Do we have any bagpipers in the crowd?

 

Step up, please. We might have to hold a funeral for one of the most cherished maxims of the Cold, Hard Football Facts.

 

Even more sadly, we might have to make a death-bed confession to the biggest tool in the gridiron garage, ESPN “analyst” Merril Hoge: "You were right, Merril!"

 

Maybe.

 

For about two years now, we’ve told you that great passing teams – not great running teams – are the teams that win championships.

 

Certainly, we weren’t wrong about that proven theorem. The great passing teams – based upon our preferred measure, yards per attempt – have always won championships. You can go all the way back to Sid Luckman and Otto Graham (still among the all-time leaders in passing yards per attempt) and right up to Ben Roethlisberger and Peyton Manning (who won the last two Super Bowl titles while leading the league in passing yards per attempt) and find that great passing teams always win.

 

Two of the top three passing teams in football, meanwhile, are still alive and big favorites this weekend: New England and Green Bay ranked Nos. 1 and 3, respectively, in Passing Yards Per Attempt this season. The two best running games, meanwhile (based upon yards per attempt), we fielded by two teams that failed to reach the playoffs: Minnesota and Philadelphia.

 

But folks like Hoge have insisted – to the point that we’ve vomited up our precious Harpoon IPA – that you have to “establish the run” to win. We even had a couple of Trolls engage in heated debate over the topic of “establishing the run” earlier this season.

 

But it seems – at least in this playoff season that, hold your breath folks – Merril Hoge was right!!!!

 

That’s right, even a coin-flipping monkey stumbles into a victory over hard-core analysis from time to time. And it seems this year that the coin-flipping monkey we know as Hoge is right about the need to “establish the run.”

 

Two fact-fiilled trolls debated earlier this year what it means to “establish the run.” Does it mean:

Nobody seems to know for sure.

 

But in the test group for this story – the eight 2007 playoff contests entering the conference title games – it does seem to matter.

 

Playoff winners have been fairly dominant on the ground in every single category. In other words, it seems you have to “establish the run” to win – at least within individual games here in the 2007 playoffs.

 

We looked at this year’s eight playoff games, and this is what we found. Teams that:

Basically, the teams that have "established the run" – no matter how you define “established” – have dominated the playoffs.

 

The favor of the running game might be even more dominant if not for a single game – last Sunday’s Giants-Cowboys showdown.

 

Dallas dominated the ground game in every imaginable way. They ran more often (33 times vs. 23 times) for more yards (154 to 90) and more yards per attempt (4.7 to 3.9).

 

Yet the Cowboys still lost the game, 21-17. They're the only team this postseason to run for more yards and more yards per attempt than their opponent and still falter.

 

Normally, the dominance on the ground by the loser would not surprise us. Game after game, year after year, great ground teams lose in the playoffs.

 

But this year, the loss by the dominant ground team is the exception, not the rule.

 

And maybe – just maybe – it tells us that the Giants, dare we say, are a team of destiny.