Cheaters Always Prosper

• So the cheating cheats from Cheatsville won again. How nice for them.

• The Atlanta Falcons. The Atlanta Falcons, man. They were up 28-3 late in the third quarter! They allowed three points the entire first half, then allowed 31 straight points to end the game!!! To them, I can only say:

• No, no, I really do feel for Falcons fans. That must have hurt a lot. Seriously, it finally felt like your year! Nine years after taking Matt Ryan with the #3 pick in the draft, five years after trading away almost two drafts’ worth of picks for Julio Jones, after years of watching the New Orleans Saints and Carolina Panthers make the playoffs, after years and years of being good but never really doing anything about it, you guys finally buckled down and took care of business. You marched through the season, steamrolling other teams to take your division. You earned your Wild Card bye. You dismissed the Seattle Seahawks without ceremony. You stomped on the Green Bay Packers. You made it, at last, to the Super Bowl. The entire country wanted you to win and had your back. You came out and knocked those reviled Patriots right in the mouth. You did this to their defense:

Taylor Gabriel is out here embarrassing people. https://t.co/1pPs9fxxId pic.twitter.com/YES0TfW5Kq

— SB Nation GIF (@SBNationGIF) February 6, 2017

• ...You got the rare Brady pick-six.

• ...You came out on fire and took a 25-point second-half lead. And then -- you -- after all that -- you just -- I’m sorry! I can’t!

• I just want you all to know that it was way worse for me because I KNEW THIS WAS COMING! Before the game, I thought Atlanta was going to win, but with about one minute left in the first half, with the Falcons up 21-0, I turned to my brother (he’s my witness!) in a panic and told him, “The Patriots are going to win!” He tried to soothe me, saying that Atlanta would score a bunch more points in the second half, but it was too late because I knew! I could feel it! I could feel the cliched articles being written. I could feel idiots across the country celebrating Brady “sticking it” to Roger Goodell. I could feel the “experience matters” tweets being prepared. I COULD FEEL IT AND THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD DO TO STOP IT.

• Even as I cheered this absolutely incredible Julio Jones catch, my heart was ill at ease.

• Because, sure enough, the Patriots had to one-up Julio.

• There’s certainly blame enough to go around in Atlanta, but there were two HUGE plays that really cost the Falcons, and both saw a failure in protection. On a third-and-1 in the fourth quarter, Ryan dropped back to pass (even though running back Devonta Freeman had been averaging 8.2 yards a carry) and Freeman (maybe?) failed to pick up a rushing Dont'a Hightower, who sacked Ryan and forced a killer fumble midway through the fourth.

• The second absolutely brutal play came with Atlanta up 28-20 with 3:50 left in regulation on the New England 23-yard line. Atlanta could have just kicked a field goal and all but sealed the game right there! Instead, after losing a yard on a first-down run, Ryan was sacked for a loss of 12 yards, pushing the Falcons to the edge of their kicker’s range. (Really? 50 yards is his limit? In a dome? Whatever.) A holding penalty on the next snap snuffed out the field goal hopes and Atlanta was forced to punt to New England.

• I’m not sure who takes the blame there: the offensive line for allowing the sack? Matt Ryan for not throwing the ball away? The offensive coordinator for not just running the darn ball in a game where Atlanta had been gaining most of their offense on the ground?

• The last point is a huge issue the decision to pass got them sacked out of field goal range and the incompletions kept on stopping the clock. Not only did they come away with no points, but they gifted New England the extra time it so desperately needed!

• That Atlanta found its early success running rather than throwing was actually the biggest surprise to me. (Since I could feel the bile of dread rising in my throat the entire game, the comeback wasn’t that much of a surprise.) The box score doesn’t really reflect this -- Atlanta and New England somehow both finished with 104 rushing yards??? -- but the Falcons were killing the Patriots in the run game the entire first half.

• If I were a New England fan  -- well, if I were, I’d kill myself, but for the purpose of this football discussion, I’m going to continue the sentence -- I would have been horribly upset with the time management in the entire second half. Down three scores, the Patriots were still huddling up and moseying to the line. Things ended up working out for them, but they very well could have cost themselves the victory with their completely unhurried approach for the entire third and much of the fourth quarters.

