Members of the media and fans nationwide have spoken about Colin Kapernick and Joe Flacco when discussing the keys to the upcoming Super Bowl. Both quarterbacks have been impressive thus far in the playoffs, but there are lesser examined factors that may prove equally pivotal to the ultimate outcome of the big game. Casual football fans often base their opinion of a team on the presence of speedy, flashy, play-making skills players on a given roster, but football players, coaches, and experts know that football games are won in the trenches. A team with a superior offensive line can give a mediocre quarterback enough time to allow a relatively untalented receiver to get enough separation to make a catch against even a talented secondary. A great offensive line can open up holes so that a running back can gain yardage even if he lacks break away speed. On the other side of the ball, a dominant defensive line can collapse an opposing teams pocket, force a quarterback into making poor throws, and cover up serious deficiencies in their team's defensive secondary. Today we'll go over a pair of line personnel changes that have drastically affected the play of each Super Bowl-bound teams, and why those changes will likely play a deciding role in the upcoming game.
KEY PLAYER SPOLIGHT: JUSTIN SMITH
In week 15 of the regular season, the 49ers played the New England Patriots in Foxboro and won 42-34. It was a spectacular high scoring game, and likely gave many fans confidence in Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers as a whole. What the score doesn't tell us at first glance is what this particular game ultimately cost San Francisco in the long run. The 49ers were up 31-3 in the 3rd quarter after a blunderous first half gave Tom Brady and the Patriots a massive deficit. The second half, however, was a totally different story. The Patriots began a furious comeback that fell just short as the 49ers offense was able to score just enough to keep the Patriots down by 7 points in the end. The Patriots still manages to score 31 second half points, and 24 of those points came in the 4th quarter alone.
The question many fans should have been asking themselves at that point was how on earth the vaunted 49ers defense allowed a team to score 24 points in a single quarter. I think most fans attributed such offensive success to the fact that the 49ers were playing the highest powered offense of the regular season in its home stadium. That offense, however, was without its biggest redzone threat at the time, and was not nearly as strong as the 49ers made it appear on that night.
The real key to the 49ers' defensive meltdown was an injury to their best defensive lineman. Justin Smith tore his triceps tendon during the game, and that single injury had far-reaching effects on the rest of the defense. Justin Smith is a lot like Haloti Ngata in that he often occupies the blocks of two opposing offensive linemen, and that opens things up for the 49ers pass rushers such as Aldon Smith to get to quarterbacks with less obstacles. As a result of Justin Smith's dominant and physical presence at defensive tackle, Aldon Smith logged 19.5 sacks in just the first 13 games of the season!
As soon as Justin Smith became injured in the Patriots game, however, Aldon Smith's ability to hit quarterbacks dropped substantially. He has, in fact, not recorded a sack in a single game since week 14. The effects of Justin Smith go beyond Aldon Smith's sack total. The 49ers have not been able to put nearly as much pressure on quarterbacks, and that has exposed a the 49ers secondary as much weaker than their 4th place regular season passing yardage allowed average would suggest.
Many fans and analysts are aware of the fact that the 49ers defense has allowed a far greater amount of passing yards in recent weeks. The fact that the 49ers are favored by many of these same people would suggest that they attribute those passing defensive numbers to the high powered passing offenses that the 49ers have faced. A fact that may have been lost on these same people is that Justin Smith's injury also allows opposing teams to run the ball far more easily against the 49ers. Only one week after Justin Smith tore his triceps tendon, the 49ers faced their rivals the Seattle Seahawks. The 49ers beat the Seahawks in a defensive showdown 13-6 earlier in the regular season, but this game was far different. The 49ers defense couldn't stop the Seahawks' rushing attack, and San Francisco found itself down 24-6 at halftime. Since the 49ers couldn't stop the Seahawks from running the ball, Colin Kaepernick and the offense had far less opportunities to score, and what little opportunities that DID have were shut down by a fresh, superior Seahawks defense.
The defensive deficiencies of the 49ers defense have been at least somewhat covered up by the fact that the 49ers won both of their playoff games thus far, and any offensive flaws have been covered up by the fact that the 49ers played two teams with absolutely horrendous defenses during that time. On Sunday, however, the 49ers will be facing a well-rested team with a defense that has played better than any defense this post season and an offense that already absolutely shredded one of the top 3 defenses in the league this season. The 49ers picked the wrong time to have issues with their defensive line because the reason for the Ravens' recent offensive dominance has to do in large part with the fantastic play of the Ravens offensive line-- and that brings us to our second key lineman analysis.
KEY PLAYER SPOTLIGHT: BRYANT MCKINNEY
Almost at the same time that the 49ers defensive line became noticeably weaker with Justin Smith's injury, the Ravens offensive line improved by leaps and bounds in the area of pass protection. The Ravens offensive line struggled for much of the year to protect Joe Flacco. Michael Oher played at left tackle, but he often struggled as he simply isn't built to protect the blind side despite what Hollywood may have led the general public to believe. The Ravens offense looked downright anemic in road games for most of the regular season, and many believed that their only chance at going to the Super Bowl would be a first-round bye and homefield advantage throughout the playoffs.
Just as the regular season ended, however, the Ravens' young left guard, Jah Reid, went down with an injury. The Ravens had no choice but to reshuffle the offensive line to deal with the loss. Instead of bringing in another lineman at left guard, the Ravens decided to take their starting right tackle, Kelechi Osemele, and slide him to left guard. They then moved Michael Oher back to right tackle and put Bryant McKinney in at left tackle. McKinney got his feet wet in the final reguar season game at Cincinatti, and many remarked at how poorly he played. His poor play must have been the result of a season of almost never seeing the field. After shaking off the metaphorical rust in the Cincinatti game, Bryant McKinney looked absolutely dominant in the opening round of the playoffs. McKinney wasn't simply going up against any average defensive end on each snap; he was going up against one of the best pass rushers in the NFL in Dwight Freeney. Not only did Bryant not allow a single sack, he didn't allow Freeney to even TOUCH Joe Flacco for the entire game.
Some may have attributed McKinney's performance to the Ravens playing in their home stadium, but he continued to protect Flacco just as well in the following game in Denver. With McKinney on the left side, the entire Ravens offensive line gave Flacco more than enough time to complete some of the most impressive passes of his career against a defense riddled with pro-bowlers. Elvis Dumervil and Vonn Miller combined for a single sack the entire game, and that sack was the result of Flacco holding on to the ball for what appeared to be at least 6 seconds since his receivers couldnt' get separation.
If Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis couldn't beat the Ravens offensive line, and if Vonn Miller and Elvis Dumervil had just as much trouble, we can expect the 49ers' defensive line to have little success at pressuring the red hot Ravens quarterback. Joe Flacco has appeared quite noticeably more confident in the pocket with the recent performance of his offensive line, and that has led to one of the greatest post season performances by a quarterback in NFL history. Joe Flacco is currently 3rd all time on the list of most touchdowns thrown (8) in a single post season without an interception. Flacco needs only 3 more touchdowns without a pick to tie Joe Montana, and 4 more touchdowns without an interception would put him at 1st on the list.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The 49ers demonstrated numerous times since Justin Smith tore his triceps tendon just how much they struggle defensively when the dominant defensive tackle isn't healthy. Smith has valiantly played through this injury thus far in the playoffs, but he's well aware that he could tear completely through the tendon at any moment and would be totally unable to play. Justin Smith will be operating with only on functional arm in the Super Bowl this Sunday, and that simply won't be enough to warrant a Ravens double team.
The Ravens, on the other hand, will likely run the ball early against the 49ers and force the talented 49ers linebackers to stop Ray Rice and Bernard Pierce. Forcing the 49ers to stop the Ravens running game should ultimately open up the passing game and expose a comparatively weak 49ers secondary. Expect Joe Flacco to have a good amount of success off of play-action fakes, and expect a big day from Dennis Pitta and Anquan Boldin if the 49ers use double team coverage on Torrey Smith all day.
The 49ers certainly have a good offensive line and an effective running game, so I don't expect them to be shut out in this game. Their offense's dependence on running could make a second half comeback difficult against a Ravens defense that has only allowed 4 touchdowns in this entire post season thus far. I'm not ready to make a score prediction without full statistical analysis of both teams, but the rise of the Ravens offensive line and the decline of the 49ers defensive line certainly both point to a Ravens edge this Sunday. Oh, and for anyone who has said something to the effect of "how are the Ravens going to manage to stop Colin Kaepernick??", I would like to remind them that the Ravens stopped Peyton Manning in Denver and Tom Brady in Foxboro. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are so far beyond Colin Kaepernick that it's laughable that someone would imply they'd have more trouble with the young guy than the two greatest quarterbacks of the last 15 years and arguably of all time. Only one more game to go, Ravens fans!
AS ALWAYS
GO RAVENS!!!
Monday, January 28, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
SUPER BOWL PREVIEW PART II: MOBILE QB'S UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
There has been quite a great deal of hype surrounding young, athletic, mobile quarterbacks this season. I've heard plenty of talk in the media that the read-option offense is going to be the wave of the future and that traditional pocket passers will be a thing of the past sometime in the near future. I certainly haven't bought into such talk, though, and there are good reasons as to why.
The first reason is the most obvious: a high reliance on mobile quarterbacks running the football puts the athlete at an incredible risk for season-ending or season-altering injury. Michael Vick has long been a prime example of this, but Robert Griffin III is the most recent example to show that Vick is no sort of anomally. Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick haven't suffered any major injuries this season, but it's likely only a matter of time until they do. It's not that these types of athletes aren't talented and explosive, it's just that the rules of the NFL don't protect runners. There are rules that protect quarterbacks behind the line of scrimmage, and there are rules that protect receivers, but you won't see flags thrown for helmet to helmet hits on someone who crosses the line of scrimmage with the football tucked against their body.
Safety isn't the only downside to having a quarterback that runs the ball so often. One of the things that makes many quarterbacks elite is their ability to step up into the pocket and make throws even with pressure bearing down upon them. Extremely speedy, athletic quarterbacks often get overconfident in their ability to outrun pass rushers, and will give up on throwing the ball too quickly and attempt to run for a first down. This can sometimes be successful, but it seems to hold such quarterbacks back from truly developing a pocket presence and possibly even chemistry with their receivers.
Mobility in a quarterback certainly isn't a bad thing on its own. An agile quarterback with good footwork such as Aaron Rodgers commands enough speed to run for a first down when necessary, but he also has the restraint and sound judgement to know when it's safe to run and when to simply use his athleticism to extend the play and complete a pass instead of crossing the line of scrimmage as a runner. Rodgers isn't alone in this skill set. As much as I loathe him, Ben Roethlisberger has demonstrated time and again the ability to use his mobility and judgement to get out of the pocket in order to give himself more time to complete passes downfield. Lord knows I'm no fan of Tony Romo, but he also often displays this talent.
The major difference between the Romos, Roethlisbergers, and Rodgers of the world and the Kaepernicks, Wilsons, and Griffins is that the first three men listed know they're not necessarily fast enough to outrun everyone chasing them. They know they can buy more time with a few moves, but ultimately, they're looking to get the ball into the hands of faster players downfield. Robert Griffin III and Colin Kaepernick, on the other hand, know they ARE some of the fastest men on any given field, and don't hesitate to prove it. The problem is, however, that being a faster athlete doesn't always mean one can avoid the crushing blow of a defender with a good angle and a good 150 pounds on you...just ask RG3 what it feels like to get hit by 350 pound Haloti Ngata.
The underlying reason for this rant against running quarterbacks is my own personal issue with the idea that the 49ers should be favored going into the Super Bowl. I know that the Ravens couldn't care less about whether they're favored by pundits or oddsmakers (it sounds as though they actually relish the underdog role), but my own examination of statistics and key factors leading up to this game leads me to question why people are so incredibly high on the 49ers and still doubtful of the Ravens.
I have not yet finished compiling and analyzing statistics for the upcoming Super Bowl, so please don't expect a final prediction in this post. I have, however, come across some interesting and obvious facts in the early stages of my examination of both teams, and almost all of them lead me to wonder why the Ravens aren't at least 3 point favorites in this game.
The first obvious observation is that the 49ers defense has performed quite poorly thus far in the playoffs. The 49ers defense was able to hold the Falcons offense scoreless in the second half of the NFC Championship, but that was after easily surrendering 24 first half points to Matty Ice and company. It was mostly Colin Kaepernick and the offense that allowed the 49ers to win both of the playoff games they've played thus far, but that offense was going against two defenses that were clearly ill-equipped to stop them. Regardless, the 49ers allowed an average of 27.5 points per game in this post-season, and that doesn't bode well for them against a Ravens team that has averaged 30 points per game and 33 points per game on the road. Hell, the Ravens' highest scoring game was against a Broncos team with the #3 ranked pass defense and #3 ranked run defense in the league.
One of the top defenses in the league couldn't stop the Ravens offense far away from Baltimore, and its no secret that major changes have occured within the last two months to allow for such production regardless of the venue in which the Ravens play. It's difficult to point to one major factor and say that it's the strongest reason for the Ravens recent offensive success. There are, rather, three major factors of equal importance that combined to produce such an explosive unit. The first, of course, was the firing of Cam Cameron and promotion of Jim Caldwell to offensive coordinator. Jim gets plays called more quickly and intelligently than Cam Cameron. Also, unlike with Cam, the Ravens players have faith and a good rapport with Caldwell, and gives Flacco and his targets a great deal of confidence. The second reason is the current state of the offensive line. Marshal Yanda is once again healthy, and the movement of Bryant McKinney to left tackle, Michael Oher to right tackle, and Kelechi Osemele to left guard has meant plenty of time and protection in the pocket for Joe Flacco.
That brings us to reason #3: Joe Flacco has been absolutely dominant with the football in his hands. Reasons #1 and #2 give Joe Flacco the type of circumstances that allow him to fully take advantage of his talents. With plenty of time in the pocket and better play calling, Joe Flacco is able to use his arm strength and precision to tear opposing secondaries to shreds. Play calling also helps to remind defenses that they must defend against the Ravens rushing attack as Ray Rice and Bernard Pierce combine to form a dangerous complimentary running back tandem. With weapons everywhere you look and fantastic offensive line performance and play calling, the Ravens now possess the most balanced, explosive offense in team history. They can score quickly when needed, they can go on long grinding drives to keep the clock moving, and they can get into the endzone regardless of the strength of the defense staring back at them.
The 49ers will ultimately have trouble stopping the Ravens' offense. They might be able to halt the running game early, but when the game is on the line, the Ravens protect Joe Flacco long enough for some of the NFL's speediest receivers to get open. Oh, and let's not forget that if a team tries to blanket Torrey Smith with double coverage, they leave the middle of the field wide open for Dennis Pitta and Anquan Boldin.
With all of that said in favor of the Ravens, the 49ers still do possess their own set weapons. Vernon Davis commands the greatest combination of size, speed, and strength among all NFL tight ends, and Michael Crabtree has developed into a good wideout over the last couple of years. Randy Moss still has the height and hands to make the occassional play, and let's not forget how well Frank Gore has been running as of late. The problem is that the Ravens just finished beating two other teams with better quarterbacks and far more impressive offensive weapons. The Ravens' corners shouldn't have incredible trouble with Michael Crabtree, and they were able to render Vernon Davis useless fairly easily last season. As for Randy Moss, he simply no longer possesses the speed to get behind a secondary of the Ravens' caliber, and Kaepernick may find himself on the receiving end of some big hits from Ravens pass rushers if he takes the time to attempt long throws downfield.
My ultimate Super Bowl prediction will likely boil down to matchups. I'll won't draw much from the 49ers' domination of the Packers in San Francisco because the Super Bowl isn't being held there. I'll draw more conclusions from last week's game against the Falcons because it will feature a similar dome and road environment. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that many of my conclusions will stem from somewhat earlier games where the 49ers struggled to score. Falcons' defense, after all, struggled repeatedly to maintain sizeable leads in the second half of games.
The Ravens, on the other hand, displayed the ability to actually become better on defense after halftime. This is likely because of a combination of wisdom and experience amongst veteran Ravens defenders along with a coaching staff that knows exactly how to make the necessary adjustments to slow down virtually any offense.
Also, if you're thinking to yourself something to the effect of "well the Ravens just faced two pocket passing quarterbacks that tend to throw the ball a lot, and they haven't played a team that can pound the ball like the 49ers" you would be wrong. The Ravens just beat the 7th ranked Patriots rush offense last weekend, and had the physicality to knock one of the most league's most explosive running backs out of the game. The Ravens also faced an offense similar to the 49ers when they played the Redskins a couple of months ago. The Redskins had a better running back than Frank Gore and a better quarterback than Colin Kaepernick, and that was when the Ravens were incredibly short-staffed on defense.
The 49ers have not yet faced a team with a combination of offensive firepower and defensive physicality that the Ravens currently possess. It appears as though much of the news media still bases their opinion of the Ravens on their entire body of work during the 2012 regular season. That body of work, however, is far from reflective of their current condition, and it boggles my mind that pundits continue to doubt the Ravens despite the fact that they already beat the two teams most people thought would most likely win the Super Bowl...on the road.
Complain as I may, I'm not bitter. I simply find all of the doubt surrounding the Ravens wildly amusing. It will be even funnier to hear those same doubters either come up with excuses or admit they were wrong if the Ravens defeat the 49ers. I've preached that Ravens fans should keep faith in their team all season, but now it seems just so easy to believe in them. The Ravens have already gone FAR beyond the expectations of fans and commentators, and now it's time to win one last game to put any lingering skepticism to rest. Make sure you honor the second to last Purple Friday tomorrow.
AS ALWAYS
GO RAVENS!!!
The first reason is the most obvious: a high reliance on mobile quarterbacks running the football puts the athlete at an incredible risk for season-ending or season-altering injury. Michael Vick has long been a prime example of this, but Robert Griffin III is the most recent example to show that Vick is no sort of anomally. Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick haven't suffered any major injuries this season, but it's likely only a matter of time until they do. It's not that these types of athletes aren't talented and explosive, it's just that the rules of the NFL don't protect runners. There are rules that protect quarterbacks behind the line of scrimmage, and there are rules that protect receivers, but you won't see flags thrown for helmet to helmet hits on someone who crosses the line of scrimmage with the football tucked against their body.
Safety isn't the only downside to having a quarterback that runs the ball so often. One of the things that makes many quarterbacks elite is their ability to step up into the pocket and make throws even with pressure bearing down upon them. Extremely speedy, athletic quarterbacks often get overconfident in their ability to outrun pass rushers, and will give up on throwing the ball too quickly and attempt to run for a first down. This can sometimes be successful, but it seems to hold such quarterbacks back from truly developing a pocket presence and possibly even chemistry with their receivers.
Mobility in a quarterback certainly isn't a bad thing on its own. An agile quarterback with good footwork such as Aaron Rodgers commands enough speed to run for a first down when necessary, but he also has the restraint and sound judgement to know when it's safe to run and when to simply use his athleticism to extend the play and complete a pass instead of crossing the line of scrimmage as a runner. Rodgers isn't alone in this skill set. As much as I loathe him, Ben Roethlisberger has demonstrated time and again the ability to use his mobility and judgement to get out of the pocket in order to give himself more time to complete passes downfield. Lord knows I'm no fan of Tony Romo, but he also often displays this talent.
The major difference between the Romos, Roethlisbergers, and Rodgers of the world and the Kaepernicks, Wilsons, and Griffins is that the first three men listed know they're not necessarily fast enough to outrun everyone chasing them. They know they can buy more time with a few moves, but ultimately, they're looking to get the ball into the hands of faster players downfield. Robert Griffin III and Colin Kaepernick, on the other hand, know they ARE some of the fastest men on any given field, and don't hesitate to prove it. The problem is, however, that being a faster athlete doesn't always mean one can avoid the crushing blow of a defender with a good angle and a good 150 pounds on you...just ask RG3 what it feels like to get hit by 350 pound Haloti Ngata.
