I think the Steelers will win the Super Bowl, mostly because they have the #1 defense in the league.  James Harrison is amazing, Ike Taylor will mostly shut down Larry Fitzgerald (with help from Ryan Clark and Troy Polamalu) and the Steelers will win.  I was originally picking the Ravens because of their defense (#2 to the Steelers) but defense usually wins.  I’m still hoping to see some excitement from Kurt Warner and some ridiculous catches from Fitzgerald, but its the Steelers.  With their pass rush, they should force Kurt Warner into some bad throws, and I think their D will get some turnovers out of it.  On the other side, Roethlisburger and Willie Parker should be able to do enough to win the game.

Here are my playoff predictions.  My somewhat ’sleeper’ teams that I really like are the Ravens and Falcons.  As is the usual with the NFL playoffs, I would expect the teams with the best defenses to go far.  So the Titans, Steelers, Ravens, Panthers, and Giants.  Here we go:

Wildcard Round:

Ravens over Dolphins
Colts over Chargers
Vikings over Eagles
Falcons over Cardinals

Divisional Round:

Ravens over Titans
Steelers over Colts
Falcons over Giants
Panthers over Vikings

Conference Championships:

Ravens over Steelers
Falcons over Panthers

Super Bowl:

Ravens over Falcons

The Patriots beat the Bills 13-0 yesterday to improve their record to 11-5 and miss the playoffs!!  But unlike some complainers, I think its totally fair.  There are six AFC teams in the playoffs.  Of those six, the Patriots played four of them.  And what happened?  They lost to all four!  Looking at it another way, of the Patriots five losses, four were to playoff teams (the fifth was in OT to the Jets).  Of course had David Thomas not made that late hit, or Jabar Gaffney not dropped that pass, or Ben Watson not fumbled that ball, or Brandon Meriweather made that 3rd and 15 tackle in OT, we probably would have won another game or two and be in the playoffs as AFC East champions….

This season has been a testament to how good the Patriots are at identifying and developing players. They’ve played every game with their backup QB Matt Cassel, who was ridiculed in the preseason and had never started in college. They played many games with their fifth running back, BenJarvus Green-Ellis. They’ve been forced to start backup offensive lineman Mark LeVoir, backup tight ends Tyson Devree and Steven Spach, backup linebackers Gary Guyton, and Vince Redd.  They had to go out and sign Junior Seau and Rosie Colvin from retirement to come play on the team. And they’ve started games with rookies Jerod Mayo, Vince Redd, Gary Guyton, and Terence Wilhite on defense.  And for the most part, they’ve succeeded.  It shows how good they are at picking out players, and perhaps more importantly, how good they are at coaching them up, and putting them in a position to succeed in their system.

On another note, NFL.com has a video up of Belichick during the Patriots practices in California before the Oakland game, when he was wearing a wire. He’s getting advice from Moss on the Raiders D, joking with Mayo about buying new trucks (”thats first round money” Moss says), and checking on Matt Cassel.  Interesting insight into how practices go with Belichick.

Wow!  What a dominating performance by the Patriots.  They came out hard, pounding the ball with Lamont Jordan and Sammy Morris behind Russ Hochstein playing at full back. They continued with some great passing by Matt Cassel (345 yards, 3 TD’s) and a lot of great plays by the receivers, especially Jabar Gaffney.  But I think the highlight of this performance was the defense.  They held the Cardinals to at least seven 3&outs (I lost count), as well as two turnovers. At the end of the first quarter, the Cardinals had had 4 drives for a total of 0 yards. ZERO!

The Patriots sure do seem to be picking up steam heading into the end of the season.  Now they have to hope they can make it to the playoffs.  They need to win next week against Buffalo and have either (a) the Jets beat or tie the Dolphins to win the AFC East or (b) the Jaguars beat or tie the Ravens to grab the last wildcard spot.  If neither of those happens, the Patriots could be left out with an 11-5 record.  So let’s go Jets!!!!

A very tough win.  But a win.  The Patriots gave up 14 points early, but slowly crawled their way back.  And now we’re back in the race for the AFC East!

What a game! It looked like one of those shootout games where the last team to score wins, but then the Patriots pulled out a bunch of scores at the end to win 48-28.  The offense finally looks like the offense of last year. They played with the spread field offense, and Cassel and Moss both looked great.  While the offense was impressive, the defense still looks suspect. They still struggled on third down, but they did make the stops at the end of the game when it counted.

What a game! While the Patriots lost this game, it had to improve your confidence in Matt Cassel’s abilities. While also lowering your confidence in the team overall (so many stupid mistakes and bad defense on third down). This was another game where eliminiating any one of the mistakes would have won them the game.

Matt Cassel was very impressive. After still struggling in the red zone on the first two opportunities, he led them back from 24-6 with an all pass, no huddle offense. He made all the throws, including the ones in the red zone for touchdowns. And he led them on all important drive with a minute left, throwing a ridiculous pass to Randy Moss for the tying touchdown with one second left.

But the team overall worries me. They’ve made two many dumb mistakes. The Patriots started the second half with three good looking drives, each to be stopped by some mistake. Ben Watson fumbling the ball with no one around. A bad snap to Cassel. A dropped pass by Jabar Gaffney. And some terrible terrible defense on third down (including 3rd and 15 in OT).

Perhaps if they can cleanup the dumb mistakes, they’re that close to winning these games. Certainly Matt Cassel keeps getting better each week.

This was a nice win over a division rival.  I would say this was the best team performance so far this year.  Cassel looked the best he has all year.  He wasn’t taking too many silly sacks, he was throwing the ball well, and he was actually throwing the ball on patterns longer than 5 or 10 yards.  He had a lot of 15 or 20 yard throws.  Cassel ended the game 23/24 for 234 yards.  Another good sign was the running game.  Even with the 5th running back on the roster, undrafted rookie BenJarvus Green-Ellis, they ran very well.  In fact, Green-Ellis looks like a really good running back. He’s patient and sees the holes and doesn’t take many tackles for losses.  The Patriots offense was able to dominate time of possession, which is great.  Finally, the defense looked good as well, especially against the run, holding the Bills offense to 60 rushing yards and only 168 yards overall.  A solid performance all around!

The Patriots 18-15 loss to the Colts tonight was very frustrating.  It still seems like the Patriots lack some confidence in Cassel.  They didn’t let him throw deep to Moss against backup defensive backs.  And there seemed like too many plays where they went with a draw play on 3rd and long instead of throwing the ball.  But their running attack worked, and when Cassel did throw the ball he was throwing accurately.  He still seemed like he was taking too long to make decisions, or not seeing the field well, as many of his pass attempts turned into scrambles (he ran 5 times for 20 yards).

The Patriots still had chances to win the game though.  Jabar Gaffney had a chance at a wide open catch for a TD on a drive that ended in a field goal.  They could have gone for it on 4th and 1 later in that drive.  Had David Thomas not committed a stupid penalty on their second to last drive of the game, they should have gotten at least a tying field goal.  And their poor use of timeouts in the second half allowed the Colts to run a lot of time off the clock at the end of the game when it counted.

With that being said, playing the Colts this close in a night game in Indy is a positive sign.  The Patriots still have the second best record in the conference and are in a 3 way tie for the lead in the division.  The next three games are huge, as they play all three division foes.  These next three games will likely decide where the Patriots end up in the division (and thus their playoff chances).