The Seahawks and Jaguars are happy as cows in a field, the Steelers and Redskins are as low as the underside of a centipede. But irrelevant animal metaphors aside, there was much to be learned Saturday as the NFL playoffs kicked off and made our lives worth living. With fourth-quarter drama in both games, it was quite a beginning.
As Saturday turns into Sunday, we share what we learned on the first day of the 2007 NFL postseason extravaganza:
Seattle’s 12th-man tradition is pretty friggin’ cool. The lack of traditions in the NFL is curious. The sport is all but defined by traditions at the high school and college level. Then at the pro level, the traditions wilt like Hillary Clinton’s presidential hopes after the Iowa caucus. One of the few pro football traditions that capture our fancy is the raising of the 12th-man flag before home games in Seattle. Former Seattle Mariners pitcher Jamie Moyer did the honors Saturday, to the wild cheers of the Seahawks faithful. Sure, it’s a bit hokey. But it makes for great theater, it fires up the local crowd, and it’s one way Seattle fans declare to the world that this arena is different than any other. And the Seahawks are 6-2 at home in the playoffs all time.
The Seahawks have a Super Bowl-caliber defense, at least against bad teams. Sure, Seattle played nobody this year. Its league-low three games against Quality Opponents pretty much says it all. But, still, this is the NFL and you gotta give credit where credit is due. And credit is due the Seahawks defense. They finished the season No. 2 in Defensive Passer Rating, No. 2 in Bendability Index, our measure of team-wide defensive efficiency, and No. 4 in our Defensive Hog Index. That’s a pretty solid defensive club. The Redskins clearly weren’t the best test case: a mediocre offensive led by a journeyman quarterback making his first playoff appearance. But the Seahawks hedl them to 4 of 18 on third downs (22 percent), 75 rushing yards on 29 attempts (a paltry 2.6 YPA) and an average of 3.9 yards per offensive play. The Seattle defense plays at a level that makes the team a threat going forward.
Marcus Trufant is good. We marveled at Trufant's production (7 INTs, 78 solo tackles, 15 pass breakups), coupled with Seattle’s No. 2 defensive passer rating rank, and put him on our All-Pro ballot. Still, all seven of his INTs came against the NFC West, and we worried that his numbers were better than his play. But his performance in Saturday’s win over Washington confirmed his worth, as his two INTs were game-changers to say the least – and he was a blanket all day on whoever he was covering.
Matt Hasselbeck isn't getting it done. Hasselbeck is 2-2 over his last four playoff games, which is respectable. What’s not respectable is his play in those games. For the fourth straight game, he had a passer rating under 70 – he’s basically had the same game four times in a row dating back to the Super Bowl. His ratings were 67.8, 66.9, 69.6 and 68.4. Not worthy of a Chunky commercial, by a longshot.
Mike Holmgren is getting it done. After four straight playoff one-and-dones spanning the end of his Packer career and the start of his Seahawk career, Holmgren has now won at least one playoff game in three straight seasons. In 16 years as a head coach and six as an assistant, he’s only had two losing regular seasons. One of the most remarkable little factoids we culled from the pregame press releases was that Seattle's coaching staff boasts 19 Super Bowl rings ... now if they can only win one in Seattle.
Third down conversions? Never heard of them. The Seahawks-Redskins game was a pretty ugly affair, thanks to some great third-down defense and terrible third-down offense. Between them, the Skins and Seahawks were 6-of-29 on third downs, a 20.6 success rate that’s about half the league average.
Pittsburgh’s season unraveled faster than our New Year’s resolution to quit drinking
Through the first nine games of the season the Steelers were 7-2 and looked like one of the more dominant teams in the NFL this year. They outscored their first nine opponents by 125 points and seemed poise to challenge New England and Indy for a first-round bye. They were paced by a defense that was simply suffocating. As of Week 13 – after 12 games – Pittsburgh
boasted the stingiest defense in the NFL. They allowed a league-best 12.9 PPG and 230.8 YPG. The defense was so good through the first week of December that it actually compared favorably,
as we pointed out, to the great Steel Curtain defenses of the 1970s.
Then came a visit to New England, Pittsburgh’s nemesis over the past decade. The Patriots shredded the league’s No. 1 defense for 399 passing yards and a 34-13 victory.
It was never the same for the Steelers after that. After surrendering 12.9 PPG through the first 12 games, Pittsburgh was ripped for 29.0 PPG over the last four regular-season games and Saturday’s 31-29 wildcard game loss against Jacksonville.
It was a remarkable defensive collapse and, naturally, the losses begin to pile up. From mid-November on, the Steelers went just 3-5 (including Saturday’s loss to Jacksonville). Their three wins came against Miami, Cincinnati and St. Louis – three of the worst teams in football.
Pittsburgh’s rookie coach Mike Tomlin had a fairly impressive first year: his team rebounded from an 8-8 campaign in 2006 to win 10 games and its division. But, clearly, he needs to find a way for his team to well over all 16 games, not just the first nine.
Yes, the Steelers missed Willie Parker badly. You have to think that with "Fast Willie" in the lineup the Steelers might have beaten Jacksonville. Najeh Davenport was just awful (16 carries for 25 yards), and it was his missed block on the last play of the game that forced a Ben Roethlisberger fumble. His kickoff returns (16.0 per return) left much to be desired as well. Fullback Carey Davis also failed to catch a sure TD pass that could have been costly (Pittsburgh ended up scoring).