The underlying reason for this rant against running quarterbacks is my own personal issue with the idea that the 49ers should be favored going into the Super Bowl. I know that the Ravens couldn't care less about whether they're favored by pundits or oddsmakers (it sounds as though they actually relish the underdog role), but my own examination of statistics and key factors leading up to this game leads me to question why people are so incredibly high on the 49ers and still doubtful of the Ravens.
I have not yet finished compiling and analyzing statistics for the upcoming Super Bowl, so please don't expect a final prediction in this post. I have, however, come across some interesting and obvious facts in the early stages of my examination of both teams, and almost all of them lead me to wonder why the Ravens aren't at least 3 point favorites in this game.
The first obvious observation is that the 49ers defense has performed quite poorly thus far in the playoffs. The 49ers defense was able to hold the Falcons offense scoreless in the second half of the NFC Championship, but that was after easily surrendering 24 first half points to Matty Ice and company. It was mostly Colin Kaepernick and the offense that allowed the 49ers to win both of the playoff games they've played thus far, but that offense was going against two defenses that were clearly ill-equipped to stop them. Regardless, the 49ers allowed an average of 27.5 points per game in this post-season, and that doesn't bode well for them against a Ravens team that has averaged 30 points per game and 33 points per game on the road. Hell, the Ravens' highest scoring game was against a Broncos team with the #3 ranked pass defense and #3 ranked run defense in the league.
One of the top defenses in the league couldn't stop the Ravens offense far away from Baltimore, and its no secret that major changes have occured within the last two months to allow for such production regardless of the venue in which the Ravens play. It's difficult to point to one major factor and say that it's the strongest reason for the Ravens recent offensive success. There are, rather, three major factors of equal importance that combined to produce such an explosive unit. The first, of course, was the firing of Cam Cameron and promotion of Jim Caldwell to offensive coordinator. Jim gets plays called more quickly and intelligently than Cam Cameron. Also, unlike with Cam, the Ravens players have faith and a good rapport with Caldwell, and gives Flacco and his targets a great deal of confidence. The second reason is the current state of the offensive line. Marshal Yanda is once again healthy, and the movement of Bryant McKinney to left tackle, Michael Oher to right tackle, and Kelechi Osemele to left guard has meant plenty of time and protection in the pocket for Joe Flacco.
That brings us to reason #3: Joe Flacco has been absolutely dominant with the football in his hands. Reasons #1 and #2 give Joe Flacco the type of circumstances that allow him to fully take advantage of his talents. With plenty of time in the pocket and better play calling, Joe Flacco is able to use his arm strength and precision to tear opposing secondaries to shreds. Play calling also helps to remind defenses that they must defend against the Ravens rushing attack as Ray Rice and Bernard Pierce combine to form a dangerous complimentary running back tandem. With weapons everywhere you look and fantastic offensive line performance and play calling, the Ravens now possess the most balanced, explosive offense in team history. They can score quickly when needed, they can go on long grinding drives to keep the clock moving, and they can get into the endzone regardless of the strength of the defense staring back at them.
The 49ers will ultimately have trouble stopping the Ravens' offense. They might be able to halt the running game early, but when the game is on the line, the Ravens protect Joe Flacco long enough for some of the NFL's speediest receivers to get open. Oh, and let's not forget that if a team tries to blanket Torrey Smith with double coverage, they leave the middle of the field wide open for Dennis Pitta and Anquan Boldin.
With all of that said in favor of the Ravens, the 49ers still do possess their own set weapons. Vernon Davis commands the greatest combination of size, speed, and strength among all NFL tight ends, and Michael Crabtree has developed into a good wideout over the last couple of years. Randy Moss still has the height and hands to make the occassional play, and let's not forget how well Frank Gore has been running as of late. The problem is that the Ravens just finished beating two other teams with better quarterbacks and far more impressive offensive weapons. The Ravens' corners shouldn't have incredible trouble with Michael Crabtree, and they were able to render Vernon Davis useless fairly easily last season. As for Randy Moss, he simply no longer possesses the speed to get behind a secondary of the Ravens' caliber, and Kaepernick may find himself on the receiving end of some big hits from Ravens pass rushers if he takes the time to attempt long throws downfield.
My ultimate Super Bowl prediction will likely boil down to matchups. I'll won't draw much from the 49ers' domination of the Packers in San Francisco because the Super Bowl isn't being held there. I'll draw more conclusions from last week's game against the Falcons because it will feature a similar dome and road environment. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that many of my conclusions will stem from somewhat earlier games where the 49ers struggled to score. Falcons' defense, after all, struggled repeatedly to maintain sizeable leads in the second half of games.
The Ravens, on the other hand, displayed the ability to actually become better on defense after halftime. This is likely because of a combination of wisdom and experience amongst veteran Ravens defenders along with a coaching staff that knows exactly how to make the necessary adjustments to slow down virtually any offense.
Also, if you're thinking to yourself something to the effect of "well the Ravens just faced two pocket passing quarterbacks that tend to throw the ball a lot, and they haven't played a team that can pound the ball like the 49ers" you would be wrong. The Ravens just beat the 7th ranked Patriots rush offense last weekend, and had the physicality to knock one of the most league's most explosive running backs out of the game. The Ravens also faced an offense similar to the 49ers when they played the Redskins a couple of months ago. The Redskins had a better running back than Frank Gore and a better quarterback than Colin Kaepernick, and that was when the Ravens were incredibly short-staffed on defense.
The 49ers have not yet faced a team with a combination of offensive firepower and defensive physicality that the Ravens currently possess. It appears as though much of the news media still bases their opinion of the Ravens on their entire body of work during the 2012 regular season. That body of work, however, is far from reflective of their current condition, and it boggles my mind that pundits continue to doubt the Ravens despite the fact that they already beat the two teams most people thought would most likely win the Super Bowl...on the road.
Complain as I may, I'm not bitter. I simply find all of the doubt surrounding the Ravens wildly amusing. It will be even funnier to hear those same doubters either come up with excuses or admit they were wrong if the Ravens defeat the 49ers. I've preached that Ravens fans should keep faith in their team all season, but now it seems just so easy to believe in them. The Ravens have already gone FAR beyond the expectations of fans and commentators, and now it's time to win one last game to put any lingering skepticism to rest. Make sure you honor the second to last Purple Friday tomorrow.
AS ALWAYS
GO RAVENS!!!
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
CHAMPIONSHIP WEEKEND REACTION AND SUPER BOWL PREVIEW
I still haven't fully wrapped my mind around the idea that the Ravens will be going to the Super Bowl. I predicted they would, but each season in the Harbaugh-Flacco era has, thus far, ended in heartbreak from me, and it's almost as though some part of my mind simply expected my favorite team to be once again screwed by the referees or a blunderous missed field goal. This Ravens team, however, is different than those of previous years, and there's a big reason why: the 2012-2013 Ravens actually got better in the playoffs than they were during the regular season. The Ravens made a late coaching change and reshuffled their offensive line. At around the same time, just about all of the major defensive stars became healthy enough to play...and man, are they playing!
The 49ers haven't had to deal with the same number of injuries to their defensive starters as the Ravens, but their coaching staff did make a major decision that had an impact on the season. The 49er's quarterback, Alex Smith, became injured roughly half way through the season, and Colin Kaepernick became his replacement. Kaepernick impressed his teammates and coaching staff to such a degree that he became the permanent starter even after Smith once again became healthy enough to play. This was a risky decision as it could have cost the coaching staff the respect of the players for demoting a starter just because of in injury. The players, however, rallied behind the young quarterback and gave him their full support.
Fearless personnel and staffing decisions may just be what makes the Harbaugh brothers great coaches. Fans and even some players may not always agree with their decisions at first, but it's clear that both men have inherited a resolve to do what is right for their team regardless of any risk that they'll upset or annoy others. I'll be happy to see the Ravens defeat the 49ers, but I'm glad they'll be facing a tough, gritty team one more time before purple confetti falls.
RAVENS AT PATRIOTS
What a game this turned out to be. I had the Ravens winning by a touchdown, but I verbally told co-workers and friends all week that I expected the Ravens to thump a Gronkless Patriots team by 10 or more points. I saw that the Patriots struggled in the redzone against some bad teams with Gronk out in the regular season, and that ended up making the difference in a game where the Patriots had a handful of unsuccessful trips beyond the Ravens 20 yard line. Would this game have been different if Gronkowski had been in? Of course, but injuries are a part of football, and if the Ravens hadn't experienced a mountain of injuries during the regular season, it's likely they would have gone 13-3 or 14-2 and this game would have been played in Baltimore.
This was a game where I finally gained a huge amount of confidence in defensive coordinator Dean Pees. Pees made adjustments in the second half that led to a 3rd and 4th quarter shutout of a Patriots offense that scored 557 regular season points. Pees did what the Steelers did in their regular season win over the Patriots during the 2011 regular season; he kept the Ravens in mostly nickel packages and even dropped back players such as Paul Kruger into coverage. The Ravens defensive linemen were able to pressure and hit Brady at times even though they never truly sacked him. Pees' strategy was intelligent because the Patriots tend to get the ball into the hands of their receivers early near the line of scrimmage with many screen passes and short routes to keep the chains moving. This takes away the time and opportunity that opposing teams require to sack Brady. In light of the fact that most of the Patriots' passes were short, the Ravens' defensive line did a fantastic job of getting hands up to bat down and tip Brady's passes.
I must admit that I was a bit puzzled by Jim Caldwell's play calling early in the game, but it became abundantly clear soon thereafter that Caldwell had a method to what at first appeared to be madness. Caldwell at first appeared to be trying to force the issue as he ran the ball on first and second down repeatedly in the first quarter. The Patriots, after all, had a strong run defense this season. Pounding the ball up the middle early, however, opened things up for the Ravens later in the game once the ball was placed squarely in the control of Joe Flacco. In the second half of the game, Caldwell called plays that allowed Flacco to go over the middle to Torrey Smith and Dennis Pitta while finding Boldin for two spectacular touchdowns. We seldom saw those kinds of plays with Cam Cameron at the helm. As the Ravens found success in the passing game, Caldwell began to mix in running plays once more, but this time he intelligently ran numerous draw plays to take advantage of the fact that the Patriot's linebackers were often dropped back into coverage.
The most important thing I realized after the game was that the Ravens didn't NEED to worry about missing a game-winning field goal because they Ravens scored touchdowns on all 4 of their trips to the redzone. An improved offensive line has meant an incredibly precise, confident Joe Flacco who has thrown 8 touchdowns and no interceptions in the post-season. The 49ers should be worried about their upcoming matchup.
49ERS AT FALCONS
This was the first game I incorrectly predicted in the entire post season as my playoff record for 2013 is now 9-1. I reasoned that the Falcons were good enough to lead a quick game-winning drive against a team almost identical to the 49ers only a week earlier, and it appeared as though they might even do that in the last 2 minutes of the NFC Championship. A major missed pass interference call on Navarro Bowman meant the Falcons couldn't convert on 4th down and the game ended in a 49ers win.
The Falcons certainly looked dominant in the first half of the game, but their defense simply appeared poorly conditioned and equipped to handle another entire game of a mobile quarterback and strong running game. The Falcons offense, however, was mostly to blame as it failed to score in the entire second half and couldn't stay on the field long enough to give the defense time to catch its breath. Matt Ryan threw a costly interception and had an embarrassing fumble that wasn't forced by a 49ers player or even the result of a bad snap.
As for the 49ers, they stuck to exactly what they've done well for the last couple of seasons. The 49ers took advatnage of a poor Falcons run defense and unleashed Frank Gore. At times it appeared as though the Falcons defenders were standing still as Gore slipped right by them on his way into the endzone. Colin Kaepernick made some great throws after being forced out of the pocket to Vernon Davis and Michael Crabtree. I was not, however, incredibly impressed with Kaepernick the way the rest of the world appeared to be. He's great for a young quarterback, but at this stage of the playoffs, I'm judging players on how they play, not how they play given the time they've been in the league. Kaepernick has only faced mediocre and poor defenses thus far in the playoffs, and his success in this game depended largely on the typically blunderous playoff performance of Matt Ryan.
With that said, Kaepernick has the arm strength and athleticism to evade pressure and make great throws to some big targets downfield. The Ravens got a taste of that kind of quarterback earlier this season with Robert Griffin III. Somehow the Falcons repeatedly allowed Vernon Davis to get wide open downfield, and that helped the 49ers go one step further than the Seahawks did a week earlier.
SUPER BOWL PREVIEW
We have the better part of two weeks until the Super Bowl, so I will have plenty more previews, analyses, and predictions in store for my readers. I simply figured it would be a good idea to get my own thought process going regarding positional matchups and each team's tendencies. This game, after all, features two teams with a lot of similarities, and it will likely require a great amount of analysis over the next couple of weeks to form a reasonable prediction of the outcome of Super Bowl 47.
As I stated earlier, the Ravens got a preview of a 49ers-style offense when they faced a Colin Kaepernick-like player in RG3. RG3 is even faster than Kaepernick with just as strong an arm. The Redskins also featured a fantastic running back who was much better than Frank Gore this season. The Ravens didn't win that game, but that had more to do with offensive mistakes and defensive injuries. If Joe Flacco had the protection of his current line and the Ravens had their current starting defense, the Ravens-Redskins game could have turned out much differently. With that said, the Ravens were able to halt the Redskins' offense in the second half, but the Ravens' offense couldn't capitalize off of their defensive success.
From a schematic standpoint, the Ravens were able to contain RG3 in the way that they'll need to contain Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick isn't great from the pocket, and the 49ers' offensive system isn't designed to get the ball into the hands of receivers quickly like that of the Patriots or Broncos. The Ravens will, therefore, have to set the edge with Kaepernick and prepare for a lot of up-the-middle running from Frank Gore.
The next two weeks will be huge for Haloti Ngata as the extended time to rest and prep for the next game will likely lead to increased performance from the giant Polynesian. Ngata has dealt with a nagging sprained knee all season and he's performed far better after periods of extended rest. The Ravens will need their defensive line to hold up against a strong 49ers offensive line if they hope to minimize Frank Gore's success.
The 49ers, on the other hand, will have to try to refrain from running Colin Kaepernick too much unless he has clear opportunities to get a first down and out of bounds safely. The Ravens have the explosive hitting power in enough of their athletes to leave a mobile quarterback battered, bruised, and limping. Fortunately for the 49ers, their backup used to be their starter, and he's more than capable of playing well enough to win games.
The 49ers know full well that they are not going up against a defense that gets exahusted and plays poorly in the second half of games. This Ravens defense has only allowed 4 offensive touchdowns in 3 playoff games against top offenses with tons of weapons. The Ravens defense has enough experience and leadership to slow down the best offenses in the league, and the Ravens offense has already gone against one of the top defenses in the league on the road in the divisional round. I realize that a lot of people are high on the 49ers because they get excited by mobile quarterbacks, but Colin Kaepernick hasn't faced a team as explosive, complete, and well coached as the Ravens yet in the playoffs. The '9ers are in for a rude awakening.
I've been telling Ravens fans to keep the faith all season, and it has paid off big time. The Ravens have no major injuries listed, and they're going to have extra time to rest and get prepared for the most important game in team history. This game isn't just about winning the big game, and it isn't just about getting Ray Lewis on final ring. It's about validation of the last dozen years of building and perfecting this team to get back to Super Bowl form. It's about once again being an underdog team with a wildly loyal fanbase that can be heard loudly even in harsh road venues (loved hearing "O!!" in during the national anthem in Foxboro). Most of all, it's about showing the world why we Ravens fans are nuts about our team year in and year out. We love big hits, interceptions, and a hard-nosed running game, but now we have a great quarterback and fantastic receiving corps to boot. I'm calling on Ravens fans everywhere to wear purple as often as possible until the Super Bowl. It's time to show our purple pride!
AS ALWAYS
GO RAVENS!!!!
The 49ers haven't had to deal with the same number of injuries to their defensive starters as the Ravens, but their coaching staff did make a major decision that had an impact on the season. The 49er's quarterback, Alex Smith, became injured roughly half way through the season, and Colin Kaepernick became his replacement. Kaepernick impressed his teammates and coaching staff to such a degree that he became the permanent starter even after Smith once again became healthy enough to play. This was a risky decision as it could have cost the coaching staff the respect of the players for demoting a starter just because of in injury. The players, however, rallied behind the young quarterback and gave him their full support.
Fearless personnel and staffing decisions may just be what makes the Harbaugh brothers great coaches. Fans and even some players may not always agree with their decisions at first, but it's clear that both men have inherited a resolve to do what is right for their team regardless of any risk that they'll upset or annoy others. I'll be happy to see the Ravens defeat the 49ers, but I'm glad they'll be facing a tough, gritty team one more time before purple confetti falls.
RAVENS AT PATRIOTS
What a game this turned out to be. I had the Ravens winning by a touchdown, but I verbally told co-workers and friends all week that I expected the Ravens to thump a Gronkless Patriots team by 10 or more points. I saw that the Patriots struggled in the redzone against some bad teams with Gronk out in the regular season, and that ended up making the difference in a game where the Patriots had a handful of unsuccessful trips beyond the Ravens 20 yard line. Would this game have been different if Gronkowski had been in? Of course, but injuries are a part of football, and if the Ravens hadn't experienced a mountain of injuries during the regular season, it's likely they would have gone 13-3 or 14-2 and this game would have been played in Baltimore.
This was a game where I finally gained a huge amount of confidence in defensive coordinator Dean Pees. Pees made adjustments in the second half that led to a 3rd and 4th quarter shutout of a Patriots offense that scored 557 regular season points. Pees did what the Steelers did in their regular season win over the Patriots during the 2011 regular season; he kept the Ravens in mostly nickel packages and even dropped back players such as Paul Kruger into coverage. The Ravens defensive linemen were able to pressure and hit Brady at times even though they never truly sacked him. Pees' strategy was intelligent because the Patriots tend to get the ball into the hands of their receivers early near the line of scrimmage with many screen passes and short routes to keep the chains moving. This takes away the time and opportunity that opposing teams require to sack Brady. In light of the fact that most of the Patriots' passes were short, the Ravens' defensive line did a fantastic job of getting hands up to bat down and tip Brady's passes.
I must admit that I was a bit puzzled by Jim Caldwell's play calling early in the game, but it became abundantly clear soon thereafter that Caldwell had a method to what at first appeared to be madness. Caldwell at first appeared to be trying to force the issue as he ran the ball on first and second down repeatedly in the first quarter. The Patriots, after all, had a strong run defense this season. Pounding the ball up the middle early, however, opened things up for the Ravens later in the game once the ball was placed squarely in the control of Joe Flacco. In the second half of the game, Caldwell called plays that allowed Flacco to go over the middle to Torrey Smith and Dennis Pitta while finding Boldin for two spectacular touchdowns. We seldom saw those kinds of plays with Cam Cameron at the helm. As the Ravens found success in the passing game, Caldwell began to mix in running plays once more, but this time he intelligently ran numerous draw plays to take advantage of the fact that the Patriot's linebackers were often dropped back into coverage.
The most important thing I realized after the game was that the Ravens didn't NEED to worry about missing a game-winning field goal because they Ravens scored touchdowns on all 4 of their trips to the redzone. An improved offensive line has meant an incredibly precise, confident Joe Flacco who has thrown 8 touchdowns and no interceptions in the post-season. The 49ers should be worried about their upcoming matchup.
49ERS AT FALCONS
This was the first game I incorrectly predicted in the entire post season as my playoff record for 2013 is now 9-1. I reasoned that the Falcons were good enough to lead a quick game-winning drive against a team almost identical to the 49ers only a week earlier, and it appeared as though they might even do that in the last 2 minutes of the NFC Championship. A major missed pass interference call on Navarro Bowman meant the Falcons couldn't convert on 4th down and the game ended in a 49ers win.
