Here's your Week 16 recap in Quick Snap form. I'll also feature a big idea, team and/or player each week to keep things interesting. This week: The Most Disappointing NFL Teams of 2012. But first, the good stuff:
Week 16: The Good Stuff
- The New Seahawks-49ers Rivalry - Seattle's dominating victory over San Francisco on Sunday night allowed me to barely sneak back into double-digit wins with my picks this week, so for this alone I am grateful. But I am also grateful we now have ourselves a most-excellent new rivalry in the surprisingly good NFC West. These teams have all the makings of a Steelers-Ravens quality tradition of hatred: incredibly successful new coaches who used to face each other annually in the PAC-10, a bruising running game, elite defenses, and now, two young quarterbacks that have absolutely earned their keep under center in the second half of this season. If these two teams' seeding holds and they get into the second round, they will face off in Candlestick in the divisional round of the playoffs. Mark your calendars because this will be a battle of epic proportions. Alex Smith will still watch from the sidelines with his helmet on. P.S., Is it just my wishful thinking or is there a chance that he could sign with those other rivals, the Arizona Cardinals, out of spite and make the NFC West twins into triplets?
- Late Season Bounce Backs - Although one could equally argue that these teams' opponents were DOA on Sunday, I was impressed with the way the Ravens, Bears and Chargers all bounced back with emphatic wins on Sunday after several weeks of slumping. As the New York Giants single-handedly remind us most years that are not 2012, postseason success is so very often about getting hot at the right time. (The Chargers are out of that conversation, so consider my San Diego hat tipped for sacking hapless third-string QB Greg McElroy a whopping 11 times on Sunday.) Few teams could have used a confidence-building win more in Week 16 than Baltimore and Chicago, and they delivered by returning to their old winning habits. Baltimore rediscovered its offense with about 35% aggressive play-calling from OC Jim Caldwell, 50% Ray Rice, and 15% Joe Flacco having one of those games that makes you wonder why he doesn't do this more often. The Bears found pay dirt by forcing three takeaways for two defensive scores against the woeful Cardinals, which ended up being the difference in their win.
- Nailed It!: My Best Week 16 Prediction - Next season, I think I'm going to feature a few spread predictions each week as well as the usual straight win-loss stuff. Case in point - my observation that the Patriots, like the Packers and Texans, weren't just going to waltz into Jacksonville untouched. Turned out, it was a tough enough game to make a Brady throw his Uggs in the locker room, metaphorically:
- "I've already joked twice about elite teams (Packers, Texans) getting a second bye week by playing the Jaguars this year, yet both times the Jags played it surprisingly close. So to make a long story short, I don't expect them to beat the Patriots either."
- Big Ben's Anti-Clutch Woes - Dating back to that unbelievable pass (and catch) from Roethlisberger to Holmes in Super Bowl XLIII, Ben Big has earned a respectable on the field reputation as one of the league's most clutch QBs. Sadly for Steelers fans, what goes up must come down, and Ben's last two weeks under center have been nothing short of disastrous in the waning minutes, costing Pittsburgh any chance of making the playoffs this year. For two weeks in a row, Roethlisberger threw interceptions deep in Steelers territory--first in overtime against Dallas and then in the last 20 seconds of regulation against Cincinnati--to set up winning field goals for the other team. Last week in Dallas was a disappointing moment for Pittsburgh to be sure, but this week was just a head-scratcher by all accounts. To be transparent, I'm no Steelers fan, but even I felt like I was crazy watching Pittsburgh trying to march down the field in the final seconds of the game against the Bengals. The team was positioned around its own 20 yard line in a tie game with less than half a minute to go in the fourth quarter. When you're playing at home against a Bengals team that has been nothing short of abysmal against you for most of the world's existence and they haven't scored an offensive TD all day, why in the world of Kanye our lord and savior would you EVER try to go for it in this situation when a much more statistically successful path to victory is just a kneel-down and coin toss away?!?!?! I don't deny that this is more a coaching problem than a QB problem, but for goodness' sake, Ben Roethlisberger, just throw. the ball. away. so Jessica could have gotten to 11 - 5 in her picks this week. Looks like there's only one thing for this new family man left to do:
- The Texans' Pretender Status - Oy. I've mentioned here before that I've really enjoyed rooting for the Houston Texans this year for their balanced success and playmaking ability in a very QB-heavy league, but it's hard to imagine them making it to the conference championship round at all in the playoffs the way they're playing right now. Conversely, I cannot think of a more deserving Coach of the Year than the Vikings' Leslie Frazier who has done so much with so little this year. While Adrian Peterson has a much more uphill battle now to break Eric Dickerson's single-season rushing record with the Texans holding him to a "mere" 86 yards on Sunday, Coach Frazier exploited Houston's obsession with stopping AP to a tee to earn a surprisingly easy Vikings victory. But back to the Texans-- they have shown in these past few weeks that they cannot stop an elite quarterback (Rodgers, Brady) nor could they stop the league's simplest offense on Sunday to secure a #1 seed in the AFC... yet. Let's just say next week against the Colts at Lucas Oil just got a whole lot more interesting.
- Shanked It!: My Worst Week 16 Prediction - Speaking of that Texans-Vikings tilt, I didn't see Minnesota's meteoric rise continuing against a Houston team whose stock is now on a big decline:
- "As much as I'd love to see Minnesota continue its very memorable underdog playoff run, I just can't see the Texans defense getting outsmarted by a very one-dimensional offense with competing priorities."