• Why is Matt Ryan’s face so gaunt? Doesn’t he get enough food?

• Ugh this is all just so horrible! I’m so unhappy. The Patriots now have the most Super Bowl appearances. Tom Brady has the most Super Bowl wins among quarterbacks. Bill Belichick has the most Super Bowls for a coach. It’s all just so devastating. Because you know who are the only bigger ---------s than the New England Patriots players? Every single New England Patriots fan. 

• Next year’s Super Bowl will be held in Minneapolis. The Vikings have a dome, so lucky for the fans during the actual game, but have any of the people who made this decision ever actually been in Minnesota in February? The high today is 13 degrees. Without the windchill.

• This article features 51 facts about Super Bowl 51, and it numbers them all in Roman numerals, except for #50. Did they think we’d all get thrown by “L”? Or that we wouldn’t be able to piece it together from the 50 other context clues we had?

• I am soooooo sad about Teddy Bridgewater! The Minnesota Vikings’ QB blew out his knee in training camp this season, missing all of the 2016 season. Now, it’s being reported that he’s going to miss all of 2017 too, since the damage to his knee requires more than a year-and-a-half recovery period. Yes, of course, the Vikings are my mortal enemy, but how do you not feel bad for this kid? It would not be surprising for this injury to turn out to be career-ending, but I really, really hope that he’s able to come back in 2018 and play great. (Not too great, though. He is still a Viking.)

• Minnesota fans must be extra depressed since that means another season of Sam Bradford. Sam Bradford’s probably not too excited about it, either.

"Pleeaaassee! Somebody help me! This isn't about
the game anymore! I don't want to die!"

• The Pro Bowl was played, reportedly, though who knows because no one watched it. The final score was 20-13 AFC, which is really, really low considering that no defense was played. On that note, since the players don’t play defense, which I totally understand in the Pro Bowl, they should make it two-hand touch or something so that the offensive players have to actually try.

• Speaking of trying, one player in the Pro Bowl did try, and I absolutely love him for it. Kirk Cousins, who is a free agent looking for a big payday, threw a pass that was tipped and intercepted. The intecepter returned it a ways, then lateraled it to a teammate, who was headed for the endzone when my man Cousins chased him down and stripped the ball! Now, Cousins’ team did not recover the fumble and that was pretty much the end of the game, but STILL! How do you not appreciate that man’s effort?

• I watched the NFL Honors show so you didn’t have to. By far the best line of the night from host Keegan-Michael Key: “Dak and Zeke led the Dallas Cowboys to the NFC’s number one seed. And even though they’re both rookies, they looked like Cowboys veterans in the way they immediately lost in the playoffs.”  Hahahahahahaha it’s funny because it’s true.

• Key also got a zing in on Green Bay: “The playoffs got really great ratings this year. For instance, the NFC Championship was watched by 46 million people -- and the Packers’ secondary.”

• Can someone tell me why the BLEEP Jerral Jones was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame? Saying as, ya know, he never played in the NFL?

Maybe there'd be more room for guys like Terrell Owens if
we didn't include people who weren't in the NFL.

• The best part of the NFL Honors was Jordy Nelson winning Comeback Player of the Year!!

• Besides Packers winning, the other best part of these awards shows is getting to see Green Bay players all dressed up and looking dapper.

(I cropped out his fiancee.)

• Some clever fans introduced us to Sideline Ninja’s non-superhero alter ego: Nerdy Jelson!

• It was a roller coaster year for Green Bay. There were a lot of highs, but it eventually ended with disappointment. I feel good about 2017, though. It'll be our year! Till next season, Packers fans.

It Ends with a Whimper

• So the Green Bay Packers lost to the Atlanta Falcons by 23 points in the NFC Championship … and it wasn’t even as close as the score suggests.