The Falcons certainly looked dominant in the first half of the game, but their defense simply appeared poorly conditioned and equipped to handle another entire game of a mobile quarterback and strong running game. The Falcons offense, however, was mostly to blame as it failed to score in the entire second half and couldn't stay on the field long enough to give the defense time to catch its breath. Matt Ryan threw a costly interception and had an embarrassing fumble that wasn't forced by a 49ers player or even the result of a bad snap.
As for the 49ers, they stuck to exactly what they've done well for the last couple of seasons. The 49ers took advatnage of a poor Falcons run defense and unleashed Frank Gore. At times it appeared as though the Falcons defenders were standing still as Gore slipped right by them on his way into the endzone. Colin Kaepernick made some great throws after being forced out of the pocket to Vernon Davis and Michael Crabtree. I was not, however, incredibly impressed with Kaepernick the way the rest of the world appeared to be. He's great for a young quarterback, but at this stage of the playoffs, I'm judging players on how they play, not how they play given the time they've been in the league. Kaepernick has only faced mediocre and poor defenses thus far in the playoffs, and his success in this game depended largely on the typically blunderous playoff performance of Matt Ryan.
With that said, Kaepernick has the arm strength and athleticism to evade pressure and make great throws to some big targets downfield. The Ravens got a taste of that kind of quarterback earlier this season with Robert Griffin III. Somehow the Falcons repeatedly allowed Vernon Davis to get wide open downfield, and that helped the 49ers go one step further than the Seahawks did a week earlier.
SUPER BOWL PREVIEW
We have the better part of two weeks until the Super Bowl, so I will have plenty more previews, analyses, and predictions in store for my readers. I simply figured it would be a good idea to get my own thought process going regarding positional matchups and each team's tendencies. This game, after all, features two teams with a lot of similarities, and it will likely require a great amount of analysis over the next couple of weeks to form a reasonable prediction of the outcome of Super Bowl 47.
As I stated earlier, the Ravens got a preview of a 49ers-style offense when they faced a Colin Kaepernick-like player in RG3. RG3 is even faster than Kaepernick with just as strong an arm. The Redskins also featured a fantastic running back who was much better than Frank Gore this season. The Ravens didn't win that game, but that had more to do with offensive mistakes and defensive injuries. If Joe Flacco had the protection of his current line and the Ravens had their current starting defense, the Ravens-Redskins game could have turned out much differently. With that said, the Ravens were able to halt the Redskins' offense in the second half, but the Ravens' offense couldn't capitalize off of their defensive success.
From a schematic standpoint, the Ravens were able to contain RG3 in the way that they'll need to contain Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick isn't great from the pocket, and the 49ers' offensive system isn't designed to get the ball into the hands of receivers quickly like that of the Patriots or Broncos. The Ravens will, therefore, have to set the edge with Kaepernick and prepare for a lot of up-the-middle running from Frank Gore.
The next two weeks will be huge for Haloti Ngata as the extended time to rest and prep for the next game will likely lead to increased performance from the giant Polynesian. Ngata has dealt with a nagging sprained knee all season and he's performed far better after periods of extended rest. The Ravens will need their defensive line to hold up against a strong 49ers offensive line if they hope to minimize Frank Gore's success.
The 49ers, on the other hand, will have to try to refrain from running Colin Kaepernick too much unless he has clear opportunities to get a first down and out of bounds safely. The Ravens have the explosive hitting power in enough of their athletes to leave a mobile quarterback battered, bruised, and limping. Fortunately for the 49ers, their backup used to be their starter, and he's more than capable of playing well enough to win games.
The 49ers know full well that they are not going up against a defense that gets exahusted and plays poorly in the second half of games. This Ravens defense has only allowed 4 offensive touchdowns in 3 playoff games against top offenses with tons of weapons. The Ravens defense has enough experience and leadership to slow down the best offenses in the league, and the Ravens offense has already gone against one of the top defenses in the league on the road in the divisional round. I realize that a lot of people are high on the 49ers because they get excited by mobile quarterbacks, but Colin Kaepernick hasn't faced a team as explosive, complete, and well coached as the Ravens yet in the playoffs. The '9ers are in for a rude awakening.
I've been telling Ravens fans to keep the faith all season, and it has paid off big time. The Ravens have no major injuries listed, and they're going to have extra time to rest and get prepared for the most important game in team history. This game isn't just about winning the big game, and it isn't just about getting Ray Lewis on final ring. It's about validation of the last dozen years of building and perfecting this team to get back to Super Bowl form. It's about once again being an underdog team with a wildly loyal fanbase that can be heard loudly even in harsh road venues (loved hearing "O!!" in during the national anthem in Foxboro). Most of all, it's about showing the world why we Ravens fans are nuts about our team year in and year out. We love big hits, interceptions, and a hard-nosed running game, but now we have a great quarterback and fantastic receiving corps to boot. I'm calling on Ravens fans everywhere to wear purple as often as possible until the Super Bowl. It's time to show our purple pride!
AS ALWAYS
GO RAVENS!!!!
Friday, January 18, 2013
AFC CHAMPIONSHIP ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION!!
This is the moment all you loyal readers have been waiting for; this is where we analyze and break down factors and statistics to gauge the probable winner of Sunday night's matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and the New England Patriots. These two teams have developed one of the most competitive rivalries in the NFL in recent years. It may not be filled with as much hatred and physical animosity as the Ravens-Steelers rivalry, but somehow specatcularly memorable plays always seem to find their way onto the field when Brady finds himself staring down Ray Lewis and Ed Reed. Probably the biggest reason this rivalry has become so big in recent years is that these teams keep meeting in the playoffs. This Sunday, in fact, will mark the 3rd playoff matchup between the Ravens and Patriots in 4 years. The Patriots have historically beaten the Ravens many more times than the Ravens have beaten the Patriots, but these teams are each 2-2 in the last 4 games they've faced one another. This game is a rematch of last season's AFC Championship where the Patriots edged the Ravens 23-20 as the Ravens failed to score on their final drive...we all know how that went.
This season, however, the Ravens got a bit of redemption as they edged the Patriots with a game-winning field goal that just barely went between the uprights as time expired. That redemption was sweet, but it means little at this moment as it has no bearing on Sunday's game. The Ravens were a different team when they last faced the Pats, and the Patriots were a different team when they last traveled to Baltimore. The rosters are mostly the same, but seemingly small differences in personnel have meant big differences in recent performance. Homefield advantage won't likely mean much as the Ravens and Patriots have each won one home and one away game in this rivalry over the course of the last 4 seasons. Games between these two teams are seldom decided by more than 6 points, so get ready for a gridiron war of epic proportions!
RAVENS AT PATRIOTS
MOMENTUM AND PERSONNEL
NFL fans and commentators often speak of how it's important to get hot going into the playoffs. They discuss how regular season records mean little compared to the health and strength of a team going into the post-season. Three of the last five Super Bowl champions won no more than 10 games in the regular season, and last year's Super Bowl winning team only went 9-7! That's not to say that teams with great regular season records don't win Super Bowls--they often do, but it's not the regular season record that gets them to the Super Bowl, it's the condition and strength of their team down the stretch.
The Patriots have, once again, put together an impressive list of wins this season. Brady and company got off to a rocky start as they lost 3 out of their first 6 games but finished the regular season winning 9 of their last 10 to secure a #2 seed in the playoffs. The Ravens regular season proved far more tumultuous. Ray and his boys got off to a hot 5-1 start, but certain aspects of the team had fans worried about their chances to make a deep playoff run despite a good record. The Ravens displayed an inability to stop the run for the first time in a LONG time, and that inability extended to weak teams as well as strong. The Ravens appeared to be a totally different team on the road, and that became abundantly apparent as the Ravens got flattened by the Texans 43-13 in week 6. To add to the Ravens' defensive issues, Lardarius Webb tore his ACL and Ray Lewis tore his triceps.
As Lewis and Webb went down, however, Suggs returned and a young talented linebacker named Dannell Ellerbe took the field to fill in for Ray as he rehabilitated his right arm. After the Houston game, the Ravens saw a return to defensive dominance as they went on a month long stretch in which they had the top defense in the league. That defensive dominance was short lived as Ellerbe and then Suggs became injured. The Ravens lost the next 3 games as Suggs and Ellerbe worked to become healthy. Most commentators regarded the Ravens' season as basically doomed, but the Purple Nightmare staff (I) was well aware of what was to come as soon as both Suggs and Ellerbe returned to the field.
Suggs and Ellerbe both saw the field once again against the New York Giants in week 16. The Ravens absolutely punished last year's Super Bowl winners and held them to a pedestrian 14 points in what quickly became a rout. The Ravens then rested their starters the following week against the Cincinatti Bengals, but they brought Bryant McKinney back out to get some reps with the second string. McKinney looked shakey at first in his first game back at left tackle, but presence in the playoffs would prove absolutely critical to the success of the team.
The Ravens manhandled the Colts in the playoffs 24-9 and kept a high scoring offense out of the endzone entirely and held two of the NFL's best pass rushers without a sack on Flacco. The Ravens then traveled to Mile High Stadium to face a Broncos team that no one said they could beat...no one, that is, except myself, Mike Golic, and a host of optimistic Ravens fans. ESPN's Ashley Fox went so far as to write a cocky, poorly thought out article stating that there was virtually no way the Ravens could beat Peyton Manning....yeah...how'd that one work out, Ash?
Equally important to the outcome of that game is the set of factors that led to the win as those factors will be crucial in our analysis of the upcoming AFC Championship game. The Ravens, once again, protected Flacco effectively against one of the best pass rushing tandems in the NFL. Elvis Dumervil and Vonn Miller managed only one sack on Flacco all game, and that sack was the result of Flacco holding on to the ball for roughly 6 seconds because of tight coverage on the Ravens wide receivers rather than poor protection. Ravens offensive tackles Bryant McKinney and Michael Oher gave Flacco enough time to connect on long passes downfield so the Ravens could score quickly and ultimately win. The Ravens successfully went on the road and beat a team that had beaten them handedly in the not so distant past, and they did so in spectacular fashion without experiencing any major injuries to their starters.
The Patriots also faced a Houston Texans team that they played and demolished not much earlier in the regular season. In this meeting, however, the Texans actually put up a bit of a fight. Unlike their regular season matchup, the Patriots had only a 4 point lead at halftime and a 10 point lead for a time in the 4th quarter. Although I never doubted that the Texans would lose, they certainly demonstrated that the Patriots are still vulnerable in their pass defense at times, and that they aren't quite the same team without Rob Gronkowski.
Rob Gronkowski broke his arm last weekend as he dove for a catch on the sidelines. Gronkowski had missed 5 games during the regular season after breaking that very same arm a couple of months ago. The Patriots' divisional round win over the Texans gave many Patriots fans comfort that Tom Brady could still spread the ball around to enough targets to beat another playoff team by a comfortable margin, but that margin became much smaller without their enormous and talented star tight end to help help continue drives late in the game and keep the ball out of the hands of opponents. On that note, we will begin our statistical analysis.
KEY STATISTICS
I heard commentators on ESPN talking about how the Patriots still maganged to score a high average of points per game without Rob Gronkowski this season. The Patriots scored an average of 35.09 points per game with Gronkowski, and 34.2 points per game without him. At first glance, there appears to be little difference in offensive production with Gronk in the game or out of it. That idea, however, is false. The average points per game stat is skewed by a couple of major outliers. Two of the five games the Patriots played during Gronkowski's 5 game absence were utter blowouts of teams falling apart at the seams. The Patriots beat the Jets on Thanksgiving in a game filled with embarrassment and calamity for Gang Green. The Jets appeared to almost literally give the ball to the Patriots at one point as running back Shonne Greene held the ball out to try to stretch for a first down and a Patriots player simply took the ball out of his hands. The second of two blowouts was against a Texans team that had only just barely beaten two of the worst teams in the NFL. Those two worst teams each scored well over 30 points on the Texans, so it's no surprise that the Patriots were able to do the same in Foxborough.
What the average points per game statistic during that Gronkless five game stretch doesn't tell you is that the Patriots only beat both the Miami Dolphins and bottom-feeding Jacksonville Jaguars 23-16. The Patriots also lost to the 49ers 41-34. Without Gronkowski, therefore, the Patriots barely slipped by two teams with a combined 8 wins. Upon Gronkowski's return, however, the Patriots promptly trounced that same Dolphins team 28-0.
We, at this point, must ask ourselves why it is that Rob Gronkowski makes such an trememdous difference for the Patriots. Gronkowski is a huge, sure-handed target at 6'6" with what appear to be some of the biggest hands in the league. Gronkowski had 11 touchdowns in the 11 regular season games he played this year. Gronkowski is nearly impossible to cover as he's simply taller and larger than just about any linebacker and defensive back. At 265 lean, solid pounds, Gronkowski is tough to tackle and often times makes fools out of defenders as he shakes them off on his way to extra yardage after contact. Gronkowski is also a strong blocking tight end who gave Terrell Suggs serious problems in last season's AFC Championship game. Gronkowski also makes the Patriots more of a passing threat in the redzone as he can win jump ball situations in the endzone when it becomes impossible to spread out opposing defenses.
Without Rob Gronkowski, the Patriots have no major star weapons to provide physical mismatches with the Ravens linebackers and defensive backs. The rest of the Patriots' major offensive weapons are in the average heigh range or below. Wes Welker is one of the greatest receivers in the last 10 years of the NFL, but he's only 5'9". Aaron Hernandez is decently sized at 245 pounds, but he's a manageable 6'1" and not at all a mismatch for the likes of Bernard Pollard or Dannell Ellerbe. The Patriots' only downfield threat, Brandon Lloyd, is 6'0" and 200 pounds. Lloyd also presents little height mismatch for any one of the Ravens corners, and hasn't performed nearly to the level that many people expected of the 2010 NFL receiving yards leader.
With all of that said, the Patriots have an added dimension to their offense this season. Their leading rusher, Steven Ridley, piled up 1263 rushing yards and 12 rushing touchdowns in the regular season. Ridley was complimented by speedy, athletic backups Danny Woodhead and Shane Vereen. Their ability to run the football helped the Patriots put together an incredibly balanced and explosive offensive attack that put up a mild-boggling 557 points in the regular season and then another 41 points in their first playoff game. Think about that for a moment...the Patriots have scored almost 600 points this season.
It is this offensive firepower and the ability to run the football that makes this Patriots team more difficult to guard than the team the Ravens faced in last year's post-season. I've written many times this season about Brady's lightning quick release and the intricacy of the Patriots' offensive system. The Ravens, after all, didn't exactly shut down the Patriots offense in the first meeting between these two teams this season. The Ravens simply did what it took to make key stops towards the end of the game and the Ravens offense put up enough points to ultimately outscore the Patriots.
This Ravens team, however, is not the same one that the Patriots faced in week 3. Terrell Suggs did not play in that game, and the offensive line had not yet been reshuffled to its current dominant form. Lardarius Webb will not be there this week to cover Wes Welker, but the increased power of the Ravens pass rush and the addition of defensive back Corey Graham to the starting lineup will more than make up for absence of the Ravens best corner.
I could waste your time and mine by calculating the average points allowed and scored at home and on the road over the course of the season for each of these teams as many of the games that I would be plugging into each equation are irrelevant because of current differences in major intergral cogs to each team's figurative machine. I could then determine which games ARE relevant in that respect, but the sample size is simply too small in both cases that I feel as though I might infuriate a couple of good friends of mine who are Patriots fans by leaving out many impressive Patriots perfomances from the course of this season.
I am, thus, left to use a less mathematical method of determining the likely winner of this game. This game boils down to the major aforementioned factors of the health and current condition of each team. Which team has improved since the last meeting between these two teams? Well many would argue that the Patriots' defense improved as they acquired Aqib Talib to bolster a poorly performing secondary, and I certainly wouldn't argue with them on that point. The Ravens, on the other hand, have also improved defensively with the return of Terrell Suggs and the rise of Dannell Ellerbe. This was evident in the defense holding the Giants to 14 points, the Colts without a touchdown, and Peyton Manning's offense to 21 points (please note that 14 of the Broncos 35 points were scored by the Broncos special teams).
Offensively, the Patriots are now worse. Yes, their running game has improved over the course of this season, but that running game will take a hit without the Patriots' best blocking tight end. The Patriots pass offense lost its biggest, most effective target and touchdown leader. At the same time, the Ravens pass offense has come alive as the Ravens newly reshuffled line has been able to keep flacco upright and confident enough to step up into the pocket to launch deep balls to his speedy targets. It must be mentioned that Flacco put up a monster performance against one of the league's top defenses last weekend, and the Patriots pass defense is worse than the Broncos pass defense by quite a substantial margin. The Patriots pass defense ranked 29th in the league this season, while the Broncos pass defense ranked 3rd. Aqib Talib is better than anything the Patriots had earlier in the year, but he is certainly not better than the pro bowl cornerback, Champ Bailey, that Torrey Smith so gracefully embarrassed last weekend.
If the Patriots believe they'll render Torrey Smith ineffective by putting him in double coverage all night, they'll find themselves being methodically taken apart by Anquan Boldin, Dennis Pitta, Ray Rice and occassionally Ed Dickson, Jacoby Jones, and even Vonta Leach. The key is Flacco's protection and it all boils right back down to Bryant McKinney's return at left tackle.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This post is unquestionably slanted in favor of the Ravens. I am a Ravens fan, and if you didn't know that already, then I'm afraid there's little hope for you. The Patriots are a great football team, and they will undoubtedly make this a tough game for the Ravens. A big play or two on the part of either team could blow this game wide open. I simply can't ignore, however, the dominance the Ravens have displayed in their two playoff games thus far. The Ravens beat up on a decent but clearly flawed Colts team, and scored seemingly at will in one of the NFL's harshest environments against one of the NFL's top defenses. Flacco's previous inconsistent nature stemmed from the Ravens' inconsistent ability to protect the man. The Patriots, however, didn't sack Flacco once in the Ravens' week 3 victory, and it will be even harder to get to him this weekend.
On the other hand, the Patriots will have a harder time protecting Brady than they did last week against the Texans or in their first meeting with the Ravens this season. Paul Kruger has stepped up to become one of the leagues best pass rushers in the second half of this season, and Terrell Suggs was on fire with 10 tackles and 2 sacks on Peyton Manning last weekend despite his recent injury.
If the Patriots allowed the Texans to score so furiously in the 4th quarter, then they're going to have a tough day against a team that features the best deep passing game in the league and the only running back to rush for over 100 yards on the Patriots run defense all season. Oh...and complimentary running back Bernard Pierce is once again healthy and ready to add to the Ravens ground attack.
To put it simply, the Patriots were a better team than the Ravens for the vast majority of this season. They consistently dismantled teams and successully stopped the run week in and week out. The Ravens, however, have made too many adjustments and improvements in time for the playoffs and are the strongest team left at this point. Their offense and defense have now shown that they both travel and played well enough to win in the playoffs against a team that many people said was a lock to go to the Super Bowl. On top of ALL of that, Ray Lewis is back and playing his best football of the year with 30 tackles in only 2 post-season games. I had faith that the Ravens were strong enough to take down the Broncos, and I definitely have faith that they're more than strong enough to take down a Gronkless Patriots team. It'll be a great game and most likely a fight to the bitter end, but I truly believe Ray Lewis will be back after this weekend for one final game.
MY PREDICTION: RAVENS 34-27.
This is a game that will likely be remembered for a long time regardless of the outcome. I can't say that I'm a fan of Tom Brady, but I have the utmost respect for the consistency with which he and Bill Belichick have dominated the last decade of NFL football. This game features everything that true football fans love in a great championship rivarly game. We'll see big hits, long runs, spectacular passes, and equally spectactular catches. We'll see some of the greatest leaders in NFL history squaring off for one last time, and we'll see the energy and explosiveness of the talented young players on each team that will ultimately take their respective places. The Ravens had a daunting path to the Super Bowl going into the playoffs as they had to go against the Colts, go through the Denver, and will soon have to face the Patriots in Foxboro...but I wouldn't have it any other way. Only one last thing to say:
WHAT TIME IS IT?!?! GAME TIME!!!!!!
