SteveSilver.net

Mike’d Up

Did you notice that all four NFC teams playing in the playoffs this weekend have coaches named “Mike”? The Vikings-Packers game pits Tice against Sherman, while Rams-Seahawks gives us Martz vs. Holmgren. A fifth Mike, Shanahan, got into the playoffs with Denver, although Buffalo coach Mike Mularkey, who probably did a better job this season than any of the other Mikes, saw his team eliminated in Week 17. I'd been wondering why there hadn't been many coach firings yet this off-season, but then I remembered that most of the league's truly awful coaches are still alive in the playoffs.

As for picks, yes, I’ve come to grips with the fact that the Vikings are losing on Sunday. And the only solace I can take in the firings yesterday of the 49ers’ Dennis Erickson and Terry Donahue is that if the most classless organization in the NFL can see the error of their ways, maybe the second-most classless (Red McCombs’ shop) can too, and undergo a similar housecleaning. If they can’t, the Vikes are barreling very quickly toward Wilbonian “Sorry, No Account” status. Anyway, how I see the playoffs:

Wild Card Round:
Chargers over Jets
Colts over Broncos
Rams over Seahawks
Packers over Vikings

Divisional Round:
Eagles over Rams
Packers over Falcons
Colts over Patriots
Steelers over Chargers

Championship Round
Eagles over Packers
Steelers over Colts

Super Bowl XXXIX
Steelers 27, Eagles 21

UPDATE: Speaking of the Vikings, Jason Whitlock has a column today bashing Randy Moss as a “punk.” That I agree with, much more than usual with Whitlock. Except for this line, which is problematic, I’d say:

Randy Moss is no Avon Barksdale. Randy doesn't love the game. He loves what the game can do for Randy Moss.

Barksdale, for those of you (i.e., most people) who don’t watch “The Wire,” is that show’s Baltimore drug kingpin; what Whitlock is saying, I think, is that the fictional Barksdale actually enjoys “the game” (i.e., his chosen profession, selling drugs), whereas Moss does not enjoy his. Must be nice for Randy to be compared, unfavorably, to a drug lord.

Posted by Stephen Silver at January 6, 2005 09:28 PM