Just as we've enjoyed seeing a surprising class of great teams emerge from the ashes this year and into postseason consideration (the Colts, Vikings, Redskins and Seahawks to name a few), it's time to, err, coronate the underperformers of the league whose fans will soon have only bitter disappointment and a litany of "what ifs" to ponder for the next eight months. Weirdly enough, this wasn't nearly as "disappointing" of a season for most fan bases as we are accustomed to, since it is likely 6 out of 8 divisions will have been won by the same teams as last year, and only three out of twelve teams that were in the playoffs last year have been outright eliminated as of Week 16 this year (Steelers, Saints and Lions). So to stick to the script and explain why the New York Jets have no place here, since I predicted they'd be disappointing in the preseason, here are the top 5 teams I expected better of this season who've turned out to be pretenders instead of contenders:
5) The Pittsburgh Steelers - I don't particularly have to go into the Steelers too much given my treatise of Ben Roethlisberger's egg-laying above, but after rightfully predicting that Pittsburgh would barely miss the playoffs at the beginning of the season, I reneged at mid-season and actually projected they would win the division with Baltimore and Cincinnati suffering some big slumps. It's hard to begrudge the Steelers too much with all of the injuries they've had this season including Roethlisberger's troubling rib injury that sidelined him for several games, but the Steelers have been wildly uneven. They've won several games I didn't expect them to (vs. the Giants and Ravens in Baltimore with Charlie Batch), but they've lost even more games that they really shouldn't have (vs. the Titans, Browns, Raiders and Chargers), which will frustrate any Pittsburgh fan who realizes just how easy it would have been to make the AFC playoffs this year.
4) The Buffalo Bills - It's interesting to compare the fortunes of the Bills to the similarly rostered Vikings this year. Both have solid defensive talent and Pro Bowl-caliber running backs that could very easily be offset by poor coaching and poorer QB play. Sure, it's unfair to compare anyone to Adrian Peterson this year, even C. J. Spiller, but it's no small wonder that Minnesota has had a much more successful season than a Bills team that, like the teams above and below on this list, could have forged their way to the top of a shaky conference this year. Poor Buffalo's woes probably won't get much better as long as Ryan Fitzpatrick's bloated contract keeps him under center and Chan Gailey's tenure continues... which shouldn't be long, actually. And you can chalk up some of the Bills' problems to the suprisingly great play of Andrew Luck's Colts and Peyton Manning's Broncos that have eclipsed most other AFC teams' chances of getting into the postseason. Nevertheless, Buffalo has now earned its eighth consecutive season without a winning record, which is unfortunately all too appropriate for the saddest city in the rust belt.
3) The Kansas City Chiefs - I could not have been any more dead wrong with a single team's outlook this season than the Chiefs, which I thought would be able to win the very unstable AFC West while Peyton Manning was still getting his groove back with the Broncos. I was definitely right that the AFC West would be the NFL's worst, most easily conquerable division in 2012, but who knew the Chiefs would turn out to be the worst of the worst? Romeo Crennel will almost certainly pack his bags with glee in January to leave behind a devastating year in every sense. P.S., now that we see what Todd Haley was able to do with the same roster two years ago, how quickly do you suppose he'll get snatched up by another team desperate for a head coach?
2) The New York Giants - At the time of writing this, the Giants still technically have a chance to make the playoffs this season, but they need about four games not in their control to go right next Sunday. In other words, it ain't gonna happen. New York will become the first reigning Super Bowl champions in four years not to make the playoffs the subsequent year. They also became the first champs to lose the 2012 season opener since this Thursday night tradition started eight years ago. Much like the Steelers' troubles above, the Giants too have won some surprising games this year (vs. the 49ers and Packers) and lost some worse ones in the late season when their usual sense of unstoppable urgency kicks in (vs. the Bengals, Ravens and Falcons). Unlike the Steelers, however, the Giants don't have an ungodly number of injuries to hide behind with this young, stacked roster that made it look so easy just a year ago. One thing's for certain, Patriots fans everywhere are sighing in relief as we speak.
1) The Philadelphia Eagles - Fewer expectations have been more deflated this year than those surrounding the Philadelphia Eagles. Andy Reid has proven himself to be the Lucy that has snatched the football away from us Charlie Browns one last time. Philly's stock soared with its seemingly invincible coaching staff and fantasy football-style of talent acquisitions in the offseason of 2011, but everything came crashing back to Earth during a 4 - 8 slide sooner than you could spell Asomugha. Nevertheless we still had hope that after the team closed the season out at 4 - 0, the Eagles talent and coaching machines would be much more well-oiled and ready to rise back into serious contention on the wings of a healthy Michael Vick in 2012. Although some pundits' expectations may not have been quite as high as mine (though many were higher by picking the Eagles to win the NFC East), I dare you to find a soul who had this team going 4 - 11 at this point. Once again, poor Michael Vick has been beaten to a pulp behind an offensive line that couldn't stop the league's worst defenses (like the Saints!) and the team has been otherwise riddled with turnovers, bone-headed mistakes and an unforgiving fanbase that actually has much better reasons to boo now than they did when Donovan McNabb was drafted long ago. There can be no doubt Jeff Lurie will clean house (assuming his job is safe either) once the Eagles pack up their cleats next week, but it take more than a clean slate to get this team back to fine in 2013 and beyond.
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