AS ALWAYS
GO RAVENS!!!
This season, however, the Ravens got a bit of redemption as they edged the Patriots with a game-winning field goal that just barely went between the uprights as time expired. That redemption was sweet, but it means little at this moment as it has no bearing on Sunday's game. The Ravens were a different team when they last faced the Pats, and the Patriots were a different team when they last traveled to Baltimore. The rosters are mostly the same, but seemingly small differences in personnel have meant big differences in recent performance. Homefield advantage won't likely mean much as the Ravens and Patriots have each won one home and one away game in this rivalry over the course of the last 4 seasons. Games between these two teams are seldom decided by more than 6 points, so get ready for a gridiron war of epic proportions!
RAVENS AT PATRIOTS
MOMENTUM AND PERSONNEL
NFL fans and commentators often speak of how it's important to get hot going into the playoffs. They discuss how regular season records mean little compared to the health and strength of a team going into the post-season. Three of the last five Super Bowl champions won no more than 10 games in the regular season, and last year's Super Bowl winning team only went 9-7! That's not to say that teams with great regular season records don't win Super Bowls--they often do, but it's not the regular season record that gets them to the Super Bowl, it's the condition and strength of their team down the stretch.
The Patriots have, once again, put together an impressive list of wins this season. Brady and company got off to a rocky start as they lost 3 out of their first 6 games but finished the regular season winning 9 of their last 10 to secure a #2 seed in the playoffs. The Ravens regular season proved far more tumultuous. Ray and his boys got off to a hot 5-1 start, but certain aspects of the team had fans worried about their chances to make a deep playoff run despite a good record. The Ravens displayed an inability to stop the run for the first time in a LONG time, and that inability extended to weak teams as well as strong. The Ravens appeared to be a totally different team on the road, and that became abundantly apparent as the Ravens got flattened by the Texans 43-13 in week 6. To add to the Ravens' defensive issues, Lardarius Webb tore his ACL and Ray Lewis tore his triceps.
As Lewis and Webb went down, however, Suggs returned and a young talented linebacker named Dannell Ellerbe took the field to fill in for Ray as he rehabilitated his right arm. After the Houston game, the Ravens saw a return to defensive dominance as they went on a month long stretch in which they had the top defense in the league. That defensive dominance was short lived as Ellerbe and then Suggs became injured. The Ravens lost the next 3 games as Suggs and Ellerbe worked to become healthy. Most commentators regarded the Ravens' season as basically doomed, but the Purple Nightmare staff (I) was well aware of what was to come as soon as both Suggs and Ellerbe returned to the field.
Suggs and Ellerbe both saw the field once again against the New York Giants in week 16. The Ravens absolutely punished last year's Super Bowl winners and held them to a pedestrian 14 points in what quickly became a rout. The Ravens then rested their starters the following week against the Cincinatti Bengals, but they brought Bryant McKinney back out to get some reps with the second string. McKinney looked shakey at first in his first game back at left tackle, but presence in the playoffs would prove absolutely critical to the success of the team.
The Ravens manhandled the Colts in the playoffs 24-9 and kept a high scoring offense out of the endzone entirely and held two of the NFL's best pass rushers without a sack on Flacco. The Ravens then traveled to Mile High Stadium to face a Broncos team that no one said they could beat...no one, that is, except myself, Mike Golic, and a host of optimistic Ravens fans. ESPN's Ashley Fox went so far as to write a cocky, poorly thought out article stating that there was virtually no way the Ravens could beat Peyton Manning....yeah...how'd that one work out, Ash?
Equally important to the outcome of that game is the set of factors that led to the win as those factors will be crucial in our analysis of the upcoming AFC Championship game. The Ravens, once again, protected Flacco effectively against one of the best pass rushing tandems in the NFL. Elvis Dumervil and Vonn Miller managed only one sack on Flacco all game, and that sack was the result of Flacco holding on to the ball for roughly 6 seconds because of tight coverage on the Ravens wide receivers rather than poor protection. Ravens offensive tackles Bryant McKinney and Michael Oher gave Flacco enough time to connect on long passes downfield so the Ravens could score quickly and ultimately win. The Ravens successfully went on the road and beat a team that had beaten them handedly in the not so distant past, and they did so in spectacular fashion without experiencing any major injuries to their starters.
The Patriots also faced a Houston Texans team that they played and demolished not much earlier in the regular season. In this meeting, however, the Texans actually put up a bit of a fight. Unlike their regular season matchup, the Patriots had only a 4 point lead at halftime and a 10 point lead for a time in the 4th quarter. Although I never doubted that the Texans would lose, they certainly demonstrated that the Patriots are still vulnerable in their pass defense at times, and that they aren't quite the same team without Rob Gronkowski.
Rob Gronkowski broke his arm last weekend as he dove for a catch on the sidelines. Gronkowski had missed 5 games during the regular season after breaking that very same arm a couple of months ago. The Patriots' divisional round win over the Texans gave many Patriots fans comfort that Tom Brady could still spread the ball around to enough targets to beat another playoff team by a comfortable margin, but that margin became much smaller without their enormous and talented star tight end to help help continue drives late in the game and keep the ball out of the hands of opponents. On that note, we will begin our statistical analysis.
KEY STATISTICS
I heard commentators on ESPN talking about how the Patriots still maganged to score a high average of points per game without Rob Gronkowski this season. The Patriots scored an average of 35.09 points per game with Gronkowski, and 34.2 points per game without him. At first glance, there appears to be little difference in offensive production with Gronk in the game or out of it. That idea, however, is false. The average points per game stat is skewed by a couple of major outliers. Two of the five games the Patriots played during Gronkowski's 5 game absence were utter blowouts of teams falling apart at the seams. The Patriots beat the Jets on Thanksgiving in a game filled with embarrassment and calamity for Gang Green. The Jets appeared to almost literally give the ball to the Patriots at one point as running back Shonne Greene held the ball out to try to stretch for a first down and a Patriots player simply took the ball out of his hands. The second of two blowouts was against a Texans team that had only just barely beaten two of the worst teams in the NFL. Those two worst teams each scored well over 30 points on the Texans, so it's no surprise that the Patriots were able to do the same in Foxborough.
What the average points per game statistic during that Gronkless five game stretch doesn't tell you is that the Patriots only beat both the Miami Dolphins and bottom-feeding Jacksonville Jaguars 23-16. The Patriots also lost to the 49ers 41-34. Without Gronkowski, therefore, the Patriots barely slipped by two teams with a combined 8 wins. Upon Gronkowski's return, however, the Patriots promptly trounced that same Dolphins team 28-0.
We, at this point, must ask ourselves why it is that Rob Gronkowski makes such an trememdous difference for the Patriots. Gronkowski is a huge, sure-handed target at 6'6" with what appear to be some of the biggest hands in the league. Gronkowski had 11 touchdowns in the 11 regular season games he played this year. Gronkowski is nearly impossible to cover as he's simply taller and larger than just about any linebacker and defensive back. At 265 lean, solid pounds, Gronkowski is tough to tackle and often times makes fools out of defenders as he shakes them off on his way to extra yardage after contact. Gronkowski is also a strong blocking tight end who gave Terrell Suggs serious problems in last season's AFC Championship game. Gronkowski also makes the Patriots more of a passing threat in the redzone as he can win jump ball situations in the endzone when it becomes impossible to spread out opposing defenses.
Without Rob Gronkowski, the Patriots have no major star weapons to provide physical mismatches with the Ravens linebackers and defensive backs. The rest of the Patriots' major offensive weapons are in the average heigh range or below. Wes Welker is one of the greatest receivers in the last 10 years of the NFL, but he's only 5'9". Aaron Hernandez is decently sized at 245 pounds, but he's a manageable 6'1" and not at all a mismatch for the likes of Bernard Pollard or Dannell Ellerbe. The Patriots' only downfield threat, Brandon Lloyd, is 6'0" and 200 pounds. Lloyd also presents little height mismatch for any one of the Ravens corners, and hasn't performed nearly to the level that many people expected of the 2010 NFL receiving yards leader.
With all of that said, the Patriots have an added dimension to their offense this season. Their leading rusher, Steven Ridley, piled up 1263 rushing yards and 12 rushing touchdowns in the regular season. Ridley was complimented by speedy, athletic backups Danny Woodhead and Shane Vereen. Their ability to run the football helped the Patriots put together an incredibly balanced and explosive offensive attack that put up a mild-boggling 557 points in the regular season and then another 41 points in their first playoff game. Think about that for a moment...the Patriots have scored almost 600 points this season.
It is this offensive firepower and the ability to run the football that makes this Patriots team more difficult to guard than the team the Ravens faced in last year's post-season. I've written many times this season about Brady's lightning quick release and the intricacy of the Patriots' offensive system. The Ravens, after all, didn't exactly shut down the Patriots offense in the first meeting between these two teams this season. The Ravens simply did what it took to make key stops towards the end of the game and the Ravens offense put up enough points to ultimately outscore the Patriots.
This Ravens team, however, is not the same one that the Patriots faced in week 3. Terrell Suggs did not play in that game, and the offensive line had not yet been reshuffled to its current dominant form. Lardarius Webb will not be there this week to cover Wes Welker, but the increased power of the Ravens pass rush and the addition of defensive back Corey Graham to the starting lineup will more than make up for absence of the Ravens best corner.
I could waste your time and mine by calculating the average points allowed and scored at home and on the road over the course of the season for each of these teams as many of the games that I would be plugging into each equation are irrelevant because of current differences in major intergral cogs to each team's figurative machine. I could then determine which games ARE relevant in that respect, but the sample size is simply too small in both cases that I feel as though I might infuriate a couple of good friends of mine who are Patriots fans by leaving out many impressive Patriots perfomances from the course of this season.
I am, thus, left to use a less mathematical method of determining the likely winner of this game. This game boils down to the major aforementioned factors of the health and current condition of each team. Which team has improved since the last meeting between these two teams? Well many would argue that the Patriots' defense improved as they acquired Aqib Talib to bolster a poorly performing secondary, and I certainly wouldn't argue with them on that point. The Ravens, on the other hand, have also improved defensively with the return of Terrell Suggs and the rise of Dannell Ellerbe. This was evident in the defense holding the Giants to 14 points, the Colts without a touchdown, and Peyton Manning's offense to 21 points (please note that 14 of the Broncos 35 points were scored by the Broncos special teams).
Offensively, the Patriots are now worse. Yes, their running game has improved over the course of this season, but that running game will take a hit without the Patriots' best blocking tight end. The Patriots pass offense lost its biggest, most effective target and touchdown leader. At the same time, the Ravens pass offense has come alive as the Ravens newly reshuffled line has been able to keep flacco upright and confident enough to step up into the pocket to launch deep balls to his speedy targets. It must be mentioned that Flacco put up a monster performance against one of the league's top defenses last weekend, and the Patriots pass defense is worse than the Broncos pass defense by quite a substantial margin. The Patriots pass defense ranked 29th in the league this season, while the Broncos pass defense ranked 3rd. Aqib Talib is better than anything the Patriots had earlier in the year, but he is certainly not better than the pro bowl cornerback, Champ Bailey, that Torrey Smith so gracefully embarrassed last weekend.
If the Patriots believe they'll render Torrey Smith ineffective by putting him in double coverage all night, they'll find themselves being methodically taken apart by Anquan Boldin, Dennis Pitta, Ray Rice and occassionally Ed Dickson, Jacoby Jones, and even Vonta Leach. The key is Flacco's protection and it all boils right back down to Bryant McKinney's return at left tackle.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This post is unquestionably slanted in favor of the Ravens. I am a Ravens fan, and if you didn't know that already, then I'm afraid there's little hope for you. The Patriots are a great football team, and they will undoubtedly make this a tough game for the Ravens. A big play or two on the part of either team could blow this game wide open. I simply can't ignore, however, the dominance the Ravens have displayed in their two playoff games thus far. The Ravens beat up on a decent but clearly flawed Colts team, and scored seemingly at will in one of the NFL's harshest environments against one of the NFL's top defenses. Flacco's previous inconsistent nature stemmed from the Ravens' inconsistent ability to protect the man. The Patriots, however, didn't sack Flacco once in the Ravens' week 3 victory, and it will be even harder to get to him this weekend.
On the other hand, the Patriots will have a harder time protecting Brady than they did last week against the Texans or in their first meeting with the Ravens this season. Paul Kruger has stepped up to become one of the leagues best pass rushers in the second half of this season, and Terrell Suggs was on fire with 10 tackles and 2 sacks on Peyton Manning last weekend despite his recent injury.
If the Patriots allowed the Texans to score so furiously in the 4th quarter, then they're going to have a tough day against a team that features the best deep passing game in the league and the only running back to rush for over 100 yards on the Patriots run defense all season. Oh...and complimentary running back Bernard Pierce is once again healthy and ready to add to the Ravens ground attack.
To put it simply, the Patriots were a better team than the Ravens for the vast majority of this season. They consistently dismantled teams and successully stopped the run week in and week out. The Ravens, however, have made too many adjustments and improvements in time for the playoffs and are the strongest team left at this point. Their offense and defense have now shown that they both travel and played well enough to win in the playoffs against a team that many people said was a lock to go to the Super Bowl. On top of ALL of that, Ray Lewis is back and playing his best football of the year with 30 tackles in only 2 post-season games. I had faith that the Ravens were strong enough to take down the Broncos, and I definitely have faith that they're more than strong enough to take down a Gronkless Patriots team. It'll be a great game and most likely a fight to the bitter end, but I truly believe Ray Lewis will be back after this weekend for one final game.
MY PREDICTION: RAVENS 34-27.
This is a game that will likely be remembered for a long time regardless of the outcome. I can't say that I'm a fan of Tom Brady, but I have the utmost respect for the consistency with which he and Bill Belichick have dominated the last decade of NFL football. This game features everything that true football fans love in a great championship rivarly game. We'll see big hits, long runs, spectacular passes, and equally spectactular catches. We'll see some of the greatest leaders in NFL history squaring off for one last time, and we'll see the energy and explosiveness of the talented young players on each team that will ultimately take their respective places. The Ravens had a daunting path to the Super Bowl going into the playoffs as they had to go against the Colts, go through the Denver, and will soon have to face the Patriots in Foxboro...but I wouldn't have it any other way. Only one last thing to say:
WHAT TIME IS IT?!?! GAME TIME!!!!!!
AS ALWAYS
GO RAVENS!!!
Thursday, January 17, 2013
NFC CHAMPIONSHIP ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION
I'm beginning to write this blog post without any idea of which team to pick to win the NFC Championship. Unlike most people I've talked to, I don't believe the 49ers' dominant home win over the Packers is evidence that they have a clear-cut advantage going into this Sunday's game in Atlanta. Yes, Colin Kaepernick's rushing yardage was the most by any quarterback in a single game in NFL history, but it was against Packers team with horrible road defense this season. Besides, the 49ers already beat the Packers in Green bay earlier in the season, so it's no surprise that the 49ers would win quite handedly against the same team in San Francisco. The Falcons did not look particularly dominant against the Seahawks as they blew a 20-0 lead at the half to go down by a point with roughly half a minute left in the 4th quarter. Matt Ryan was able to drive his team down the field with 30 seconds and two timeouts left to set up a game-winning field goal, but I doubt the a 2 point win in their own dome was enough to thoroughly impress anyone.
The Falcons, nevertheless, have demonstrated an ability to win many games this season by slim margins. It may be that they're not a great team, or it may be that they're simply a cautious team that does just enough to win one way or another. Over the course of this season the Falcons beat the Broncos 27-21, the Panthers 30-28, the Redskins 24-17, the Raiders 23-20, the Cowboys 19-13, the Cardinals 23-19, the Buccaneers 24-23, and most recently beat the Seahawks 30-28. Not all of those teams were particularly impressive this season, but two of them made the playoffs. In the NFL, it's wins and losses that count the most and not margins of victory. For the sake of making predictions, however, margins of victory absolutely need to be taken into a account. Let's take a look at what the statistics for both teams say about their respective chances at victory this weekend.
49ERS AT FALCONS
KEY STATISTICS
One thing that does bode well for the Falcons is that they just finished beating a Seahawks team that is incredibly similar to the 49ers. The Seahawks had one of the best defenses in the league this year with a hard pounding running game and a mobile young quarterback. The Seahawks and 49ers are also similar in that they both struggled on the road at times this season. Three out of four of the 49er's losses came on the road, and most of their road wins were against teams with horrible records. It is for this reason that I believe the Falcons should not be counted out of this game, though I certainly am not particularly impressed with them.
Homefield advantage certainly isn't the only factor in determining this game, but it's a good point to begin our analysis. The Falcons' homefield advantage in the Georgia Dome during the regular season has been impressive for years now as they've only lost 6 home games in the last 3 seasons. Their only real losses this season were on the road against the Saints and Panthers. They lost their final game of the season at home, but the Falcons had already clinched a #1 seed in the playoffs and had no serious motivation to win. As I mentioned in last week's Falcons-Seahawks prediction, the Falcons offense doesn't perform significantly better at home than on the road, but the Falcons defense gets an incredible boost from home crowd noise in the Georgia Dome. The 49ers offense also doesn't perform better at home on average than it does on the road, but the 49ers defense is much better in Candlestick Park for presumably the same reason of home crowd noise advantage.
The 49ers won't have their home crowd in the Georgia Dome, and that could be a huge problem when facing a team that has impressive offensive weapons such as Roddy White, Tony Gonzalez, Julio Jones, Jacquizz Rogers, and Michael Turner. Just as a reminder, the Falcons allowed only 17 points per game in the regular season at home (that number increases to 18.22 if you include last weekend's game). The 49ers defense allowed an average of 20.25 points per game on the road this season and that means they allowed roughly a touchdown more per game on the road than at home.
When looking at the 49ers offense, however, analyzing a full season of statistics is meaningless as their current starting quarterback only actually played for the second half of the regular season. It is for this reason that we'll use only games in which Colin Kaepernick started to take offensive production averages. The Kaepernick-led 49ers averaged 24.5 points on the road this season. This statistic is a tad misleading because at no time did the 49ers score anywhere near 24.5 points on the road with Kaepernick under center. During these four road games, the 49ers scored 31 points against the Saints, 13 points in a loss to the Rams, 41 points in surprising a road win against the Patriots, and 13 points in a blowout loss to the Seahawks. This shows that the 49ers are either red hot or ice cold on the road with Colin Kaepernick starting. This is good, though, as it shows us which types of teams create problems for Kaepernick and which he seems to be able to dominate on the road.
Kaepernick started in his first road game in New Orleans earlier this season. The Saints endured so much offseason turmoil that it's no surprise they finished with a losing record. Nevertheless, the Saints were still a dangerous team at times in their own stadium this season. A 31-21 score would indicate a strong offensive performance against a poor Saints defense, but that simply wasn't the case as 14 of the 49ers' 31 points came off of interceptions returned for touchdowns. Kaepernick threw for one touchdown and ran for another, and David Akers kicked a field goal for the game's final score. The 49ers, thus, relied on defensive touchdowns to win the game.
Kaepernick's next road game was a 16-13 loss to the Rams. Kaepernick threw for no touchdowns, and the 49ers' lone touchdown came from a 1 yard goaline rush by Frank Gore. The Rams sacked Kaepernick 3 times and held him to 208 passing yards. The 49ers' next road game turned out quite differently. The 49ers faced the Patriots in Foxboro, and outlasted the Patriots in a 41-34 thriller. Tom Brady threw for 443 yards and the Patriots went on a 28 point comeback, but that comeback fell short as the Patriots simply ran out of time to attempt to score one more touchdown that would have tied the game. Despite impressive passing yardage, Brady threw for only 1 touchdown, ran in another, and threw 2 interceptions. The 49ers forced a total of 4 turnovers including the two aforementioned interceptions and 2 fumbles. The 49ers also sacked Brady 3 times, while the Patriots only sacked Kaepernick once.
