NFL Week 17: The End of the Regular Season

The New Year arrived cold and clear here. Usually on days when I don't have to work I like to be out on the road for a run before 8:30 AM, but the below-freezing temperatures kept me indoors. I finally made it out around 10:00 AM. On my way out the door I dropped off my rent check in the building super's mail slot. On the outside of the check envelope I jotted a note about the dire circumstances in which the home team finds itself at Week 17.

The building super, like so many men and women in this city, is a Seahawks junkie. Whenever I run into him at the entrance to the apartment building we hash out the team's state of affairs. The last time I saw him I believe was prior to the Cardinals-Seahawks Sunday night game in Week 10. Since that loss and up until last week's shellacking administered by the Jeff Fisher Rams, Seattle had gone on a Russell Wilson-fueled winning streak; the result of which, thanks to the synchronicity of losses by other teams competing for a wild card berth, is that the Seahawks had secured a playoff spot at the end of Week 15.

But now, the day before the last game of the regular season, things are not looking good. The Seahawks visit the Cardinals at University of Phoenix Stadium Sunday afternoon with a roster decimated by injury: Jimmy Graham out for the season; Thomas Rawls gone for the year; the great Marshawn Lynch, heart and soul of the team, missing since the Week 10 Cardinals loss because of an abdominal injury that required surgery; Kam Chancellor, absent since the game in Baltimore with an injury to his pelvis, will be a pale shadow of his former self if he does return to active duty; Michael Bennett and Jordan Hill both slowed because of toe injuries; Russell Okung hobbled with a bum calf. One could go on, but you get the idea. The Seahawks are not the team they once were. When they take the field the vibe is different.

Which was the gist of my note to the building super: Never before in the Russell Wilson era has Seattle been so vulnerable.

My fear is that Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians has a beat down planned for the Seahawks, payback for the humiliating defeat Seattle dealt to Arizona at the end of the season last year. But not just payback, also a statement. The statement being that the Seahawks are finished, kaput. There will be no more Super Bowls for Seattle.

As I think I have mentioned before, football, National Football League football, is important in the United States because it provides an ersatz form of community in this era of peak neoliberalism, in this age of possessive individualism run amok. Yes, it is a corporate product that serves as a public relations foil for U.S. militarism (which comes pretty close to a good definition of fascism), but it binds people together, gives them a way to relate to one another in what is otherwise a benign way. Because underneath the layers of commercialism, the billions of dollars in advertising and the excessive violence is the athleticism, the basic element of human effort. For a Seahawks fan when Marshawn Lynch rushes for a touchdown at the goal line the feeling is "All is right with the world." Or for a Jets fan, what it must have felt like when Eric Decker caught the touchdown that beat the Patriots last Sunday in overtime. It is sad to say but this is what represents exuberant, collective fulfillment for us in the West now that neoliberalism has bankrupted our politics.

After I dropped off my rent check I headed out the front door to the trash and recycle bins. I had a green biodegradable bag full of kitchen compost -- banana and grapefruit peels, coffee grinds, onion skins -- that I needed to drop off before I began my jog. When I flipped open the compost container I was greeted by the vision of a large carcass of some sort of bird of prey. Hawk or owl I don't know which. I couldn't make out the head, and the body parts were hard to identify. The feathers were white with some gray checks; it could've been the under-wing of an osprey. Probably road kill that some Samaritan scooped up and tossed in the compost. In any event, a very ill omen for Seahawks fans.

It has been a bizarre season. Despite Carolina's flirtation with a perfect record, which came to an end last week thanks to Atlanta, there has been no sense of transcendence or complete domination by any one team. I think injuries have upended a lot of the drama of the regular season. Baltimore has been uncharacteristically turned into an also-ran because of season-ending injuries to Suggs, Flacco and Forsett. Green Bay, once the apple of the tout's eye, is now limping, like the Seahawks, to the playoffs, their offensive line devastated. In the AFC, conference powerhouses New England and Denver (not to mention Cincinnati), are very beatable because of rosters wracked by injury.

If I had to make a prediction I would say the Arizona Cardinals are the team to beat. Nonetheless they are beatable. The Seahawks had them in the fourth quarter in Week 10, but they couldn't hold the lead. It is going to take a team with a stout line and good defensive secondary who can run the ball on offense. That team very well could be the Panthers. The problem with Carolina is that the defense has looked shaky lately.