• From the opening moments, the Atlanta Falcons had their way. The Packers defense wasn’t even a speed bump to them. The Falcons’ own drops were the best defense of the game. I’ll make this quick, like ripping off a bandaid: Atlanta had 493 yards, six touchdowns, and no turnovers. They only punted twice the entire game. Matt Ryan completed 71% of his passes (really? Because it felt like at least 96%) and finished with a passer rating of 139.4.

• I feel bad for ripping our absolutely dreadful defense because they were such a ragtag bunch. They were pretty much already on their third-string before losing Micah Hyde, Kentrell Brice, and Jake Ryan. (Who was even in secondary for them with Hyde and Brice down?? They were already playing out of position because of injuries.) I don’t have the heart to condemn players who were just out-talented by the Falcons’ top-ranked offense. 

Yes, he dropped this interception.

• The injuries hit the offensive line hard, too. The Packers lost Lane Taylor (knee), TJ Lang (foot), and Bryan Bulaga (concussion). In the final series, the Packers only had four offensive linemen, and nose tackle Letroy Guion had to come in and play right guard, with the other linemen telling him what to do as the play unfolded. So that was depressing.

• Poor TJ Lang! The guard, who broke his foot earlier in the season, missed several weeks, came back, played great, and earned his first Pro Bowl honor, broke the same foot on Sunday. Fortunately it was not a more serious injury, considering that he’s now a free agent, but that's still a rough time to get hurt. 

• The Green Bay defense was numbing to watch, but it’s not as if the offense did much with the few opportunities they had. Unfortunately, it’s tough to find a rhythm when you’re only on the field for 10 minutes in the entire first half. Seriously, the worst approach to playing the best offense in the league? Give them a two-to-one advantage in time of possession.

Dropping passes also did not help.

• Look, I certainly am not shocked by Atlanta winning. That seemed like a very likely outcome going in. But watching the Pack get shut out in the first half? It was all a horrible nightmare. I couldn't believe my eyes. 

• Then giving myself a pep talk all during halftime, telling myself the Packers could turn this around, only to watch Green Bay start the second half with a three-and-out and then allow a 73-yard touchdown within the first 70 seconds:

• And slowly accepting that was literally nothing Green Bay could do to stop the bleeding:

• The problem with a team like the Falcons is just a couple of errors, and the dominoes start to fall -- fast. It became abundantly clear fairly early on that Atlanta was going to be scoring on every single possession. The hope was to get the ball in Aaron Rodgers’ hands as much as possible and try to limit the Falcons to field goals on at least a few of their drives. The wheels came off almost immediately, however: the Falcons scored on the opening possession, the Packers missed a field goal, the Falcons made a field goal, and the Packers fumbled just outside the redzone. Instead of 10-10, it was 10-0, and when the Falcons scored a touchdown on their next play, the floodgates were opened.

• I really feel bad for all my Packers and I don’t want to kick anyone when he’s down and we win as a team, lose as a team, and all that, but if there’s one person who maybe I feel just the slightest bit tempted to heap blame upon, I’m looking at you, Rip. That fumble was killer. In so many ways. You just can’t do that in a conference championship, Yukon!

• The biggest surprise to me besides, ya know, getting blown out of the water, was Atlanta’s pass rush. Though they have some real playmakers -- including sack leader Vic Beasley Jr. -- the Packers’ offensive line has been so impressive in pass coverage, I really wasn’t worried. The Falcons got pressure on Rodgers all day long, though, while also keeping him in the pocket, which few other teams have been able to do.

• The saddest part is that such a beatdown ruins the magic feeling of the season. If it had been a close, heartbreaking loss, we could all find solace in the incredible effort of the team, how many injuries they fought through, how they won eight straight games, how they started 4-6 and still ended up just one game from the Super Bowl. It was a crazy season with so many unbelievable plays and comebacks and wins! But alas, the ignominious exit mars that.

• Atlanta’s head coach Dan Quinn must be part robot. He barely reacted to the Gatorade shower at all!

In his defense, he did slightly raise his eyebrows about 15 seconds after this.

