Wild-card turkeys

Here's how the Giants (and Browns) really screwed up

Wild-card weekend -- the story behind the story:

49ERS 39, GIANTS 38

For two straight days, the New York papers were full of outrage. The second-day outrage was justified. Referee Ron Winter had screwed up and the Giants should have been allowed to re-kick the 41-yarder they blew at the end of the game. Most likely with a new snapper, Chris Bober. Maybe he would have screwed up the snap as badly as Trey Junkin did, maybe he wouldn’t. We’ll never know. I have a feeling that this is just a cockamamie operation, as it has been all season, and to stick a guy in there cold, without any warmups, is still another formula for disaster.

The first day’s outrage filled the Monday papers. Terrell Owens had attacked Giants defenders not once but twice, the first time after the Niners' final touchdown, then again after the failed two-point conversion. Shaun Williams retaliated and he was bounced from the game, but worst of all, the penalty that would have cost the Niners 15 yards on the subsequent kickoff was scrubbed by the offsetting fouls.

On TV, FOX's Cris Collinsworth had gone positively berserk at the dumbness of Williams' retaliation. Putting all this together, you get the feeling that there's a sizable body of opinion that feels that this somehow cost the Giants the game. It cost them nothing. Except for a little blood-stirring, it was insignificant.

Delvin Joyce returned the kickoff to the Giants' 48. It was the only significant kick return he got off all day. So if the Niners had been penalized 15 yards and forced to kick from their 15, would the Giants have wound up in any better shape? Would Joyce have gotten the same good kick return, or something similar to his others? I'm guessing he'd probably have ended up at about the same spot. And even if the Giants eventually wound up closer and had the chance to try a shorter field goal, so what? If you have a snapper who can't get the ball back, what difference does it make?

To me, the crucial part of the game came with a little over three minutes left and the Giants holding a 38-33 lead. They had a fourth-and-1 on the Niners' 24. Do you kick the field goal or try to pick up the yard? Let's look at the upside and downside of each.

The Niners had scored on their last three possessions. The Giants defense was falling apart. Worse yet, it was exhausted, and still worse, the pass rush was exhausted. I was watching Michael Strahan all day. The Niners' right tackle Scott Gragg had annihilated him, and that was all by himself, with no help. By the late fourth quarter Strahan was merely going through the motions.

Kick a field goal, and what do you have? An eight-point lead, and who's to say that the Niners couldn't come down the field and get their TD and the deuce to tie things? They had already done it twice. You have a 41-year old snapper, Junkin, who has been out of football, and that wasn't because he was still efficient. Jim Fassel had mentioned that Junkin looked good in practice. What the hell does that mean? Anyone can snap in practice, with no pressure. Try it at the end of a playoff game, in a hostile stadium, with some guy across the line beating on your head. Plus, the Giants' kicker, Matt Bryant, was ending a shaky regular season and had shown that if anything was the least bit off -- snap, hold, etc. -- he had trouble adjusting.

So, do you put this field goal unit on the field or do you try to get the yard? Can you find a play to pick up a yard? What are the odds? And just look at the upside if you get your first down. You eat more clock and give your defense more rest. You make the Niners burn their remaining timeouts. The best possible thing that can happen is that you score a TD and the game's over, but even if you're stopped, you've still given your kicker a shorter attempt, maybe even a chip shot. I know, if the snapper can't snap, what difference does it make? But the extra points were OK, right? And finally, even if you're stopped on fourth and one, you're still giving the Niners eight more yards to travel than if you'd missed the field goal.

En fin -- in football, in business, in life, when faced with a crucial job to get done, you place your faith in your most reliable people, not in nebbishes. Which means you turn it over to Tiki Barber and Kerry Collins and that bunch, instead of that motley field goal crew. The Giants chose the motleys. I think it was a bad choice.

STEELERS 36, BROWNS 33

The script was somewhat similar to the ending of the Giants-Niners game, but the execution was different. Pittsburgh drove the length of the field twice in the late going, to put up 15 points and eliminate a comfortable Cleveland lead. Unlike the Giants, who tried to mix up their defenses during their disaster period, the Browns went vanilla. Three- and four-man rushes, backed up by soft zones.

I'd seen Butch Davis do this earlier in the season and I'd seen him get beaten that way. I thought he had learned his lesson, but I guess not. The defense was lay-back-and-catch-it. Here, we'll give you yards, just not too many of them, OK? No blitzing, not even any imaginative stunting, nothing except the slow burn.

And while all this was going on, there were the sideline shots of Davis looking kind of confused, kind of annoyed, angry at times, anything but intelligent, wondering what was happening to his team and his lead. God, I hate this kind of football. Then, afterward, I'm sure he was in the locker, telling his guys, Well, we tried our best. If I were a member of that defensive unit, I'd have to wonder.

FALCONS 27, PACKERS 7

This one came from nowhere. We all knew the Packers were kind of on a downer, after the way they blew the Jets game, heading into the playoffs. After the Falcons beat them it was mentioned that the Packers couldn't shake the malaise that had affected them. But how about the Falcons? They'd lost three out of their last four, going in. They shouldn't have even been in the postseason, except that New Orleans made it easy for them by folding against Carolina. Talk about coming into the playoffs on a slide.

But they were energized for Lambeau Field, and their operation really was nice to watch. An interesting part of the game, from my standpoint, came early in the second half. You could tell that some very harsh things must have been said in the Packers locker room because they came out with a real killer instinct, and Brett Favre put together one of his zip-zap scoring drives to open the period. Yes, the score was 24-7, Atlanta, but the crowd was buzzing because the Pack was on the way back.

So what does Atlanta do? March the length of the field on its own to put up three points and remove almost seven minutes from the clock. This is what is known as a statement. Of course, we didn't know it at the time but that Green Bay drive had cost the Packers Ahman Green and Donald Driver. Terry Glenn was already out with a concussion, as he usually is at this stage of the game. There just weren't enough weapons left for the Pack.

But I'm still thinking about the way the Falcons answered that energized Green Bay drive with one of their own. There's an uncharted element with this team, and I give it more of a chance against the Eagles than, well ... than the odds-makers do.

JETS 41, COLTS 0

Never mind what tricky defensive schemes the Jets put up to combat Peyton Manning's change-ups and last-minute calls. The hard fact is that he couldn't throw the ball in the ocean. He was inaccurate on practically everything. Even little four-yard checkdowns were hitting his guys on the wrong side. I've seen him have spells like this before, but never this bad. It lasted for just about the entire game.

If he'd been on the money, then the game would have been closer, but there was no way the Colts defense was going to slow down that Jets attack. What do I see there? A truly functional offensive line, thanks to the return of LG Dave Szott, who free-agented over from Washington during the offseason to firm up the unit, but who had been out until a few weeks ago.

Left guard was their weakest link up front. Now it's their strongest. In addition to being a fine drive-blocker and trapper, Szott has managed to bring a solidity to the unit that lifts it to a new level. How it'll do against a Raiders front that can effectively alternate as many as eight players, I don't know. I'm guessing it'll be just fine. Everybody knows about Chad Pennington and his army of offensive weapons, but the difference now is that there's really a good base from which to operate.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Paul Zimmerman covers the NFL for the magazine and CNNSI.com. His "Inside Football" column and Mailbag appear weekly on CNNSI.com. To send a question to Dr. Z, click here.

 

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