Oh Happy Day

BEST. WEEKEND. EVER.


Incredible, just incredible. I had not even fathomed that the Divisional Playoffs could work out so perfectly (for me at least, I am sure there are many disappointed fans this week, and I understand your pain). The two teams I don't like were eliminated, embarrassingly - Dallas and Indianapolis. My team - the Patriots - won. My second favorite team of the playoffs - Green Bay - drilled their opponents in a blizzard. There are just so many more things to talk about, I'll get started!


- Tom Brady throws for the best completion percentage in the playoffs EVER. Two incompletions out of 28 attempts. 27 was a drop, and some journalists are saying that 28 was a missed penalty call. I don't care if they were short passes. The point of football is to win in whatever way you can. If that means short, you do it short. As much as we like the fancy, we don't need it. Also amazing that the Patriots can win with Randy Moss having one single catch the entire game. I guess doubling him is a pick your poison kind of situation.


- What a time for Lawrence Maroney to come into his own. We've seen flashes of his ability last year and earlier this year, but he's come alive in the last few weeks. When Jacksonville figured they couldn't allow Tom Brady to beat them himself, they left open wide holes for Maroney to push through.


- I love snow games! Green Bay is the hands-down best football town in America. One of my friends has been there for a game, and said there is nothing like it. It's the purest football one can experience. I loved how the network showed a picture of the field at kickoff and then a shot of its current state. It must have snowed 5 inches by the end of the game! And it was pretty, fluffy snow - the perfect environment for the Pack to show what they could do. Poor Seattle was barely in it. When you have a team that can recover from not one, but two fumbles in the first quarter, and end up scoring over 40 points after being down 14, you know that team is for real. I said fairly early on in the game that they could hit 40 and I was sort of laughed at, but lo and behold, who was right??


- Brett Favre is awesome. That almost-sack that became a shovel pass to Donald Lee for a first down was sick. Just sick. It will pain me if I have to root against him at some point, i.e. future time that I will not speak of too much for fear of jinxing it.


- I was one of those people who believed that the Colts defeat of the Chargers would be the lock of the weekend. How (happily) wrong we all were. I'm still wondering how the Colts managed to lose that game. They had everything going for them. The lack of media pressure, one of the loudest home fields in the league, the Defensive Player of the Year. Heck, they even knocked LaDainian Tomlinson out of the game in the second quarter, and Phillip Rivers out in the second half! How much more advantage does one need? There were several times during that game that I was just in complete and total shock. The interceptions were crazy, the officiating even worse. It felt like the league was trying to hand the game to the Colts.


- Phillip Rivers is a punk and I do not like him. Just shut up, man. Stop running your mouth. What exactly have you done again? Oh right, nothing yet. I forgot.

- A lot of people are commenting on the fact that all of the teams who rested players over the last few weeks of the regular season have been eliminated from the playoffs. There is a point there, I think. To me, there is definitely something to the idea of continuity and momentum in sports. Sure, resting the body is important, but I can see how some players or teams might just fall into a bit of a lull. I'm not one who will say that Tony Romo played badly because he was in Cabo with Jessica Simpson, but I would say that it seemed like he put it in neutral for most of the end of the season. He never appeared to regain full speed. It's easy to get caught up in the idea that your team has it together and that you don't need as much at the end as you do at the beginning. But I am starting to agree with the idea of 60 minutes of 16 games. The end is not the time to screw with momentum.


- Speaking of Tony...oh Tony. Tony, Tony, Tony. Please tell me this banner didn't really fly over Texas Stadium yesterday.




Because if that is real, then I will never stop laughing at you for the rest of the time you play in the NFL, and probably after that. As I just said, I don't think that being in Cabo with Jessica Simpson last week had anything to do with the actual game played yesterday. However, I do think it was just about the stupidest thing he could have done for his own image. I just don't get why you even open yourself up to that. Keep your personal life personal. Yes, Tom Brady dates celebrities, but do you ever see more than a picture of him out to dinner on a normal night?


- The New York Giants are playing in the NFC Championship? Excuse me...did I say that out loud? Since I wanted anyone but Dallas to win yesterday, my friends and I all rooted for the Giants, but that warmth has worn off today and now I am left with the fact that the Eli Manning-led Giants are in the NFC Championship game. Ugh. At least now we get a game in Lambeau (and they're saying single-digit temps for Sunday). But still, now that the ridiculous happiness that came along with the Cowboys' loss is receding, I'm left with the astonishment that Tom Coughlin will be keeping his job. Great.


- R.W. McQuarters has the best name ever. It sounds like he should be an 1880's newspaper mogul.


- By now if you haven't seen the clip of Terrell Owens crying about Tony Romo on national television, you live in a cave. If you are one of the crazies who haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and go to ESPN or NFL.com and find it. It might be the best video clip I have seen in a long time. Add to that the fact that, as one of my friends noted yesterday, he's wearing a cast-off outfit from the music video for "Beat It."


So those are my highlights from probably the best football weekend in a very long time. My apologies if it is a little disjointed, I was writing off pure giddiness. I could probably go on more. The teams I hate most lost and the ones I love won! The games were all competitive and were fun to watch. And we ended up with a combination of teams in the conference championships that give us the best chance for an incredible Super Bowl. For all the bad that the NFL has had to deal with this year, we're lucky as fans to have it end this way. I can't wait for next week!