Although I am usually a baseball writer for this blog, I decided after this weekend of playoff football I need to write about it. I have never experienced a series of playoff games that have ever been as uninteresting as the ones I just saw. I usually expect when watching playoffs of any sport that there is going to be some sense of talent or anticipation or even excitement, but rather I spent hours of my weekend waiting for the games to end. Let's look at how each game managed to bore me.
Game 1: Houston 19 Cincinnati 13
I never thought this game ever had any hope of being entertaining, when I saw it was going to happen I thought "haven't we seen this before?" Yes, we had seen this before and it was almost entertaining because I was drinking and Arian Foster was running fools over left and right. This time I wasn't drinking and actually watched the first part of the game at a local pizza joint, which probably makes for the best part of the game. While Toninho and I were waiting for our delicious Hawaiian pizza to come to us, some random guy and other people with him come in and occupy the booth next to us, I chose the booth in the far corner for a reason. Anyways, the guy was all sorts of pumped to see the outcome of this game and I believe was interested in seeing the Texans lose, I know this because he talked to everybody in his local vicinity about this and even enlightened Toninho and I with this amazing insight, "if the Texans lose, they're going home!" Thank whichever deity you choose that we had him to explain to us how the NFL playoffs worked, despite the fact that anybody who gave a damn about what he said would know that already. Anyways, we ate our pizza and watched the game at my house. Arian Foster kicked ass again, there were a ton of field goals and Cincinnati had negative passing yards in the first half. Yup, that's some inept football courtesy of Andy Dalton. But at least there was another game coming up!
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No look pass? |
Game 2: Green Bay 24 Minnesota 10
Looking back I can't believe the score was as close as it was, this game never appeared to be even vaguely close. Especially since Minnesota discovered their mediocre quarterback, Christian Ponder was too hurt to be able to play, and their coach decided to start backup Joe Webb because they wanted to "rest him up for next week" (the quote is probably not exact but he definitely said something along those lines.) Here's some background knowledge on Joe Webb, he had not thrown a pass in about 2 years, the only positive thing they could say about him is that he runs a 4.4 second 40 yard dash and, as far as I'm concerned, his greatest achievement is having
jumped over 7 bags during his combine. The eleven points Green Bay were giving were obviously too few as once again we were in range of having a team go into halftime with negative passing yards (something we were told only happened one other time in NFL playoff history), there is no way they had much more than 4 though. It was at this time we went to a bar and I paid much less attention to the game. I would occasionally look up at the TV and see Webb alternate between throwing the ball 12 yards too far or 12 yards too short. I'm sure the Packers played fine, but I was left wondering how Joe Webb could possibly be a professional quarterback who was so bad at his job, I'm not sure whether or not I want to see him get another chance.
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Speaking of another chance... |
Game 3: Baltimore 24 Indianapolis 9
To make some excuses for the first set of games, nobody was expecting them to be entertaining. I figured I would have a fun night on the town, wake up and enjoy the games that were supposed to be good. This first game was rife with subplot, probably the best defensive player I have seen in my life was potentially playing the last game of his career at home in the playoffs (not as emotional as Chipper's last game in October, by the way) against the first overall pick rookie quarterback and their cancer survivor head coach. The drama was palpable and there was no way the game couldn't be entertaining! Sure as hell this turned out to be one of those low scoring games, and in football a low scoring game usually means it is really sloppy and this game followed the trend. Joe Flacco was doing Joe Flacco things, I can't remember if Ray Rice ever came on the field and, worse yet, Andrew Luck must have been so nervous he was drenching the ball with his sweat, I can't think of another reason his receivers would have dropped 9 passes with those flypaper gloves. Anyways, the result of this game was a whole lot more field goals, another week of hearing about how this may be Ray Lewis's last game and another few hours of commercials and boring football, but at least I got to see the following commercial a few times!
Game 4: Seattle 24 Washington 14
I was excited for this game, even through the boring games before it, I kept watching knowing that I''ll get to see RG3 and Russell Wilson battle it out in the last game of the weekend. There was no way this game could let me down, especially since Griffin and his Redskins came out of the gates with two dominant drives for touchdowns, including the second one which left me raving about how much of a warrior Griffin was after twisting his knee, limping to the huddle and throwing a touchdown on the next play. Unfortunately it was not a sign of awesomeness but rather a sign that things were going to start hobbling. Shortly after that, Russell Wilson and his Seahawks started going on a tear and going into the 2nd half it was a tight game. So there was potential that it was going down to the wire. Much to the chagrin of everybody who wanted to watch an entertaining game, Griffin's knee was screwed up for the day and as was Washington's offense. Washington couldn't get anything going and neither could Seattle, partially due to the kicker turning his ankle earlier (and the award for most hilarious injury to affect a game's trajectory goes there.) Then we reached the point where Russell Wilson remembered that he was good and suddenly the game was over. On the whole, it wasn't that bad of a game, but it also wasn't too good of a game. After such a bad set of games it was way too little too late.
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DC sports renaissance! 2013 |
So that was my weekend, and everybody else's who likes to watch the playoffs. Let's hope that next weeks games are better, or at least the ones that are supposed to be entertaining actually live up to their billing. I'm looking at you San Francisco-Green Bay and Atlanta-Seattle.