Conference Championship Preview: Riding A Wave To Super Bowl XLVI

The more you immerse yourself in the NFL, the more you realize that it’s the quintessential week-to-week league. It’s impossible to successfully determine the outcome of an NFL game based on each team’s body of work alone. Remember when the Buffalo Bills started the season 4-1, while playing tough and even beating eventual playoff teams like New England? But then they lost to a New York Giants team in week six that desperately needed a bounce-back win after a terrible loss in Seattle. It should’ve been overwhelmingly expected. The Bills had been riding a wave of perpetually forced turnovers; the Giants had just lost to a downtrodden Seattle team by giving up 20 points in the fourth quarter due to inexplicable turnovers, and they had something to prove. You never want the Giants when they have something to prove. That’s one of many examples on how to approach the NFL when making predictions. If you’re into that sort of thing.

Well, the playoffs are no different. Talking heads are now starting to fall into their own naivety by making assumptions like, “Maybe the NFL is becoming like baseball and all the other sports, all you have to do is make the playoffs! As long as you get in, it’s all about getting hot and playing good football at the right time!”

But isn’t that what the whole season is about if you sincerely look at it through a microscope the way the media does come January? After that loss to the Giants, the Bills beat the hapless Redskins then followed that game by losing seven straight. Their juice ran out as soon as Ryan Fitzpatrick received his contract extension and they were one of the easiest teams to bet against all year. And that’s just one example. The Dolphins are probably the best one; they started off the season ahead in the “Suck for Luck” sweepstakes and ended it by putting money in bettors’ pockets.

Now, I’m going to try not to jinx it, but I’m doing pretty well in my playoff picks against the spread right now. It’s very hard not to look ahead but I’m forcefully restraining myself because, after all, this is a week-to-week league. It’s the same week-to-week league that saw the prominent Packers fall violently at home to the Giants and saw the Saints get smacked around by the vicious-hitting 49ers. Maybe some aspects were a little surprising (nobody expected the Packers to get beat down at home the way they did, and nobody expected Alex Smith to go blow-for-blow with Drew Brees), but enough was on the table to suggest that the Saints would struggle on the road outdoors (they did, and turnovers indicated so), and that the Giants were playing at a high level suited for competitive play against an elite team. That was enough to make the overall outcome of the divisional round unsurprising to those with cognizance of the week-to-week league known as the NFL.

If you ride a wave too long, it’s bound to swallow you up at some point. It was easy to look at the 15-1 Packers’ body of work and say they were going to ride an easy wave to the Super Bowl. They couldn’t sustain that body of work because no team ever does. Football is a sport that thrives off motivation, determination and execution as much, if not more than, talent and strategy. This creates ebbs and flows in a season, no matter what it ultimately amounts to. The challenge is being prepared for those slip-ups or looming ascensions and taking full advantage. Preparation is riding the right wave.

Sunday, Jan 22 – 3:00 PM ET
Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots

By the time conference championships roll around, each of the four teams is either playing at its apex or is at the cusp of reaching it. This holds true for every team remaining right now, except for the Baltimore Ravens. Either that, or the Ravens are at their apex and just aren’t as good as the other three teams.

They had a chance to stick a fork in the Texans up 17-6 in the second quarter last week and couldn’t do it. They let Houston stick around and have a chance to win or at least tie the game in the fourth quarter, and the Texans ultimately covered the 7.5-point spread. The Baltimore offense has been anemic all season as well as predictable, which has translated to a very predictable team. Anemic offenses tend to be the catalyst for zig-zag teams as well, which made bets against them versus Seattle and San Diego virtual locks this season. The 2011-12 Ravens are a situational zig-zag team. Losses followed big wins and big wins followed losses. They beat Pittsburgh twice off sheer motivation, and those ended up being their biggest wins of the season excluding their beat down of San Francisco on Thanksgiving night. The rest of the season was highly unimpressive. Joe Flacco threw for over 300 passing yards only four times this year, and hasn’t done so since week nine in Pittsburgh. Is that the kind of offense that can keep up with a Patriots team that’s going to put up an inordinate amount of points no matter what defense they’re facing? Nope; and once again, I can’t back down now. This team (along with the Falcons) is the team I’ve been waiting to bet against in the playoffs all season, and I get to do it twice! Thank you, gambling gods.

