Tag: Circus Bowl

The Conference Championship games are tomorrow with the Washington Commanders going to Philadelphia to face the Eagles and the Buffalo Bills facing off against the Kansas City Chiefs in Kansas City. I consider these the last true games in professional football. The Super Bowl is such a farce, an example of the NFL selling its heart and soul for ratings and money, that I do not consider it a true pro football game even though a NFL championship is riding on the outcome. More on that later in the blog. What is interesting about the combatants is that they all got to the championship game not so much by them winning their previous playoff game but by their opponents all losing the divisional round games. In all 4 games the losing team outgained the winning team, some by pretty wide margins. The Houston Texans outgained Kansas City 336 to 212. They were the only losing team not to turn the ball over. They had one of the best opening 2nd half drives in the entire playoffs by going 82 yards on 15 plays and eating up over 10 minutes of clock. So how the hell did they lose. They missed the extra point to still trail 13-12 but they made two strategic blunders. One in the first half when they attempted a 55 yard field goal in less than ideal conditions with a kicker who had a bad record on long field goals in the best of conditions. This gave Kansas City great field position which they took advantage to score a touchdown and take a 13-3 lead. With 10 minutes to go in the game the Texans elected to go for a 4 and 10 at the Kansas City 40 yard line trailing 20-12. They did not make it and though the Texans defense forced a 3 and out the field had been flipped. The Baltimore Ravens outgained Buffalo 416 to 273 but lost the turnover battle 3-0 and dropped an easy catch for 2 points that most likely would have sent the game to overtime. The Lions made the turnover into an art form, turning the ball over 5 times to gift wrap the win for the Commanders. They gained over 500 yards on offense and game was not close. The Rams had two very costly fumble turnovers and allowed Saquon Barkley to have two long touchdown runs to lose 28-22 despite outgaining the Eagles 402 to 350. All four winning teams had zero turnovers.

Looking at all 4 teams they are not all that powerful looking but have no real weaknesses. There is a lot of social media and real media talk about how the officials favor the Chiefs. The stats really do not support this. The Chiefs have been penalized just 20 yards less than their opponents. The Bills 277 yards less than their opponents. Both the Eagles and Commanders have been penalized about 100 yards more than their opponents. There are not that many things that these teams do super well statistically, in other words be in the top 5. The Chiefs are no. 3 in 3rd down efficiency, No. 4 in points allowed, and 4th best at not turning the ball over. The Bills are no. 1 in turnover ratio with a whopping +24, no. 2 in scoring, and no. 1 in not turning the ball over. The Eagles are No. 1 in yards allowed, No. 2 in yards gained on the ground, and No. 2 in the fewest points allowed. The Commanders are No. 4 in 1st downs and No.5 in scoring. It is obvious that the Eagles love to run the ball but Jalen Hurts has a bum knee going into this game. He is thinking of wearing a brace. The Commanders are probably going to key on Barkley and force Hurts to run to see if he will and how well. For the Redskins, will Jayden Daniels be able to continue to shine agaist a great defense and championship game pressure. Daniels threw for 5 TD’s late in the season at home against the Eagles to pull out a 36-33 win where Jalen Hurts was injured in the 1st quarter. To me this game will simply come down to quarterback play. Whoever plays the best his team wins the game. A lot will depend on that knee. The Bills and Chief meet in the 2nd game with Kansas City trying to keep its hopes alive for 3 straight Super Bowl wins. When the Bills played the Chiefs in the regular season and won 30-21 they even won the turnover battle then 2-1. I feel they will have to do better than that if they are going to win tomorrow. Will somebody finally put a stop to Travis Kelce. How in the hell does he get so wide open. If the Bills can be the first team to basically shut him down to say 3 catches and zero touchdowns then they will have a legitimate shot to win the game. Of course the wild card in all of this is Patrick Mahomes. Can he do it again? I would love to see a Bills-Commanders Super Bowl. While speaking of the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl is so wrong on so many fronts. I have written about this before but I will go quickly through them before I rename the Super Bowl. Taking a week off between the Championship game and the Super Bowl. Wrong. Playing the game at a neutral site. Wrong bend over supporting regular season and playoff fans. The long half time. Wrong, most likely has a negative impact on the quality of play. Being a slave to high ratings. Wrong, 2/3rd of the people who watch, watch because of the commercials and the half time show. There are other things but I just can’t go on. However, because of all of these things I think it should be renamed the Circus Bowl. The Circus Bowl is much more descriptive of the event than Super Bowl. Recently the games have been better but for the most part the game itself has not been all that super. This will be Super Bowl 59 and the vast majority of the games have been real clunkers. I feel the event itself has caused most of this. Regardless, I will be watching but only the game itself. Thank you, DVR, the greatest invention known to man.