NFL Championship Games

My predictions


Steelers 16

Ravens 12



Eagles 28


Cards 24

My predictions...

I hope you're wrong on both games

Wait, that's not a prediction.

Go Steelers!
Go Cardinals!

catbox_9 wrote:

My predictions...

I hope you're wrong on both games

Wait, that's not a prediction.

I hope hes wrong too, I would love to see the Cards and Ravens in the Super Bowl.

Saturday, January 17, 2009
AFC Championship game: Ravens at Steelers
For Steelers, Ravens, familiarity breeds contempt
Detroit News wire services

PITTSBURGH -- Let those other teams wear throwback uniforms. The Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers are throwback teams, descendants of the single-wing days of leather helmets, canvas pants and single-platoon football.

Their coaches are named John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin, but during a different time it's easy to picture these Ravens and Steelers being coached by George Halas or Curly Lambeau. They hit hard, play with a fury, own a yard-wide mean streak and give an inch as grudgingly as if they were giving up a first down.

In an era of spread formations, five-receiver sets, two-deep zones and a gimmick a minute from some offensive coordinators, the Ravens and Steelers win with defense and toughness. Let other teams try to outfox you -- they'll outhit you, and flash a smile while doing so.

Only last week, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger quick kicked, of all things. If that's not something out of a Sammy Baugh playbook, what is?

The Ravens and Steelers are so alike in style, attitude and makeup that it's difficult to tell one from the other, so perhaps it's fitting the two rivals will play for the AFC championship on Sunday night. If this isn't the NFL's version of a backyard brawl, what is?

May the nastiest team win.

"When you get two bullies going up against each other, it's about who is the strongest bully," Steelers linebacker James Farrior said.

The Steelers are playing their third AFC Championship Game in five seasons, but their first against a division opponent since meeting and beating the Houston Oilers (now the Titans) during the 1978-79 seasons.

Back then, a frustrated Oilers coach Bum Phillips threatened to kick down the door and finally beat the Steelers at their own game and win a title. The Oilers couldn't and, nearly 30 years later, another division team is trying to beat the Steelers at their own game.

"We are very similar teams," Ravens All-Pro linebacker Ray Lewis said. "They have a lot of the same type personalities we have. You have ultimate competitors on both sides of the football. I think that's where it kind of stirs up."

If Ed Reed of the Ravens isn't the NFL's best safety, Troy Polamalu of the Steelers probably is. If Lewis isn't the league's nastiest player, James Harrison of the Steelers may be. Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward was voted by fans as the most despised visiting player in Baltimore. Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco looks and plays like a slightly younger version of Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger; Flacco is going for an AFC title barely a year after playing in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly I-AA) title game at Delaware.

Pittsburgh has the NFL's best defense statistically in 17 years and Baltimore is second. This is the first time the league's two top defenses are meeting in a conference championship game since Rams vs. Cowboys during the 1978 season.

The Ravens were fourth in rushing, the Steelers an unusually low 23rd, but a now-healthy Willie Parker has restored Pittsburgh's traditionally powerful running game by gaining 262 yards in his last two games.

"I think Pittsburgh has an awesome tradition, obviously, with the Steel Curtain and everything going back," Reed said. "And I think we have a tradition around here."

In this rivalry, the on-field jawing is ceaseless. Early in the week, Ravens wide receiver Derrick Mason got it going early by warning the Steelers, "The Ravens are coming, so prepare yourself."

"I don't know if I'm supposed to be scared or laugh at that," Ward said.

The Steelers have won three of four against the Ravens and seven of eight in Heinz Field, where Pittsburgh is 0-2 in AFC Championship Games. This is the Steelers' 14th appearance in an AFC title game, tying the Raiders. They are 1-4 at home in AFC Championship Games over the last 29 years, losing to the Patriots at Heinz Field during the 2001 and 2004 seasons.

Both regular-season games between teams located only four hours apart were tight. The Steelers rallied for a 23-20 overtime victory after trailing 13-3 at home Sept. 29, then won the rematch 13-9 in Baltimore last month.

In that Dec. 14 game, the Steelers' fifth comeback victory this season was decided by a disputed, last-minute touchdown pass from Roethlisberger to Santonio Holmes, with referee Walt Coleman deciding upon review that Holmes inched the ball across the goal line.

"It's always going to come down to the last drive or the last play that ultimately defines the games," Steelers left tackle Max Starks said.

The couple of inches on that play may have meant the Steelers, not the Ravens, won the division title.

