Playoffs? You want to talk about playoffs? Yes

That’s right Jim Mora, I want to talk about the playoffs.

Consider the oddities from this… That’s right Jim Mora, I want to talk about the playoffs.

Consider the oddities from this year’s young NFL playoffs. Three of four road teams won last weekend. Three of four division winners found themselves packing their bags. Only one of the NFC games sucked. The Redskins won. The Redskins. In the playoffs.

I don’t know if that should shock me or not. On the one hand, Dan Snyder’s reign in Washington has been best characterized by hopelessness, insanity and draft-day moves that cause the sports world to raise a collective eyebrow and grown men in the D.C. Metro area to weep into their beer.

And yet, despite himself, Snyder has managed to assemble a competitive team, and this weekend, that team and its leader, fresh out of cryo-freeze, managed to totally suffocate a potentially explosive Tampa Bay offense in a game where I’m actually reasonably certain that nothing happened for three full hours. I mean, I watched it. I remember watching it, even being entertained by it. But if you were to ask me, “Hey Dan, how about that ‘Skins game?” I would have nothing for you.

The thought of the ‘Skins picking up a win on the road in the playoffs against a Jon Gruden team is actually so unnatural that my body was physically rejecting the game as I watched it. I was worried for a second that my last image from this life would be of that deer-in-the-headlights look third-year phenom and Jake Busey look-alike Chris Simms wore for most of the second half as Gregg Williams’ defense mowed down his hapless offensive line.

Speaking of the deer-in-the-headlights effect, I sincerely hope nobody actually thought we’d have a chance at a Manning-Manning Super Bowl. Though Eli has shown flashes of brilliance this year, he’s still inexperienced and that really showed against Carolina this weekend. While I don’t think anybody was necessarily expecting that much of a blowout, it was only a matter of time before the G-men were exposed. And considering that New York’s defense tackled just well enough to beat the North Hills Indians, it’s not exactly a long shot to say that we don’t really miss Brent Alexander, Alonzo Jackson and Tim Lewis here in Pittsburgh.

And then we had the AFC and the Patriots’ one-way jack hammering of the Jaguars. The poor guys from Jacksonville, Fla., never stood a chance. The Pats are, once again, red-hot headed into the playoffs and poised to cement themselves in sports lore as The Most Boring Dynasty in the History of the NFL. The poor Jags were just out-coached, out-planned and outplayed. What are you gonna do? It’s Belichick, who I’m convinced one of these days is going to pull off a totally illegal play so bizarre that nobody – not fan nor journalist nor official – dare call him on it.

If we’re going to talk about victims of the Patriots dynasty, that brings us right around to the Steelers. I can say with confidence that Sunday’s Bengals beat-down was definitely the best game of the weekend. You can just see the bad blood between these teams beginning to reach a boil, and that’s a beautiful thing, because the Ravens and Browns haven’t exactly been living up to rivalry potential lately. For a good rivalry, you need the coaches taking jabs at each other, you need Troy Polamalu flipping out and shoving a football into someone’s facemask. You need trash talking like nobody but Chad Johnson can produce.

The way Johnson talks to the media makes me wonder whether he’s a genius or an idiot. This is the man who, when asked by Jim Rome if he would continue to come up with new celebrations, answered, “I can promise you it’s only going to get worse from here … and by that, I mean better for the public.” Then he invited Rome to go to McDonald’s with him to get a coke the next time he’s in L.A. You just don’t get that kind of pure gold anywhere else.

As the Steelers game came to a close, along with Wild Card Weekend, Sunday night, I couldn’t help but feel a bit warm and fuzzy inside, and I don’t think it was just the Wild Turkey. It was the satisfaction of a full, weekend-long football binge, the kind that only comes during the playoffs.

Dan Richey is the managing editor for The Pitt News.