may say in public, I am pretty sure that each brother wants to beat the hell out of each other.
• Speaking of coaches, was it Walt Harris or Dave Wannstedt who thought Joe Flaco wasn't worth playing at Pitt?  Yeah, I know, hindsight is 20/20, but still...
• As for me, I will be rooting for San Francisco in the Super Bowl for the following reasons.  (1) In like Jim slightly better than John, (2) I don't like the Ravens, (3) the Ray Lewis sycophantry, (4) The Colin Kaepernick Story is a very cool one, and (5) unlike many Steelers fans, I am not threatened by the idea that a 49'er win will tie them with the Steelers with six Super Bowl titles.