| | No perfect team in this year's playoffs
By Len Pasquarelli
ESPN.com
From the standpoint of raw statistics, the art of crunching numbers and then comparing the results to the past, this year's complement of a dozen playoff teams ranks as one of the most dubious in recent history.
When postseason play begins this weekend, it will do so with the 12 entries having posted an aggregate 125 victories, and with nine qualifiers boasting of double-digit victories. Since the NFL adopted the 12-team playoff format there have been only two seasons, the 1993 and '95 campaigns, in which the field combined for fewer victories. Just three times, most recently in 1999, has there been a playoff contingent featuring less than nine teams with 10 or more wins.
The hard numbers, as slide-rule aficionados like to say, don't lie. Coming off a 2002 season in which the lone constant was basic inconsistency, this is certainly a suspect group of Super Bowl contenders, and the playoffs could "out" the pretenders in fairly expeditious fashion.
In what figures to become the worldwide Year of the Clone, it doesn't take a renowned geneticist to peer breathlessly through an electron microscope at the league's DNA helix and conclude that these 12 teams are hardly perfect facsimiles of, say, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the '70s or the Dallas Cowboys of the '90s.
What most observers have already decided is that the playoff entries aren't perfect, period, that there are clearly some teams with genetic defects. Fact is, all 12 teams have some type of shortcoming, it seems.
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With the (salary) cap and free agency, you aren't going to get the dynasty teams the league had in the past. So you try to put together the most complete team that you can, knowing there are going to be some tradeoffs, and some things that you might not be able to address. Every team has some warts. ” |
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— Tony Dungy, Colts coach |
The Raiders had to overcome an ugly four-game losing streak. So did the Tennessee Titans, the hottest team in the AFC, but also a club whose owner suggested early in the season that his team was being out-coached. The Jets also lost four straight, went to the inexperienced Chad Pennington as their quarterback when Vinny Testaverde was ineffective, and finally caught fire.
Tampa Bay managed to lose two games to the underachieving New Orleans Saints. The upstart Atlanta Falcons, with the NFL's most exciting player in quarterback Michael Vick, crawled into the playoffs, losing three of their final four games. Winners of just three home games, Cleveland had to rally very late in the fourth quarter in both its final two games and goes into the postseason minus quarterback Tim Couch, who sustained a broken fibula on Sunday afternoon.
Even the Eagles, where a masterful job turned in by Andy Reid should earn him coach of the year honors, are surrounded by question marks. It appears that quarterback Donovan McNabb, who hasn't played since fracturing his ankle on Nov. 17, will start in the playoffs. But there's no guarantee of that, even though McNabb will resume practicing this week.
"With the (salary) cap and free agency, you aren't going to get the dynasty teams the league had in the past," acknowledged Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy. "So you try to put together the most complete team that you can, knowing there are going to be some tradeoffs, and some things that you might not be able to address. Every team has some warts."
The collective case of acne could still make this Super Bowl tournament a compelling one, particularly if it encompasses the unpredictability of the regular season, and includes some early upsets. There are, to be sure, lots of flaws among the 12 teams in postseason play. And the two teams that arrive in San Diego in three weeks for Super Bowl XXXVI might well be the ones who do the best jobs of camouflaging their deficiencies.
"But everyone," said one general manager whose team is in the playoffs, "has some (shortcoming) it will have to overcome. Some teams are victims of circumstances. Some just flat-out aren't all that good. But this certainly is a flawed bunch, for sure, no matter how you look at it."
There may be no better example of a franchise that has mixed injuries and ineptitude than the Green Bay Packers.
Green Bay will enter the playoffs minus both starting offensive tackles and each of its starting defensive ends. Its top wide receiver, Donald Driver, is injured and likely won't play. Tailback Ahman Green limped through the final month of the season. Free safety Darren Sharper will try to play with a torn knee ligament. The secondary is inconsistent, overhauled because of an early-season spate of infirmity, and the linebackers don't make plays.