In the AFC I think it is a toss-up. The Jets could even make a run, assuming they don't shoot themselves in the foot tomorrow against Buffalo. I say this because New York has proven they can beat the Patriots. There has been a lot of talk about the run that the Chiefs are on. My issue with the Chiefs, and the same can be said of the Bengals, is that they have a tendency to underperform in the playoffs.

Pay Him!

A friend sent me a link to the video above. The outcome of two games of this new season can be directly attributable to Kam Chancellor: the opening loss to the Rams when Kam's replacement Dion Bailey fell down and the Rams scored a TD in the final quarter to tie the game; then Monday night when Kam single-handedly saved the win over Detroit. Like Michael Bennett says "Pay him! Paul Allen is the 17th richest man in the world. Pay him!"

NFL Week 17: Home Field for Seattle

I realized last night as I watched Snowpiercer (2013), Bong Joon-ho's innovative post-apocalyptic thriller that doubles as an allegory for how traditional societies (as well as storytelling) work, what a degradation of one's humanity it is to toil at a job 50-out-of-52 weeks a year.

Hard on the heels of this realization was the thought that what keeps the passengers pacified as the U.S. train hurtles off the rails is the National Football League. The NFL is the preferred opiate of the American masses. Without it there would be little coherence to our national character right now. One can safely assert, I think, that the National Football League is the only game in town.

Then I went to bed thinking about the four games the Seattle Seahawks lost this season. What stands out about those games is that the Seahawks can definitely be beaten. You beat them by running the ball, dumping the ball off to a back in the flat, and connecting with the tight end. That is on offense. On defense you shut down Marshawn Lynch and you keep Russell Wilson in the tackle box.

Two teams -- San Diego in week 2 and Dallas in week 6 -- dominated Seattle this season. The two other losses by the Seahawks -- St. Louis in week 7 and Kansas City in week 11 -- were fourth quarter nail-biters and could have easily gone Seattle's way, the kind of games that routinely went the team's way last year's Super Bowl season.

So to take a stab at the question -- "Can the Seahawks repeat?" -- we need to zero in on the San Diego and Dallas games.

In both those games the Seattle defense was on the field far too long. The Chargers killed the Seahawks with Antonio Gates and Danny Woodhead; Philip Rivers connected on short-to-medium range passes all day long. Kam Chancellor was not a 100% coming back from off-season hip surgery. K.J. Wright couldn't cover Antonio Gates. In the game against Dallas it was running backs DeMarco Murray and Joseph Randle who did the real damage. The Cowboys racked up 401 yards to Seattle's 206. Byron Maxwell and Bobby Wagner left the game with serious injuries.

In those two games the Seahawks offense was a Formula One race car with timing problems; it couldn't sustain drives. It would score quickly; then, in succeeding drives, would repeatedly go three-and-out. This was in the Harvin era.

When all is said and done, the big coaching misfire for Pete Carroll's staff this season will be the inability or the mistaken decision to try to convert the Seattle offense, oriented primarily around the rushing of Marshawn Lynch, to a sleek, super-fast pass-first West Coast-style offense. For whatever reason, it didn't work. Carroll and Bevel couldn't get the parts to mesh and Harvin was sent packing labeled as a malcontent. I think the real reason for the failure is that to run that type of offense you need a drop-back passer with an acute sense of timing and a lot of touch. Drew Brees, who is maybe an inch or a half-inch taller than Russell Wilson, can run that type of offense. But at this stage in his career Russell Wilson cannot. Russell Wilson is a scrambler and a superb rushing quarterback who can drop a ball in over coverage but he is not an "all eyes on me" pure passer. He needs a Marshawn Lynch in the backfield to anchor his attack.

Once the Seahawks returned to the offensive scheme that won them a Super Bowl and the defense returned to health they have been the best team in the league. If they were to play either San Diego or Dallas now Seattle would win. Outside of the 49ers and Frank Gore during the first half of the game in week 15, no team has run on the Seahawks defense since KC's Jamaal Charles in week 11. And no team has beat them this year by throwing long. Beast Mode is cranked up and running. Russell Wilson is connecting to Owen Willson, who finally realized his speedy potential as a receiving tight end last Sunday night. The offensive line has been a shambles and the defensive line is penalty prone. But besides these two shortcomings, the Seahawks are sound. They are young, still hungry and filled with leaders -- Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor, Russell Wilson, Marshawn Lynch, et al.