The 49ers' final road game was one that they'd probably like to forget. On a cold and wet night in Seattle, the Seahawks destroyed the 49ers in almost every way imaginable. The Seahawks returned a blocked field goal for a touchdown, Russell Wilson threw for 4 touchdowns, and Marshawn Lynch rushed for a touchdown. Colin Kaepernick passed for 231 yards, 1 touchdown, and 1 interception.
The major common theme in the 49ers' road wins is that the 49ers defense forces a lot of turnovers and gives Colin Kaepernick and his offense good field position and lots of opportunities to score. The major common theme in the 49ers' road wins is that the defense fails to force a large number of turnovers and Colin Kaepernick simply isn't dynamic enough to complete enough long drives to win games. There is an interesting similarity between the two teams the 49ers beat on the road: both teams were pass-first offenses with poor pass defenses. The two teams that the 49ers lost to on the road had at least decent pass defenses. The Rams were a middle of the pack team in terms of pass yards allowed per game, but they produced a good pass rush and sacked the 49ers' quarterback 3 times. The Seahawks only sacked Kaepernick once, but they possesed a great secondary that allowed few passing yards.
I know this is a long drawn out analysis, but all of this information is key to an accurate prediction in this game, so please bear with me just a little bit longer. Now must decide what these road wins and losses mean when facing the Falcons. The Falcons certainly resemble the Saints and Patriots a lot more than they resemble the Seahawks and Rams as Atlanta possesses the 6th ranked pass and only the 23rd ranked pass defense. The Falcons don't typically fare much better stopping the run as they ranked 21st in run defense during the regular season. These rankings, however, fail to take into account the fact that the Falcons ranked 5th in total points allowed during the regular season. The Falcons displayed a fantasic ability to keep the Seahawks out of the endzone in the first half of last weekend's divisional matchup.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The vast majority of NFL fans seem to be sold on Colin Kaepernick after his electric performance against the Packers in San Francisco last week. There's no denying his talent as he ran for 180 rushing yards and outplayed one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. The problem is that the Packers still managed to score 31 points on the 49ers' defense, and that signals to me that the 49ers' defense is simply not the same with an injured Justin Smith. Smith is playing through a partially torn triceps, and that's not something a defensive lineman can play through and still be a major factor. If the 49ers defense allowed 31 points at home after a bye week, then I can't imagine they'll be any less pourous against an equally high-octane Falcons' passing attack in Atlanta. Matt Ryan won his first playoff game last week against arguably the best secondary in the NFL and he did so without ever being sacked. Like the 49ers will be doing this weekend, the Seahawks were not playing with a fully healthy defensive line as their best pass rusher, Chris Clemons, was out with a torn ACL. Matt Ryan showed he was able to overcome his two interceptions to lead a final scoring drive last week. Matt Ryan may have only won a single playoff game in his career, but he's about to win another, and this won will send him to the Superbowl. I know everyone is picking the 49ers in this one, but the Falcons' defense is simply too good in the Georgia Dome, and Matt Ryan can pass on even elite secondaries. Kaepernick is talented and athletic, but he hasn't shown the ability to lead a comeback win on the road against a playoff-caliber team.
MY PREDICTION: FALCONS 33-27
The Falcons, nevertheless, have demonstrated an ability to win many games this season by slim margins. It may be that they're not a great team, or it may be that they're simply a cautious team that does just enough to win one way or another. Over the course of this season the Falcons beat the Broncos 27-21, the Panthers 30-28, the Redskins 24-17, the Raiders 23-20, the Cowboys 19-13, the Cardinals 23-19, the Buccaneers 24-23, and most recently beat the Seahawks 30-28. Not all of those teams were particularly impressive this season, but two of them made the playoffs. In the NFL, it's wins and losses that count the most and not margins of victory. For the sake of making predictions, however, margins of victory absolutely need to be taken into a account. Let's take a look at what the statistics for both teams say about their respective chances at victory this weekend.
49ERS AT FALCONS
KEY STATISTICS
One thing that does bode well for the Falcons is that they just finished beating a Seahawks team that is incredibly similar to the 49ers. The Seahawks had one of the best defenses in the league this year with a hard pounding running game and a mobile young quarterback. The Seahawks and 49ers are also similar in that they both struggled on the road at times this season. Three out of four of the 49er's losses came on the road, and most of their road wins were against teams with horrible records. It is for this reason that I believe the Falcons should not be counted out of this game, though I certainly am not particularly impressed with them.
Homefield advantage certainly isn't the only factor in determining this game, but it's a good point to begin our analysis. The Falcons' homefield advantage in the Georgia Dome during the regular season has been impressive for years now as they've only lost 6 home games in the last 3 seasons. Their only real losses this season were on the road against the Saints and Panthers. They lost their final game of the season at home, but the Falcons had already clinched a #1 seed in the playoffs and had no serious motivation to win. As I mentioned in last week's Falcons-Seahawks prediction, the Falcons offense doesn't perform significantly better at home than on the road, but the Falcons defense gets an incredible boost from home crowd noise in the Georgia Dome. The 49ers offense also doesn't perform better at home on average than it does on the road, but the 49ers defense is much better in Candlestick Park for presumably the same reason of home crowd noise advantage.
The 49ers won't have their home crowd in the Georgia Dome, and that could be a huge problem when facing a team that has impressive offensive weapons such as Roddy White, Tony Gonzalez, Julio Jones, Jacquizz Rogers, and Michael Turner. Just as a reminder, the Falcons allowed only 17 points per game in the regular season at home (that number increases to 18.22 if you include last weekend's game). The 49ers defense allowed an average of 20.25 points per game on the road this season and that means they allowed roughly a touchdown more per game on the road than at home.
When looking at the 49ers offense, however, analyzing a full season of statistics is meaningless as their current starting quarterback only actually played for the second half of the regular season. It is for this reason that we'll use only games in which Colin Kaepernick started to take offensive production averages. The Kaepernick-led 49ers averaged 24.5 points on the road this season. This statistic is a tad misleading because at no time did the 49ers score anywhere near 24.5 points on the road with Kaepernick under center. During these four road games, the 49ers scored 31 points against the Saints, 13 points in a loss to the Rams, 41 points in surprising a road win against the Patriots, and 13 points in a blowout loss to the Seahawks. This shows that the 49ers are either red hot or ice cold on the road with Colin Kaepernick starting. This is good, though, as it shows us which types of teams create problems for Kaepernick and which he seems to be able to dominate on the road.
Kaepernick started in his first road game in New Orleans earlier this season. The Saints endured so much offseason turmoil that it's no surprise they finished with a losing record. Nevertheless, the Saints were still a dangerous team at times in their own stadium this season. A 31-21 score would indicate a strong offensive performance against a poor Saints defense, but that simply wasn't the case as 14 of the 49ers' 31 points came off of interceptions returned for touchdowns. Kaepernick threw for one touchdown and ran for another, and David Akers kicked a field goal for the game's final score. The 49ers, thus, relied on defensive touchdowns to win the game.
Kaepernick's next road game was a 16-13 loss to the Rams. Kaepernick threw for no touchdowns, and the 49ers' lone touchdown came from a 1 yard goaline rush by Frank Gore. The Rams sacked Kaepernick 3 times and held him to 208 passing yards. The 49ers' next road game turned out quite differently. The 49ers faced the Patriots in Foxboro, and outlasted the Patriots in a 41-34 thriller. Tom Brady threw for 443 yards and the Patriots went on a 28 point comeback, but that comeback fell short as the Patriots simply ran out of time to attempt to score one more touchdown that would have tied the game. Despite impressive passing yardage, Brady threw for only 1 touchdown, ran in another, and threw 2 interceptions. The 49ers forced a total of 4 turnovers including the two aforementioned interceptions and 2 fumbles. The 49ers also sacked Brady 3 times, while the Patriots only sacked Kaepernick once.
The 49ers' final road game was one that they'd probably like to forget. On a cold and wet night in Seattle, the Seahawks destroyed the 49ers in almost every way imaginable. The Seahawks returned a blocked field goal for a touchdown, Russell Wilson threw for 4 touchdowns, and Marshawn Lynch rushed for a touchdown. Colin Kaepernick passed for 231 yards, 1 touchdown, and 1 interception.
The major common theme in the 49ers' road wins is that the 49ers defense forces a lot of turnovers and gives Colin Kaepernick and his offense good field position and lots of opportunities to score. The major common theme in the 49ers' road wins is that the defense fails to force a large number of turnovers and Colin Kaepernick simply isn't dynamic enough to complete enough long drives to win games. There is an interesting similarity between the two teams the 49ers beat on the road: both teams were pass-first offenses with poor pass defenses. The two teams that the 49ers lost to on the road had at least decent pass defenses. The Rams were a middle of the pack team in terms of pass yards allowed per game, but they produced a good pass rush and sacked the 49ers' quarterback 3 times. The Seahawks only sacked Kaepernick once, but they possesed a great secondary that allowed few passing yards.
I know this is a long drawn out analysis, but all of this information is key to an accurate prediction in this game, so please bear with me just a little bit longer. Now must decide what these road wins and losses mean when facing the Falcons. The Falcons certainly resemble the Saints and Patriots a lot more than they resemble the Seahawks and Rams as Atlanta possesses the 6th ranked pass and only the 23rd ranked pass defense. The Falcons don't typically fare much better stopping the run as they ranked 21st in run defense during the regular season. These rankings, however, fail to take into account the fact that the Falcons ranked 5th in total points allowed during the regular season. The Falcons displayed a fantasic ability to keep the Seahawks out of the endzone in the first half of last weekend's divisional matchup.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The vast majority of NFL fans seem to be sold on Colin Kaepernick after his electric performance against the Packers in San Francisco last week. There's no denying his talent as he ran for 180 rushing yards and outplayed one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. The problem is that the Packers still managed to score 31 points on the 49ers' defense, and that signals to me that the 49ers' defense is simply not the same with an injured Justin Smith. Smith is playing through a partially torn triceps, and that's not something a defensive lineman can play through and still be a major factor. If the 49ers defense allowed 31 points at home after a bye week, then I can't imagine they'll be any less pourous against an equally high-octane Falcons' passing attack in Atlanta. Matt Ryan won his first playoff game last week against arguably the best secondary in the NFL and he did so without ever being sacked. Like the 49ers will be doing this weekend, the Seahawks were not playing with a fully healthy defensive line as their best pass rusher, Chris Clemons, was out with a torn ACL. Matt Ryan showed he was able to overcome his two interceptions to lead a final scoring drive last week. Matt Ryan may have only won a single playoff game in his career, but he's about to win another, and this won will send him to the Superbowl. I know everyone is picking the 49ers in this one, but the Falcons' defense is simply too good in the Georgia Dome, and Matt Ryan can pass on even elite secondaries. Kaepernick is talented and athletic, but he hasn't shown the ability to lead a comeback win on the road against a playoff-caliber team.
MY PREDICTION: FALCONS 33-27
Monday, January 14, 2013
NFL DIVISIONAL ROUND RECAP AND A LOOK AHEAD TO NEXT WEEKEND
Well THAT was quite a weekend of football. I predicted each one of the games correctly, but I certainly could not have predicted the level of excitement and suspense that so enveloped the hearts and minds of football fans across the nation. The Falcons won their first playoff game with Matt Ryan under center, the 49ers' quarterback proved himself capable of taking over a game and outplaying an elite NFC rival quarterback, and the Patriots won in costly fashion as Rob Gronkowski once again went down with an injury in the playoffs. Far more exciting and surprising to many was how the Ravens-Broncos game finished. The Ravens were heavy underdogs and were going into a venue in which they had only won once in team history. In addition, they were going up against a team that trounced them 34-17 just over a month ago, and were about to face a quarterback that had beat them 9 straight times dating back to 2001. If all of that wasn't enough, the Ravens had little time to adjust to mile-high altitude and impossibly cold Denver winter weather. The funny thing is, I don't think any of that scared them one bit.
The Ravens may have actually blown the Broncos out if not for two major blunderous special teams errors that led to a punt and kickoff being returned for touchdowns. The fact remains, however, that special teams is a part of football and we must give credit where credit is due to the shortest player in the NFL (that little guy was 5'5"!) for running a pair of returns back on one of the best special teams units in the league this season. What truly impressed me was how the Ravens simply went right back to work after the Broncos scored so easily. Joe Flacco looked confident and relaxed as he launched bombs down the field to Torrey Smith, and hit Dennis Pitta and Anquan Boldin with surgical precision in incredibly high pressured clutch situations. Joe's pass on the run to Jacoby Jones wasn't lucky, it wasn't just the result of poor coverage by the Broncos, it was a great pass. Joe launched the ball on the run with little more than 30 seconds left in the game 54 yards in the air. Jacoby Jones slowed his route moments before but then quickened his pace for a double move that lulled the Broncos' corner and safety into playing far shallower than was necessary to defend that pass. It's clear to me that neither the corner nor the safety was tracking the ball correctly, and both were instead simply reading Jacoby Jones' body language and movements to try to judge where they assumed the ball would end up. They didn't count on #5 and that cannon he calls his right arm.
Possibly as almost satisfying as the spectacular plays made by Flacco and his receivers was the fact that his offensive line did exactly I predicted it would do in shutting down Vonn Miller and Elvis Dumervil. The offensive line had more trouble in opening up lanes through which Ray Rice could gain big chunks of yardage, but that didn't stop the Ravens from feeding their playmaker the ball. That strategy ultimately lead to Ray Rice accumulating 131 rushing yards with a couple of highly significant extended runs.
Ray Rice may have been limited to 2-4 yards on most of his carries, but the fact that Jim Caldwell never veered away from feeding Ray Rice the ball consistently tells me he has a great understanding just how to win with this team. Giving Ray Rice significant carries forces teams to commit to stopping him. When teams spend so much energy and effort to stop Ray Rice, typically thing open up in the passing game for the host of speedy and surehanded targets that make up the Ravens receiving corps. Combine that with the best pass protection in the league and a dose of play action fakes and you get 330 yards and 3 touchdowns on the road against the 3rd ranked pass defense in the NFL.
The Ravens offense, however, wasn't the only unit that impressed me. The Ravens defense held Peyton Manning to only 21 points in Denver, and that's not an easy task. There were times when I shook my head at missed tackles in the redzone and yelled at my television with demands of more pressure on Peyton Manning. The Ravens defense, regardless, made stops late in the game when it truly mattered. The Ravens major defensive stars played with an intensity to which Ravens fans have grown accustomed to witnessing in big pressure situations. Terrell Suggs absolutely flattened Peyton, Ray Lewis had an ungodly 17 total tackles, Dannell Ellerbe flew around the field making plays, and Paul Kruger forced a fumble and kept Manning on the run. Kruger's pressure ultimately led to the play that essentially sealed the game for the Ravens in overtime.
The Ravens acquired Corey Graham from the Chicago Bears in the offseason. Graham went to the Pro Bowl last year as a special teams player, but he insisted he could be productive as a defensive back--and, man, was he right. Graham intercepted a tipped Peyton Manning pass in the first quarter and returned it for a touchdown to give the Ravens an early 14-7 lead. It was not until overtime, however, that Graham made possibly the most important defensive play of the season. Under heavy pressure from Paul Kruger on his blind side, Peyton Manning scrambled to his right and then desperately threw a pass across his body towards former Raven Brandon Stokely. The ball, instead, found its way right into the arms of Corey Graham. That interception puts Graham right behind Ed Reed with the most interceptions of Peyton Manning in the playoffs (Reed has 3 and now Graham has 2).
I know that I could have spent time discussing some other rather exciting games from this weekend, but nothing else ended in quite the storybook fashion of the Ravens game. The Falcons game came right down to the wire, but it was more heartbreaking to a Seahawks team that so valiantly battled back from what appeared to be an almost certain loss to take their first lead of the game with only roughly 30 seconds left on the clock in the 4th quarter. The Seahawks struggled to pressure Matt Ryan in the first half without their star pass rusher, Chris Clemons, and found themselves down 20-0 at the half. I'm happy for future hall-of-famer, Tony Gonzalez, for finally winning his first playoff game and playing such an integral role in his team's victory, but I can't help but feel bad for a Seahawks team that fought so valiantly. This weekend was, nevertheless, the most exciting NFL playoffs weekend I've ever witnessed, and I'm quite sure that Ravens fanbase across the U.S. just grew rather significantly.
LOOKING AHEAD TO CHAMPIONSHIP WEEKEND
The Texans played a more competitive game against the Patriots last night, and cut the Patriots lead to 10 at one point in the 4th quarter. That, however, was simply not enough to ever actually frighten a Patriots team that moved the ball so effortlessly against a defense that dominated teams for the first half of the regular season. Some people may look at this game as an example of just how well the Patriots play, but I actually look at this game more as an example of how poorly the Texans defense plays on the road and how vulnerable the Patriots defense can be at times.
The Patriots should be somewhat worried after allowing the Texans to score 4 touchdowns in Foxboro last night. Remember that this is the same Texans team that struggled to get into the endzone a week earlier in their own stadium against the Bengals. The Patriots handled their business offensively, but beating up on the Texans defense is something that a great number of teams have done against the Texans in the last two months. The Texans defense allowed an average of 27.75 points per game in their last 4 road games, and that statistic is skewed by the fact that the Texans defense only allowed 10 points to the lowly Titans. In the other three road games during that time span, the Texans allowed an average of 33.66 points per game including giving up 42 to the Patriots.
The Patriots' next foe is certainly no stranger to playing playoff games in Foxboro. The Ravens are 2-2 in their last 4 games against the Patriots and 1-1 in playoff games played in Foxboro during that stretch. The Patriots are not the same team that the Ravens faced in the AFC Championship last season, but they are more or less the same team that the Ravens edged in Baltimore in Week 3...with one rather big exception. Last night Rob Gronkowksi once again broke his arm and will be out for the remainder of the playoffs. This takes away the biggest matchup issue for the Ravens as Aaron Hernandez is much shorter and more easily covered by Ravens linebackers and safeties. Sure, the Patriots still have playmakers capable of moving the chains against almost anyone, but the Ravens seldom struggle to cover speedy receivers of average height.
I certainly won't go into prediction mode in this particular post, but one has to imagine that the Ravens breathed a sigh of relief after hearing confirmation of Gronkowski's status for this weekend. Rob Gronkowski had 11 touchdowns in 11 games this season, and the Ravens defense could not stop the Patriots offense from driving down the field last season until Gronkowski came out with a high ankle sprain.
With all of that said, the Patriots now possess an added dimension of rushing ability to their offense this season, and that could pose issues for a Ravens run defense that has struggled at times this season. The Patriots may have serious trouble getting pressure on Joe Flacco with the current state of the Ravens' offensive line, and they may struggle to cover Torrey Smith and Dennis Pitta once more, but this game has the potential to be yet another shootout and anything can happen.
The 49ers looked dominant even without their Justin Smith this weekend. Their defense didn't look particularly strong as it allowed the Packers ultimately to pile up 31 points, but the offense looked more explosive than it had all season with Colin Kaepernick's spectacular 181 rushing yards on a mindboggling 11.3 average yards per carry. I didn't predict that kind of a rushing performance, but I did predict a big offensive performance from the 49ers because of just how poorly the Packers defense plays on the road. The poor Packers defense gave Kaepernick a rather large number of offensive opportunities to make plays. This is not something they should expect from any team they might face from here on out. The Falcon's defense isn't the most dominant in the NFL, but it's a defense that performs well enough to win games at home in the Georgia Dome.
If this game was played in Candlestick Park, I would have the 49ers winning by a significant margin, but I'll have to crunch some serious numbers this week and weigh out factors such as available personnel and injuries before I give either team an advantage here. The Seahawks, after all, are incredibly similar to the 49ers and the Falcons managed to edge them at home. The NFC Championship could be just as close as yesteday's Falcons-Seahawks matchup.
