By Kerry J. Byrne
Cold, Hard Football Facts ice princess
The Cold, Hard Football Facts address the Iciest Issues of the final week of the 2007 season with all the blank-eyed dispassion of a Bill Belichick postgame interview (but with a helluva lot more information).
Icy Issue: Which of the five teams still fighting for two playoff spots will make the cut this weekend?
Icier Response: Cleveland in the AFC and Washington in the NFC.
Cleveland’s playoff hopes rest so squarely on the outcome of Sunday Night’s Tennessee-Indy game on NBC that you could use it to draw a right angle.
The Browns find themselves in a completely unusual situation as they host the 49ers Sunday. Winning or losing will have no impact on their playoff hopes. But a Tennessee loss at Indy sends Cleveland to the playoffs. A Titans victory and they move on themselves to the postseason.
Sure, the powerhouse Colts, already locked into the No. 2 seed, will give many of its top players a rest against the Titans. But the 13-2 Colts are so good – perhaps the best regular-season team in franchise history – that they're perfectly capable of beating an upstart Tennessee team fighting for a playoff spot.
And that’s great news for the Browns, who can go out and lay an egg against the 49ers and still make the postseason, while redefining the term "backing into the playoffs" in the process.
In the NFC, meanwhile, the Redskins have the clearest path to the lone remaining playoff spot. Washington is the only team of the three still alive which controls its own destiny. With a win at home over Dallas – which has already wrapped up the No. 1 seed and essentially has nothing to play for – the Redskins are in.
Minnesota and New Orleans, the other teams still alive, each need help. The Vikings need a win at Denver and a Redskins loss. The Saints need a win at Chicago and losses by both the Vikings and Redskins.
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Icy Issue: Did the all-powerful NFL cave to pressure by deciding to have Saturday Night’s historic Patriots-Giants game simulcast on CBS and NBC, along with its own NFL Network?
Icier Response: Yes, but the decision will certainly work to the long-term benefit of the NFL, and its prized NFL Network.
The most interesting news of a week virtually devoid of playoff drama came on the broadcast front. Saturday’s Patriots-Giants game, in which New England can become the first-ever 16-0 team while setting a slew of other team and individual records, was scheduled to be broadcast solely by the NFL Network. But the network, owned by the league, is available only in a small percentage of American homes.
So the league came under great pressure from fans and politicians, including a threat by Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) that Congress would step in if the league did not make the game more widely available.
The NFL quickly worked out a deal, announced just on Wednesday, to have the NFL Network production simulcast on NBC and CBS. It will also be seen on additional local stations in Boston and New York.
It’s a smart move for the NFL foor three major reasons:
- It's a huge PR lift for a league that, despite its popularity, is often seen as cold and ruthless.
- It allows the league to advertise its young product, the NFL Network, for free to tens of millions of viewers who otherwise would not have seen the game, including viewers in the nation's No. 1 and No. 6 media markets. This opportunity will in all likelihood pay off in increased subscriptions to its network.
- The potential history-making game will only serve to elevate the NFL's on-field product in the eyes of nation already passionate about it.
Basically, the Patriots-Giants game has now been elevated to the stature of a presidential speech, to be seen on several stations all at once. That’s nothing but good news for the league and for both of its prized products: the one on the field and the one in the studio.
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Icy Issue: Can New England lose to the Giants yet still go down as the greatest team ever?
Icier Response: Yes, but only if they roll through the playoffs and win the Super Bowl in dominant fashion.
If the Patriots were to lose to the Giants Sunday but still win the Super Bowl, they’d join the very short list of teams that have won 18 games in a single season.
The list currently includes just two legendary teams:
- the 1984 49ers went 15-1 in the regular season and then dominated the Dolphins, 38-16, in the Super Bowl.
- the 1985 Bears went 15-1 in the regular season and then dominated the Patriots, 46-10, in the Super Bowl.
Both teams finished 18-1 including playoffs. Of course, the 14-game era gave us the undefeated Dolphins, who added three playoff victories to end the season 17-0.
