Riffs, rants, observations and dissenting opinions from the voices in my head: Here's a warped and dented take on this weekend's games, written while I was stuck in jury duty all week!We've written so many obituaries for the Seahawks over the last two months that it is easy to forget that they are 8-4. If the playoffs started before Sunday's kickoff, they would face the NFC South-leading (chortle) Falcons in the opening round. Their postseason road is paved with Mark Sanchez, Shaun Hill and Drew Stanton, plus a game at home against a 49ers offense that their defense manhandled on the road. Back-to-back 19-3 victories against division rivals indicate that the Seahawks defense is returning to something close to Super Bowl form.
Their return to the heart of the playoff picture does not eliminate all of the concerns the Seahawks raised in early season losses or during the Percy Harvin drama. The Seahawks are currently little more than Russell Wilson, Marshawn Lynch and three defensive backs in search of reinforcements. The Eagles are a far more complete team: much deeper at the skill positions, more stable on the offensive line now that an early season injury emergency has subsided and superior on special teams. If Russell Wilson, Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas traded places with their Eagles counterparts, the result would be one team that could beat the 1972 Dolphins and another that would lose a best-of-seven series with the Raiders.
But Wilson will remain with the Seahawks and Sanchez with the Eagles on Sunday. Sanchez got away with things against the Cowboys and Titans secondaries that will be added to his blooper reel if he tries them against Sherman and Thomas. The Seahawks special teams won't be as accommodating as opponents like the 49ers have been, so a turnover-and-field-position game is likely to tilt Seattle's way. The Eagles have their own smoothed playoff road, but it is built atop Giants and Redskins opponents in tee-time mode, plus a rematch with a Cowboys team still trying to figure out what happened on Thanksgiving.
The Sanchez Eagles won't be able to beat the Seahawks, but they are also not dead, nor even "mostly dead." As December rolls on, both teams will have fun storming the castle.If Peyton Manning is the Beatles and Tom Brady is the Rolling Stones, then Philip Rivers is the Kinks: quirky, differently awesome, the creator of an impressive body of work, but an easily overlooked regional favorite and connoisseur's choice that fell just short of global superstardom.
(More 2000s quarterback to British Invasion comparisons: Ben Roethlisberger is the Who, with Todd Haley as Keith Moon; Eli Manning is Herman's Hermits, with lots of hits but little influence; Donovan McNabb was the Yardbirds, with Terrell Owens as Jeff Beck. The Carson Palmer Bengals burned out too soon like Eric Burdon and the Animals. Joe Flacco is Joe Flacco.) When Marlon McCree fumbled a potential game-icing Tom Brady interception right back to the Patriots in the 2006 playoffs, setting the stage for a Brady comeback, it was the football equivalent of the four-year ban from touring the United States the Kinks received in 1965. (The Kinks would fight so bitterly on stage that they sometimes seriously injured each other, despite the fact that they were playing songs like "Well Respected Man" and "Dandy"; it was the 60s rock equivalent of A.J. Smith's contract negotiation techniques.) Rivers was relegated to second-tier status during several years of high-profile Peyton-Brady-Roethlisberger showdowns, his Chargers an uneven afterthought that mixed 13-3 "Waterloo Sunset" masterpieces among forgettable .500 performances.
Rivers-Brady VI finds Rivers 0-5 but still a defiant, singular underdog. He cannot fill arenas for his crowd-pleasing greatest hits tours like Brady can, but he puts on remarkable shows in smaller venues, like last week's spectacular against the Ravens. A great Rivers game lacks the Brady dazzle, but it is more personal and intimate, off-speed curveball passes eluding defender's hands like they are bobbing to some baroque melody.
Rivers will never be Brady's equal, but if the superstar phones one in while Rivers plays with pride and passion before the home crowd, there's a chance that the Chargers will give the people what they want.
source http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2289923-nfl-week-14-picks-jury-duty-seahawks-rebirth-and-the-chargers-invasion
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