I'm proud to say that I have predicted the correct winner of every single game thus far in the NFL playoffs. Not a single ESPN analyst can say that, and I have yet to find or hear of a single analyst in the world of sports media who can say that. I preach over and over again the importance of throwing out irrelevant statistics and and paying close attention to significant changes in personnel when predicting the winner of an NFL game. The playoffs can be exciting and may sometimes seem unpredictable to many, but I'm now 15-1 in playoff predictions as long as I've been blogging, and that should tell readers that there is a definite logical approach to all of this. I don't make my methods secret, and I don't do any complicated math, but one way or another, the Purple Nightmare approach proves successful. Stay tuned for predictions and analysis of the upcoming AFC and NFC Championsips.
AS ALWAYS
GO RAVENS!!!
The Ravens may have actually blown the Broncos out if not for two major blunderous special teams errors that led to a punt and kickoff being returned for touchdowns. The fact remains, however, that special teams is a part of football and we must give credit where credit is due to the shortest player in the NFL (that little guy was 5'5"!) for running a pair of returns back on one of the best special teams units in the league this season. What truly impressed me was how the Ravens simply went right back to work after the Broncos scored so easily. Joe Flacco looked confident and relaxed as he launched bombs down the field to Torrey Smith, and hit Dennis Pitta and Anquan Boldin with surgical precision in incredibly high pressured clutch situations. Joe's pass on the run to Jacoby Jones wasn't lucky, it wasn't just the result of poor coverage by the Broncos, it was a great pass. Joe launched the ball on the run with little more than 30 seconds left in the game 54 yards in the air. Jacoby Jones slowed his route moments before but then quickened his pace for a double move that lulled the Broncos' corner and safety into playing far shallower than was necessary to defend that pass. It's clear to me that neither the corner nor the safety was tracking the ball correctly, and both were instead simply reading Jacoby Jones' body language and movements to try to judge where they assumed the ball would end up. They didn't count on #5 and that cannon he calls his right arm.
Possibly as almost satisfying as the spectacular plays made by Flacco and his receivers was the fact that his offensive line did exactly I predicted it would do in shutting down Vonn Miller and Elvis Dumervil. The offensive line had more trouble in opening up lanes through which Ray Rice could gain big chunks of yardage, but that didn't stop the Ravens from feeding their playmaker the ball. That strategy ultimately lead to Ray Rice accumulating 131 rushing yards with a couple of highly significant extended runs.
Ray Rice may have been limited to 2-4 yards on most of his carries, but the fact that Jim Caldwell never veered away from feeding Ray Rice the ball consistently tells me he has a great understanding just how to win with this team. Giving Ray Rice significant carries forces teams to commit to stopping him. When teams spend so much energy and effort to stop Ray Rice, typically thing open up in the passing game for the host of speedy and surehanded targets that make up the Ravens receiving corps. Combine that with the best pass protection in the league and a dose of play action fakes and you get 330 yards and 3 touchdowns on the road against the 3rd ranked pass defense in the NFL.
The Ravens offense, however, wasn't the only unit that impressed me. The Ravens defense held Peyton Manning to only 21 points in Denver, and that's not an easy task. There were times when I shook my head at missed tackles in the redzone and yelled at my television with demands of more pressure on Peyton Manning. The Ravens defense, regardless, made stops late in the game when it truly mattered. The Ravens major defensive stars played with an intensity to which Ravens fans have grown accustomed to witnessing in big pressure situations. Terrell Suggs absolutely flattened Peyton, Ray Lewis had an ungodly 17 total tackles, Dannell Ellerbe flew around the field making plays, and Paul Kruger forced a fumble and kept Manning on the run. Kruger's pressure ultimately led to the play that essentially sealed the game for the Ravens in overtime.
The Ravens acquired Corey Graham from the Chicago Bears in the offseason. Graham went to the Pro Bowl last year as a special teams player, but he insisted he could be productive as a defensive back--and, man, was he right. Graham intercepted a tipped Peyton Manning pass in the first quarter and returned it for a touchdown to give the Ravens an early 14-7 lead. It was not until overtime, however, that Graham made possibly the most important defensive play of the season. Under heavy pressure from Paul Kruger on his blind side, Peyton Manning scrambled to his right and then desperately threw a pass across his body towards former Raven Brandon Stokely. The ball, instead, found its way right into the arms of Corey Graham. That interception puts Graham right behind Ed Reed with the most interceptions of Peyton Manning in the playoffs (Reed has 3 and now Graham has 2).
I know that I could have spent time discussing some other rather exciting games from this weekend, but nothing else ended in quite the storybook fashion of the Ravens game. The Falcons game came right down to the wire, but it was more heartbreaking to a Seahawks team that so valiantly battled back from what appeared to be an almost certain loss to take their first lead of the game with only roughly 30 seconds left on the clock in the 4th quarter. The Seahawks struggled to pressure Matt Ryan in the first half without their star pass rusher, Chris Clemons, and found themselves down 20-0 at the half. I'm happy for future hall-of-famer, Tony Gonzalez, for finally winning his first playoff game and playing such an integral role in his team's victory, but I can't help but feel bad for a Seahawks team that fought so valiantly. This weekend was, nevertheless, the most exciting NFL playoffs weekend I've ever witnessed, and I'm quite sure that Ravens fanbase across the U.S. just grew rather significantly.
LOOKING AHEAD TO CHAMPIONSHIP WEEKEND
The Texans played a more competitive game against the Patriots last night, and cut the Patriots lead to 10 at one point in the 4th quarter. That, however, was simply not enough to ever actually frighten a Patriots team that moved the ball so effortlessly against a defense that dominated teams for the first half of the regular season. Some people may look at this game as an example of just how well the Patriots play, but I actually look at this game more as an example of how poorly the Texans defense plays on the road and how vulnerable the Patriots defense can be at times.
The Patriots should be somewhat worried after allowing the Texans to score 4 touchdowns in Foxboro last night. Remember that this is the same Texans team that struggled to get into the endzone a week earlier in their own stadium against the Bengals. The Patriots handled their business offensively, but beating up on the Texans defense is something that a great number of teams have done against the Texans in the last two months. The Texans defense allowed an average of 27.75 points per game in their last 4 road games, and that statistic is skewed by the fact that the Texans defense only allowed 10 points to the lowly Titans. In the other three road games during that time span, the Texans allowed an average of 33.66 points per game including giving up 42 to the Patriots.
The Patriots' next foe is certainly no stranger to playing playoff games in Foxboro. The Ravens are 2-2 in their last 4 games against the Patriots and 1-1 in playoff games played in Foxboro during that stretch. The Patriots are not the same team that the Ravens faced in the AFC Championship last season, but they are more or less the same team that the Ravens edged in Baltimore in Week 3...with one rather big exception. Last night Rob Gronkowksi once again broke his arm and will be out for the remainder of the playoffs. This takes away the biggest matchup issue for the Ravens as Aaron Hernandez is much shorter and more easily covered by Ravens linebackers and safeties. Sure, the Patriots still have playmakers capable of moving the chains against almost anyone, but the Ravens seldom struggle to cover speedy receivers of average height.
I certainly won't go into prediction mode in this particular post, but one has to imagine that the Ravens breathed a sigh of relief after hearing confirmation of Gronkowski's status for this weekend. Rob Gronkowski had 11 touchdowns in 11 games this season, and the Ravens defense could not stop the Patriots offense from driving down the field last season until Gronkowski came out with a high ankle sprain.
With all of that said, the Patriots now possess an added dimension of rushing ability to their offense this season, and that could pose issues for a Ravens run defense that has struggled at times this season. The Patriots may have serious trouble getting pressure on Joe Flacco with the current state of the Ravens' offensive line, and they may struggle to cover Torrey Smith and Dennis Pitta once more, but this game has the potential to be yet another shootout and anything can happen.
The 49ers looked dominant even without their Justin Smith this weekend. Their defense didn't look particularly strong as it allowed the Packers ultimately to pile up 31 points, but the offense looked more explosive than it had all season with Colin Kaepernick's spectacular 181 rushing yards on a mindboggling 11.3 average yards per carry. I didn't predict that kind of a rushing performance, but I did predict a big offensive performance from the 49ers because of just how poorly the Packers defense plays on the road. The poor Packers defense gave Kaepernick a rather large number of offensive opportunities to make plays. This is not something they should expect from any team they might face from here on out. The Falcon's defense isn't the most dominant in the NFL, but it's a defense that performs well enough to win games at home in the Georgia Dome.
If this game was played in Candlestick Park, I would have the 49ers winning by a significant margin, but I'll have to crunch some serious numbers this week and weigh out factors such as available personnel and injuries before I give either team an advantage here. The Seahawks, after all, are incredibly similar to the 49ers and the Falcons managed to edge them at home. The NFC Championship could be just as close as yesteday's Falcons-Seahawks matchup.
I'm proud to say that I have predicted the correct winner of every single game thus far in the NFL playoffs. Not a single ESPN analyst can say that, and I have yet to find or hear of a single analyst in the world of sports media who can say that. I preach over and over again the importance of throwing out irrelevant statistics and and paying close attention to significant changes in personnel when predicting the winner of an NFL game. The playoffs can be exciting and may sometimes seem unpredictable to many, but I'm now 15-1 in playoff predictions as long as I've been blogging, and that should tell readers that there is a definite logical approach to all of this. I don't make my methods secret, and I don't do any complicated math, but one way or another, the Purple Nightmare approach proves successful. Stay tuned for predictions and analysis of the upcoming AFC and NFC Championsips.
AS ALWAYS
GO RAVENS!!!
Friday, January 11, 2013
NFL DIVISIONAL ROUND: SUNDAY PREDICTIONS
The divisional round of the NFL playoffs, unlike the wildcard round, features exciting games on BOTH days of the weekend. Last weekend, the Vikings-Packers game barely qualified as a playoff game, and the Bengals looked too offensively inept to warrant even being a wildcard team. As lesser teams are eliminated, however, the games become far more interesting. The Seahawks have looked nearly unstoppable recently, while the Falcons get little credit for being tied for the NFL's best record. The likely outcome of the Texans-Patriots game certainly appears far less uncertain, but the Texans still have the potential to get hot and make this a more interesting game if they can avoid mistakes they made in their last trip to Foxboro.
SEAHAWKS AT FALCONS
This is one of the most interesting matchups of the entire 2012-2013 season and certainly one of the most interesting matchups of the 2013 post-season. The Falcons have been a mystery all season as they won 13 regular season games, but often played impossibly close games against losing teams. Few fans, commentators, and analysts seemed to take the Falcons seriously as a truly dominant team because of the way they won games rather than the number of games they won. The Seahawks are one of the hottest teams in football at the moment, and they've shown that they can go on the road and beat another hot team in the Washinton Redskins. The Seahawks, however, lost their top pass rusher last weekend to a torn ACL, and their leading rusher, Marshawn Lynch, was listed on the injury report this week with a foot injury even though he is expected to play. The Atlanta Falcons, on the other hand, have not won a playoff game since January 15, 2005, and they have only one current player, center Todd McClure, who has ever won a playoff game in a Falcons uniform. Could this be the season that Matt Ryan finally wins a game in the post-season? Let's take a look at some of the numbers to get a better idea.
KEY STATISTICS
Matt Ryan has had the best statistical year of his career with 4719 yards and 32 passing touchdowns. More importantly, the Falcons are 7-1 in Atlanta with their only home loss coming in a game that meant nothing as the Falcons had already clinched the 1st seed in the playoffs. The last meaningful home game the Falcons played was a 34-0 drubbing of the Giants. There's an argument to be made that the Falcons are actually hitting their stride heading into the post-season.
The Falcons don't have a great defense from a standpoint of yardage allowed. They possess the 23rd ranked pass defense and the 21st ranked run defense. The Falcons, however, had the 5th best scoring defense in the league with only 299 points allowed in the entire regular season. Only the Seahawks, 49ers, Bears, and Broncos allowed fewer points. The Falcons, in that way, are a lot like the Ravens in that they may allow teams to move between the 20 yard lines, but buckle down as opposing teams approach the endzone. The Falcons have allowed exactly 17 points per game at home as opposed to 20.375 on the road. The Falcons defense, thus, gains an advantage from its own home crowd.
The Falcons scoring offense is ranked 7th with a total of 419 points in the regular season, which averages out to 26.1875 points per game. Most of the Falcons yardage stems from their 6th ranked passing offense that averaged 281.8 yards per game through the air. The Falcons were far less impressive running the football as they ranked 29th in the NFL with only 87.3 rushing yards per games. The Falcons, however, do possess the ability to use their leading rusher, Michael Turner, quite well in the redzone as he has 10 rushing touchdowns on the season (1 more than Ray Rice). The Falcons possess some impressive receivers with Julio Jones and Roddy White. These two receivers have a combined 2549 receiving yards and 17 touchdowns this season, and are a matchup nightmare for any pair of cornerbacks. Tony Gonzalez is still playing at a high level towards what we have to assume is the tail end of his career as a tight end. Gonzalez had 930 receiving yards and 8 touchdowns this season, and I'd like to say his experience will be a big bonus to this Falcons receiving corps, but Gonzalez has zero experience winning a playoff game.
The Seahawks defense has been arguably the best defense in the league, and it certainly looked dominant against a high powered Redskins offense last weekend. The Seahawks, as I mentioned earlier, lost their best pass rusher, and that could hurt them against a pass-heavy team with a handful of top notch receivers such as the Falcons. The Seahawks certainly disproved doubters that insisted Seattle is a team that only truly excels at home. The Seahawks appeared to disprove that by holding the Redskins scoreless after the first quarter of the wildcard round game. The Redskins, however, have a rather one dimensional offense that relies so heavily on the run and was hurt by the poor throwing ability and accuracy of an injured, hobbled RG3. The Falcons may seem equally one dimensional at times, but the one dimension they possess will likely prove more successful against a Seattle team without Chris Clemons. Clemons had 11.5 sacks this season, and taking away a team's leading pass rusher can totally change the dynamic of the defensive line.
The Seahawks' defense allowed 18.75 points per game on the road this season (18.22 if you count last week's road playoff game). The Seahawks only scored an average 21.125 points per game on the road, however, and that may not be quite enough to win in the Georgia Dome. The Falcons, however, aren't a terrifying home team from an offensive production standpoint. On the contrary, they averaged less points per game at home (24.75) than on the road (27.625). This discrepancy doesn't have to do with the strength of their home schedule as opposed to their road schedule as both were around the same in difficulty. Instead, the Falcons are a team that scores by necessity rather than scoring just to score. It would appear that the Falcons try not to be overly aggressive when it's not necessary to avoid mistakes and turnovers.
SEAHAWKS AT FALCONS: FINAL THOUGHTS
I believed in the Seahawks last week because I understood that their ability to stop the run would travel well. I knew that RG3 was slowed by a knee injury, and that the Redskins wouldn't be a huge threat in the passing game. Before RG3 took some shots, however, the Redskins quickly drove down the field and scored two touchdowns on the Seahawks defense. It took re-aggrivation of RG3's knee injury to really blow the game wide open for the Seahawks. The Falcons, on the other hand, will be quite well rested and ready for this Sunday. Their quarterback is simply better than RG3 even when RG3 is healthy. That's not a jab at the Skins or their fans, but Matt Ryan is simply a great quarterback. Now it's Ryan's chance to prove that his talent and skills can carry over into the post-season. The loss of Chris Clemons will badly hurt Seattle's ability to pressure a quarterback with impressive pocket awareness and footwork. Matt Ryan will likely connect with Julio Jones, Roddy White, and Tony Gonzalez before pressure gets to him, and that will open things up for Michael Turner on occassion. The Falcons play excellent defense at home. They will focus on keeping Marshawn Lynch off of the field and out of the endzone. Russell Wilson will make plays and prove that he's just about the best rookie quarterback in the league right now, but he won't have enough opportunities to drive downfield as the Seahawks defense will struggle to stop the Falcons at too many points. I'll be rooting for the Hawks, but it looks like a different bird is going to move on to the next round.
MY PREDICTION: FALCONS 27-21.
TEXANS AT PATRIOTS
I don't want to disrespect my friends who are Texans fans. I know the Texans won last week over a team with an great defense, but it would be just downright silly to think that a narrow home win over an offensively anemic Bengals team would mean much heading into a road rematch with a Patriots team that beat the Texans down only a little over a month ago. The Patriots drove effortlessly on the Texans over and over and over...and over. The score ended up being 42-14 with half of Texas' points coming in garbage time. The Texans lost a lot when they lost Brian Cushing early in the season. They lost a defensive playmaker who added leadership, intensity, run-stuffing, and pass-rushing dimensions to this Texans team. After Cushing's injury, many teams discovered a winning formula for stopping the Texans: double team J.J. Watt, and everytime he throws his arms up in the air, deliver a blocking blow right to his stomach to make him pay. Watt still had plenty off success this season, but he became one of the few players in the Texans front 7 to demonstrate the ability to make big plays.
The Texans have not lost or gained any major personnel since their last matchup with the Patriots, so this game will be far easier to predict from a statistical standpoint. The Patriots, on the other hand, have only become healthier and stronger with the return of Rob Gronkowski. Rather than worrying about the entire regular season let's briefly look at the Texans' performance last week and then take a more in-depth look back to the last time the Texans and Patriots played one another to get an idea of what is about to happen on Sunday.
KEY STATISTICS
Last week the Texans beat the Bengals 19-13 in what can only be described as a defensive struggle. Not a defensive showdown or war, but a struggle. I say a struggle because it had more to do with each team's total ineptitude when it came to getting into the endzone on offense. The Bengals' only touchdown came off of an embarrassing Matt Schaub pick 6, and the the Texans only touchdown came on the ground from Arian Foster who had himself quite a good day. The Matt Schaub drove his team into the redzone on a few occassions but the Texans had to settle for 4 field goals.
The Texans' offensive struggles in the redzone were equally apparent but far more costly against the Patriots in week 14. The Texans had the same number of offensive drives as the Patriots (13), only one less yard per play, and 5 less total plays than Tom Brady and company. Houston's ability to get into the redzone, however, was atrocious to say the least. The Texans would look impressive at times and put together a drive, but almost all of their drives stalled long before they got within the redzone or even field goal range.
Matt Schaub and the Texans offense got credit for putting up big points against a handful of teams earlier this season. Schaub himself, however, has not had many particularly impressive games from a standpoint of passing yards. Schaub had one standout performance with over 500 passing yards against the worst team in the league an overtime barn-burner. Other than that embarrassingly close matchup, Schaub has only had one game all season with 300+ passing yards. It could be that Andre Johnson is slowing down, or it could be that Schaub himself has simply made too many mistakes along the way, but he has certainly not looked like the pro bowler that he once was years ago.
Tom Brady, on the other hand, has been exactly what we expect him to be year in and year out. Brady passed for 4,827 yards, 34 touchdowns, and only 8 interceptions this season. If Peyton Manning hadn't led his team to the best record in the AFC coming off of a nagging neck injury, Brady would likely be the #1 quarterback candidate for league MVP. Brady's ability to spread the ball around his receiving corps and read defenses makes him dangerous in any game. Brady's lightning quick release and sure-handed targets allow him to complete a high number of passes without being pressured much.
Most importantly, Tom Brady and the Patriots did not seem the least bit frightened by J.J. Watt. The Patriots have the ability to run the ball well, and that helped to keep the Texans from bringing heavy blitzes to pressure Brady into making poor throws. Bill Belichick obviously did his homework before facing the Texans last time, because he seemed to have totally figured out each and every one of the weaknesses in a Texans defense that looked brutal and terrifying only a month earlier.
TEXANS-PATRIOTS: FINAL THOUGHTS
I won't waste too much more time with statistical analysis. A rested Patriots team with their biggest, most dangerous receiver back and healthy will be far too much for the Texans to handle. The Texans offense, try as they may, won't be efficient enough at scoring in Foxboro to keep up with the high-powered Patriots. I hope the Texans make this a more interesting game than I expect it to be.
