Pigskin Predictions: The Divisional Round

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-powered offences. The Saints have dominated for most of the year, but they slumped a bit down the stretch; it will be interesting to see if they can get back into form. Meanwhile, the Cardinals were creamed 33-7 by Green Bay in the last week of the regular season (while playing backups), but '99 Warner showed up last week and destroyed the Packers in the wild-card playoffs, finishing with 379 yards and more touchdown passes (five) than incompletions (four) in a 51-45 overtime win. The Cardinals' defence was absent for much of the game, but they actually got a pretty decent rushing performance out of Beanie Wells (14 carries for 91 yards) and they
got a key defensive play when it mattered in overtime. I agree with Samer that this team seems a lot like last year's surprise Super Bowl-contending edition; in my mind, it's even better because they've added a solid run game and a playmaking defence. I'm expecting Warner to lead them to victory again this week, despite the quality of the opposition. When '99 Warner shows up, you'd better run to the hills.



Pick: Arizona

Ravens at Colts: (8:15 p.m. Eastern Saturday, CBS)

This should be a classic "Battle of Baltimore", featuring the team that packed up and left in the middle of the night against their replacements. Karma would favour the Ravens in this one, but the Colts did finish the year 14-2 (with their only losses coming in games they weren't trying in), while the Ravens barely made the playoffs on the final day. Moreover, quarterback Joe Flacco only completed four passes for 34 yards and was picked off once in the Ravens' first-round victory over the Patriots, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence, especially considering that he's going up against Peyton Manning. However, there are some reasons to favour the Ravens. For one, they're a punishing, physical team on both offence and defence, which doesn't bode well for the Colts, who favour smaller, quicker players. The Colts also struggle running the ball (Joseph Addai doesn't inspire a lot of confidence), and Baltimore's defence might just be good enough to frustrate Manning. For me, the biggest thing going into this game is the lacklustre way the Colts finished the season; they laid down rather than going for 16-0, and I think that will come back to haunt them. That's not thanks to karma, but thanks to timing; football's a game of precise timing, where a millisecond can make the difference between a touchdown pass and an interception. That timing can only really be tested in games, as practices move at a slower speed and with less pressure. I'm guessing the Colts' offence will be a bit out of sync after taking several weeks off, and that could be all the opportunity Baltimore needs. The Colts surrendered too early, and that may hurt them tonight.



Pick: Baltimore

Cowboys at Vikings: (Sunday, 1:00 p.m. Eastern, FOX)

It's tough to figure out who to root for in this game between the team everyone hates (the Cowboys) and the quarterback everyone hates (Brett Favre). It should be an interesting contest, though; both teams have plenty of talent with balanced run/pass offences and strong defences. However, I'm taking the Cowboys based on their recent play. The Vikings struggled down the stretch while Dallas roared into the playoffs and thumped an excellent Eagles team twice in a row. Brett Favre's due to explode any time soon, and Tony Romo and company look surprisingly competent without locker-room distraction Terrell Owens. Plus, Wade Phillips is a slightly more competent coach than Brad Childress. Who doesn't want to be a Cowboy, baby?



Pick: Dallas

Jets at Chargers:

The Jets turned in an impressive performance last weekend, running over the Bengals 24-14 in the wild-card round. However, San Diego is a tougher opponent for them. The Bengals boasted one top receiver in Chad Ochocinco, an easy mark for Darrelle Revis, their star shutdown corner. The Chargers have four great receivers in Vincent Jackson, Antonio Gates, Malcolm Floyd and Legedu Naanee: Revis can only cover one of them at a time, and the rest of the Jets' secondary is merely okay. Moreover, those guys are all 6'4 or taller; Revis is 5'11. That should lead to some jump-ball opportunities, which Philip Rivers excels at throwing and the Chargers' receivers excel at bringing in. They also have a great rushing and receiving threat in RB Darren Sproles. When you factor in the Chargers' momentum over the second half of the season and that the Jets limped into the playoffs mostly thanks to their opponents laying down, this seems like a good weekend to ride the lightning.