The Vegas line has Seattle by 13 over the Rams. If the Rams hope to win, St. Louis will have to play an error-free game while at the same time hoping that Seattle self-destructs with turnovers and key injuries. Such an outcome is unlikely. The Rams will need to run the ball and Shaun Hill must be able to complete passes to his tight end Jared Cook. We will know quickly if St. Louis has a prayer.

I say Seattle wins this game and cinches home-field for the playoffs. In many ways, the Seahawks are a better team than they were last year at this time.

In the AFC, the only team at this point that I can see beating New England is Pittsburgh. The Ravens might sneak in if the Chiefs can beat the Chargers, which I think is probable. And Baltimore has shown a knack for beating Belichik in the post-season. So all hope is not yet lost. The Patriots might yet be kept from the Super Bowl.

NFL Week 15: Why the Rams Need to Win Thursday Night

NFL Week 15 gets underway on Thursday with a game of great importance when the Cardinals travel back to their previous home port to challenge the renascent Rams. Arizona roughed up the Rams in the desert in NFL Week 10.

This is a Rams team coming off back-to-back shutouts, something that hasn't been done in the NFL since 1945. Amazing. Not the Seahawks of last year, nor the Millennial Ravens, nor the 1985 Bears, nor the Steel Curtain teams of the 1970s; neither Lombardi's Packers nor Bednarik's Eagles.

That's why the current Vegas line has St. Louis by 4 points regardless of Arizona's top-seed status in the NFC.

Jeff Fisher has never impressed me. Even though I am predisposed to see Arizona lose the remaining three games -- St. Louis, Seattle, San Francisco -- it would not surprise me to see Bruce Arians outfox the Rams yet again.

Nonetheless, I think St. Louis comes out on top. Drew Stanton alone in the dome is not enough to master the Rams defense. Derek Carr is a much better QB, and he couldn't put any points on the board.

A loss by the Cardinals pleases me because, assuming the Seahawks continue their winning ways, this drops Arizona into a tie for first place in the NFC West, setting up a Battle Royale for the division next Sunday night.

If Seattle triumphs in the desert then regardless of the outcome of the last game of season, the Seahawks would be division champs.

I'm getting too far ahead of myself. I know. But to take it to the limit, imagine the improbable: Green Bay loses at Buffalo and Seattle runs the table of remaining regular-season games. That means home field for the 12th Man throughout the playoffs.

NFL Week Six: The Seahawks Dethroned

Tonight NFL Week Seven gets underway with a Jets-Patriots match-up in Foxborough. Belichik's Patriots are the closest thing to a machine in the NFL. The last several seasons though, since their Super Bowl XLVI defeat by the Giants, New England has looked all too human.

Nonetheless, Belichik, though I have loathed his teams for decades, is hard to bet against. He knows how to win, and his Patriots, led by the aging "teen idol" Tom Brady, are always atop the AFC East. A couple Sundays back I caught the first half of the evening game against the undefeated Bengals. Brady led the Patriots offense with ruthless precision.

The Rex Ryan Jets are another story. Once endowed with the league's most formidable defense, the Jets at 1-5 are a team adrift. Ryan probably should have been fired at the end of last season. Maybe tonight New York will surprise us, but that is most unlikely. The Patriots at home have proven to be almost unbeatable in the regular season.

Now that these Thursday night games are available on broadcast television, I must say that I look forward to them; it is something akin to the tradition of the Thursday night party that fraternities put on while I was at the university. Though I was never a member of a frat, their Thursday night parties had a spillover effect for everyone else on campus -- a bridge to the weekend, a way to chop down the five-day work week.

But the Thursday night game is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the humiliating defeat suffered by the Super Bowl XLVIII Champion Seattle Seahawks by Dallas.

I tossed and turned all night long this past Sunday. I awoke every 90 minutes. The most searing episode was around 2 AM when I jolted up muttering to myself about the offense.