MY PREDICTION: PATRIOTS 38-23
SEAHAWKS AT FALCONS
This is one of the most interesting matchups of the entire 2012-2013 season and certainly one of the most interesting matchups of the 2013 post-season. The Falcons have been a mystery all season as they won 13 regular season games, but often played impossibly close games against losing teams. Few fans, commentators, and analysts seemed to take the Falcons seriously as a truly dominant team because of the way they won games rather than the number of games they won. The Seahawks are one of the hottest teams in football at the moment, and they've shown that they can go on the road and beat another hot team in the Washinton Redskins. The Seahawks, however, lost their top pass rusher last weekend to a torn ACL, and their leading rusher, Marshawn Lynch, was listed on the injury report this week with a foot injury even though he is expected to play. The Atlanta Falcons, on the other hand, have not won a playoff game since January 15, 2005, and they have only one current player, center Todd McClure, who has ever won a playoff game in a Falcons uniform. Could this be the season that Matt Ryan finally wins a game in the post-season? Let's take a look at some of the numbers to get a better idea.
KEY STATISTICS
Matt Ryan has had the best statistical year of his career with 4719 yards and 32 passing touchdowns. More importantly, the Falcons are 7-1 in Atlanta with their only home loss coming in a game that meant nothing as the Falcons had already clinched the 1st seed in the playoffs. The last meaningful home game the Falcons played was a 34-0 drubbing of the Giants. There's an argument to be made that the Falcons are actually hitting their stride heading into the post-season.
The Falcons don't have a great defense from a standpoint of yardage allowed. They possess the 23rd ranked pass defense and the 21st ranked run defense. The Falcons, however, had the 5th best scoring defense in the league with only 299 points allowed in the entire regular season. Only the Seahawks, 49ers, Bears, and Broncos allowed fewer points. The Falcons, in that way, are a lot like the Ravens in that they may allow teams to move between the 20 yard lines, but buckle down as opposing teams approach the endzone. The Falcons have allowed exactly 17 points per game at home as opposed to 20.375 on the road. The Falcons defense, thus, gains an advantage from its own home crowd.
The Falcons scoring offense is ranked 7th with a total of 419 points in the regular season, which averages out to 26.1875 points per game. Most of the Falcons yardage stems from their 6th ranked passing offense that averaged 281.8 yards per game through the air. The Falcons were far less impressive running the football as they ranked 29th in the NFL with only 87.3 rushing yards per games. The Falcons, however, do possess the ability to use their leading rusher, Michael Turner, quite well in the redzone as he has 10 rushing touchdowns on the season (1 more than Ray Rice). The Falcons possess some impressive receivers with Julio Jones and Roddy White. These two receivers have a combined 2549 receiving yards and 17 touchdowns this season, and are a matchup nightmare for any pair of cornerbacks. Tony Gonzalez is still playing at a high level towards what we have to assume is the tail end of his career as a tight end. Gonzalez had 930 receiving yards and 8 touchdowns this season, and I'd like to say his experience will be a big bonus to this Falcons receiving corps, but Gonzalez has zero experience winning a playoff game.
The Seahawks defense has been arguably the best defense in the league, and it certainly looked dominant against a high powered Redskins offense last weekend. The Seahawks, as I mentioned earlier, lost their best pass rusher, and that could hurt them against a pass-heavy team with a handful of top notch receivers such as the Falcons. The Seahawks certainly disproved doubters that insisted Seattle is a team that only truly excels at home. The Seahawks appeared to disprove that by holding the Redskins scoreless after the first quarter of the wildcard round game. The Redskins, however, have a rather one dimensional offense that relies so heavily on the run and was hurt by the poor throwing ability and accuracy of an injured, hobbled RG3. The Falcons may seem equally one dimensional at times, but the one dimension they possess will likely prove more successful against a Seattle team without Chris Clemons. Clemons had 11.5 sacks this season, and taking away a team's leading pass rusher can totally change the dynamic of the defensive line.
The Seahawks' defense allowed 18.75 points per game on the road this season (18.22 if you count last week's road playoff game). The Seahawks only scored an average 21.125 points per game on the road, however, and that may not be quite enough to win in the Georgia Dome. The Falcons, however, aren't a terrifying home team from an offensive production standpoint. On the contrary, they averaged less points per game at home (24.75) than on the road (27.625). This discrepancy doesn't have to do with the strength of their home schedule as opposed to their road schedule as both were around the same in difficulty. Instead, the Falcons are a team that scores by necessity rather than scoring just to score. It would appear that the Falcons try not to be overly aggressive when it's not necessary to avoid mistakes and turnovers.
SEAHAWKS AT FALCONS: FINAL THOUGHTS
I believed in the Seahawks last week because I understood that their ability to stop the run would travel well. I knew that RG3 was slowed by a knee injury, and that the Redskins wouldn't be a huge threat in the passing game. Before RG3 took some shots, however, the Redskins quickly drove down the field and scored two touchdowns on the Seahawks defense. It took re-aggrivation of RG3's knee injury to really blow the game wide open for the Seahawks. The Falcons, on the other hand, will be quite well rested and ready for this Sunday. Their quarterback is simply better than RG3 even when RG3 is healthy. That's not a jab at the Skins or their fans, but Matt Ryan is simply a great quarterback. Now it's Ryan's chance to prove that his talent and skills can carry over into the post-season. The loss of Chris Clemons will badly hurt Seattle's ability to pressure a quarterback with impressive pocket awareness and footwork. Matt Ryan will likely connect with Julio Jones, Roddy White, and Tony Gonzalez before pressure gets to him, and that will open things up for Michael Turner on occassion. The Falcons play excellent defense at home. They will focus on keeping Marshawn Lynch off of the field and out of the endzone. Russell Wilson will make plays and prove that he's just about the best rookie quarterback in the league right now, but he won't have enough opportunities to drive downfield as the Seahawks defense will struggle to stop the Falcons at too many points. I'll be rooting for the Hawks, but it looks like a different bird is going to move on to the next round.
MY PREDICTION: FALCONS 27-21.
TEXANS AT PATRIOTS
I don't want to disrespect my friends who are Texans fans. I know the Texans won last week over a team with an great defense, but it would be just downright silly to think that a narrow home win over an offensively anemic Bengals team would mean much heading into a road rematch with a Patriots team that beat the Texans down only a little over a month ago. The Patriots drove effortlessly on the Texans over and over and over...and over. The score ended up being 42-14 with half of Texas' points coming in garbage time. The Texans lost a lot when they lost Brian Cushing early in the season. They lost a defensive playmaker who added leadership, intensity, run-stuffing, and pass-rushing dimensions to this Texans team. After Cushing's injury, many teams discovered a winning formula for stopping the Texans: double team J.J. Watt, and everytime he throws his arms up in the air, deliver a blocking blow right to his stomach to make him pay. Watt still had plenty off success this season, but he became one of the few players in the Texans front 7 to demonstrate the ability to make big plays.
The Texans have not lost or gained any major personnel since their last matchup with the Patriots, so this game will be far easier to predict from a statistical standpoint. The Patriots, on the other hand, have only become healthier and stronger with the return of Rob Gronkowski. Rather than worrying about the entire regular season let's briefly look at the Texans' performance last week and then take a more in-depth look back to the last time the Texans and Patriots played one another to get an idea of what is about to happen on Sunday.
KEY STATISTICS
Last week the Texans beat the Bengals 19-13 in what can only be described as a defensive struggle. Not a defensive showdown or war, but a struggle. I say a struggle because it had more to do with each team's total ineptitude when it came to getting into the endzone on offense. The Bengals' only touchdown came off of an embarrassing Matt Schaub pick 6, and the the Texans only touchdown came on the ground from Arian Foster who had himself quite a good day. The Matt Schaub drove his team into the redzone on a few occassions but the Texans had to settle for 4 field goals.
The Texans' offensive struggles in the redzone were equally apparent but far more costly against the Patriots in week 14. The Texans had the same number of offensive drives as the Patriots (13), only one less yard per play, and 5 less total plays than Tom Brady and company. Houston's ability to get into the redzone, however, was atrocious to say the least. The Texans would look impressive at times and put together a drive, but almost all of their drives stalled long before they got within the redzone or even field goal range.
Matt Schaub and the Texans offense got credit for putting up big points against a handful of teams earlier this season. Schaub himself, however, has not had many particularly impressive games from a standpoint of passing yards. Schaub had one standout performance with over 500 passing yards against the worst team in the league an overtime barn-burner. Other than that embarrassingly close matchup, Schaub has only had one game all season with 300+ passing yards. It could be that Andre Johnson is slowing down, or it could be that Schaub himself has simply made too many mistakes along the way, but he has certainly not looked like the pro bowler that he once was years ago.
Tom Brady, on the other hand, has been exactly what we expect him to be year in and year out. Brady passed for 4,827 yards, 34 touchdowns, and only 8 interceptions this season. If Peyton Manning hadn't led his team to the best record in the AFC coming off of a nagging neck injury, Brady would likely be the #1 quarterback candidate for league MVP. Brady's ability to spread the ball around his receiving corps and read defenses makes him dangerous in any game. Brady's lightning quick release and sure-handed targets allow him to complete a high number of passes without being pressured much.
Most importantly, Tom Brady and the Patriots did not seem the least bit frightened by J.J. Watt. The Patriots have the ability to run the ball well, and that helped to keep the Texans from bringing heavy blitzes to pressure Brady into making poor throws. Bill Belichick obviously did his homework before facing the Texans last time, because he seemed to have totally figured out each and every one of the weaknesses in a Texans defense that looked brutal and terrifying only a month earlier.
TEXANS-PATRIOTS: FINAL THOUGHTS
I won't waste too much more time with statistical analysis. A rested Patriots team with their biggest, most dangerous receiver back and healthy will be far too much for the Texans to handle. The Texans offense, try as they may, won't be efficient enough at scoring in Foxboro to keep up with the high-powered Patriots. I hope the Texans make this a more interesting game than I expect it to be.
MY PREDICTION: PATRIOTS 38-23
Thursday, January 10, 2013
NFL DIVISIONAL ROUND: SATURDAY PREDICTIONS
There will be little time for anticipation this weekend for Ravens and Broncos fans as their playoff game of choice is the first of four divisional contests. At 4:30 EST on Saturday, the Ravens will take the field at Mile High Stadium to face a team that manhandled them in Baltimore roughly one month earlier. The Houston Texans will be facing a similar situation when they travel to Foxboro to play the Patriots on Sunday. There are, however, two major difference between the situations of each of these two teams. The first of these differences is that the Ravens had a host of key injuries during the first game they played against the Broncos this season, while the Texans were relatively healthy when they last played and lost to the Patriots. The other difference is that the Texans are playing the Patriots in Foxboro again, and the Ravens are facing the Broncos in Denver instead of Baltimore this time.
The Texas-Patriots game will, as I stated before, be played on Sunday, so we'll discuss that more in my next post, but it simply seemed interesting to me to bring up the fact that both AFC divisional round games are rematches of total beatdowns from the last month of the regular season. The second game that will be played on Saturday night is the Packers-49ers matchup in San Francisco. That game will ALSO be a rematch of a regular season game wherein the 49ers beat the Packers 30-22 in week 1. I would like to say that we should be able to gather a lot from that regular season matchup, but it happened during the first week of the replacement referees, and the 49ers have since switched quarterbacks. This will present challenges in collecting truly relevant statistics, but that'll only make this weeks predictions all the more interesting.
RAVENS AT BRONCOS
Most of us have heard that the Broncos are 9 point favorites to win this game. I certainly can't argue with the factors that led to this betting line by vegas as the points are quite convincing. The first of such factors is that the Ravens typically have a far worse record on the road than at home. Baltimore's homefield advantage is now legendary, but the Ravens have won only 4 road games per season in the last two years. The Ravens will also be traveling on a short week to play a Broncos team that is coming off of a bye week with little injuries to speak of except Willis McGahee's knee. Then there's Peyton Manning's 9 game winning streak against the Ravens dating back roughly a decade; that has to be a huge factor on the minds of Las Vegas oddsmakers. Probably the biggest factor that went into Vegas' prediction of a Broncos win is the fact that the Broncos beat the Ravens in Baltimore only a month earlier, and should logically have an easier time beating the Ravens on at home in Denver this time around. These are all quite logical points, and I agree that the Ravens certainly have a daunting task ahead of them. There are, however, far more factors and statistics to consider for this matchup, and many of them actually favor the Ravens. Let's take a look.
KEY STATISTICS
I spent days writing and re-writing this post because I could not come to a conclusion with which I could be satisfied. There are so many reasons to pick one team or the other and it's difficult to decide which of those reasons will likely prove more valid when game time rolls around. I typically spend a lot of my time crunching numbers in a calcluator to come up with my playoff predictions, but this one was so very much more complicated because factors regarding injuries and personnel making collecting statistics so incredibly difficult. Oh well, here goes nothing.
First, it's unwise to bring up Peyton Manning's playoff performance of the last decade as evidence that he may choke this weekend. Peyton Manning is no longer on the Colts, and the Broncos offer things that should make their team more suited for the playoffs. The Broncos have a far better defense in all regards than the Colts did at almost any time during the last decade. The Broncos also run the ball better than the Colts did for most of Peyton's time in Indianapolis. Yes, Peyton Manning failed to win a playoff game in 7 of his 11 trips to the playoffs, but he lacked the support that his current team grants him.
Another set of factors I decided to throw out was the Ravens performances in the first 7 weeks. The Ravens DID win 5 out of those 7 games, and they DID beat the Patriots in dramatic fashion, but differences in defensive personnel make it impossible to use that team as a statistical predictor for this weekends' matchup in Denver. The Ravens no longer start Lardardius Webb as he went down in week 6 with a torn ACL, and the Ravens no longer start Jameel McClain as an inside linebacker as his season ended with a spinal injury against the Redskins. The Ravens now have Terrell Suggs back, and his presence does make a difference despite lingering issues with his biceps and achilles tendon. The biggest factor has been the emergence of Dannell Ellerbe as a starting linebacker for the Ravens. The Ravens have not allowed a single touchdown from the redzone in games where Dannell Ellerbe has started. Ellerbe was one of many Ravens standouts that did NOT play last time the Broncos faced the Ravens one month ago.
The idea that Peyton Manning is 0-3 in the playoffs in games below 50 degrees is interesting but not a statistic upon which we should draw definite conclusions. Two of those cold playoff games were in Foxboro against Tom Brady and the Patriots, and the Patriots homefield advantage likely has far more to do with the Peyton's losses than the cold. Peyton has also been playing in Denver all season and practicing in rather cold weather recently. The Colts played in a dome and dome teams often experience trouble in harsh outdoor environments because their players have far less experience in low temperatures once the post-season rolls around. Peyton should be quite used to the cold, and thus, it shouldn't be nearly as much of a factor.
The biggest set of statistics to throw out in predicting this game is that of the Broncos-Ravens game from 4 weeks ago. I know that may seem quite silly to many of you, but it has so little to do with this weekend. The Ravens were short-staffed on both sides of the ball, they were playing their first game with an offensive coordinator that had never called plays in an NFL game before, and it took place in Baltimore--not Denver.
Now let's take a look at what I believe will prove TRULY relevant for this weekend. Defensively, I can only look to games where the Ravens have fielded a similar set of healthy personnel. Those games, however, are few and far between. It may also seem slanted that all of the games where the Ravens start nearly this same defense happened to be Ravens wins, but that's a vitally important fact and set of statistics that I'll soon address. The presence of both Dannell Ellerbe and Terrell Suggs on the field has meant the difference between the Ravens having an incredibly stout, stingy defense and the Ravens having a porous defense riddled with weaknesses. Ellerbe and Suggs both dramatically elevate the Ravens' pass rush and run-stopping ability, and Ellerbe provides a great boost to the Ravens' pass covereage as well. In games where both men started and played without major injury, the Ravens defense held opponents to an average of 13.5 games and went 6-0. This series of 6 games included 3 road games at Cleveland, San Diego, and Pittsburgh, and that demonstrates that a Ravens defense with Ellerbe and Suggs starting travels quite well and performs at an elite level in both far away and hostile environments. The Ravens defense the 6 aforementioned games provided Joe Flacco and the Ravens offense with enough opportunities to score enough points to win each time. The Ravens offense, however, has performed at a much lower level on the road this season, and that could prove a great benefit to the Broncos.
The Ravens offense has suffered injuries at times, but for the most part it has fielded a relatively consistent set of playmakers. It is for this reason that you would THINK we'd have a larger number of games from which to draw offensive statistics. Fortunately for the Ravens, Cam Cameron is no longer the offensive coordinator, and Jim Caldwell has done an impressive job at calling plays in the last couple of serious games that the Ravens have played (we won't count the Bengals game as the Ravens pulled their starters early). Both different play-calling and a newly shuffled and healthy offensive line are the major reasons why this Ravens offense can't be statistically compared to that of many of the regular season games. Bryant McKinney appears back in rare pass blocking form at left tackle and Marshal Yanda is once again healthy and provides a huge boost to the running game as well as pass protection.
Ok, enough about how the Ravens are a better team than the team that lost three straight games starting 6 weeks ago. The Broncos are not to be taken lightly, they have an incredible offense that can run and pass the ball on just about anyone. They also boast the 3rd ranked pass defense and the 3rd ranked rush defense in the NFL. They have two incredible pass rushers and a fantastic secondary with veteran leaders such as Champ Bailey. The Broncos had a playoff team last season with a horrible quarterback--they've upgraded since then. The Broncos are 5th in the NFL in passing yards per game, and average a whopping 32.5 points per game at home while only allowing 16.375 points per game in Denver. That's over a 16 point average margin of victory.
The Broncos absolutely steamrolled the final two teams they played at home, but those teams had a combined 7 wins. The Broncos are on an 11 game winning streak, but only two of those 11 teams finished the season with a winning record, and one of them was a broken, depleted Ravens team. Another vitally important point is that the Broncos had numerous games in which they only edged solid or mediocre teams in Denver. The Broncos two home games before the Browns and Chiefs games were against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and San Diego Chargers. The Broncos only beat the Chargers 30-23, and the Buccaneers 31-23. Those are, of course, solid wins, but they demonstrate that the Broncos defense does not always shut down opponents in Mile High Stadium. If the Broncos can allow the sorry Chargers and the solid but flawed Buccaneers to each score 23 points, then maybe there's hope for a Ravens team that is much better than either of those non-playoff teams.
RAVENS-BRONCOS: FINAL THOUGHTS
My prediction for this game ultimately came down to personnel matchups and an examination of how the Ravens performed when healthy this season. Few believed in the Giants going into the last post season--few except this blogger. The Giants looked up and down all last season. They were swept by the Redskins and went on a 4 game losing streak in November and early December, but they showed flashes of being able to contend with and edge teams they'd ultimately need to beat to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in February. The key for the Giants was getting healthy and hot right before the playoffs. I see a similar path for the Ravens. The Ravens were broken and depleted when they went on their own losing streak, but they clinched their division and that gave them the opportunity to rest their starters and revamp their offensive line.
On the flip side, the Broncos are well rested and dangerous, but their homefield advantage hasn't exactly been what many people may think it has been this season. In the last two games against teams with at least 7 wins, the Broncos allowed 23 points per game and only won by an average 7.5 points. At the same time, the Ravens defense has only allowed an average of 13.5 points per game when Dannell Ellerbe and Terrell Suggs start. With a healthy defense, the Ravens showed they can go across country and hold the Chargers to 13 points (the same Chargers team that scored 23.5 points per game on the Broncos this season), and showed they could go into Pittsburgh and hold the Steelers to 10 points. I expect the Broncos to score more than the Chargers or Steelers, but when the Ravens are healthy, I simply can't bring myself to bet against them. With a healthy defense, a better offensive coordinator, and far better pass protection, the Ravens will upset the Broncos en route to a rematch with the Patriots. I probably sound like a total homer, and I'm sure I am, but I actually strongly believe that the Broncos won't see this Ravens team coming. Peyton Manning has only won games in 4 of his 11 trips to the playoffs. And after all, Peyton Manning has thrown 1 touchdown and 7 interceptions in post-season games below 40 degrees at kickoff, and this one just may be the coldest.
