Steelers MMQB: Conference Championship Weekend Wrap Up
By Kim Myers
What We Learned in Conference Championship Weekend in the NFL:
- Ray Lewis is the only Raven who shanks things
- Brady gets outplayed but still punches his ticket to his 5th Super Bowl appearance
- Miscues keep both Harbaughs out of the Super Bowl
- Eli proves to be the best playoff quarterback in the NFC
If I could spend today just watching the reaction of the Ratbirds when that kick went wide left, I’d be a happy girl. Simply priceless. Even without the Steelers playing this Sunday we were treated to some exciting games with both conference championships being decided by a total of 6 points. In spite of the exciting play for both games the outcomes were mostly determined by mistakes made by the respective Harbaugh-coached team. Just a side note for one second, are those two guys not the biggest douche-bags you’ve ever seen? Yeah I think so too. Moving on, so Super Bowl XLVI will be a rematch of Super Bowl XLII, except without that whole “perfect season” on the line and Eli going into the game playing much better than Brady.
After all the criticism of Joe Flacco this week (a lot of it coming from his own teammates), the underachieving quarterback actually had a better game than Brady did. The Patriots defense held Ray Rice in check but allowed Flacco to connect on some very big plays. Being a Steeler fan, choosing between the Ravens and the Patriots is almost like picking between the electric chair and lethal injection. It almost appeared as if the Ravens had a shot to reach the promise land if it wasn’t for those last few seconds of the game. First Lee Evans allows Pats backup safety Sterling Moore to bat down a potential game winning touchdown in the endzone. Then after some awesome clock and timeout management by John Harbaugh, Billy Cundiff trotted out on the field for a 32 yard field goal to send the game into OT. Wide left. Not even blocked, laces out, just a pure shank of the ball to the left. Instead of Ball So Hard University, Terrell Suggs in his “Oh my God!” on the sidelines is now a part of Ball So Wide Left University.
Who knows if this same Baltimore team will ever be able to advance to this level again? Certainly, Ray “Stabby” Lewis is staring down the end of his career after having such a signature performance yesterday being involved in zero plays. If Flacco and Co. can’t take advantage of sweeping the Steelers and taking the AFC North and a poorly playing Brady in the AFC Championship game, where do they go from there? The road won’t always be laid out like this for them to finally have a chance to back up their talking. Fortunately, Suggs dropping out of playing in next week’s Pro Bowl allowed Steelers OLB James Harrison to be added to the roster.
On the other side of the country in a sloppy stadium a red hot Giants team capitalized on a blunder by San Francisco’s Kyle Williams who fumbled a punt in overtime allowing the Giants in just 5 plays to send Lawrence Tynes to kick the game winning field goal. Eli powered through being sacked 6 times to go 32 of 58 for 316 yards and 2 touchdowns. Clearly the Giants realized they weren’t going to be successful running the ball against the San Fran defense so they went to the air.
The Giants are the red hot team going into the Super Bowl but shouldn’t count on another poor performance by Brady. It will be a rematch of Super Bowl XVII, but a whole different set of circumstances. The Giants are the team looking like the better, more complete team going into the big game. Although both teams capitalized off of mistakes to earn their victories, the Giants clearly put together a more impressive victory than the Pats did. If Lee Evans holds onto that ball in the endzone, that game is over and the Ratbirds would have been holding up the Lamar Hunt trophy. If Billy Cundiff’s kick doesn’t sail to the left, who knows what happens. But the Giants definitely earned their spot in the big game by totally dominating Atlanta in the first round, shutting down the defending champs in the second round, and outlasting the Niners last night.
The way the two Jagoff brothers teams lost were just awful. As a fan you’d like to sympathize with the fans of those teams but as a Steelers fan, you don’t because they’re jagoffs anyway. I told myself that I wouldn’t even bother watching the Super Bowl if it would have been the Harbaugh-Bowl. I wouldn’t have been able to handle that much jagoffery in one setting for it to be even slightly enjoyable. Fortunately, we won’t have to deal with that. In the mean time we can enjoy seeing some of our boys live it up in Hawaii for the Pro Bowl.
Follow me on Twitter @Kimmy_KimKimM