• There was only one small glimmer of joy this week and that was Jordy being an absolute beast and braving two broken ribs to play. He had six catches for 67 yards and a touchdown, but you can’t quantify his toughness.

• He had to wear kevlar padding to protect his ribs, but that still didn't stop him from playing. 

What a man.

• Sigh. All in all, I’m handling things well.

• It was a very impressive final four for the NFL.

• Seattle Seahawks corner Richard Sherman played the second half of the season with an MCL injury, which is impressive, but also confusing, because aren’t NFL teams required to list injuries on their weekly injury report? When asked why this information had not been announced, head coach Pete Carroll responded “I don’t know,” and “Honestly, I didn’t even realized we hadn’t revealed it.” (Hmm, which is it?) Anyway, I believe Pete. His shining character and forthrightness have certainly earned him the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think he’d do anything underhanded or illegal to gain an advantage over an opponent. 

• The poor Pittsburgh Steelers got run over by the New England Patriots. Their worst fears were realized when Le’Veon Bell left the game in the first quarter with a groin injury. From there, the game got out of hand quick and New England cruised to an easy 36-17 win.

• It was cold during the game, what with it being January in New England and all, but luckily Tom Brady was able to keep warm on the sideline by sitting inside a tent. (This is not photoshopped.)

There's obviously some cheating going on in there. He's get PED
injections or deflating footballs or having the purified blood
of small children put into him.

• The playoffs have not been great entertainment for neutral fans. Aside from the Packers-Cowboys thriller and the Steelers-Chiefs game in the divisional round, all the playoff games have been decided by 13 points or more.

• I don’t usually like to cheer for teams that crush all my dreams, but I am happy for Atlanta. I like Matt Ryan and Julio Jones, and Quinn's done a great job with the defense. They’ve been good for awhile, but never could get things to click on all cylinders before. Plus, the franchise has never won a Super Bowl. And the New England Patriots are the worst, so I’ll definitely be rooting for the Falcons. 

• Goodness, if the Falcons need any bulletin board materials to fire them up against all their doubters, they can just remind themselves that more people bet money that the Cleveland Browns would win the Super Bowl than people who thought Atlanta would win. That’s so insulting!

• The main thing we don’t want is those cheating cheats up in New England to cheat their way to another championship. We as a country are pretty divided right now after a contentious election season, but I think the one thing that can bring us all together again is root against the Patriots. Even if you’re on the fence about the cheating cheats, just imagine how awful all the Patriots fans squawking about Deflategate and Tom Brady in their monstrous accents for months will be if they win. 

Who would you rather listen to all offseason: Patriots fans celebrating being
cheating cheats? Or happy Falcons fans celebrating their first-ever Super Bowl win?

• It's tough to face the end of the Packers season, but at least we went farther than the Dallas Cowboys, and at least we ripped out their heart and stomped on it a few times. It means it wasn’t a totally wasted season.

Conference Championships

• The weekend was pretty boring without the Green Bay Packers. There are going to have to be a lot of superfluous Jordy pictures in this post to keep my interest.

I couldn't be bothered to come up with a real title for this post.

• Both of the championship games were rather surprising. I definitely would not have picked the Denver Broncos and Peyton Manning’s lifeless, noodle arm against the reigning champion New England Patriots. That said, I’m ECSTATIC the Pats lost!

• The dominant Denver defense made it a long and rough day for Tom Brady. The New England quarterback was sacked four times and hit 20 times!! Brady had 310 yards, but completed fewer than half is throws, and threw two interceptions. (Goodbye, offensive line coach.)

• The Broncos weren’t any easier on the run game. Tom Brady is not exactly known for his mobility but he led the entire Patriots team in rushing!

• The Denver offense was exactly lights out -- with only 244 TOTAL yards -- but they didn’t need to be. The defense carried them all the way to the Super Bowl.

• Poor New England kicker Stephen Gostkowski bore a lot of the blame for the two-point loss. He missed an extra point after New England scored in the first quarter, a miss that would force the Pats to go for two after their fourth-quarter touchdown, which they failed to convert. And there are your two points. Gostkowski has been one of the league’s best kickers in the league, and the miss ended a streak of 523 straight extra points made. Poor guy.

