King Kaufman's Sports Daily
NFL playoffs: From the sublime (Colts, Chargers) to the 8-8 (half of the NFC), the first weekend should at least provide lots of points, and at most four good games.
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Jan. 7, 2005 | It's NFL playoff time again, and you know what that means: More annoying Don Cheadle commercials!
Also lots of good football. The AFC has at least four teams that look good enough to go to the Super Bowl. The NFC has none, but somebody's going to have to go.
Is a Patriots-Steelers AFC Championship Game an inevitability or can the Colts or Chargers get there? Can the wild-card teams, the Jets and Broncos, make a Cinderella run?
Can the Eagles end their streak of NFC Championship Game losses at three even without Terrell Owens, and after having lost their last two games while resting the first string? Are the Falcons paper tigers? Are the Packers as good as they looked in the second half? Are the Vikings as bad? Are the Rams and Seahawks the worst playoff teams ever? What's the capital of South Dakota?
Pierre. The other questions will be answered over the next three weekends. Let's have a look at wild-card weekend, in chronological order:
Saturday games
St. Louis Rams (8-8, wild card) at Seattle Seahawks (9-7, NFC West champs), 4:30 p.m. EST, ABC: The last time an 8-8 team made the playoffs was in 1999, when the Lions and Cowboys both got in as wild cards and both got pounded in the first round. The Saints made it as an 8-8 wild card in 1990 and lost in the first round.
I can't tell you if either of these teams is worse than all of the above 8-8 teams, but they're pretty rough trade for the playoffs. They both finished the season with two wins to get to or just above .500, but look who they beat. The Seahawks beat the Cardinals and the second string of the Falcons while the Rams beat the Eagles' second string and the Jets, who lost three of their last four and six of their last 11. The Jets' only win in the last month was over -- the Seahawks.
The Rams swept the season series. Everyone's talking about the Oct. 10 game in Seattle, perhaps the defining moment of the year for both teams, when the Rams roared back from a 17-point deficit -- or the Seahawks blew a 17-point lead, if you like -- with less than nine minutes to go and won in overtime. What no one seems to remember is that five weeks later the Rams beat the Seahawks easily at home, and that came in the middle of a five-game stretch in which the Rams were hideous. In the two games before and after that win, St. Louis went 0-4 and got outscored 153-70.
But it's awfully hard to beat the same team three times in one season, right? Wrong. Fifteen teams have played playoff games against division foes they'd swept that year, and they've gone 10-5. It's not unreasonable to think that if a team has beaten another team twice in one year, it's because they're better, or they at least have that team's number.
This could be a shootout, more because of bad defenses than good offenses. The Seahawks should be able to make hay with Shaun Alexander, last seen apologizing for his unseemly whining about coach Mike Holmgren calling plays with winning an important game in mind, as opposed to Alexander winning the rushing championship. The Rams should be able to throw on Seattle.
Both teams are fully capable of self-destructing, and for no other reason than home field, I'll pick the Rams to do so. St. Louis badly outplayed the Jets last week but came awfully close to losing because of turnovers and poor special teams play. The Seahawks kicked one game away to them this year at Qwisp Field. I think the Rams will return the favor. Prediction: Seahawks