By ColdHardFootballFacts.com staff
Here's our first reaction to the NFC divisional round with the schedule already settled following New York's 24-14 win at Tampa Sunday afternoon. This is just our immediate reaction. By the end of the week, ColdHardFootballFacts.com will have these games broken down so completely you'll confuse it with socialist economic theory.
N.Y. Giants at Dallas, Sunday, 4:30 p.m.
Mark your calendar for this game, folks, this will be awesome – if not on the field than certainly in the hype leading up to it. Would you believe the Giants and Cowboys, bitter division rivals and two of the league’s great, marquee franchises, have never met in the playoffs?
Believe it.
The Cowboys have played in 55 postseason games in their storied history. The Giants have played in 40 – and 26 since the Cowboys joined the NFL in 1960. The two organizations have combined for 14 title game appearances and seven NFL championships over the same 48-season period.
There’s also been something about 91 regular-season meeting, too.
And through it all, these two great franchises have never met in a do-or-die game.
The ratings will be through the roof for this one: two big-market teams playing in the backyard of America’s Team. Eli Manning’s suddenly on a roll at the right time of the year and the Cowboys, who essentially went wire-to-wire as the NFC’s No. 1 seed stumbled a bit before the finish line. Giants-Cowboys is a great way to close out the year’s last full weekend of football.
Seattle at Green Bay, Saturday, 4:30 p.m.
“We want the ball and we’re gonna score!” Get ready to hear those words over and over this week, as the Seahawks and Packers meet in Walrus Bowl II, the first postseason meeting between Mike Holmgren’s former team and current team since their 2003 overtime classic.
You probably remember the story: Seattle’s, Matt Hasselbeck, a plucky, relatively unknown QB at the time, had battled toe-to-toe with the legendary Brett Favre at Lambeau Field through four quarters. Seattle won the OT toss and, with youthful enthusiasm that belies his bald head, Hasselbeck his famous declaration live on national television. Then he promptly through a pick-six that gave Green Bay a 33-27 victory.
The moment has clearly haunted Hasselbeck, but he’s handled it incredibly well: As C-Hog, a Seahawks fan in Germany
noted in the Football Forum earlier today, the first words out of Hasselbeck’s mouth in his postgame press conference Saturday, when he knew he was going to Green Bay again, were “We want the ball and we’re gonna score!”
By the way, is anyone surprised that Holmgren has spent more years in Seattle (9) than he did in Green Bay (7). It’s like a baseball fan realizing that Carlton Fisk spent more years with the White Sox (13) than Red Sox (11). Just seems weird.
By the way, in conclusion, we offer this up as the worst football-team tribute tune in history:
