NFL Play-Offs - Starting Tonight

1

5th Jan 2008:

21:30 Washington Redskins 8/5 At Seattle Seahawks 10/19

The Redskins come into the game with serious momentum having won their last 4 games to make the play-offs. Todd Collins has come in at QB for the injured Jason Campbell and has really got the offence going. The Seahawks were guaranteed their play-off spot a few weeks back and haven’t been firing on all cylinders since then. They’re very dangerous in the air with Hasselback at QB but I think the Redskins secondary will tie him down and Clinton Portis should get the yards on the ground to give the visitors an upset victory.

6th Jan 2008:

01:00 Jacksonville Jaguars 4/6 At Pittsburgh Steelers 5/4

This should be an absolute belter. Again, I take the visitors to prevail here as I’ve been really taken with the Jaguars this season. Fred Taylor is making huge yards on the ground and David Garrard has been a revelation at QB. This will be a tough inter-divisional battle but I think Jaguars are the form side and should repeat their victory at Pittsburgh from a few weeks back.

18:00 New York Giants 6/5 At Tampa Bay Buccaneers 20/29

Really tough one to predict. The Giants have finished the season relatively strongly despite a plethora of injury problems and were very close to ruining the Patriots’ party last weekend in going down 35-38 in New Jersey. Eli Manning continues to be very inconsistent - from throwing 4 interceptions at home to Minnesota recently before leading them on 2-game winning drives the following week in Chicago. They’re without their main receiver, Jeremy Shockey, with a broken ankle and their other main go-to-guy in the air, Plaxico Burress, has been playing hurt all year but it hasn’t upset their rhythm too much.

The Bucs have been led superbly by the veteran QB, Jeff Garcia, and were comfortable divisional winners. I’m reminded of the two QBs coming up against each other at a similar stage last season when Garcia inspired the Philadelphia Eagles to a victory at the Giants. He has an excellent career record against them and I give a tentative nod to the Bucs to hold off a strong Giants challenge.

21:30 Tennessee Titans 9/2 At San Diego Chargers 1/6

The Chargers flattered to deceive earlier this season under new coach, Norv Turner, and never threatened to match last year’s 14-2 regular season. That said they’ve come with a lot of momentum in recent weeks and are in excellent form. Any team that has Ladainian Tomlinson carrying the ball is a force to be reckoned with and QB, Philip Rivers, has overcome some mid-season difficulties and is finding his main main, Antonio Gates, regularly of late. The Titans achieved all their season objectives in making the play-offs and the Chargers should prove to be a class above.

I’m going for Washington, Jacksonville, Tampa Bay and San Diego.

2

My skins got beaten earlier on.

This game now is absolute quality.

Pittsburgh 23 - 28 Jacksonville.

10 minutes left.

Jacksonville in possession - 2nd & 15.

Atmosphere electric.

I fooking love the play-offs.

As I type.

Intercerception!!!

Garrard is picked.

Steelers return it to the Jacksonville 16.

Class.

3

David Garrard.

Take a bow.

Take a fooking bow.

Incredible drama on 4th down & 2.

32-yard gain!

Off the hook, off the chain.

Jacksonville 28 - 29 Pittsburgh.

But Garrard has Jacksonville in game winning territory.

1:28 left.

Jaguars on the 11-yard line after Garard’s heroics.

Gonna let the clock run and kick an FG.

4

And the FG is good!

Pittsburgh 29 - Jacksonville 31.

Steelers with 37 seconds and no timeouts to salvage this.

5

And the Jaguars win this ball game.

What a game.

6

The QB draw on 4th and 2 was the game winning play.

First time in history Pittsburgh have been beaten twice at home by the same team in the same season.

Roll on tomorrow.

7

Just watched that Pittsburgh Jacksonville game - smashing contest. Roethelsberger (or whatever his name is) made a right mess of that last chance for Pittsburgh but it was probably beyond them anyway.

Superb run from Garrard. Quality break and then the composure and the bravery to keep going with it. Plenty of QB’s would have slid when they came to the first defender but Garrard just stepped around him and ran all the way to contact.

8

Backed the Packers to win the whole thing at 12/1. Can’t meet the Patriots until the final and they’ve been in cracking form.

9

Chargers looked muck first half but they’ve really turned things around since half time and they’re getting first downs with something approaching ease now.

Just got the game’s first TD, aided by 2 tight calls from the umpires - a first down near the touchline, which looked dubious, and then a personal foul on the QB, which looked like the right decision.

10

A poor 2 from 4 last week.

I’ve been thinking about this week’s divisional play-off games and I can’t see past any of the home team favourites.

Sat 12th:

Seattle 14/5 at Green Bay 5/18 - 9.30pm

Seattle had a great home win last week but nobody wins in Wisconsin in the play-offs. Nobody. Seattle rely on their passing game but Green Bay have an excellent secondary defence. Brett Favre is still producing the goods and Ryan Grant has added a running dimension. With the hostile home crowd behind them they should win this one to advance to the NFC Championship game.

