Ten Thoughts on the NFL, the playoffs, and the Bears

1) I went three for four in my playoffs picks last week, with my only miss being the Los Angeles Chargers at New England Patriots game. It wasn't that I didn’t believe the Patriots would win, it was that I thought the Chargers had a complete team and would finally break through with a win for Philip Rivers.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

It was the Patriots that showed to have the most complete team on Sunday with Sony Michel rushing for 129 yards and Tom Brady getting 343 passing yards. It was a ridiculously efficient game from the Pats in winning 41 to 28.

2) The Kansas City Chiefs rolled the Indianapolis Colts 31 to 13, and it could have been much worse. The Colts offense couldn’t get anything going til the 4th quarter and by then the Chiefs were just coasting.

It wasn’t the best game from K.C. QB Patrick Mahomes, but it didn’t need to be. The Chiefs found a running game and their defense stepped up.

This did happen however...

3) I really, really, really want to pick the Chiefs since they were my Super Bowl pick a few weeks ago, but I can’t pick against these Patriots. I think N.E. head coach Bill Belichick will come up with a game-plan to stymie Mahomes, and the Patriots will win another AFC Championship by a score of 34 to 21.

4) The Saturday night game was a tough one, because you know who could have been playing in that game if it wasn’t for that missed kick.

The Los Angeles Rams beat the Dallas Cowboys 30 to 22, and it was the Rams offensive line that was the story of this game with both C.J. Anderson and Todd Gurley rushing for over a hundred yards each, with the team rushing total of 273 yards being a franchise record eclipsing the 269 yards they had on the ground in 1986, also a win against the Cowboys.

4a) We all remember what happened the week after that 1986 Rams win don’t we?

5) The Rams will have a rematch against the New Orleans Saints in the NFC Championship game, after the Saints took out the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles, 20 to 14 in heartbreaking fashion.

Just one week after doing this (seen in the following Tweet) after helping his Eagles win in Chicago...

Alshon Jeffery dropped the ball that fell into Marshon Lattimore’s hands for his second interception of the afternoon.

5a) Pure class from Philly’s Michael Bennett.

6) But back to the game this Sunday...

The Saints beat the Rams earlier this year, 45 to 35, in a game also played in New Orleans, and I’m taking the Saints to win this time as well, but in a lower scoring affair. Give me N.O. 34, L.A. 33.

7) So the top four scoring teams in the NFL are the four remaining teams in the playoffs.

As a guy that played a little offensive line in my day, and as a guy that usually called the offense when I coached, I gotta say the old “defense wins championships” mantra is a fallacy. Sure, good defenses can help your team have success, but teams win by scoring more points.

Now with that being said, you still gotta stop someone from scoring, but ultimately your offense is going to have to score to win.

You can have the league’s #1 (in DVOA) defense and still come up short if you don’t score more points than the opposition.

8) Who did it better, Adam Gase...

... or Nicolas Cage?

9) Maroon 5 was announced as the headline act for halftime of the Super Bow, with Travis Scott and Big Boi to also show up.

Did you know that the Super Bowl Halftime Show is the most-watched musical event of the year?

10) I’m sure a few Chicago Bears fans remember the pool jumper draft of 2009. That was the first year after the Jay Cutler trade, so the Bears were without their 1st and 2nd round picks, and in the third round they drafted Jarron Gilbert who famously jumped out of a pool and then went on to play four games in his Bears career.

With the Bears missing their first two picks this year, I’m reminded of that Jerry Angelo draft, but at yesterday’s press conference, GM Ryan Pace reminded everyone of a draft he was involved in with the Saints in 2012. In that draft the Saints were missing their top two picks, and in the third round they took a kid from the University of Regina (in Canada), and that kid, Akiem Hicks, just made his first Pro Bowl.

Fingers crossed for a Hicks-like talent in 2019, and not a YouTube sensation.