While it is true that the defense was manhandled by the Cowboys, if the Seahawks had mustered one or two sustained drives, I think the outcome would have been different. The planned and hoped for (by the Carroll brain trust) transformation of the offense this year from a power-rushing attack to a West Coast style passing attack has, after five games, been a bust. It's time to either return to Beast Mode or start heaving bombs down the field to Harvin and Richardson.

I've compared these weekly posts on the NFL to a dream journal, a brief mostly colorless record of my bachelor Sunday waking dream life, lying on my mattress on the floor in front of a 13-inch color TV, absorbing the various telecasts from 10 AM to the end of the Sunday night game on NBC. Well, the Cowboys-Seahawks Week Six game was a nightmare. Prompting the question, Why am I so attached to this team? Sure, they are Super Bowl Champions. But the Holmgren Seahawks were almost Super Bowl Champions -- and I loathed that team.

It has something to do with the composition of the squad. The fact that the Seahawks marquee players are all black, young and appealing (to me at least) has a lot to do with it. Even though a Richard Sherman and a Marshawn Lynch are extremely wealthy by working-class standards, they strike me as representative of the rest of us struggling on the front lines of the rat race with our degraded lives at work.

The reverse image of the National Football League is the repetitious, "trial by ordeal," soul crunching, 50 out of 52 weeks a year American way of earning a living where no respect is given and any dignity we manage to display we do on our own dime.

But the home team offers an idealized space where we are young, strong, fast and potent. Every Sunday we are allowed to transfer our identity out of our mundane, hopeless lot to a collective consciousness of positive actualization.

Until, of course, a beat down like last Sunday happens. Then one's world is turned upside down. The order of the mundane soulless routine is cast asunder. I began to question my attachment -- and how attachment defines identity.

To make matters worse, on the train ride to work Monday morning, a bevy of Cowboys fans, wearing their team jerseys and sporting Lone Star paraphernalia, crowed and boasted of their dominance on their way to the airport.

One guy, a black guy from Baton Rouge sporting a Dez Bryant jersey, traveling with his young son and demure wife, was particularly boorish. Talking at the top of his voice for 45 minutes, he relived the entire game, belittling the Seahawks -- "There's no way they're going back to the Super Bowl. No way. They're done." -- celebrating the dominance of his Cowboys. A young white couple with big dark blue Lone Stars on their chests nodded and cackled in agreement at every dull pearl the Baton Rouge Dez Bryant uttered.

I gritted my teeth and tried to read the newspaper. It was painful, but I held my tongue. Then when the train pulled into its last stop at the airport station I couldn't resist one parting comment. "Well, for your sake, I hope you can keep DeMarco Murray healthy."

The young white couple politely responded, "Oh, yes."

But Dez Bryant, with a foul look smeared on his face, didn't say a word. He knows the truth. The truth is that DeMarco Murray has been injured each of the last two seasons, missing a significant amount of time. When that happens the Cowboys become one-dimensional with Romo throwing the ball non-stop. They don't win that way.

Murray already has 130 carries after 5 games. Chances are good given past history that he will sustain another injury. I don't wish that upon DeMarco Murray. He is an excellent running back and seems like a good young man. But Dez Bryant from Baton Rouge should be a little more discrete on a commuter train in Seattle. Dallas has not won the Super Bowl yet.

As for the defending Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks, things do not look good. Injuries on defense and an offense that cannot establish a rhythm (and haven't been able to all season minus the home opener against Green Bay) portend a brutal, painful year ahead.

I've been down this road before with the defending Super Bowl Champion San Francisco 49ers during the 1985 regular season. That season changed my life. I became an alcoholic. I dropped out of the university for a semester. The 1985 49ers showed true grit just to make it to the playoffs as a wild card.

We'll see what the Seahawks are made of -- if they have the toughness of those '85 49ers. Sunday in St. Louis will be a good indication. The Rams are a dangerous team despite their poor record. St. Louis was up early at home against Dallas and San Francisco. Both the Cowboys and the 49ers were able to come back. But the Seahawks so far have not shown an offense that can mount a comeback.

