picks for sunday

Well Wildcard weekend got off to a great start with all both home teams going into Saturday as the underdogs but both were able to pull out the victories. The Cardinals won despite playing as the leagues doormats the last month of the season won because of a couple of big plays by WR's and a defensive lapse late in the game by the Falcons on a 3rd and 16 that will have people calling for longtime Falcon Keith Brooking's head. I personally thought the Falcons really outplayed them in the 1st half controlling the clock and moving the ball down the field after struggling the 1st half of the 1st period. But they got killed by giving up a 40+ yard TD to Larry Fitzgerald on a flea flicker. Then Anquan Boldin breaking a tackle on a normal stop route, luckily for the Cardinals there were no other Falcons who were able to get to him as he ran 71 yards for a TD. The Falcons recaptured the momentum as the half came to a close but collapsed coming out of the 1st half getting 1 first down the 1st 20 minutes of the 2nd half. And as previously mentioned when they needed a stop couldn't get it.

Then the night capper was Colts vs. Chargers, this was one of the best games I'd seen in a long time. Don't know why but I just got really into the game though I have no affiliation to either team. But I felt the Chargers had outplayed the Colts the majority of the game thus wanted them to be rewarded (felt the same way when the Giants played the Packers in the NFC title game last year) Darren Sproles made himself a lot of money tonight though, with over 300 all purpose yards this man is electric, dynamic and any other word you can think of. He is so damn fast, he's a perfect 3rd down back because of his ability to catch out of the backfield and being able to at times make something out of nothing with his shiftiness going vertical or side to side. Not to mention his return ability. And lets not forget about Mike Scifres who punted 6 balls and all 6 landed inside the 20 (5 were inside the 10!) and had a whopping 52.7 yards per punt!

I normally don't gush about punters but it was truly the best punting performance that I have ever seen. But I just read about (didn't see the game) about Florida States kicker/punter Graham Gano who had 4 punts inside the 7 in the bowl game against Wisconsin including 3 inside the 3 yard line. He also had 6 XP's.

Back to this game, both teams had chances to intercept some bad throws or just made some mistakes at innoportune times (Darren Sproles fumbling into the endzone losing the ball. Clint Session stupidly grabbing Sproles's facemask when he was already wrapped up and was about to go down) I felt the Chargers squandered away more chances though, but in OT I would've hated to be the ref in the situation where he called defensive holding on 3rd and 8 against the Colts, I would have agreed with that call either way, you just hate to see a game decided on something like that.

But all in all it was superb football game and effort by both teams, only thing I would have loved to see was Tony Dungy uncharacteristically barking at or chewing out a camera man pointing a camera in his face, just would have really cracked me up. But in my opinion the Chargers were better then the record losing some real heart breakers and the Colts were a little worse then there record being very fortunate in some of there games. But I'm not the saying the better team today won, but the team that played better today did win. My advice to the Colts, should've called tails.

Now onto Sunday's games:

Baltimore Ravens (-3.5) @ Miami Dolphins
This 3.5 spread looks like a real ballbuster (and knowing the shady stuff that goes on in Vegas somebody will get there balls busted up for picking the wrong side of that half a point. This type of game won't feature much offense in all likelihood and will probably come down to a field goal and leave a bunch of gamblers sweating. I'm getting tired of the Dolphins eeking out victories week in and week out, Baltimore's already beaten them @ the Dolphins place and I like them this week. Over/under is set at 38 I like the over, Miami will be playing catch up and passing the ball a lot tomorrow (much like the 1st matchup) That O/U prediction is probably dumb though

Philadelphia Eagles (-3) @ Minnesota Vikings
Tough matchup, obviously the Eagles have more talent in most positions but can they put the pieces together or will they continue to show flashes of greatness coupled with games of mediocrity and out and out crappiness? That's the great mystery, but I like the Eagles because they have a stout run defense to slow Adrian Peterson and they favor passing the ball and running outside the tackle box so that will help avoid the 2 Williams clogging up the middle for Minnesota. And McNabb is agile enough to evade the best of pass rushers, the Eagles last week did a very nice job last week on Demarcus Ware double and triple teaming him (though he seemed to blitz less often last week) Maybe they will employ the same strategy this week against Jared Allen. The Eagles are a more dangerous team and as long as they can control the clock they should win this game somewhat easily, so it's hard not to take them. Eagles, O/U is set at 41 take the over, especially if the Eagles dominate.