Jacksonville 6/1 at New England 2/19 - 1am

I think Jacksonville will give New England quite a game as they’ve impressed me a lot this season. They have a duel running threat with Taylor and Jones-Drew and David Garrard has been excellent. If New England have a weakness it’s their run defence so Jacksonville will need to exploit this. They should also vary things by going with a few fake run plays and letting Garrard put some air on the ball. That said New England have so much firepower, Brady is absolutely peerless and has such a fantastic wide receiving corps to hit, led by Randy Moss of course. Really looking forward to this game and it’s why I’m staying in tonight.

Sat 13th:

San Diego 4/1 at Indianapolis 2/19 - 6pm

This is the game where I’d give the underdogs the best chance of an upset. San Diego didn’t fire on all cylinders last week but got the job done and they really improved in the second half of the season. Their best receiver, Antonio Gates, got injured early on last Sunday though and it’s undecided as to whether he’ll play yet. If he’s out then their chances are all but gone. They need LT to run the ball superbly to get them in a winning position but I don’t see it happening. Indianapolis had plenty of injury problems in the regular season but still were comfortable second seeds. A lot of these players have come back to fitness now and Bob Sanders and the linebacker unit should limit LT’s gains. Peyton Manning should then be able to hit Dallas Clark and Reggie Wayne enough times to see them through.

New York Giants 13/5 at Dallas 10/33 - 9.30pm

A lot of money has gone on New York after their impressive victory in Tampa Bay last week where Eli Manning really stepped up to the mark to get his first play-off victory. The defence was strong and shut down Tampa Bay in the second half while Brandon Jacobs took the game to them on the ground. Dallas stumbled in the latter weeks of the regular season, especially in the games post Terrell Owens sustaining his ankle injury. He takes two or three men with him on every route he runs so once he was out of the picture then Tony Romo found it much harder to connect with his other receivers as space was at a premium. In addition, Romo’s been banging Jessica Simpson so his concentration levels dropped. TO returned to training this week and has played impressively while hurt in the past and I feel his return will be critical to Dallas getting their offence going. He murdered New York in the regular season and the Giants have some injury problems in their secondary defensive corps themselves. I take TO’s return to drive Dallas to the Championship game.

There’s little value in doing the accumulator, which works out at a little over 2/1, so I’m off to check the handicap betting.

11

Just did a 5/2 double:

Green Bay (-7 points) to beat Seattle and Dallas (-7 points) to take New York out.

12

Outstanding first half here. Green Bay went in 28-17 ahead after initially going 14-0 behind when Ryan Grant fumbled their first 2 possessions deep in their own territory. The team as a whole, and Grant and Brett Favre especially, came back superbly with the former running for nearly 100 yards and 2 touchdowns and the latter leading a number of smashing drives and throwing 2 touchdown passes. One of the completions in the drive just before half time when he was falling over and threw the ball underarm was the stuff of genius. I love this game.

13

This is superb stuff. 35-20 and Green Bay are driving again. Grant just had a 46-yard run to get them within scoring territory. At the start of the game the pitch was green with a little few snow flakes in the air. Now the pitch is fully covered in snow and you can’t see any of the yardage lines and can only barely see the ball. And the weather’s getting worse too.

14

42-20 in the end to Green Bay.

'Twas a sensational display from them after the initial crazy first 5 minutes when they went 14-0 behind.

It was a smashing comeback by Grant who ended up with 3 TDs and ran for 201 yards, only the 7th player in history to rush for over 200 yards in a play-off game.

Patriots game is just about to start.

15

2 out 2 from last night, which isn’t much to write home about given both teams were strong favourites. The games panned out pretty much as I had predicted beforehand on this thread.

The combination of Grant’s running and Favre’s passing, along with their secondary completely shutting down Hasselbeck’s options allowed Green Bay to ease to victory.

Jacksonville did indeed give the Patriots a stern enough test but the Patriots were always in relative control. It appears impossible to stop Tom Brady no matter how you set up your defence. Jacksonville decided to employ a four man rush with their seven other defenders dropping back quite deep to prevent huge plays to the likes of Moss.

With his offensive line able to keep the rushers at bay, bar the first snap he took when he was sacked, that gave Brady plenty of time on the ball. However, his options deep were limited by the depth of the Jags defense so he simply adapted his game and made a plethora of short 5-15 yard completions with little screen and dunk passes to his running backs and quick slants to the likes of Welker and Watson.

When it got to 28-17 Jacksonville knew they couldn’t let Brady march them downfield with a series of these short plays so they made the decision to pressurise him by sending more men up in his face. So literally the first time they blitzed him, Brady rolled out to the right and connected with Dante Stallworth for 47-yards.

In effect, defend conservatively and he’ll happily take small 5-15 yard completions whereas if you blitz him and leave one-on-one match ups with the wide receivers then he’ll destroy you with big plays, like the Stallworth one.

Brady only had two incompletions all game - he was exceptional - and Garrard did a superb job for the Jaguars too.

Really looking forward to tonight’s games now.

16

Another fiesta of football about to start now.

All the injured Chargers have been passed fit - Rivers, LT and Gates - but I take the Pats to beat them comfortably by +14 (at 10/11).

Giants at Green Bay is too close to call. I’ve taken Giants +7.5 (at 10/11) in my handicap double but I don’t know who’ll come out on the right side of this one. Temperatures in Wisconsin are sub-zero too apparently.

Let the games commence.