"Every blade of grass has to be defended on both sides," Holmes said. "The offense has to gain every inch they can."

Polamalu agreed, saying, "In other games, a 4- or 5-yard gain is nothing, like (when playing) the Indianapolis Colts. But a 5-yard gain in this game means so much."

Since the former Browns relocated to Baltimore in 1996, never has a Ravens-Steelers game meant this much.

Asked about the supposed difficulty of beating a good team three times in a season, Tomlin said, "I personally don't subscribe to that hocus-pocus." However, there have been only 11 sweeps in the 55 instances NFL teams met three times.

The Ravens have two other concerns: the Flacco factor and the fatigue factor.

As steady and as mostly error-free as Flacco has been, no rookie quarterback has led his team to the Super Bowl. Roethlisberger tried four years ago, but, despite the Steelers' 16-1 record, they were thumped by the Patriots 41-27.

And because of their Hurricane Ike-shifted bye, the Ravens are playing for an 18th consecutive week, possibly with a depleted cast because of injuries to cornerback Samari Rolle (groin), linebacker Terrell Suggs (shoulder) and Mason (thigh). Rolle appears unlikely to go and Suggs didn't practice all week.

The Ravens are trying to reach the Super Bowl as a sixth-seeded team, three years after the Steelers were the first to do so and a year after the Giants won while being seeded fifth.

"It's kind of crazy just thinking (about) the path that this team has taken throughout the season," safety Jim Leonhard said. "To be one win away from the Super Bowl is amazing."

Saturday, January 17, 2009
NFC Championship game: Eagles at Cardinals
Cardinals, Eagles defy expectations
Detroit News wire services

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- One by one, the players walked through the Arizona Cardinals' spacious locker room showing off their "Prove It" T-shirts. They might as well have been Philadelphia Eagles, too.

Is there any phrase more pertinent for Sunday's NFC championship game than the one adopted by the Cardinals? For both sides?

Consider, first, the NFC West champions.

The Cardinals haven't won a league title since 1947. They hadn't taken a division crown in 33 years before this season, when they managed it primarily by going 6-0 against weaklings San Francisco, Seattle and St. Louis. In matchups with some of the NFL's bully boys -- the Giants, Panthers and Patriots -- they lost by a combined 111-59.

Throw in a 48-20 Thanksgiving night roasting at Philadelphia and, well, "Prove It" indeed.

"It is a motivation thing," linebacker Karlos Dansby acknowledged. "We have to prove to the world that we can play at this level and play at a high level and try to win on this stage."

A stage few people outside of the Valley of the Sun imagined the Cardinals would reach this year. Even when, following an early clinching of the division, they turned around a December swoon by beating Seattle, a common description of the Cardinals was "the worst division winner in NFL history."

"It definitely put fuel to the fire," Dansby said. "We were motivated, and we had a lot of poise on the defense and on the offense."

Expected to lose to Atlanta in the wild-card round, the Cardinals won 30-24, outgaining the Falcons by 107 yards, getting three sacks and forcing three turnovers.

Most observers shrugged.

But when they went to Carolina, where the Cardinals fell 27-23 during the season, and romped 33-13, getting six takeaways, well, they certainly had proved something.

"I think we have corrected some things, made less mistakes," said Kurt Warner, one of the few Cardinals with any knowledge of championship game surroundings. Warner, the 1999 and 2001 NFL most valuable player who is 1-1 in Super Bowls, has been a settling force for Arizona (11-7).

"Guys have gone and focused on the details a little more. We have taken advantage of plays that are there to be made.

"What we saw happen against us in those games we lost we are starting to do now. When somebody else makes a mistake, you see us getting an interception ... You see us getting a 40- or 50-yard play. That is what the difference is in where we were down the stretch and where we are right now and how we have played in the playoffs."

The Eagles were in a much more dire situation in December. While the Cardinals were trying to get straightened out before the postseason, Philly was trying to figure out how to get into the playoffs, needing a lot of help.

Yet the Eagles got that help. Sure, they had to recover from Donovan McNabb's benching in a lopsided loss at Baltimore. And from a tie at lowly Cincinnati. And from a misstep at Washington in the penultimate week of the schedule.

But they also required cooperation from others.

So when the Week 17 requirements were for Tampa Bay to lose at home to the awful Raiders, and for Chicago to go to Houston and fall, and for the Eagles to beat the Cowboys in Philadelphia with the final wild-card spot on the line -- Philly, well, proved it.

Everything fell the Eagles' way. So much so that they drew a good matchup in the first round of the playoffs and won 26-14 at Minnesota.

