Sunday, January 07, 2007

NFL Wild Card Day One Wrap Up

Colts 23, Chiefs 8

Going into this game, there were two schools of thought. One was that the Chiefs would run Larry Johnson all over the Colts defense, and would control the game, and win rather easily. Nostradumbass, amongst others, bought into that idea. The other school was that it wouldn't matter how many points the Chiefs scored, the Colts would find a way to score more. That would have been my particular school of thought. We were both wrong.

But my school was closer to being right. The Colts defense, shockingly, came up with a game plan to stop Larry Johnson. More shockingly, the Chiefs never fucking adjusted their game. The Colts had 8 or 9 guys in the box almost the entire game, but they struggled on offense throughout the first half. Peyton Manning was intercepted 3 times before he threw a TD pass. But the Chiefs never scored a touchdown. They managed to overuse and underuse Larry Johnson at the same time. Johnson ran for all of 32 yards on 13 carries. There's no excuse for Larry Johnson to only get 13 carries in a game that was closer than the score makes it look (KC was never more than 10 points down until early in the 4th quarter). But the Chiefs ran Johnson at the most obvious of times. They clearly thought they could run him at will, and win. And didn't change things up when it was clear that the Colts were not going to let that happen. Trent Green threw 14 complete passes, and 10 of them went to Running Backs and Tight Ends.


Dallas 20, Seattle 21

Everyone who predicted that Dallas would win this game got screwed. They were right. Dallas had this game won. One 19 yard long field away from winning it, and Tony Romo, who is still the holder for Dallas botched the snap for the field goal, and did almost a great job of reaching the first down on Seattle's 2 yard line. He came up short, and Seattle was able to run out the clock.

The game was great, though. Plenty of crazy ass plays. The Terry Glenn fumble on his own one yard line (who passes in that situation?) that Seattle turned into a touchdown thanks to the athleticism of Tatupu, only to be reviewed and declared a Safety, instead. An absolutely scorching kick return from rather slow sounding Miles Austin (despite his name, he's sick in the speed department).

But in the end, it came down to Tony Romo, the most fellated quarterback of the last month. Michael Irvin's theory that Romo's great great grandma fucked her black slave gains some currency. There have been precious few holders of African-American descent, and today we saw why. Romo got a perfectly good snap, took the ball in both hands, and yet somehow fumbled the placement of the ball for the easily hateable Martin Grammatica. Blame the Black Genes, Tony!

As a former owner of Julius Jones, I'd also like to point out that Parcell's obsession with Marion Barber III cost them in this game, too. MB3 has one of the worst 3rd down conversion rates in the NFL, and yet, in a key 3rd down situation, there he was. But who would have predicted that Parcells would over coach this game? Oh, wait. I Did! Eat it, you stupid Tuna.

Oh well. Thanks for playing Dallas and KC! Hit the bricks!

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