New Orleans needed a bit of humbling to keep themselves focused on Indianapolis and not get too cocky. So, they invented ways to make the game interesting at half….much like a cat playing with a mouse. At halftime, they oiled up their machine and rolled over Detroit in the second half to make it a laugher. Cincinnati…oh, the Bengals. While they were a nice story this year, Andy Dalton has never played this many games in a season and wore down. Plus, their defense does not know how to step up and make big plays. See Chris Crocker’s drop of what would have been a momentum-changing INT (possibly for a TD). Soon after, Pacman Jones rolled out the red carpet for an easy TD to Andre’ Johnson to put the game away. I still don’t know why Pacman was on the field. Mayhem could have provided better coverage on that play. Also, how was Andre Johnson facing single coverage all day? Most of Houston’s fans can’t even name another receiver on their team.

Heading to New York for the Falcons matchup. Atlanta may have had the absolute worst offensive gameplan that I have ever seen. The Giants pass defense is horrific and Matt Ryan never put it to the test. Good thing they found out during the season, and then forgot in the playoffs, how valuable Julio Jones is to their offense. And the fourth-and-1 play calls?! Matt Ryan averaged just over 2 rushes per game this year and fumbles every 5 carries and you call his number at the most critical points in the game? Mike Smith should be fired for allowing those plays to be called. What about play-action? The Giants knew a run was coming. Maybe fake to Michael Turner and roll out to hit Tony G? Nah….too risky. The Falcons defense decided that if their coach wasn’t going to try, neither were they. After the last 4-and-1 failure, their entire linebacking corp and secondary formed one of those wedding dance corridors and let Hakeem Nicks watusi all the way to paydirt.

And then we head to Denver. This is two years in a row that a team gets home field advantage over a much more qualified team. In 2010, the NFC West should have been eliminated for playoff contention and the AFC West should have been this year. It is not fair to send a 12-4 team on the road versus a team that is break-even on the year or worse. Aside from that, you knew Divine Intervention was afoot when the Steelers started dropping like pants at an orgy. First Big Ben twisted his ankle up three weeks ago and was extremely limited coming into the game. Rashard Mendenhall tore up his knee last week and was done for the season. An unheralded safety, Ryan Clark, has a blood condition that is only dangerous at high altitudes. Come on! Witch Doctors couldn’t come up with a better Out than that! Because Clark was out, Ike Taylor has to man-up on his side of the field and was forced to take Denver’s only legitimate receiver, Demaryius Thomas, one-on-one. Thomas began lighting Taylor up from the opening kickoff. After James Harrison took out Eric Decker, Tebow only had one person to throw to and Pittsburgh refused to give Taylor the help he truly needed. I guess they threw in the Terrible Towel since they knew that they couldn’t fight Good.

The shocker was how far the Rams fell without their starting QB and, even more shocking, of course, was the Colts’ fall from grace. I expected Peyton Manning back by week 5 when I made all my projections. That was a bad risk for my prognostications and for my fantasy football drafts. Ugh.

We had no business missing as badly as we did on Minnesota though. We knew it would be a tough year for projections and that was the one fact we did get right!

Pre-season playoff predictions:   

AFC Division winners: New England, Baltimore, Houston, San Diego
AFC Wildcards: Pittsburgh, New York Jets
AFC Championship game: Baltimore over New England

NFC Division winners: Philly, Green Bay, Atlanta, St. Louis
NFC Wildcards: New Orleans, New York Giants
NFC Championship game: Atlanta over Philadelphia

Super Bowl Champs: Baltimore

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Though he will be a week early, I expect Santa to arrive in Oakland to deliver lots and lots of gifts during the Lions-Raiders game….all wrapped in yellow. This game may take so long to complete due to the penalties that it may lap the Monday Night game.

The best gift on Christmas is when Christmas lands on a Sunday. How sweet is it to have a full day of football to watch while the kids run around playing with their new toys? Even sweeter is New Years day. Not only do we have NFL all day to watch while we nurse our hangovers, but we get Monday off and get a full day of college football too. Even though the weather outside is frightful, 24 straight days of NFL and college football rules! If you don’t often watch college football, you need to turn on some of these upcoming games. Just flip on a game with a MAC team if you want to see lots of scoring. Tonight’s Ohio-Utah State game may sound boring on paper, but these teams will see the end zone often.

The Bears defense has to be livid with the offense’s performance the past few weeks. They have done everything they needed to do to get wins. As much as people want to blame Marion Barber and Caleb Hanie, I would look to the front office first since the Bears should have learned from the Todd Collins experiment last year that they need a talented, proven backup QB or two. Houston is winning with their third-string QB, as is Denver, and neither team’s defense is near as talented as Chicago’s. This season is shaping up for Bears’ fans to be as disappointing as a new NBA collective bargaining agreement.

If you were playing for a spot in your league’s playoff last week, many of the league’s top players definitely helped you out as the more reliable ones definitely came through. The dogs, such as Michael Vick and Peyton Hillis, performed as expected, though at least you knew Vick was on the shelf for the week so you didn’t need to kick yourself after another terrible performance by him. Of course, players like these most likely buried you in the standings long ago. The key to fantasy success is consistent, solid weeks of scoring production. Adrian Peterson may put up big numbers overall at the end of the year, but they tend come in bunches with many very-low scoring weeks mixed in. You don’t want a feast-or-famine category of player on your team since you never can predict the low point weeks.

Instead, get yourself players who produce predictable double-digit output on a weekly basis. Aaron Rodgers has put up over 20 points a week in standard scoring leagues. In all my years of years of playing fantasy football, I have never seen such a week-in and week-out assault. Those who were mocked for “reaching” for a QB in the first round are the owners laughing now. Drew Brees also performed admirably, putting up over 20 in all but 4 weeks. 4 weeks of mediocre-to-good production is far from a season-killer. I would take that from the number 1 pick in the draft and would be overjoyed if it was a pick anywhere after the first round. Speaking of the consensus top picks…they were pretty solid as well. Even though Arian Foster missed three weeks and shared the backfield for a lot of the season, he put up double-digits in every week but one after getting over his knee injury. Ray Rice had double digits in every week except when facing San Fran (no shock) and Jacksonville (I’ll never understand what the Ravens’ game plan was that night). The big surprise for many people with consistent production was from LeSean McCoy. With the Vick’s running and passing expectations, many analysts downgraded McCoy. Well, he danced his way to double-digit production every week. A damn impressive performance considering how the team played overall this year.

It is tough to get someone to throw in the towel on their first round draft picks, but, if you were able to wrestle Chris Johnson away at the midpoint of the season or later, you probably got a steal after he decided to perform; double digits in 4 of the last 5 games. If you kept him all season and benefitted from his late push, then you must have done well with low draft picks and early waiver wire acquisitions. As much as Rodgers carried some teams solo this year, a few productive Sleepers will you to the Promised Land. Players like Fred Jackson, Victor Cruz and Jordy Nelson did wonders for teams. I often avoid early-round QB picks since you can grab solid QBs in middle or later rounds, but rarely do you find one on the waiver wire that is one of the top point producers in the league. Kurt Warner comes to mind in his first season in St Louis, but no one else….until Cam Newton took the field. No one could have predicted his offensive success this year. Not only did he have solid passing numbers, but the rushing TDs were out of control. He has already broken the record for most rushing TDs in a season and has a few games left to put that baby out of reach for a long time. What I had to chuckle at was who the previous record-holder was. Vick, Randall Cunningham, Steve Young,…players that can run jump to mind first. I was floored when I found out that Steve Grogan was the long-time owner of the Rushing TDs by a QB record. One more time; Steve Grogan!