And even the next round wasn't fearful because the Eagles had won at the defending champion Giants on Dec 7. Their 23-11 victory last Sunday was just as emphatic.

At 11-6-1, they had set up the first conference championship game between teams that won only nine times in the regular season.

"I think this group has been very loose and that's the way we've approached things for weeks," McNabb said. "I've been a part of a group that was tight, coming into this situation, and I've been a part of a team, obviously, where we didn't know what tight was. You know what? This team has continued to treat it as if it's just a normal game and just go out to practice and have a great time.

"We haven't had any problems with guys being hesitant in any way or wondering what if? Guys just understanding that, if we go out and do what we've been doing the previous weeks and just try to improve on it, dreams can come true."

In other words, they can "Prove It."

Sunday, January 18, 2009
Cardinals 32 - Eagles 25
Cardinals rally to reach Super Bowl
By Dave Dye The Detroit News

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- If the Tampa Bay Rays can go to the World Series, why can't the Arizona Cardinals go to the Super Bowl?

The Cardinals blew an 18-point halftime lead before quarterback Kurt Warner regrouped and led a 14-play, 72-yard winning drive in the final minutes for a 32-25 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC championship game.

Trailing 25-24, Warner dumped a pass over the middle to running back Tim Hightower for an 8-yard touchdown with 2:53 remaining on a third-and-goal play. A two-point pass to tight end Ben Patrick gave Arizona a seven-point lead.

The raucous crowd of 70,650 at the University of Phoenix Stadium played a big role in helping secure the franchise's first Super Bowl appearance.

Arizona will play the winner of the AFC championship game -- Pittsburgh or Baltimore -- in the Super Bowl on Feb. 1 in Tampa, Fla.

Larry Fitzgerald showed why many believe he is the NFL's best receiver. He scored three touchdowns on 9-, 62- and 1-yard passes from Warner.

Fitzgerald tied the record for most touchdowns in a NFC championship game. He also set the record for most receiving yards in a postseason with 419 in three games, surpassing Jerry Rice, who had 409 yards for San Francisco in 1988.

Fitzgerald has five straight games with at least 100 receiving yards. Three of those are playoff games, tying a NFL record.

Warner completed 21-of-28 passes for 279 yards and four touchdowns with no interceptions. He will be only the second quarterback to start the Super Bowl for two different teams. Warner helped lead the St. Louis Rams there in 1999 and 2001. Craig Morton played in Super Bowls with Dallas and Denver.

McNabb finished with 375 yards passing while completing 27-of-46 for three touchdowns and one interception.

After falling behind 24-6 at halftime, the Eagles completely dominated the third quarter to get back in the game. McNabb threw two touchdown passes to tight end Brent Celek (6 and 31 yards).

The Eagles outgained the Cardinals, 165-8, in the quarter and had nine first downs to none.

Philadelphia finally took its first lead with 10:45 remaining on a 62-yard pass to rookie DeSean Jackson, who made a juggling catch.

The ball bounced off Jackson's hands and off his shoulder before he reached back with his left hand and tapped it into his arms while stepping toward the end zone.

The Eagles had missed an extra point after their second touchdown, so they attempted a two-point conversion this time, which failed on an incomplete pass.

Instead of leading by three points, the Eagles were ahead by one.

Arizona came right back with a drive that will go down as one of the all-time classics in NFC championship games.

Steelers beat Ravens, 23-14; Head to Tampa
Sunday, January 18, 2009
By Ed Bouchette, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

On a cold, snowy night, the sun finally shone on the Steelers in a championship game at Heinz Field.

Safety Troy Polamalu ended a rolling Baltimore comeback when he intercepted rookie quarterback Joe Flacco's pass and returned it 40 yards for a touchdown with 4:34 left that sealed the Steelers' 23-14 victory over the Baltimore Ravens.

The victory, their first in a championship game on their third try in the past eight years at home, lifted the Steelers into their seventh Super Bowl and a chance to become the first team to win six. Their seven championships are an AFC record.

They will play against an unlikely opponent, the Arizona Cardinals, in Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa, Fla., Feb. 1. The Cardinals, often called "Pittsburgh West" because of their many connections to the city and the Steelers, will play in their first Super Bowl.

Ed Bouchette can be reached at ebouchette@post-gazette.com .

I can't believe the Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl. I always thought they were the one franchise worse than the Lions. Not anymore.

catbox_9 wrote:

I can't believe the Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl. I always thought they were the one franchise worse than the Lions. Not anymore.