Those are elements the Packers simply couldn't control.
Yet the team is culpable for signing middle linebacker Hardy Nickerson, who has made zero big plays, during the summer and installing him into the lineup. Although coach Mike Sherman attempted to address the departure of return specialist Allen Rossum, the Packers failed miserably, and averaged a league-worst 4.2 yards per punt runback in the regular season.
Hoping to repeat their success of 1996, when Green Bay added return ace Desmond Howard and he earned most valuable player honors in Super Bowl XXXI, the Packers signed Eric Metcalf last week. But the league's all-time leader in kick returns for touchdowns looked pitifully rusty on Sunday, after not having played all season, and it remains to be seen if he can remedy one of Green Bay's biggest problem areas.
The lack of a competent return game might not seem like a big problem but it could be a fatal flaw in postseason, where field position is crucial, and the games tend to turn on one or two signature plays. Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher noted this week how magnified third-down plays become in the postseason and certainly that will be an element to watch when the 49ers face the New York Giants this weekend.
San Francisco led the league in third-down conversion rate, at a gaudy 52.3 percent, but also had the NFL's worst third-down rate on defense, allowing its opponents to cash in on 46.9 percent of their tries. Said San Francisco defensive end Andre Carter: "We have to be able to knock (offenses) off the field. It's been a pretty notable deficiency for us."
Every franchise in the '02 playoffs, however, possesses a similar Achilles heel that must be addressed.
Despite a suffocating defense, and ability to stuff the run, Tampa Bay can't run the football itself and ranked 27th in that critical area. The Raiders did not show until last weekend that they could dominate with the manner of power running game they demonstrated in past seasons. Charlie Garner is a splendid all-around performer, with 962 rushing yards and a remarkable 91 receptions for 941 yards, but Oakland might want to dust off the little-used Tyrone Wheatley to help pound the ball between the tackles.
Much like San Francisco, the Pittsburgh Steelers' defense had proven far too generous on third downs. Offensively, the Steelers have gotten 1,428 combined rushing yards from their 1-2 tailback tandem of Jerome Bettis and Amos Zereoue, but the former remains less than 100 percent physically. And while quarterback Tommy Maddox has provided the Steelers with the kind of passing attack they have lacked in past playoff tournaments, he still has only four more touchdown passes than interceptions (20-16), and has never started in a postseason contest. Unless, of course, you count the XFL.
As a wild card entry, Indianapolis has the NFL's record-setting wideout in Marvin Harrison. But his 143 receptions were seven more than the Colts' next three highest wide receivers and tight ends had combined. The Colts will need a strong performance from tailback Edgerrin James, but he's had only two 100-yard outings in 2002, and isn't the same player he was before last season's knee surgery.
"You could go on and on with the problems of various clubs," said Carolina personnel director Jack Bushofsky. "The bottom line is that every team is kind of a 'but' team, you know? Yeah, they've got this and that going for them, (ital) but (end italic), they also have these areas of concern. There is no team out there perfect in every aspect."
Noted Washington personnel director Vinny Cerrato: "To get through in the playoffs, you're always going to have to overcome something. Certainly that is the case this year. It's really hard to pick a favorite because there isn't that one, dominating team."
Notable is that, of the 12 quarterbacks who will open for their respective clubs this weekend and next, eight have been to the playoffs in the past. The four newcomers -- Pennington, Maddox, Kelly Holcomb (Cleveland) and Michael Vick (Atlanta) -- will be getting their first tastes of the pressure that is inherent to postseason football.
"That's going to be a big thing to watch," said a defensive coordinator who is in the playoffs. "Quarterback play is always magnified. These guys will be under the spotlight big-time. I guess if there's one shortcoming that I wouldn't want to have to handle on my team, it would be preparing a young quarterback for his playoff baptism. That could be the most glaring flaw."
Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.
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Let The Games Begin