• You want to know what makes it even more painful for the Patriots? This screenschot that shows Rob Gronkowski open on the failed two-point conversion.

• Awww, look how cute Peyton Manning’s son is! He came with his dad to the post-game press conference, but got a little shy.

• I had to get off Twitter after the game to avoid the schmaltzy Brady-Manning tributes. They play football; let’s stop pretending that they’re Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant or something.

These two stout-hearted men haveth set upon the iron o' grid
in many a great engagement. Whither these great souls shall
meet again henceforth, we trust only the Almighty knoweth.

• Last week, New England Patriots backup linebacker (and Notre Dame grad!) Darius Fleming played with 22 stitches in his leg, which he got while rescuing a woman trapped in her car. There was a car accident that left the woman’s car without power, and she was unable to escape her car. Fleming kicked out the window and helped her out of the car. What a good guy! Way to go, Darius!

Rescuing a woman in distress is just the kind of thing Jordy would do!

• The Carolina Panthers-Arizona Cardinals game was painful to watch, so I’ll cut to the chase: Arizona quarterback Carson Palmer had six turnovers on the way to a 49-15 soul-crushing defeat.

• I have, have, have to think that Palmer’s injured index finger on his throwing hand played a part. He injured the finger in Week 15 against Green Bay, after which he had a terrible game against the Seattle Seahawks (lost 36-6), a not-very-good-until-the-freaking-fourth-quarter game against Green Bay last week, then the stinker this week. The guy had 11 interceptions and four fumbles through 16 games in the regular season, and four interceptions and two fumbles on Sunday alone! It just has to be the finger injury. I can’t fathom another reason why the number one offense in the league and the quarterback with the third highest passer rating in the regular season suddenly looked so terrible.

• Although I really wanted the Cardinals to win, it was hard not to be impressed by the Panthers. Look, for example, at Carolina receiver Ted Ginn, Jr. on this Cam Newton interception. The guy absolutely flies down the field to stop the pick from becoming a pick-six. (In fact, the Cardinals didn’t gain any points off the turnover because on the next possession, Carson Palmer -- you’ll never guess -- threw an interception.) Keep in mind as Ginn is streaking down almost the entire length of the field that his team was up 17 points at the time.

• With five-and-a-half minutes left in the game, up 34-15, Carolina scored another touchdown …. and decided to go for two. Perhaps it was because Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians had reportedly called Carolina the worse second-half team in the league at halftime, but I don’t really care what anyone said --  if you go for two when you’re up 25 points, your kicker’s foot better be broken, otherwise you guys are being @$%holes. Poor show.

• The Panthers suffered a couple of tough injuries. Safety Roman Harper left the game with an eye injury after a hit to the head. The safety has had Lasik eye surgery, and the hit caused the corneal flap over his eye to shift, temporarily obscuring his vision. Harper says the injury won’t keep him out of the Super Bowl, but still.

• Panthers linebacker Thomas Davis also says his injury won’t keep him out of the Super Bowl, except, I’m not totally sure about that because his injury is a broken arm. I totally understand wanting to play in the Super Bowl -- it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity -- and I admire his toughness,  but, uh, buddy, a broken arm is a really, really good reason to sit out a game that includes a lot of violent contact. I’m no doctor, but I would really strongly suggest cheering your team on from the safety of the sidelines.

• When asked what nickname he would give himself if he could, Carolina linebacker Luke Kuechly responded, “I don’t need a nickname. My name is Luke.” I think I’m going to go buy the mynameisluke.com domain and put a copyright on that same line for a book title (with a movie option) because that would be the coolest title ever.

My Name Is Luke™

• Kuechly’s pretty cool, right? So you can sorta understand this guy who really, really, really wanted to high-five Luke.

• I guess Carolina deserves to go to the Super Bowl, but I still feel really bad for Carson Palmer. He seems like such a nice guy. Seriously, watch this commercial of his and try to not like him.