In a nutshell, NFL Sunday Week 7 will point the way to whether Seattle makes the playoffs. A loss to the Rams means that the Seahawks will not repeat as Super Bowl Champions.

NFL Week 17: "Who is Going to Cure the Heart of a Man in Need?"

Another regular season draws to a close tomorrow. Once again we have traveled from September summer sunshine to the dark mornings of late December, and once again I am left wondering about the wisdom of planting myself hour after Sunday hour in front of the idiot box indulging in all the stress and bliss and passivity of being a fan of the National Football League.

I go through this every year, and every year I end up coming back -- to the TV, to my mattress on the floor, to my Hugg-a-Mars pillow propped beneath my head. I am a vision of the bachelor alone. But I keep coming back not because of the elixir of solitude that the NFL on television offers. I keep coming back because of community. Everyone watches the National Football League; or, if not everybody, a lot of people. There are even a number of women at work who watch the Seahawks. It is a way to attach oneself to his community -- to analyze the games on Monday morning with coworkers; to chat with a fellow competitor during a 5K race about an upcoming game; to compliment a young man on his beautiful knit dark-blue Seahawks cap (as I did on a run this morning). This is why every year I renew my commitment to watching all the games.

Right now on the NFL's web site, Seattle is shown as the top seed in the NFC. This of course is assuming a lot; it's prioritizing the numbers over the trend lines. The trend is that Seattle is faltering. Last week the Seahawks lost their first game at home with Russell Wilson starting at quarterback, and they have lost two out their last three. We could also mention that the Rams have won their last two, and that last year they came very close to beating a Seahawks team (that was much more potent offensively) in their home park. As for the 49ers, they are on a roll, peaking at just the right time. I don't see them losing to the Cardinals even if Arizona has the home-field advantage. I think Carson Palmer will toss some interceptions, and, unlike the Seahawks last week, Kaepernick will capitalize. Take the 49ers.

But back to the Rams-Seahawks game. I spoke with my uncle on Christmas Day. He was a high school quarterback in the San Jose area in the 1960s. He played at the same time and in the same league as Jim Plunkett and Dan Pastorini. He lives in Santa Cruz now and is of course a San Francisco fan. And while he thinks that Seattle has a dirty defense that relies on the black magic of the 12th Man (he also hypothesizes that the fan noise at CenturyLink Field is augmented electronically), he nonetheless feels that Russell Wilson is an incredible quarterback and a winner and that the Seahawks can win if they just leave Wilson enough time on the clock at the end of the game, something the defense was unable to do against both San Francisco and Arizona. Pete Carroll needs to keep his time-outs for the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter.

This made me feel encouraged; that, and my uncle's assessment that Kellen Clemens is not a threat. The line on the Rams-Seahawks game is Seattle by ten. I don't know if the Seahawks cover, but I think they win the game, hopefully in a blowout. Take the Seahawks. They have a lot to prove after their performance against the Cardinals. I think they rise to the occasion.

You Don't Want to Say It, but . . .

Yesterday the dream died at CenturyLink Field when Arizona administered a 17-10 drubbing of Seattle, its first home loss in two years. To be sure, the Cardinals are an excellent team. They have ten wins. But who loses at home, let alone the home of the ballyhooed 12th Man, after picking off the visiting quarterback four times? I'll tell you who. A team with a weak offense. And it was on display yesterday. No speed -- at running back, at the wideouts -- and a quarterback who has trouble seeing downfield. Seattle hasn't been able to move the ball consistently since the first half of the game against the 49ers at Candlestick. And really you would have to look to the game prior to that one, the Monday night demolition of the New Orleans, to find a game where Russell Wilson was in command.

It is not as if there haven't been warning signs. Though Seattle shares the best record in the NFL at 12-3 with Denver, the Seahawks have been the recipients of an amazing amount of good luck this season. Going through their schedule, five games jump out, starting with the season opener road win at Carolina, that easily could have gone the other way. Wins against Carolina, Houston, Tennessee, St. Louis, Tampa were gifts. Turn it around and chalk them up as losses and you're looking at a team that is struggling to end the season at .500.

But Seattle didn't lose those games. The Seahawks kept winning even when they should not have. This created an aura of invincibility locally. You had people coming out of the woodwork to hop aboard the band wagon.