Grady Jackson is huge. The Jaguars’ nose tackle is listed at 6-2, 362, but everytime we see him play we’re in awe of his size. (Yes, we're pushing 360 ourselves ... but we're just 5-7). Plus Jackson wears No. 90, which is about the fattest number you can wear – he'd look slimmer in No. 71. Jackson will have to play huge if the Jags are
without DT Marcus Stroud (IR) and DT John Henderson (injured Saturday) in the next round. Although Jacksonville showed remarkable depth on the D-line Saturday night. Jacksonville’s six sacks all came from defensive linemen, six different linemen to boot (including freakish "don't want to meet him in a dark alley" DT Rob Meier, pictured right), and they held Pittsburgh to 43 yards on the ground.
Big Ben’s “elite quarterback” status is on suspension: The Cold, Hard Football Facts declared Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger one of
the game’s elite signal-callers earlier this season. The guy has quite a resume: a 15-1 rookie season, a Super Bowl title in his sophomore season and some serious, hard-core numbers to buoy his status, including 8.1 YPA, among the very highest in the history of the game, and a career passer rating of 92.5, also among the very best ever.
But in the playoffs he simply hasn’t lived up to the regular-season performances.
He’s now played seven postseason games and his numbers in those performances look like this:
- 118 for 189 (62.4%), 1,547 yards, 8.19 YPA, 12, TD, 11 INT, 85.1 passer rating
The numbers are certainly solid. But in almost every category they’re below (in some cases well below) his regular-season numbers, where he has a TD-INT ratio of 84-54 and a passer rating of 92.5, including a career best 104.1 rating this year.
And the trend is not good: in his last two playoff games (Super Bowl XL and Saturday night vs. Jacksonville), Roethlisberger has tossed just 2 TD and 5 INT with a 73.5 passer rating.
The Steelers made a game of it last night in the fourth quarter. But his three picks were all game-changers. And you simply don't win NFL playoff games when you throw interceptions. In fact, the correlation to tossing and losing is so strong we might hire it to pick up kegs for us each Friday. And elite playoff QBs don't throw three picks in a single game or 11 in seven career postseason games.
Pittsburgh DT Casey Hampton did the job. The Jaguars ran up the middle more than any other team in the league this year, and with remarkable success (No. 2 to Minnesota in yards per carry). But Fred Taylor and Maurice Jones-Drew combined for 77 yards on 24 carries (3.34 YPA)
Win or lose, Hines Ward is a big-game legend. Ward has been in 11 playoff games now, and his production is remarkable. The MVP of Super Bowl XL has 67 catches for 887 yards and eight TDs in 11 games, which projects out to 97 catches for 1,289 yards and 12 TDs – production that betters any regular season in his career except 2002 (112 catches, 1,329 yards).
Jacksonville has a first-rate franchise. Clearly, the Jaguars haven’t entered the elite status of a New England, an Indianapolis or, even a Pittsburgh. But the 13-year-old franchise has been highly competitive. The Jaguars played in the AFC title game in just their second season of existence (1996), where they lost to the Patriots. They were a league-best 14-2 in 1999 and humiliated the legendary Dan Marino in his very last NFL game, a 62-7 Miami loss to Jacksonville in the divisional playoffs. They appeared in a second conference title game that year and have reached the playoffs six times in their 13-year existence, a rate that would make most franchises proud.
Stability has been a key: while some teams pour through coaches (Miami) and quarterbacks (Chicago) the way we do boilermakers at happy hour, the Jaguars have had just two head coaches and three starting quarterbacks in 13 seasons. In the NFL – the Not For Long league – that’s pretty impressive.
25 is the magic number for Jacksonville. The Jaguars have now played 10 playoff games over their 13-year existence, not half-bad for an expansion team. When scoring 25 or more points, they’re 5-0 in the playoffs. When scoring 24 or less, they’re 0-5.
GENERAL CHFF-ERY
David Garrard bucked the inexperienced QB trend, Todd Collins defined it. After Collins became the 12th QB in 13 tries to lose their first playoff game against a more-experienced opponent,
we weren’t exactly surprised. We would have been shocked if it had gone any other way – Collins’ inexperience was painfully obvious in the fourth quarter after Washington had taken the lead. We were all set to add Garrard to the list, too, until his 32-yard run late in the fourth quarter led the Jaguars to a two-point win. Truth be told, all four QBs played like rookies, with a combined six TDs to nine INTs and Roethlisberger turning in the best rating at 79.2.
CHFF 2, Monkey 0. Bonzo the Idiot Monkey beat the Cold, Hard Football Facts like a used drum kit this year, finishing with a winning percentage of .569 vs. the spread to our one game under .500 performance.
But analysis beat coin flipping on the first day of the postseason, as we nailed both games (Jags -1.5, Seahawks -3.5) while Bonzo went the other way and lost both. Stupid monkey.
Big Plays ruled the day. Both teams that won the Big Play battle won the game as well. Seattle beat Washington 5-2 on plays that qualify on our Big Play Index, while Jacksonville had a whopping 8-2 advantage on Pittsburgh. Fittingly, the Jaguars won the game thanks to their eighth Big Play of the day, David Garrard’s 32-yard scramble on 4th and 2 with under two minutes in the fourth that set up the winning field goal.