Pick: San Diego

Enjoy the games!

Why I'm a Steelers fan

In just a few hours, the Pittsburgh Steelers will take to the field in Tampa Bay to try and win a record sixth Super Bowl title against the Arizona Cardinals. I’ve long been a Steelers fan, and these past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about why I support the team. There are plenty of great reasons including the history of success, the focus on coaching continuity and smashmouth defence and the tremendous players who have worn the black and gold over the years.

However, sometimes you’re defined as much by what you’re not as what you are. The brilliant Joe Posnanski wrote one of the quintessential pieces on the Steelers for the Kansas City Star after their win over the Ravens. Here’s the first paragraph, which really cuts to the core of this franchise.

Football is violence. It’s easy to forget that sometimes, easy to start believing that football is about other more pleasant things, that it is about coaching and strategy and star quarterbacks and fabulous catches and touchdown dances and defensive schemes and former players and coaches yukking it up back in the studio. Then you come to Pittsburgh. And it’s all made clear.

Posnanski wrote a very interesting follow-up to that piece on his blog later on, talking about the tremendous reaction he received from Steelers fans. He found this curious considering the limited amount of time he spent on it, but rationalized that he understands the Steelers because he grew up hating them as a Cleveland Browns fan, and he learned a lot about the Steelers because they represented much of what the Browns were not. This is a tremendous insight, and one that’s rarely talked about. Sometimes, you need that outsider perspective to be able to properly analyze a team’s strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, like Posnanski found, often you can define a team by what they’re not.

This brings me to the best way I’ve found to define the Steelers and why I love them; the fact that they stand in opposition to a team I hate, the Dallas Cowboys. It’s extremely fitting that the Steelers will pass the Cowboys (and also the San Francisco 49ers) in Super Bowl titles if they win today, as the Steelers and Cowboys have long been polar opposites. They’re joined at the hip, consistently finishing 1-2 in rankings of the greatest NFL franchises, but the franchises themselves couldn’t be more different. Even the team names show the separation between the two; Steelers evokes a feeling of a community of blue-collar workers, while Cowboys is more associated with a group of rugged individualists out for their own gain (or even the Rich Texan from The Simpsons, who seems like a spot-on parody of Jerry Jones.





(Separated at birth?)













That distinction runs throughout both franchises. Look at the owners, for example. On the one side, you have the Rooney family, an exceedingly humble group of fans who grew up with the team and understand what it means to the Pittsburgh community and the larger world. On the other hand, you have the aforementioned Jones, a billionaire who rolled into town on his high horse and started making it rain in a much more grandiose fashion than Pacman Jones ever did. The Rooneys have always been good to their personnel and their fans, whereas Jones has thrown everyone else under the bus repeatedly whenever it serves his whims. Look at the 1992-1993 season, where he fired Jimmy Johnson after he won the Super Bowl, or how he underhandedly dumped Bob Ackles from the player personnel division after Ackles put the pieces in place for the glory years of the Cowboys. (If you want more on these moves, check out the excellent The Waterboy by Ackles or Boys Will Be Boys by Jeff Pearlman).

This continues down to the coaches. Dallas is frequently associated with the hard-partying types like Johnson and Barry Switzer, while Pittsburgh is famous for the humility and work ethic shown by Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher. Moreover, Pittsburgh’s shown tremendous patience with their coaches and it’s paid off: they’ve had only three coaches since 1969 and have won five Super Bowls in that era. Meanwhile, the Cowboys have had seven coaches in that time frame, many for only a couple of years.