I got off the train downtown after work one Friday night. There was some sort of high school Christmas caroling competition. Pine Street was blocked off to vehicle traffic. Everyone was sporting Seahawk gear. Parents, children, shoppers. It was noteworthy.

At first I was skeptical about Seattle's good fortune, telling a coworker, "You don't want to rely on luck to win games because luck usually runs out by the time you get to the playoffs." But it is hard not to sample the Kool-Aid when your team has the best record in the NFL and your quarterback has never lost at home and it looks certain that the road to the Super Bowl is going to have to travel through Seattle.

And that's what came crashing down yesterday afternoon. The logic that has driven Seahawks fans this season -- as long as we keep winning, we'll secure home field for the playoffs; we secure home field for the playoffs, we're going to the Super Bowl -- was shown to be faulty. The Seahawks led by Russell Wilson can be beat at home. Arizona proved it. The Cardinals did it with a gimpy cast-off quarterback who threw four interceptions.

Arizona did it with defense. The Cardinals stacked the line of scrimmage but also dropped some linebackers into coverage. Seattle receivers were not able to win the one-on-one battles and Russell Wilson was not able to make the throws.

Now, as I see it, a team very similar to the Cardinals, the St. Louis Rams, comes to town on Sunday and, once again, we'll most likely need luck to beat them. The St. Louis defensive line is even better than the Cardinals' and Zac Stacy is a running back who hurt Seattle last time the teams played.

Even if the Seahawks win and get the first-round bye and home-field advantage, Toto in the form of Calais Campbell has pulled the curtain back and exposed Oz. There is nothing at the end of the rainbow. For those of us in the Emerald City who have been assuring each other that "It is our year," Sunday offered a night of fitful sleep.

And herein is the silver lining. Better to be unencumbered of fantasy with one game to go in the regular season. Better to acknowledge that the Seahawks have talons of clay prior to the playoffs. Now, after yesterday, one cannot be blindsided.

This Seattle team is not the juggernaut that at the end of last year racked up multiple 50-point wins on its way to the playoffs. This Seattle team is not nearly as good as the Holmgren team, the 2005 Seahawks, that lost to Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl. This Seattle team, truth be told, is merely a better-than-average team that has found a way to win with an aging power running game, a small quarterback, and no number one wideout. There is some peace in accepting one's limitations.

In a way a loss to St. Louis, another loss at home, which would force Seattle on the road in the playoffs as a wild card, assuming San Francisco wins its final two games, would be a fitting way to enter the playoffs. It would likely entail a trip to Green Bay or Chicago, one that would atone for all the lucky bounces that benefited the team in the regular season. It would mean a long, suffering road to New Jersey. But after the dark, despondent Sunday this bachelor -- a victim once more of emotional transference to the home team -- just went through, I don't think there can be any other way.

NFL Week 14: Showdown at Hunters Point

Week 13 concluded with the Seahawks 34-7 Monday night pummeling of the Saints at CenturyLink Field. A message was broadcast to the rest of the National Football League: Seattle is a team to fear.

Now the action shifts to the sunny Bay Area where the 49ers and Seahawks will renew their heated rivalry. Top spot of the NFC West is not at stake because Seattle at 11-1 has a comfortable cushion on 8-4 San Francisco, not to mention one head-to-head victory already tallied, the 29-3 Week 2 Sunday night drubbing the '9ers received at CenturyLink

San Francisco's defense looked in fine form against St. Louis last Sunday, completely shutting down rookie standout running back Zac Stacy. Kellen Clemens was made totally ineffectual at quarterback.

Last year the 49ers ran well out of the pistol formation in the second half; Gore tore off long gains right up the gut of the Seahawks defense. San Francisco held on to win. Alex Smith was still the quarterback then. Kaepernick has never beat the Seahawks as a starter.

This should be a tough game. San Francisco's pass rushers and defensive backs are of higher quality than what Russell Wilson saw from New Orleans; those touch passes he connected on to Doug Baldwin and Zach Miller will be difficult to repeat against the 49ers. Wilson is going to have to run more out of the shotgun.

I think Oakland native Marshawn Lynch has a big game coming home to the December sunshine of the Bay Area. I think Kaepernick continues to underperfom. Take Seattle.

