NFL Championship Games

AFC: The Colts did it.
It took a while for them to get things going and figure out the Jet D, but Peyton proved to be the man who can find and take advantage of any hole that a defense has no matter how small. I don't know how many passes there were that had me wondering "how did he get the ball in there?" During that first half of 'figuring things out', the Colts gave up two huge plays when the corners were looking into the backfield instead of covering receivers. Aside from those 2 badly blown coverage plays, the 'soft' Indy D did a fabulous job of containing the Jets' stud running backs to less than 90 yards and keeping Mark Sanchez to 140 yards. Congrats to the Jets who made more of their season than most of us thought they could. The future for that team looks to be very bright, but the Colts are the team of the AFC this year.

NFC: The Saints Take It Away
The Saints and Vikings put on a great show. The Viking D more than did their job containing the Saints' high powered offense to 68 yards rushing and 187 yards passing, but the Viking offense couldn't quite do their part. AD had 122 of the 160+ yards rushing and 3TDs. Favre had 300+ yards passing with a TD. The Vikings just didn't hold on to the ball. Five turnovers sank them. Twice they had the ball to the Saints' 10 and fumbled it away. At the end of regulation after a very stupid 12-men-in-the-huddle penalty, Favre rolled out and could have run for 5-10 yards to at least give Longwell a field goal attempt within his range (~50 yards), but he threw back across the field (no, no, no, never do that) for a pick. As a Viking fan, this was a heart breaking loss because they were not out played. Even as they kept losing the ball, the D was keeping them in the game. You could easily question the PI call in overtime where the ball was overthrow (on purpose). That would have meant that Hartley would have had to kick the game winner from 51, but you can't blame the refs when you don't make the plays that are within your grasp. I'm happy for the Saints. They played well. Their defense did like they have this season living by the turnover. Their offense had a hard time, but did better than most putting up 28 against a very good Viking D. If they want to bring the Lombardi Trophy to New Orleans, however, they need to step things up a bit. The Colts D just held the best running team to less than 100 yards and Peyton put up 30 against the top ranked defense.