Sporting Madness

It should be an interesting Super Bowl today; a clash between two high-powered offences, as well as two very different game philosophies. The Saints have a balanced attack and an incredibly aggressive defence, while the Colts' defence excels at limiting big plays and their offence is dominant in the passing game, but struggles to run the ball. You can find my full preview piece below , as well as other ones I wrote for Rob Carnell at Salt Water Music and Ryan Gallivan at The Gally Blog . Now, it's time for the prediction. Everyone has the Colts as big favourites, but I think this is overlooking a few things. For one, as Neil Paine points out, SRS (simple rating system, explained here ), which looks at teams' average margins of victory and their opponents' average ratings, is overwhelmingly in favour of the Saints. Yes, the Saints struggled against the Vikings in the NFC Championship game, but the Colts had issues with the New York Jets, a much less well-rounded t...

This year’s Super Bowl is more than just a battle between the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts; it’s also a clash of styles between the Colts’ pass-heavy offence and the Saints’ balanced attack. New Orleans was sixth in the league in rushing this year, averaging 131.6 yards per regular-season game, and fourth in passing, averaging 272.2 yards per game. The Colts were second in the NFL in passing yards per game, averaging 282.2 yards per game, but dead last in rushing, putting up only 80.9 yards on the ground. The Colts’ rushing game hasn’t improved by the numbers in the playoffs, as they’re still only averaging 2.9 yards per attempt and 71.5 yards per game. However, those stats are somewhat deceiving. The Colts got nowhere on the ground against the Baltimore Ravens in the divisional round, putting up only 44 yards on 23 carries, but that game was out of hand early and the Colts were often running just to control the clock. Against the notably effective rushing defence of the...

Who will face the Colts in this year's Super Bowl? Join me in the live blog below to find out! NFC Championship Live Blog

I'll be live-blogging today's games shortly, but first I thought I'd put up some predictions. Both these games could go either way, like anything in the playoffs, so these are just idle thoughts, not guarantees. If you want something with a better chance of success, check out Peter Pattakos ' picks over at Cleveland Frowns ; he's 8-0 so far these playoffs! With that out the way, let's get to the games. AFC: New York Jets at Indianapolis Colts: The Colts were a dominant team during the regular season. They went 14-2, and weren't particularly trying in the games they lost (one against the Jets). Meanwhile, Jets' head coach Rex Ryan thought they were eliminated at one point, and they only snuck into the playoffs on the last day. The Colts also beat their curse of resting starters with last weekend's win over the Ravens, so there's lots of logical reasons to pick them. However, I'm not going to. For one thing, small athletic teams like the ...

As part of this preview of today's NFC championship game, I spoke to my Fanball colleague Mark Hooper of Who Dat Blog to get his thoughts on the Saints. My questions and his responses are below. Andrew Bucholtz: The Saints didn't finish the regular season particularly convincingly, but they turned in a very impressive win over the Cardinals last weekend. Were you expecting more rust from them, or did you see that kind of dominant performance coming? Mark Hooper: To be honest, I didn't see that coming. I expected more of a track meet, and I thought that first play from scrimmage set the tone. I really was thinking the Saints would do their normal slow start then finish strong, but they were cranking on all cylinders from play one. Drew Brees had arguably the best game of his season balancing the running and passing game, keeping the Cardinals on their heels all day. The Saints could do anything they wanted at any time. A.B.: Both the Saints and the Vikings have ...

Today will feature the NFL's conference championship games, and I'll have plenty of coverage of them here. For starters, I wrote a pair of pieces for The Good Point talking to notable football bloggers about some elements of this weekend's matchups. You can check out the preview of the AFC contest between the Indianapolis Colts and the New York Jets (3:00 p.m. Eastern, CBS) here and the preview of the NFC clash between the New Orleans Saints and Minnesota Vikings (6:40 p.m. Eastern, FOX) here . To go along with those pieces, I'll be posting the complete interviews I conducted with each of the bloggers here. The AFC ones will be up shortly, with the NFC ones to follow in the morning. I'll also have my breakdown of each game with predictions up in the morning. Finally, I'll be live-blogging both games right here. Feel free to stop on by and join in the fun!