Sporting Madness

The NFL playoffs are always one of my favourite times of year, and if last week's games are any indication, we're in for a good playoff season. My picks for this round are up over at The Good Point , so go check those out ! The game I'm most interested in is the Steelers-Ravens clash, which gets under way shortly. From an impartial perspective, it's one of the NFL's most interesting divisional rivalries, featuring two teams that have been quite good for the last decade and more. They play similar styles, and for those like me who enjoy great defence, they're some of the best franchises to watch. Of course, I'm not entirely impartial, as I've been a Steelers' fan for most of my life, so I'm definitely decked out in my black and gold today as you can see below. Feel free to hurl insults, but the B.C. chapter of Steeler Nation is reporting for duty.

So, I went 1-3 last weekend , which certainly isn't promising. However, it was a rather bizarre weekend of games, and I did beat ESPN's Bill Simmons , who makes about a kajillion dollars more for his writing than I do, so I'm okay with that. The thing is, the NFL is a league of parity; as we often recite, anything can happen on any given Sunday. This becomes even more evident in the playoffs because only decent teams make it this far; the gap between a 14-2 team like the Colts and a 9-7 team like the Ravens is far closer than the gap between the Ravens and the 1-15 St. Louis Rams, so it's much harder to figure out who's going to win.With that in mind, I do have a few thoughts about this weekend's slate of games. As always, these predictions are nowhere near guaranteed and are intended for recreational purposes only. Cardinals at Saints: (4:30 p.m. Eastern Saturday, FOX) This should be one of the most entertaining games of the weekend, featuring two high-po...

Time to continue my series of supporting interviews for this piece I wrote for The Good Point on the importance of the left tackle. Today's interview subject is Bruce Raffel , editor of the excellent Ravens' blog Baltimore Beatdown . The Ravens' tackle situation is quite an interesting one; they used the first draft pick in their history in Baltimore on Jonathan Ogden , who turned out to be a great franchise LT. Recently, they brought in Jared Gaither to replace Ogden after his retirement. This year, they drafted possibly the most famous left tackle out there, Michael Oher of The Blind Side fame, 23rd overall. Raffel has some very interesting things to say about the Ravens' moves at tackle over the years, so read on! Andrew Bucholtz: How important do you consider the left tackle position, especially compared to the other positions on the offensive line? How important is a good left tackle to a team's overall success? Bruce Raffel: While the center position ...

Three of the football teams I follow all recorded important victories over the past weekend, but those victories couldn't have been more dissimilar. However, there were still common threads and themes between the three games. First, there was Queen's 43-16 win over Western [myself, Queen's Journal ] Saturday. This was particularly interesting, especially when you consider that Western was favoured by many going in. However, the score was rather deceiving. Queen's offence was missing in action for most of the day, and only created 295 net yards and 18 first downs against Western's 510 net yards and 33 first downs. The lopsided victory was mostly due to the excellent field position Queen's offence was given by Western's 12 turnovers and inability to convert in the red zone. The strong efforts from Queen's defence and special teams also came in handy in terms of field position. The game was also made more of a blowout by Western head coach Greg Marshall...