Through the regular season, the 2007 Patriots have clearly been the most dominant of all those teams, outscoring their opponents by a all-time record 312 points through 15 games, far ahead of the other great one-loss or no-loss champions:
- The 1985 Bears outscored their opponents by 258 points (456-198) before rolling over the postseason opposition by a combined 81 points.
- The 1984 49ers outscored their opponents by 248 points (475-227) before rolling over the postseason opposition by a combined 56 points.
- The 1972 Dolphins outscored their opponents by 214 points (385-171) before squeaking out three playoff wins by a combined 17 points.
Along with its record margin of victory, the Patriots have beat six Quality Teams (.500 or better) by a stunning average of 22.0 PPG. It's possible that, with a win over the Giants, that the Patriots will have won seven of 16 games over playoff teams (Browns, Chargers, Colts, Cowboys, Giants, Redskins and Steelers), including a record four wins over division champions. Of this group of division champs (Chargers, Colts, Cowboys, Steelers), only Indy came within three touchdowns of the Patriots.
Certainly, it would be harder to make the case for “best ever” for an 18-1 Patriots team instead of a 19-0 team. But the margins by which New England has won this year, and the quality of the competition they’ve bested, will remain unmatched in history, especially if the Patriots roll through their playoff competition the way they've rolled over the same teams in the regular season.
Of course, the best thing for New England if it wants to make history is to win out and win more games by more points than any team in history, erasing any doubt about its place in the best-ever hierarchy.
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Icy Issue: Is anyone surprised that Bill Parcells just took a job with the Dolphins?
Icier Response: No. The Tuna changes jobs more often than an itinerant farmhand.
Bill Parcells was just hired to run football operations in Miami, officially his 457th job since becoming a Wichita State assistant coach in the 1960s. The introductory press conference was held Thursday.
It’s a bold move for the once-proud Dolphins, one of the league’s marquee franchises for three decades, but now reduced to a pathetic 1-14 heading into the final week of the season.
The only question remains: what kind of impact will Tuna have on the Dolphins?
He’ll certainly get the fish swimming in the right direction. They can only get better. But Fins fans looking at Parcells to get the team back to the Super Bowl will be disappointed.
Some “pundits” have pointed to the rehab jobs he did with the Giants, Patriots, Jets and Cowboys as a sign of great promise for the Dolphins. Within four years of taking over bad teams, he won a Super Bowl (the first of two) with the Giants, brought the Patriots to a Super Bowl, lifted the Jets to an AFC championship game and helped the Cowboys twice to the playoffs.
But, with the exception of the Giants job which he held for eight years, he's never stuck around very long. He left the Patriots immediately after their Super Bowl appearance in his fourth year, actually negotiating for the Jets job when he should have been preparing for New England's Super Bowl XXXI meeting with Green Bay; he stuck with the Jets for just three years, ditching them for the broadcast booth after an 8-8 season in 1999; and he dumped the Cowboys last year after back-to-back 9-7 records and not a single playoff win in four years.
Even success hasn't kept Parcells around. He left the Giants immediately after his second Super Bowl victory with them in eight years. And, for those of you keeping score at home, it's been nearly two decades since a Tuna team won a Super Bowl (1990 Giants).
Plus, Parcells performed those rehab jobs in the locker room and on the sidelines as head coach, where he had a direct and immediate impact on what transpired on the field each Sunday. In Miami, it will merely be his job to find the folks who can do the work for him.
And it won’t be easy, even for a leader of such talent, and with such connections, as Parcells: Miami needs a franchise quarterback, it needs to overhaul its offensive line and its entire defense, it needs playmakers on both sides of the ball, and it may even need a new head coach.
Parcells will get the job started and the Dolphins will get better under Tuna's tutelage. But it’s highly unlikely that the Dolphins will fill in all those missing parts successfully and return to Super Bowl-caliber glory during Tuna’s tenure – if only because history tells us Tuna's tenure will not be very long.
