NFL Wild Card Thread: Cowboys? Check. Jets? Check. Steelers .... Steelers ....

If they beat the Colts, I wouldn't call it the reason the Colts lost to Ravens though.

Poetic justice moreso than anything else.

 

I wouldn't call it the only reason, but it could definitely be a factor. I still think that was a big reason why the Steelers beat the Colts in 2005. Pittsburgh jumped all over Indy early in that game. I think the Colts got the better of the play in the second half (with the help of that awful reversal of a Polamalu interception). That could have gone very differently if the Colts hadn't started so slowly.

 

That also was the year Dungy's son committed suicide late in the season (Caldwell's head coaching debut actually came in the last game of that regular season). Not saying that was the reason they lost, but there was an extra-special mitigating factor in 2005.

 

Re: NFL Wild Card Thread: Cowboys? Check. Jets? Check. Steelers .... Steelers ..

I'd prefer "Tepid Twelve" instead of "Terrific Twelve." There's one game worth watching this weekend, maybe two, and I need to get the leaves out of my gutters, so I'm glad I have all that free time Saturday and Sunday.

Thank God for college basketball.

 

Good point. I had forgotten about that part. I'm sure that was a factor as well. Either way, the Colts that we had seen most of that season did not seem to show up until some time in the second quarter of that playoff game.

 

How long did the starters play in yesterday's game? I know the Colts starters played until midway of the third quarter against the Jets. I don't see that as too much of a rest.

 

How the Colts do next week will be a referendum on sitting players down the stretch in the futuree. Yes, I know the league is looking to do something about it. And yes, many, many teams have done it the past.

But because of the pristine record, the Colts have become the poster child for this strategy. Win and advance deep and it will give the league teams the right to write the "I told you so' check. Lay an egg and lose in the first round, and you'll see fewer and fewer teams want to sit people in the future, along the copy cat lines of the league.

Not that it would be based on a mountain of evidence, but simply one high profile example.

 

They played less than a half, I'm not sure exactly how long. I think it is also a matter of intensity, playing games as if they are exhibitions rather than treating them as if they matter. Just a theory.

 

Looking forward to the Ravens-Patriots and Cowboys-Eagles but the other two I'll pass on. Kind of sad only two of 10 playoff games are likely to be played in the elements on grass, not counting the Super Bowl.

 

Indy's one Super Bowl was won when they played everyone in Weeks 16 and 17. Not a mountain of evidence, but a pretty high hill.

 

If there was definitive proof one way or another that sitting or resting leads to the Lombardi Trophy, everyone would lean towards that theory. But there isn't. Back in the 80s the 49ers rested their top players in parts of the last game and the Cowboys did it in the 90s.

Last year the Colts entered the playoffs on a big winning streak and got a first-round exit to an 8-8 team for their troubles.

 

Does that make Wes Welker the poster child for why you sit your guys in meaningless games?