The Remainder of NFL Week 13: Some Big Games for NFC West Teams

The Pittsburgh-Baltimore game turned out to be even better than its hype, providing a little Thanksgiving televisual bliss. The Steelers' final drive at the Ravens' goal line -- the hit on Le'Veon Bell that sent his helmet flying and killed the play on the half-yard line; Roethlisberger's TD pass to Jerricho Cotchery; then the failed two-point conversion to Emmanuel Sanders to tie the game -- made for some riveting holiday passivity. At 5-7 and one wild card spot already spoken for by either Kansas City or Denver, Pittsburgh's hopes of making the playoffs are remote. If Baltimore finds a running game, the Ravens could be a team to watch.

Sunday, a number of games have playoff implications. Arizona travels to Philadelphia to take on the Eagles. The Cardinals are hot at 7-4 having won four in a row while the Eagles have not played their best football at home this season. It is hard to believe that the Cardinals are locked in a battle for second place in the NFC West with the 49ers. I'm not a believer in Carson Palmer. But in a match-up between Bruce Arians and Chip Kelly, I'm taking Arians. The early betting line had the Cardinals by 4 points but then the money moved in the Eagles' direction. Ignore the money. Pick Arizona.

The afternoon game has the impressive Rams, winners of two in a row, traveling to Candlestick to take on San Francisco. St. Louis always plays tough against the 49ers and the Seahawks. The line has the 49ers as anywhere from a eight to nine-and-a-half point favorites. I don't know if San Francisco covers the spread, but I think the 49ers win the game. Take San Francisco.

The Monday night game is a potential NFC Championship preview: New Orleans at Seattle. Last year the Seahawks were flat coming off the bye week. But that involved cross-country travel to Miami. Monday they'll be at home in front of loud, adoring fans with a hunger for the Super Bowl. Drew Brees is masterful in his home dome, but more common playing in cool, rainy weather against a speedy pass rush. The line has the Seahawks by five. Take Seattle in a romp.

NFL Week Eight: Teams Figuring Out Russell Wilson

The Seahawks win last night in St. Louis was a gift. If Rams placekicker Greg Zuerlein is successful on his 50-yard fourth quarter field goal attempt, St. Louis wins the game. Instead of having to punch the ball in at the Seahawks goal line in the waning seconds of the game all the Rams would have needed to do was trot out Zuerlein for an automatic three points.

As it was the Seahawks defense, despite giving up two-hundred rushing yards, held strong, allowing Seattle to return home with another road win against a divisional opponent.

This marks the third game in a row -- Titans, Cardinals, Rams -- that defenses have basically shut down Russell Wilson. The only game of the three that wasn't close was the win against the Cardinals, and that was due to Marshawn Lynch's dominant running.

Teams are blitzing the Seahawks quarterback. They're loading the box and overwhelming the offensive line. Until Seattle finds a way to consistently beat that kind of pressure expect teams to continue to come with the heat. Percy Harvin's return should help, as would finding ways to connect on short passes to Lynch coming out the backfield.

****

Question: How much longer do you stick with Mike Vick? His bum hamstring took him out of the game against the the suddenly resurgent Giants. An Eagles loss combined with the Cowboys collapse in Detroit means the NFC East remains the Keystone Cops division.

Super Bowl XXXVII

I've seen every Super Bowl since Tampa Bay blew out the Raiders at the end of January, 2003.

My girlfriend had recently moved into an apartment building across the street. It was a forlorn, dark little one-bedroom. She had a small color TV sitting on a chest of drawers.

The day was warm and sunny for Seattle in late January. In running shoes, a pair of shorts and a t-shirt I strolled the few paces from my building to hers; with me I had an International Publishers copy of Frederick Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. I hadn't seen any of the action during the regular season or the playoffs. I knew nothing about the teams other than Rich Gannon, who was sort of a joke when he played with the Vikings, quarterbacked the Raiders and John Gruden, who had just come over from the Oakland, coached the Buccaneers. By the third quarter the game was a blow out. Gannon threw three pick sixes. I tried to read The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, but it's not an easy book to read; plus, the girlfriend didn't want to be inside watching television on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. So we shut the game off and went outside. (Interestingly, Super Bowl XXXVII was in the news again when Raiders great Tim Brown went on Sirius XM NFL Radio and accused Oakland head coach Bill Callahan of throwing the game.)