The player level is probably where the contrast is most pronounced. The Cowboys are famous for their individual abilities, tremendous talent and off-field antics; just look at the likes of Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, “Neon” Deion Saunders, Michael Irwin, Terrell Owens and Adam “Pacman” Jones. Meanwhile, the Steelers are famous for their collective efforts and hard work. Yes, there have been some great Steelers stars, but the most remembered part of the franchise is probably the “Steel Curtain” defence, which exemplified perfect teamwork over individual stat-padding. That focus continues today with defensive co-ordinator Dick LeBeau’s zone blitz system, where different players attack the quarterback on every down. It doesn’t produce the most impressive stats for any individual athlete, but the collective accomplishment is tremendous. The same is true on offense. Where the Cowboys have ego-driven wide receivers like Terrell Owens who complain about the quarterback not throwing them the ball enough, the Steelers’ wideouts do perhaps the best job of downfield blocking in the league. The focus is again on sacrificing your body for the good of the team regardless of the personal recognition gained in the process, and to me, that’s a great thing to see.

Today’s game should be a great one, and I’m looking forward to see how the Steelers perform against the Cardinals. Even more important, though, will be the triumph over the Cowboys in franchise titles if Pittsburgh wins. That would be a victory for ownership and fans committed to long-term success rather than flashes in the pan, for those who love watching hard-hitting defence and players willing to sacrifice for their teammates, and for collective hard work instead of egotistical individualism. That’s why I’ll be cheering for Pittsburgh today.

Note: Mike Woods and myself will have our traditional Point-Counterpoint about who will win up here shortly.

Remembering Bob Ackles, the real water boy

Photo: The cover of Bob Ackles' memoirs.

It came as quite a shock last week to hear the news [Neate Sager, Out of Left Field] of Bob Ackles' death at 69 [Ian Austin and Marc Weber, The Vancouver Province]. Ackles was such an integral part of the B.C. Lions, the CFL and Canadian football as a whole that it seems weird to consider a future landscape of the game he loved so much without him in his prominent role. It's been a bad year for CFL icons: remember, we lost J.I. Albrecht [Stephen Brunt, The Globe and Mail] back [Neate Sager, Out of Left Field] in March [my piece], so Ackles' death takes away yet another of the characters who made this league great.

Today, as an appropriate intro to the Lions-Blue Bombers game, TSN spent a half-hour of their pre-game show relating the tributes [a collection of them from TSN.ca] to Ackles, a man who thoroughly deserved all of them. The collection of tributes they were able to put together on short notice was very impressive. They had the in-studio panel share their personal Ackles stories and had Brian Williams conduct in-depth interviews with a wide range of Ackles' former teammates and colleagues, as well as famed ESPN sportscaster Chris Berman. The whole half-hour was effective and well-done, demonstrating the tremendous impact Ackles had on many different people, but the Berman piece was particularly interesting. It focused on Ackles' career in the U.S. and the respect he earned there, especially during the time he helped to turn the Dallas Cowboys from a 1-15 team into a franchise that would dominate much of the 1990s. He was the director of pro personnel from 1986-89 and the director of player personnel from 89-1992, and thus was heavily involved in the franchise's transactions during that period, including the Herschel Walker trade (which Page 2 ranked as the eighth-most lopsided trade of all time), the trades for Jay Novacek and Charles Haley, and the drafting of Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Russell Maryland.

This was a neat perspective to hear from an American sportscaster: too often, we're told that the CFL is a minor league and anyone who earns success there would never have been able to do the same south of the border, but Ackles certainly showed that perception was wrong. He played key roles with the Cowboys, Miami Dolphins, Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals and was also instrumental in the launch of the XFL: in fact, he was the only person to work as a senior executive in all three leagues. It wasn't just Berman, either: there's been a lot of coverage of Ackles' death south of the border, with prominent examples here [Chuck Carlton, The Dallas Morning News], here [Mickey Spagnola, DallasCowboys.com columnist], here [Jim Morris, The Canadian Press via The Toronto Star (features quotes from former Cowboys and Dolphins head coach Jimmy Johnson and Dolphins president Bryan Wiedmeier)], here [Lombardi on Football, SI.com writer Michael Lombardi's personal blog] and here [Phin Phanatic, a Miami Dolphins blog].

