Things I Noticed: Wild Card Round

The postseason opens with the Wild Card round, featuring the third and fourth seeded division winners hosting the two Wild Card teams.  While that may seem obvious to most football fans, yesterday I stood in line waiting for lunch for 20 minutes behind a young couple that clearly could not figure this out.  The guy actually thought the Texans were a Wild Card team because they were playing this weekend.  His girlfriend was nearly as lost, but seemed to know more than he did.  Anyway, I figured it was worth explaining, even though if you're reading a sports blog, you probably knew this already.

Denver, New England, Atlanta and San Francisco earned a bye this week for being the top two seeds in their conferences.

For the other teams that qualified for the playoffs, but not a first round bye...

Here are some things I noticed this week:

Bengals at Texans

• Matt Schaub's first career playoff start (262 yards, 0 TDs, 1 INT) was as underwhelming as his play over the past month has been, but he did just enough to help the Texans get a win.

• Arian Foster became the first player in history with 100+ yard rushing games in first three career playoff games. His 425 rushing yards in his first three career playoff games is a league record.
• Schuab was the only QB in the league that didn't run for a first down all season, but picked up one on a QB sneak at the end of the first quarter.
• Leon Hall undercut the route on a poorly thrown pass from Schaub and ran it back for a pick six to give the Bengals their first (and only) lead of the game.  This was the 4th straight game with defensive TD for Bengals.
• Andre Johnson dropped a ball in the end zone on third down, forcing the Texans to settle for FG to end the half.  All three of the Texans scoring drives stalled short of the end zone, forcing them to settle for field goals, but they still took a lead into halftime that they would not surrender.
• The Bengals had -6 passing yards at halftime, when factoring in sacks.  Dalton completed only 4 of 10 passes and 2 of those completions went for negative yardage!  The rest of his day would get slightly better, but that's not saying much.  He finished with only 127 yards while completing only 14 of his 30 pass attempts.  He also failed to lead a single TD scoring drive for the offense.
• Cincinnati is the first team since the 2007 Chiefs to have negative passing yards in the first half of a playoff game.
• Houston could have stopped the Bengals on 3rd and long and gotten the ball back with the lead and only four minutes left, but they gave the Bengals new life with a pass interference penalty.  Yet the Bengals failed to take advantage, turning the ball over on downs when a completion on fourth down came up short.  In that situation, with the game on the line, you just can't throw the ball short of the marker unless the receiver has a clear path to a first down.
• Houston wins 19-13, advancing to the next round to face New England - also known as the place the Texans were so thoroughly embarrassed last month that is caused the rest of their season to unravel.  So they can't be feeling all that confident about a trip back to Foxboro.

What's wrong with the Celtics?

Well this isn't how things were supposed to work out.  After falling just short of making their third NBA Finals appearance in five seasons, the Celtics reloaded their bench to make another run.  On paper they looked like a good team - an improved team.  Even the most pessimistic fans in Boston had to expect this team to at least contend for a spot in the top half of the Eastern Conference playoff seedings.

Then the season started.  Do we still look at this team the same way now?

The season isn't even half over yet, but already the Celtics have dug themselves into a distressing hole.  The team has lost four straight and eight of their last ten.  Those last four losses have all come by double digits, including three that were blow outs losses by 18+ points.  Their record has dropped to 14-17 and if the season were to end today, Boston would find themselves outside of the postseason.

Nobody ever expected this squad to be a lottery team.  There's far too much talent on this roster for that to happen, but in order to prevent that fate from becoming a reality, there needs to be some improvement.  So the question is - what's wrong with the Celtics?

Sure, there have been some injuries, but all teams go through that at times.  New York, Chicago and Indiana seem to be doing just fine, despite missing star players for most, if not all, of the season.

The main issue with this team has been defense.  The Celtics have been a lock as a top five team in Defensive Efficiency during the Kevin Garnett era, but currently find themselves ranked 13th in the league (102.1).  The drop in defensive performance can't be attributed to the team's defensive anchor.  Even at age 36, Garnett remains one of the league's top defenders, barking out assignments and providing elite help defense.  The problem is, KG is playing a career low 29 minutes per game.  When he's on the floor, Boston ranks as the best defensive team in the league, but when he's resting on the bench they suddenly become the worst defensive team in the league. 

Things I Noticed: Week 17

It's the final week of the regular season, but there were still teams with plenty to play for entering the week.  Two division titles still needed to be decided and playoff seedings were still up for grabs.

So, for the last time this regular season -

Here are some things I noticed this week:

• New England shutout the Dolphins in a dominant display that builds them some much needed momentum heading into the playoffs.  The win also bumped them up to the #2 seed in the AFC, earning them a first round bye.

• Rob Gronkowski returned from a broken forearm injury that cost him five games, picking up right where he left off.  His playing time may have been limited, but he made the most of it by finding the end zone for the 11th time this season - tied for 4th most in the league.  Given the time he missed, that means he averaged a score per game.  Despite having the game well in hand in the 4th quarter, the Pats made sure to get Gronk some snaps to integrate him back into the offense.
• Reggie Bush appeared openly frustrated as the final seconds ticked away.  Not because his team lost, or because they again failed to make the postseason.  No, his frustrations were about falling 14 yards short of his second straight 1,000 yard rushing season.  He broke an 18 yard run on the Dolphins last play of the game, but wasn't able to break a tackle to extend the run to get him to that milestone.  Glad to see he has his priorities in order.