• I like the above video, but really it was just an excuse to segue into Jordy’s own commercial. He’s so adorable! He’s a great dad, he spends his offseason farming, and he substitute taught with his new-found free time. (Those lucky third-grade bastards!) Isn’t he so awesome and sweet and manly and cool??

• Let’s just jump back a week and remember how Andy Reid titanicked the Kansas City Chiefs with his clock management late in the game. Remember how the Chiefs had the ball with 6:29 left, down two scores? And remember how, despite the previous sentence, they took 5 minutes and 16 seconds to score and refused to use their timeouts? And didn’t let the time crunch dissuade them from huddling on offense on the drive? And were essentially betting their postseason lives on recovering an onside kick? Well, after having a week to think on it, Andy Reid reiterated that the clock was “handled right” in the game.

• In Packer news, head coach Mike McCarthy had his season-ending press conference, and he didn’t pull any punches. He said what we were all thinking when he singled out Richard Rodgers and Davante Adams as players who “definitely need to step up.” But it was his comments on running back Eddie Lacy, who had weight issues all season, that caught the most attention: “Eddie Lacy has a lot of work to do. I think I’m stating the obvious. His offseason last season was not good enough. He has to get it done. He cannot play at the weight he did this year.”

Unless...

• There are also rumors that McCarthy is “fed up” with Ted Thompson’s extreme reluctance to sign free agents. This has long been a bone of contention for impatient Packers fans who disagree with Thompson’s rigid adherence to a draft-and-develop philosophy. Now, I understand the frustration when Green Bay has a crying need and they do nothing about it. But free agency is crapshoot with low odds. The players worth getting usually require overpaying, and the ones that don’t require overpaying … well, they’re free agents because other teams don’t want them. The Indianapolis Colts are a prime example. They were listed as early “winners” in the offseason, but few, if any, of their signings worked out. Here’s an excerpt from Bill Barnwell’s NFL teams’ Christmas wish lists article:

• Indianapolis Colts: Store credit or a full refund for Ryan Grigson's veteran shopping spree. Andre Johnson's 418 receiving yards are good for 97th in the league. Trent Cole has just three sacks. Frank Gore is averaging 3.6 yards per rushing attempt, the worst figure he has posted by a full half-yard over a professional season. And Todd Herremans lost his starting job after two games. Kendall Langford's snaps as a decent two-way defensive end might represent the best move Grigson made this offseason.

• Another example: Vernon Davis. The Packers, completely devoid of a reliable tight end -- Richard Rodgers was our #1, for Pete’s sake -- looked to be a reasonable landing place for Davis after he was released by the 49ers. Many Green Bay fans expressed frustration when Davis was snatched up by the Broncos. However, in 10 regular season games with Denver, Davis had 20 catches, 90 yards, and zero touchdowns. In his last four games, including two playoff games, Davis has zero catches. It’s not fun or exciting, but I do tend to see things Thompson’s way as far as free agency goes.

• Speaking of free agents, it looks likely that the Packers will let free agent cornerback Casey Hayward leave this summer, which makes me very sad. I love Casey, but the team has too much talent at cornerback, including two impressive rookies in Quinten Rollins and Damarious Randall. In fact, of all rookie corners, Rollins was top in opposing quarterbacks’ ratings. Yay, Q!  Way to go!

This gif is from Power Rangers. I didn't have to look that up or anything.
I just recognized them on sight. Pink Ranger, Blue Ranger, Green Ranger. 

• By the way, did we already talk about how amazing it is that Rollins only ever played one year of football in college?? That’s crazy! He was a basketball star at Miami, played one season of football, was named the MAC defensive player of the year, and then was drafted in the second round of the NFL draft.

• The most outrageous thing I read this week was Jordy Nelson telling the story of how his future wife dumped him when they were in seventh grade. What could she have been thinking? Did she think she could do better?? Did she not see the future Sideline Ninja in him? Was she so convinced that she could get him back? What! what could have made her do something so foolish? SHE NEVER DESERVED HIM!