Ackles certainly made his mark on football in B.C. over his career as well. He started at the bottom with the Lions, serving as water boy in their initial year in 1953 and working his way up to director of football management 13 years later, assistant general manager in 1971 and the full general manager's slot in 1975. In that role, he soon turned around a dismal team that hadn't recorded an above .500 season since their 1964 Grey Cup win, drafted and acquired key players like Lui Passaglia, Joe "The Throwin' Samoan" Paopao, Roy Dewalt and "Swervin' Mervin" Fernandez, gave Don Matthews his first gig as a head coach in 1983 and led the Lions to the 1985 Grey Cup. With Ackles' later success in the president's role, his capabilities as a general manager were sometimes overlooked, but the players and coaches he acquired and the success he brought speak for themselves: the man knew his football, whether three-down or four-down.

What was even more impressive about Ackles' career with the Lions was his work selling the game to the community. He was prominently involved in supporting amateur and university football in the province, and he believed in winning an audience "one fan at a time." I've had the privilege of speaking with several people who had the chance to meet Ackles personally, and the common denominator in all of their stories is how he genuinely cared about all of them and took the time to sit down and chat about football. He was at home in the corporate world, schmoozing with CEOs and wealthy types, but his real gift was that he never forgot his humble origins in the business as the team waterboy, and he took the time to reach out to average fans and journalists as well as the movers and shakers. He got results, as well: he was instrumental in the construction of B.C. Place in 1983 (and in a great example of value for money, it's still paying off for Vancouver sports: not many stadiums of that vintage can say that!) and improved the average attendance to a ridiculous 42,000 per game by the time he left town in 1985. Without him, the team went through two bankruptcies and dropped to an average gate of less than 20,000, so he came back and did it again in 2002: hiring Wally Buono as coach and G.M., leading the Lions back to the Grey Cup, and more importantly, making them relevant in Vancouver again. All those who bleed orange and black have Bob Ackles to thank for the franchise's past success and current prosperity, and so do fans of the CFL: he was a ceaseless promoter of the league, and when the threat of the NFL caused many to question the relevance of Canadian football in our modern age, he was one of the loudest voices to speak out[an op-ed he wrote for the National Post] for three-down football.

The impact of Ackles' life and work is also shown through the staggering tributes to him, many of which appeared from people and media outlets that don't always give the CFL a lot of play. Some of the best tributes are here [Matthew Sekeres, The Globe and Mail], here [Lowell Ulrich, The Vancouver Province], here [Perry Lefko, Sportsnet.ca], here [Frank Bucholtz, The Langley Times], here [Jeff Paterson, The Georgia Straight] and here [a statement from B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell in The Vancouver Sun]. To wrap up, here's some excerpts from a piece by Vancouver Province columnist Ed Willes, who said everything I've been trying to, but much better:

"It is impossible to measure Bob Ackles' impact on the B.C. Lions.
Well, maybe not impossible. Maybe there are calipers that fit around Jupiter. Maybe there's a tape measure that stretches from here to the moon. But in terms the average person can understand? No, not really.
I mean, how do you put The Water Boy's career in perspective? He was in football longer than Churchill was in politics, starting as a teenager at the lowest rung of a made-up team. By his late 20s he was in that team's front office, and by his late 30s he was running the show. He would ultimately build the Lions into a champion and a monster at the gate before he decamped for the NFL. Then, almost 20 years later, he came back and did it again, just to prove the first time wasn't a fluke.
And now he's gone. Just like that. In his half-century in the game Ackles came to learn that everyone, whether it was Don Matthews with the Lions, Jimmy Johnson with the Cowboys or any one of the thousands of coaches and players he saw come and go, could be replaced. What he failed to grasp, however, is that he was the exception to that rule.
Funny, isn't it? He was such a little guy, but he leaves behind a void that will never be filled."

Indeed. Rest in peace, Bob. You'll always have a place in the hearts of all Lions' fans, and many more hearts of those who care about football.

Related:
A great excerpt from Ackles' fantastic 2007 memoirs, The Water Boy: From The Sidelines To The Owner's Box: Inside The CFL, The XFL, And The NFL about how he brought Wally Buono to town. Highly recommended reading. [The Vancouver Sun].