MY PREDICTION: RAVENS 27-24.
PACKERS AT 49ERS
Like the Ravens-Broncos game, the Packers-49ers game will be a rematch of two teams that faced each other during the regular season. Also like the Ravens-Broncos game, this Packers-49ers game can't be easily predicted using the regular season matchup as evidence. This seasons' first meeting of these teams was played in a different location as Saturday night's game, and it featured a questionable replacement officiating crew and a different quarterback for the 49ers. The first matchup between these two teams was also in September, so we'll have to look how each team has changed since then in order to get an accurate prediction for Saturday night.
KEY STATISTICS
This Packers team is not nearly as dominant as the Packers team that won 15 regular season games last regular season. By anyone's account, the Packers should've been 12-4 during the regular season if one were to reverse one of the worst calls in NFL history against the Seahawks. The outcome of the Seahawks game took away homefield advantage for the Packers and allowed the Seahawks to make it to the playoffs, but that's not something anyone can change after the fact. The fact is that the way the Packers ended their season simply wasn't good enough to deserve a first round bye, and the way the Seahawks have played in the last 6 weeks demonstrates that they absolutely belong in the post-season.
The Packers beat a Vikings team without its starting quarterback last weekend in one of the lamest excuses for a playoff game I've ever had the misfortune of watching. That game doesn't provide the Packers with much momentum as it was a home game and this weeks matchup is on the road in a harsh playoff environment against one of the league's most dominant defenses. The Packers' regular season home games, however, don't provide relevant statistics for this upcoming game expect to illustrate the difference between how Aaron Rodgers and company play on the road as opposed to in Green Bay.
The Packers allowed their opponents to score an average of 24.5 points in road games this season. By contrast, the Packers only allowed opponents to score 17.5 points per game at Lambeau Field. Four of the five Packers losses happened on the road this season, and the only loss at home was against the team that they're about to face this weekend. The Packers offense is also more productive at home with 29.125 points per game than it is on the road with an average of 25. This means that the Packers only score an average of 0.5 points more than they allow on the road. This is not a recipe for a road playoff win.
The 49ers, like the Packers and almost all other teams, are better at home than on the road. Unlike the Packers, the 49ers will be playing at home this weekend. Three of the 49ers' four losses came on the road this season, and their only home loss came against a Giants team that has perplexingly had a recipe to beat both the Packers and 49ers on their respective home fields for the past two seasons. The 49ers haven't been better from an offensive standpoint at home as compared to on the road. The 49ers have, in fact, scored 24.875 points per game on the road and only 24.75 points per game at home. The 49ers big advantage going into Saturday night's game is their home defense. The 49ers allowed an average of only 13.875 points per game at home this season, but an average of 20.25 points on the road. This will undoubtedly work in the 49ers' favor.
There are, of course, other factors beyond homefield advantage that will come into play this weekend. The 49ers defense has been particularly strong against all of the teams they've played with pass-heavy offenses. The 49ers beat the Saints, Patriots, and Packers this season, but occasionally struggled against teams with strong running games and stout defenses such as the Seahawks and Vikings. The Packers don't run the ball well, and while their overall defensive numbers ended up being solid this season, their road defense remained fairly ineffective against competative opponents such as the Colts, Giants, and Vikings.
The final set of factors to consider is the healthy of both teams. The Packers did have long stretches without Clay Matthews this season, and that hurt their defensive ability, but they're quite healthy going into Saturday night's game. The 49ers, on the other hand, have lost Mario Manningham and Justin Smith is dealing with a partial triceps tear that will undoubtedly limit his effectiveness as a defensive tackle. The 49ers no longer start Alex Smith, but Colin Kaepernick has proven he can play well enough to beat some strong teams such as the Patriots and Bears.
PACKERS-49ERS: FINAL THOUGHTS
The 49ers defense is simply too strong at home and the Packers defense is too weak on the road for me to predict anything other than a 49ers win here. This could and likely will be a fairly close game, but there's also a chance the 49ers win by more than a touchdown. The Packers are too one-dimensional on offense which makes them an easy team to defend against for a team with a such a dominant defense as the 49ers. This will be the second year in a row that the Packers get bounced out of the divisional round of the playoffs. There's really nothing else to it.
MY PREDICTION: 49ERS 33-23.
I know many of you reading this might think less of me for giving the Ravens such a good shot at beating the Broncos this weekend. I don't care. The Broncos haven't shown me enough against quality opponents this season and have won too many close games at home over losing teams for me to think of them as truly dominant. As for the Green Bay Packers, they're simply not balanced enough on offense or strong enough on defense in road games for me to take them seriously as a strong playoff team. Aaron Rodgers had a good season, but it's a sad thing when a playoff team's leading rusher only has 464 yards on 135 carries. The Broncos are thought of to be one of the most complete teams in the league, and it's hard to argue against that, but so much of their stats stems from 3 months of extremely weak opponents. I'll probably look downright stupid if the Broncos once again blow out the Ravens, but that's football and sports in general. You can come up with a dozen reasons in your mind as to why your team will win a game and another team will lose, but you can never truly predict mistakes and unlikely spectacular plays that so often find their way into the playoffs. Keep the faith, Baltimore.
AS ALWAYS
GO RAVENS!!!!
The Texas-Patriots game will, as I stated before, be played on Sunday, so we'll discuss that more in my next post, but it simply seemed interesting to me to bring up the fact that both AFC divisional round games are rematches of total beatdowns from the last month of the regular season. The second game that will be played on Saturday night is the Packers-49ers matchup in San Francisco. That game will ALSO be a rematch of a regular season game wherein the 49ers beat the Packers 30-22 in week 1. I would like to say that we should be able to gather a lot from that regular season matchup, but it happened during the first week of the replacement referees, and the 49ers have since switched quarterbacks. This will present challenges in collecting truly relevant statistics, but that'll only make this weeks predictions all the more interesting.
RAVENS AT BRONCOS
Most of us have heard that the Broncos are 9 point favorites to win this game. I certainly can't argue with the factors that led to this betting line by vegas as the points are quite convincing. The first of such factors is that the Ravens typically have a far worse record on the road than at home. Baltimore's homefield advantage is now legendary, but the Ravens have won only 4 road games per season in the last two years. The Ravens will also be traveling on a short week to play a Broncos team that is coming off of a bye week with little injuries to speak of except Willis McGahee's knee. Then there's Peyton Manning's 9 game winning streak against the Ravens dating back roughly a decade; that has to be a huge factor on the minds of Las Vegas oddsmakers. Probably the biggest factor that went into Vegas' prediction of a Broncos win is the fact that the Broncos beat the Ravens in Baltimore only a month earlier, and should logically have an easier time beating the Ravens on at home in Denver this time around. These are all quite logical points, and I agree that the Ravens certainly have a daunting task ahead of them. There are, however, far more factors and statistics to consider for this matchup, and many of them actually favor the Ravens. Let's take a look.
KEY STATISTICS
I spent days writing and re-writing this post because I could not come to a conclusion with which I could be satisfied. There are so many reasons to pick one team or the other and it's difficult to decide which of those reasons will likely prove more valid when game time rolls around. I typically spend a lot of my time crunching numbers in a calcluator to come up with my playoff predictions, but this one was so very much more complicated because factors regarding injuries and personnel making collecting statistics so incredibly difficult. Oh well, here goes nothing.
First, it's unwise to bring up Peyton Manning's playoff performance of the last decade as evidence that he may choke this weekend. Peyton Manning is no longer on the Colts, and the Broncos offer things that should make their team more suited for the playoffs. The Broncos have a far better defense in all regards than the Colts did at almost any time during the last decade. The Broncos also run the ball better than the Colts did for most of Peyton's time in Indianapolis. Yes, Peyton Manning failed to win a playoff game in 7 of his 11 trips to the playoffs, but he lacked the support that his current team grants him.
Another set of factors I decided to throw out was the Ravens performances in the first 7 weeks. The Ravens DID win 5 out of those 7 games, and they DID beat the Patriots in dramatic fashion, but differences in defensive personnel make it impossible to use that team as a statistical predictor for this weekends' matchup in Denver. The Ravens no longer start Lardardius Webb as he went down in week 6 with a torn ACL, and the Ravens no longer start Jameel McClain as an inside linebacker as his season ended with a spinal injury against the Redskins. The Ravens now have Terrell Suggs back, and his presence does make a difference despite lingering issues with his biceps and achilles tendon. The biggest factor has been the emergence of Dannell Ellerbe as a starting linebacker for the Ravens. The Ravens have not allowed a single touchdown from the redzone in games where Dannell Ellerbe has started. Ellerbe was one of many Ravens standouts that did NOT play last time the Broncos faced the Ravens one month ago.
The idea that Peyton Manning is 0-3 in the playoffs in games below 50 degrees is interesting but not a statistic upon which we should draw definite conclusions. Two of those cold playoff games were in Foxboro against Tom Brady and the Patriots, and the Patriots homefield advantage likely has far more to do with the Peyton's losses than the cold. Peyton has also been playing in Denver all season and practicing in rather cold weather recently. The Colts played in a dome and dome teams often experience trouble in harsh outdoor environments because their players have far less experience in low temperatures once the post-season rolls around. Peyton should be quite used to the cold, and thus, it shouldn't be nearly as much of a factor.
The biggest set of statistics to throw out in predicting this game is that of the Broncos-Ravens game from 4 weeks ago. I know that may seem quite silly to many of you, but it has so little to do with this weekend. The Ravens were short-staffed on both sides of the ball, they were playing their first game with an offensive coordinator that had never called plays in an NFL game before, and it took place in Baltimore--not Denver.
Now let's take a look at what I believe will prove TRULY relevant for this weekend. Defensively, I can only look to games where the Ravens have fielded a similar set of healthy personnel. Those games, however, are few and far between. It may also seem slanted that all of the games where the Ravens start nearly this same defense happened to be Ravens wins, but that's a vitally important fact and set of statistics that I'll soon address. The presence of both Dannell Ellerbe and Terrell Suggs on the field has meant the difference between the Ravens having an incredibly stout, stingy defense and the Ravens having a porous defense riddled with weaknesses. Ellerbe and Suggs both dramatically elevate the Ravens' pass rush and run-stopping ability, and Ellerbe provides a great boost to the Ravens' pass covereage as well. In games where both men started and played without major injury, the Ravens defense held opponents to an average of 13.5 games and went 6-0. This series of 6 games included 3 road games at Cleveland, San Diego, and Pittsburgh, and that demonstrates that a Ravens defense with Ellerbe and Suggs starting travels quite well and performs at an elite level in both far away and hostile environments. The Ravens defense the 6 aforementioned games provided Joe Flacco and the Ravens offense with enough opportunities to score enough points to win each time. The Ravens offense, however, has performed at a much lower level on the road this season, and that could prove a great benefit to the Broncos.
The Ravens offense has suffered injuries at times, but for the most part it has fielded a relatively consistent set of playmakers. It is for this reason that you would THINK we'd have a larger number of games from which to draw offensive statistics. Fortunately for the Ravens, Cam Cameron is no longer the offensive coordinator, and Jim Caldwell has done an impressive job at calling plays in the last couple of serious games that the Ravens have played (we won't count the Bengals game as the Ravens pulled their starters early). Both different play-calling and a newly shuffled and healthy offensive line are the major reasons why this Ravens offense can't be statistically compared to that of many of the regular season games. Bryant McKinney appears back in rare pass blocking form at left tackle and Marshal Yanda is once again healthy and provides a huge boost to the running game as well as pass protection.
Ok, enough about how the Ravens are a better team than the team that lost three straight games starting 6 weeks ago. The Broncos are not to be taken lightly, they have an incredible offense that can run and pass the ball on just about anyone. They also boast the 3rd ranked pass defense and the 3rd ranked rush defense in the NFL. They have two incredible pass rushers and a fantastic secondary with veteran leaders such as Champ Bailey. The Broncos had a playoff team last season with a horrible quarterback--they've upgraded since then. The Broncos are 5th in the NFL in passing yards per game, and average a whopping 32.5 points per game at home while only allowing 16.375 points per game in Denver. That's over a 16 point average margin of victory.
The Broncos absolutely steamrolled the final two teams they played at home, but those teams had a combined 7 wins. The Broncos are on an 11 game winning streak, but only two of those 11 teams finished the season with a winning record, and one of them was a broken, depleted Ravens team. Another vitally important point is that the Broncos had numerous games in which they only edged solid or mediocre teams in Denver. The Broncos two home games before the Browns and Chiefs games were against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and San Diego Chargers. The Broncos only beat the Chargers 30-23, and the Buccaneers 31-23. Those are, of course, solid wins, but they demonstrate that the Broncos defense does not always shut down opponents in Mile High Stadium. If the Broncos can allow the sorry Chargers and the solid but flawed Buccaneers to each score 23 points, then maybe there's hope for a Ravens team that is much better than either of those non-playoff teams.
RAVENS-BRONCOS: FINAL THOUGHTS
My prediction for this game ultimately came down to personnel matchups and an examination of how the Ravens performed when healthy this season. Few believed in the Giants going into the last post season--few except this blogger. The Giants looked up and down all last season. They were swept by the Redskins and went on a 4 game losing streak in November and early December, but they showed flashes of being able to contend with and edge teams they'd ultimately need to beat to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in February. The key for the Giants was getting healthy and hot right before the playoffs. I see a similar path for the Ravens. The Ravens were broken and depleted when they went on their own losing streak, but they clinched their division and that gave them the opportunity to rest their starters and revamp their offensive line.
On the flip side, the Broncos are well rested and dangerous, but their homefield advantage hasn't exactly been what many people may think it has been this season. In the last two games against teams with at least 7 wins, the Broncos allowed 23 points per game and only won by an average 7.5 points. At the same time, the Ravens defense has only allowed an average of 13.5 points per game when Dannell Ellerbe and Terrell Suggs start. With a healthy defense, the Ravens showed they can go across country and hold the Chargers to 13 points (the same Chargers team that scored 23.5 points per game on the Broncos this season), and showed they could go into Pittsburgh and hold the Steelers to 10 points. I expect the Broncos to score more than the Chargers or Steelers, but when the Ravens are healthy, I simply can't bring myself to bet against them. With a healthy defense, a better offensive coordinator, and far better pass protection, the Ravens will upset the Broncos en route to a rematch with the Patriots. I probably sound like a total homer, and I'm sure I am, but I actually strongly believe that the Broncos won't see this Ravens team coming. Peyton Manning has only won games in 4 of his 11 trips to the playoffs. And after all, Peyton Manning has thrown 1 touchdown and 7 interceptions in post-season games below 40 degrees at kickoff, and this one just may be the coldest.
MY PREDICTION: RAVENS 27-24.
PACKERS AT 49ERS
Like the Ravens-Broncos game, the Packers-49ers game will be a rematch of two teams that faced each other during the regular season. Also like the Ravens-Broncos game, this Packers-49ers game can't be easily predicted using the regular season matchup as evidence. This seasons' first meeting of these teams was played in a different location as Saturday night's game, and it featured a questionable replacement officiating crew and a different quarterback for the 49ers. The first matchup between these two teams was also in September, so we'll have to look how each team has changed since then in order to get an accurate prediction for Saturday night.
KEY STATISTICS
This Packers team is not nearly as dominant as the Packers team that won 15 regular season games last regular season. By anyone's account, the Packers should've been 12-4 during the regular season if one were to reverse one of the worst calls in NFL history against the Seahawks. The outcome of the Seahawks game took away homefield advantage for the Packers and allowed the Seahawks to make it to the playoffs, but that's not something anyone can change after the fact. The fact is that the way the Packers ended their season simply wasn't good enough to deserve a first round bye, and the way the Seahawks have played in the last 6 weeks demonstrates that they absolutely belong in the post-season.
The Packers beat a Vikings team without its starting quarterback last weekend in one of the lamest excuses for a playoff game I've ever had the misfortune of watching. That game doesn't provide the Packers with much momentum as it was a home game and this weeks matchup is on the road in a harsh playoff environment against one of the league's most dominant defenses. The Packers' regular season home games, however, don't provide relevant statistics for this upcoming game expect to illustrate the difference between how Aaron Rodgers and company play on the road as opposed to in Green Bay.
The Packers allowed their opponents to score an average of 24.5 points in road games this season. By contrast, the Packers only allowed opponents to score 17.5 points per game at Lambeau Field. Four of the five Packers losses happened on the road this season, and the only loss at home was against the team that they're about to face this weekend. The Packers offense is also more productive at home with 29.125 points per game than it is on the road with an average of 25. This means that the Packers only score an average of 0.5 points more than they allow on the road. This is not a recipe for a road playoff win.
The 49ers, like the Packers and almost all other teams, are better at home than on the road. Unlike the Packers, the 49ers will be playing at home this weekend. Three of the 49ers' four losses came on the road this season, and their only home loss came against a Giants team that has perplexingly had a recipe to beat both the Packers and 49ers on their respective home fields for the past two seasons. The 49ers haven't been better from an offensive standpoint at home as compared to on the road. The 49ers have, in fact, scored 24.875 points per game on the road and only 24.75 points per game at home. The 49ers big advantage going into Saturday night's game is their home defense. The 49ers allowed an average of only 13.875 points per game at home this season, but an average of 20.25 points on the road. This will undoubtedly work in the 49ers' favor.
There are, of course, other factors beyond homefield advantage that will come into play this weekend. The 49ers defense has been particularly strong against all of the teams they've played with pass-heavy offenses. The 49ers beat the Saints, Patriots, and Packers this season, but occasionally struggled against teams with strong running games and stout defenses such as the Seahawks and Vikings. The Packers don't run the ball well, and while their overall defensive numbers ended up being solid this season, their road defense remained fairly ineffective against competative opponents such as the Colts, Giants, and Vikings.
The final set of factors to consider is the healthy of both teams. The Packers did have long stretches without Clay Matthews this season, and that hurt their defensive ability, but they're quite healthy going into Saturday night's game. The 49ers, on the other hand, have lost Mario Manningham and Justin Smith is dealing with a partial triceps tear that will undoubtedly limit his effectiveness as a defensive tackle. The 49ers no longer start Alex Smith, but Colin Kaepernick has proven he can play well enough to beat some strong teams such as the Patriots and Bears.
PACKERS-49ERS: FINAL THOUGHTS
The 49ers defense is simply too strong at home and the Packers defense is too weak on the road for me to predict anything other than a 49ers win here. This could and likely will be a fairly close game, but there's also a chance the 49ers win by more than a touchdown. The Packers are too one-dimensional on offense which makes them an easy team to defend against for a team with a such a dominant defense as the 49ers. This will be the second year in a row that the Packers get bounced out of the divisional round of the playoffs. There's really nothing else to it.
MY PREDICTION: 49ERS 33-23.
I know many of you reading this might think less of me for giving the Ravens such a good shot at beating the Broncos this weekend. I don't care. The Broncos haven't shown me enough against quality opponents this season and have won too many close games at home over losing teams for me to think of them as truly dominant. As for the Green Bay Packers, they're simply not balanced enough on offense or strong enough on defense in road games for me to take them seriously as a strong playoff team. Aaron Rodgers had a good season, but it's a sad thing when a playoff team's leading rusher only has 464 yards on 135 carries. The Broncos are thought of to be one of the most complete teams in the league, and it's hard to argue against that, but so much of their stats stems from 3 months of extremely weak opponents. I'll probably look downright stupid if the Broncos once again blow out the Ravens, but that's football and sports in general. You can come up with a dozen reasons in your mind as to why your team will win a game and another team will lose, but you can never truly predict mistakes and unlikely spectacular plays that so often find their way into the playoffs. Keep the faith, Baltimore.
AS ALWAYS
GO RAVENS!!!!
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