For the sake of assuming that the Bears aren’t terrible, let’s just say Mike Martz was playing it close to the vest against the Packers, or putting some red herrings on tape for the remainder of the NFC. Any conceivably real strategy couldn’t have yielded much worse of a result than what the offense produced in the second half, which for those of you scoring at home, amounted to zero points best illustrated by a potpourri of crappiness sprayed in all over a drive chart like some Pollock-ine . . . Pollock-esque . . . evocative of Pollock . . .
Anyway, judge for yourself what four punts, two interceptions and the obligatory turnover on downs looks like when committed to canvas.
With a meaningless game undeserving of any further analysis, let’s begin the playoff discussion.
Wild Card Round: Bears vs. Atrophy
To the second-place winner go the second-place spoils; a week off and a home game against the highest remaining seed in the divisional round.
Since the NFL does not re-seed after each playoff week, the Bears could play any of three teams on January 16th.
* The New Orleans Saints (if the Saints beat the Seahawks and the Packers beat the Eagles)
* The Philadelphia Eagles (if the Eagles beat the Packers and the Saints beat the Seahawks)
* The Seattle Seahawks (if the Seahawks beat the Saints and the Packers beat the Eagles)
Phew. That took 30 minutes to figure out.
In the interest of selfishly eating up a few more of your minutes, let’s take a closer look at the NFC matchups this Wet n’ Wild Card Weekend.
Saints at Seahawks
The likelihood of Seattle beating New Orleans is virtually zero, just ask Vegas. The Seahawks are an 11-point home dog in a game in which the visiting team is traveling from effectively the East Coast to the top left portion of the country. Also, if you sat through the Sunday night game which decided the “winner” (if you can call a team that loses more than it wins a winner) of the NFC West, you know that Seattle is arguably the worst playoff team in history, though the Jake Plummer-led ’98 Cardinals didn’t exactly pass the eye test.
Defending Drew Brees is no easy task, especially when Lawyer Milloy is your starting safety and it’s not 1999 when he was in his prime (not kidding). Also, the trademark opportunistic defense of the Saints will seize the opportunity to stop the second-worst running game in the NFL and intercept one of two bad quarterbacks, Charlie Whitehurst or Matt Hasselbeck, who will be playing poorly or injured, respectively.
Green Bay at Philadelphia
This match-up is a bit more intriguing. Green Bay’s defense has shown the ability to stop Mike Vick 2.0 when it needs to, ultimately stymieing the fleet-footed-fowl’s furious comeback in a Week One victory over the Eagles.
As an aside, I’d like to nominate “Mi-Vi” (pronounced “My-Vih”) as Vick’s shortened, hyphenated name.
The Packers’ secondary is respectable on paper and recent history against Mi-Vi indicates some success against the pass (175 yards allowed to him in Week One), but chances are Charles Woodson can’t keep up with the Eagles speedburner and Mi-Vi favorite deep threat, DeSean Jackson. If the Pack blitz, Vick will check down or just run for more than 100 yards himself.
The “Iggles” (which sounds like a show that airs just after Go Diego Go! on PBS) should win this one by a field goal.
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Andrew Golden and Carl Mohrbacher bring you The Blue & Orange Kool-Aid Report every week. They welcome your comments.
Posted on January 7, 2011