As for the Patriots, there’s nothing to worry about with an amped-up Tom Brady under center. Brady is very similar to Kobe Bryant in that he feeds off his own ego. He finds weird ways to motivate himself. He remembers the 2010 beating they took to the Ravens at home very vividly. He’s going to shred the old and hobbling Baltimore defense (Ray Lewis is old and Ed Reed was hobbling all over the field last week). Moreover, could you think of any possible scenario where the Ravens stop the greatest tight end tandem in the history of the NFL? If Terrell Suggs is used in coverage, who’s going to get to Brady? If Suggs is used to rush the passer, who’s going to cover both Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez at the same time? Ostensibly, Ray Lewis will have to cover one of them; he would have a fit attempting to do so. That’s not good for a team that needs to hold the Patriots to at least 24 points to win.
All in all, the only thing you need to know about this game is that Tom Brady was anxiously awaiting kickoff by Wednesday. He said it’s all he’s thinking about until Sunday. That’s four days prior to the game. He’s a psychopath. Ride the wave of Psychopath Tom Brady.

The pick: New England 38, Baltimore 28 (Patriots -7)

Sunday, Jan 22 – 6:30 PM ET
New York Giants at San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers are flawlessly coached, destroy people on defense and stick to the Championship Philosophy. They run the ball and stuff the run. If anything, the 49ers are the team you’d pick to resurrect the roots of the Championship Philosophy and end this era of purely dominant quarterbacking. But the Giants are really good right now. Too good.

The Giants have been sort of an enigma over the years, playing at high levels and reverting back to exasperating performances in aimless fashion. They were no different this season. The popular hypothesis behind this is that the team has a habit of quitting on its coach. Some like to blame Eli Manning. But the big thing that needs to be noted here is that the core of this team obtains a championship mentality. They know what it takes to win. When the Pittsburgh Steelers look flat and everybody overlooks it, it’s because we all know that they’ll play up to par when it matters. For some reason, that same perception isn’t correlated with the Giants. It should be.

Not only is this team eerily similar to the one that won Super Bowl XLII, it’s better. It’s better because there’s more talent with players such as Victor Cruz, Hakeem Nicks, Jason Pierre-Paul and Antrel Rolle in the fold. It’s similar in that they obtain unwavering confidence as individuals and as a team. Call it trash talk if you wish, but even so, the trash talk is coming from all the right places and it's quite riveting.

Rolle did an exceptional job in coverage against the Packers last week and gets Vernon Davis this week after some back-and-forth banter between the two. Jason Pierre-Paul predicted a win last week, and who knows, he might do it again. But as the week draws closer to Sunday, the Giants’ trash talking has evolved into humble confidence. When Rolle was asked in Wednesday’s press conference what makes Vernon Davis so dangerous, he just chuckled and replied with: “You know, he’s an NFL tight end. He’s good at what he does” when he was obviously thinking, “I’m going to destroy him. There’s no way in hell he gets 180 receiving yards this week.” The rest of the team exuded the same quiet confidence in Wednesday’s press conference, even the guys who weren’t a part of Super Bowl XLII, most notably Rolle, Cruz and Nicks. A team like the Giants can be gauged heavily on its disposition throughout the week.

The Giants are capable of knocking some heads off the same way the Niners are. They’re capable of perfecting the Championship Philosophy the same way the Niners are. They don't care about the weather and field conditions that everybody thinks will be such a huge factor. They're playing on the road for their third straight playoff game, a familiar position for the leftover players from Super Bowl XLII. They're playing against a team they already faced and barely lost to this season (it's supremely tough to beat a team twice), which means they have something to prove. You don't want the Giants when they have something to prove. They fully believe in Eli Manning and could care less about the stomach bug he caught on Wednesday, answering questions with, “Nothing’s gonna stop him at this point. I’m pretty sure a lot of us feel the same way. He’s our leader,” and “I don’t think it’s gonna affect him at all. You know Eli, he’s as tough as they come.”

So ignore this team’s body of work. Instead, ride its wave of confidence.
The pick: New York 27, San Francisco 20 (Giants +2.5)