First of all, my apologies for being so sporadic with my entries lately. I’ve been working on a couple of ideas for the blog to start off 2011 right, so I didn’t really want to commit to writing and then looking bad by changing course all of a sudden. I can’t really get into detail, but let’s just say that I have a lot of options on the table right now and I’m trying to decide which way I want to go. I’ve got a great group of friends that I can rely on to sort of act like my team and we’re trying to evaluate the pros and cons of every single idea.
In the meantime, just wanted to throw out a couple of thoughts on the NFL games from the weekend. Who would have thought that we would have had these four teams left vying for the Super Bowl? Sure, it would have been easy to take the Steelers and some even would argue that it would be easy to take the Jets and the Packers to be in this position, but no one would have ever thought the Bears would be here.
I’ll stick with what I’ve said all along. The two teams that looked like Super Bowl winners to me throughout the regular season were the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots. With the Jets pulling off the upset and knocking off the Pats, I’m all in on the Steelers now. Quite frankly, it’s not a bad team to be all-in with. The key players for this team know what it takes to win and handle the pressures that come with the big games. They may not be the flashiest team, but they are simply money when it comes to time to win the big-money games.
As for the Jets, there’s been a lot of talk about how much the team talks smack. Rex Ryan leads the way in the talking department by calling every single playoff game personal to him. Because of his “me-against-the-world” mentality and personality, his team has become the new definition for arrogance and swagger. A lot of people are put off by it and some really love it. However, all the talk can’t cover up the inconsistencies of Mark Sanchez. For this team to succeed, Sanchez has to succeed. If Sanchez can duplicate his performance yesterday against the Patriots, the Jets have a much better chance of representing the AFC at the Super Bowl.
As for the Packers and Bears, they will need to rely heavily on the play of their starting quarterbacks. Both teams have made it abundantly clear that if their quarterbacks aren’t playing up to snuff, then these teams become mediocre very quickly. There haven’t been too many times this season where Aaron Rodgers has struggled, but there have been plenty of times where Jay Cutler has. Much like Sanchez, Cutler needs to continue his strong play in order to give the Bears the best chance to represent the NFC at the Super Bowl.
In the end, I think we’ll see a Steelers-Packers final, but we’ve got a long way to go before this weekend’s games and a ton of time in between now and the Super Bowl. As the playoff results will show, things can change in a heartbeat in the NFL.