The blame game

Well division-playoff weekend was certainly a tale of two days. Saturday’s games went as predicted and had no real surprises while Sunday’s games were both upsets in the truest sense of the word. Now, in the case of upsets there’s only one thing a fan can really do over the next few days: assign blame.

So, to the start, the person most deserving of blame is Dallas’ quarterback, Tony Romo. I’m really starting to hope his late season meltdowns aren’t going to happen every year like they’re starting to. In the clutch, his failure to get rid of the ball followed by his intentional grounding penalty followed by the knife in the heart interception really killed the Cowboys.

Elisha Manning is getting some of my blame for eliminating my Cowboys as well. If he keeps up this roll, I might actually call him Eli instead of Elisha. One thing’s for sure though, playing in Dallas when they’re giving you the game is a lot different than playing in Lambeau. At least this Giants win insures a Brady-Favre Super Bowl matchup.

The other Manning, Peyton, doesn’t deserve as much blame as his receivers do. The running back who botched the goal line screen that would be picked off (One handed! While being blocked!) by a defensive lineman was a backbreaker. Dallas Clark’s drop to end the game was very bad as well. They did have some blind luck like Anthony Gonzalez not stepping out of bounds, but overall it was a bad day.

The Colts defence gets some blame too. How Darren Sproles can get loose like he did on that screen pass, I’ll never know but someone should have knocked him out of bounds.

As for Saturday’s tilts:

It may just be me (probably not though) but snow games are the best football games there are. It's certainly not because of the quality of play, which suffers because of the sub-par conditions, but because of the sheer aesthetics of the snow falling in the background. The beauty of a white-blanketed field is increased exponentially when it's Lambeau Field we're talking about as well. So, you've probably guessed by now that Saturday's Seattle-Green Bay tilt was one I rather enjoyed. And to match the serene beauty of the snow falling, Brett Favre and Co. (Ryan Grant in particular) had a great game and showed why they deserved their bye week. The worst part of the game was that I decided against picking Grant (201 yards rushing, 3 TDS) in a playoff pool I'm involved in.

Has anybody else noticed that the Patriots have turned into cowards and now play like nice guys by refusing to run up the score? What happened to their bad boy, F*** you attitude? Looks like they were just pretending to be bad asses. Maybe Belichick was acting like that to seem like a bad boy and try to steal somebody else's wife. The Jaguars did play them tough, but didn't we all figure that the Pats would win anyway? There were way too many articles floating around about how the Jags could win. Time to eat your words boys.

This week: 2-1-0
This playoffs: 3-2-1