Things I Noticed: Week 16

With the holidays quickly approaching, this weeks' schedule has been completely rearranged.  There was no ugly Thursday night game between two totally unprepared teams this week.  There are no more Monday Night Football games this season, as rather than have teams play on Christmas Eve, the MNF game was played on Saturday night instead.  The 1:00 slate of games on Sunday afternoon featured 11 games at once!  That all led to a very packed weekend of football to be treated to just before the holiday.

So with that, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a great weekend of football!

Here are some things I noticed this week:

• Atlanta clinched the top seed in the NFC, ensuring that they can rest some of their starters next week and take a week off before their first playoff game.  That's a big change for these Falcons during the Matt Ryan era, because they are used to taking the week off during their first playoff game (oh, come on Atlanta fans, you know it's true!). 


• Matt Ryan was brilliant against the Lions, completing his first 12 passes en route to a 4 TD performance.  Both Roddy White (153 yards, 2 TDs) and Julio Jones (71 yards, 1 TD) came up big, in a rare game where both of Atlanta's elite receivers were able to dominate at the same time.
• The final minutes of the game showed Atlanta's one big weakness - their inability to convert in short yardage situations.  After Detroit turned the ball over on downs at the Atlanta 2 yard line, the Falcons were unable to run out the clock by running the ball forward enough to be able to kneel out the rest of the clock.  Instead, Michael Turner was tackled in the end zone for a safety, which could have given the Lions new life.  Lucky for them, Detroit blew their chance. 
• Down two TDs, the safety would give Detroit the ball back.  A good return, if not for a score then at least for good field position, would at least have given them a chance.  Instead, Stefan Logan made the bizarre decision to give himself up by taking a knee inside his own five yard line.  Even without audio, you could read the words coming out of his coach's mouth on the sideline.  Something along the lines of that being the stupidest play he's ever seen (with a few other choice words thrown in, I'm sure).  He's not wrong - it was an incredibly stupid decision, which forced Detroit to have to try to drive nearly the entire field just to get the first of the two scores they needed with less than two minutes left.  That task, of course, came up short.  Who knows what Logan could possibly have been thinking, but it wasn't even his first mistake of the game.  Earlier he had called for a fair catch on a punt return when there wasn't a defender within 20 yards of him!  For a player who's only value comes on kick returns, if he can't even get that right then what good is he?
• Calvin Johnson set a boatload of records in this game, but the main one was surpassing Jerry Rice for the single season receiving record.  He currently stands at 1,892 yards for the season, meaning 2,000 yards is actually within reach.  At this point it would almost be a surprise if he didn't become the new CJ2K.

• Calvin also set records with 8 straight 100+ yard receiving games and four straight games with double digit catches. 
• The one blemish on Calvin's record setting game is that when Rice set his record, he did it during a playoff hunt, while Calvin's Lions team has been out of the hunt for weeks.  At times, it looked like the Lions were more concerned with getting Calvin the record than they were with winning the game. 

Red Sox off-season review

We're approximately halfway through the off-season, with less than 8 weeks before pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training.  The Hot Stove is beginning to cool off, as most of the top free agents have already been signed.  Many of those freshly signed players will be putting on a Red Sox uniform this spring, as Boston has added more players via free agency than any team, in addition to adding a new manager. 

The Red Sox had plenty of holes to fill on a roster that you might say underachieved last season (ok, understatement of the year).  So you had to expect a massive turnover was due, but given that they avoided the top high priced options on the market, how much have they really improved?

This team lost 93 games last year in a season that spiraled out of control due to injuries and a fractured clubhouse that revolted against former manager Bobby Valentine.  Replacing him with John Farrell, who is well respected by the team's core veterans from his time as the team's pitching coach a few years ago, will go a long way toward improving this team.  While the Red Sox didn't dominate the headlines by chasing marquee names, they did add several useful pieces that will help improve the team.

The rotation will get a boost from the addition of Ryan Dempster.  The veteran pitcher led the NL with a 2.25 ERA in 16 starts with the Cubs last season, before being dealt to Texas as the trade deadline.  After some initial struggles changing leagues (8 runs allowed in 2 of his first 3 starts for the Rangers), Dempster settled down and ended up going 5-0 with a 1.91 ERA over his next 5 starts.  That ugly 5.09 ERA that he posted with the Rangers would look a lot better if you take away those rough starts during the adjustment period to his first time in a new league.  Boston doesn't need Dempster to be the ace that he was in Chicago.  They just need him to be a reliable middle of the rotation starter that can be counted on for a solid 200+ innings, as he's done in 4 of the past 5 seasons.  Using him to replace some of the replacement level pitchers the team was forced to run out there last season is certainly worth a couple extra wins over the course of the season.