Somehow the year before I completely missed Adam Vinatieri's big last-second kick to beat the Rams. I think I was hung over. When you're doing a lot of drinking your short-term memory goes out the window. I went into work on Monday and several coworkers asked me what I thought about the game and wasn't it amazing that it came down to the final play; it was only then that I realized that the Super Bowl had been played. I do remember that missile batteries were set up outside the Superdome, it being the first Super Bowl since 9/11.

A lot of time the game itself doesn't live up to all the hype (though that hasn't been the case the last five years). This creates debate about the wisdom of having a two-week layoff between the NFC and AFC Championship Games and the Super Bowl. Joe Platania has a solid blog post putting to rest the theory that two-weeks off adversely affects the game's outcome. Michael Moraitis in a Bleacher Report post makes the uncontroversial statement that the extra week allows negative press to percolate; he provides Ray Lewis' Deer Antler Spray imbroglio and Chris Culliver's "Can't be with that sweet stuff" quote as proof.

One argument that I can make for the two-week layoff is it gives someone like me a trial run of what a weekend without football on TV is like (because I don't watch the Pro Bowl); it eases me back into a life without the NFL.

Coffee Grinder

Why is that certain memories recur? What is it that makes a memory so memorable? Last night when I was grinding coffee for this morning I thought once again of the Saturday night in January of 2005 when Michael Vick demolished the St. Louis Rams in the divisional playoff round and my Braun coffee grinder stopped working.

I've had the same coffee grinder since I was an undergraduate living with my girlfriend in a Berkeley railroad apartment. It has followed me throughout my adult life from West Coast to East Coast to the Lone Star and then back to the West. But that winter's night in January eight years ago it was on the fritz. I had the game on. Michael Vick and Warrick Dunn (a favorite of mine from when he carried the ball in the same Tampa Bay backfield with Mike Alstott) were running wild on the Georgia Dome turf (both ended up with more than a hundred yards). The game was a blow out. So I retired to the kitchen to repair the Braun.

I took the old coffee grinder apart beneath the bright light of a 100-watt incandescent bulb. I saw that a metal contact point had snapped and that's why nothing happened when I plugged it in. I probably broke it by repeatedly for the last twenty years slapping the side of the grinder with my palm to release the oily coffee grounds inside. I folded one contact under the other so they were constantly touching. This meant that the grinder blades would spin as long as the grinder was plugged in; the on-off button on the grinder lid no longer worked. I've used the grinder this way ever since. When I want to grind beans I fill the grinder, close the lid, plug it into the wall, and then unplug it when the beans are ground.

Now whenever I'm in the kitchen at night grinding coffee I always think of Michael Vick and that Atlanta playoff game against the Rams; Marc Bulger, too -- the quarterback who reached 1,000 completions faster than any other in NFL history -- filling consciousness from coast to coast for a moment in time and then forever after a memory recurring.

Seahawks Pass Rush Disappears Again

Drinking lots of coffee and watching the home team underperform isn't a smart way to relax; also, I've been popping up off my bed on the floor where I watch the game to periodically check online the status of the fiscal cliff negotiations in the Senate.

The Seahawks pass rush disappeared.  The last time they lost, Week 12 in Miami, was largely due to the lack of a pash rush in the fourth quarter allowing rookie QB Ryan Tannehill to move the Dolphins down the field at will.  Today Sam Bradford had time to sit in the pocket and zip throws to his wideouts.

The Rams on the other hand had a mighty pass rush, sacking Russell Wilson time and time again.  But to the credit of Darrell Bevel there was no panic, no major shift in the play calling.  Seattle stuck with the read option and piled up good yardage on the ground.  Then the Seahawks got a lucky break break in the 4th quarter when Marshawn Lynch fumbled but Seattle recovered beyond the first down marker.  Golden Tate came through with a huge catch thanks to a Russell Wilson scramble, and we were on the way to our fifth win in a row.

Never having lost at home this season, to lose now in the final game would have been bad.  But the home team hung tough.  Now it's the playoffs at either the Cowboys or Redskins.  I'm rooting for RG3.