You Blew It In The Game That Matters and That’s All That Matters [TeeCoZee's NFL Championship Roundup 2010]

Championship weekend is more important than the Super Bowl. If you beg to differ, then stand in line. My opinion on this matter is not very popular. But few can argue with the fact that 99% of the time, the championship games are much better than the actual Super Bowl. In fact, there are some championships that are regarded as the best games of all time. There’s simply much more on the line. If a team makes it to the Super Bowl, they have already won regardless of the final score. They are and will always be a Super Bowl team. It’s instant recognition. The players and coaches involved are instantly hire-able. The team will see an ever-expanding fanbase. Season tickets will sell out, merchandise will be moved like crack and groupies will be deployed. If you make it into the Super Bowl, your franchise is fucking golden for at least a year or two. Losers of the championship game, on the other hand, don’t get anything. Nobody remembers the 1991 Lions, 1996 Colts or the 1986/1987 Cleveland Browns. However, everybody still remembers the 2007 Patriots and the 1990/1991/1992/1993 Buffalo Bills. Now I’m sure Jim Kelly would argue that losing the Super Bowl is much more heartbreaking than losing the championship, but Warren Moon and Marty Schottenheimer would be right there to get all up in his grill. The championship game is the one that divides the real winners and losers. And the losers that win and the winners that lose. It could easily be argued that if the 1998 Falcons didn’t upset the Vikings in the championship game, Super Bowl XXXIII would have been a hell of a lot more interesting. But everybody would agree that the 1998 NFC championship game was way better than Super Bowl XXXIII. The way I see it, the Super Bowl is a game designed for mass consumption. It is when everyone in America watches what they are told to be the “best teams” duke it out. This normally doesn’t work out, and the commercial breaks end up being more memorable than the actual “battle”. Championship Weekend, however, that shit is for the fans.

So let’s all kick back and enjoy one last week that matters.

Green Bay Packers 21, Chicago Bears 14
The Bears were doomed the second the stepped foot on Soldier Field. There’s little ways of describing it, but Packers and Bears fans alike knew deep down what was going to happen in the ensuing 4 quarters. On the first drive, Aaron Rogers led his crew down the field. Instead of being deafeningly rabid, the people in attendance were morose and almost silent. It would be safe to say that the stadium had probably the lowest decibel meter for any opening drive in NFC Championship history. Either everybody in Chicago caught a cold or they all knew that their 12th man persona would do nothing to stop the Pack. On that drive, Rogers went 4/4 for 76 yards and then ran in the touchdown himself. It was an answer to the question that nobody had on their minds. At that point, a predicament occurred: if the Bears defense is worthless, can the offense even muster anything? The answer, of course, was no. Jay Cutler was unproductive as all hell. 6/14-80 yards and even threw a pick. Green Bay’s Tenacious D [led by the dynamically blonde duo of AJ Hawk and Clay Matthews [coached by the original dynamic blonde known as Kevin Greene]] held Chicago to 25 rushing yards in the first half. But the shit didn’t officially hit the fan until the end of the 2nd quarter. While Jay Cutler did what he does best [throw picks], he ended up tearing his MCL, which is something you really don’t want to tear up. So after one failed series in the 3rd quarter, Cutler called it quits for the day, to the dismay of everyone across Chicagoland.

Little Jay was feeling so low that even his worst enemy, Phillip Rivers, tried to cheer him up...

This is where the controversy comes in. Nobody actually saw a point in which Jay Cutler got injured. It came out during halftime that his knee wasn’t feeling too well and his return was questionable. But for fucks sake, in Championship games, everybody is hurting. They play anyways, because it’s the fucking championship game! Everybody feels that Cutler was a pussy for sitting this one out and numerous players expressed this on Twitter. Very few went to the aid of Cutler’s reputation. One of those people was Phillip Rivers, who has been known to be his mortal enemy. He stated that “I really do feel for the guy, not being able to play in the championship game.“ But then he also went on to say “Me personally, I’d have to have been taken off in a cart.” So, while he’s feeling sympathy for him, he is also inadvertently calling him a complete shitbag coward. This is coming from the guy who in 2007 played the entirety of a Championship game against the Patriots, 6 days after having knee surgery. But with all hearsay and name calling aside, who in the hell really knows what happened in the locker room during halftime? It was obvious that Cutler was not playing up to snuff and perhaps Lovie Smith wanted to bench him. By bringing the torn MCL to light [which could be an injury that has been oncoming for weeks, even months], not only would Jay Cutler lose a significantly less amount of face, but Lovie would also not be criticized for pulling him out of the game. It could have been a wholly mutual decision. Jay didn’t want to play, and Lovie didn’t want him out there. In the end, I was elated to see Todd Collins show his sorry face on that football field.

And let’s move on to my main man, Todd Collins. The man is more useless than Ryan Leaf on acid. In fact, if you watch the 4 throws he attempted, it did appear that Todd Collins was on some sort of psychedelic drug. Shit, if I was a backup QB in the championship game, I’m sure I’d do something stupid like that too. Who the fuck is going to expect the starting QB to actually get hurt? But man oh man was little Toddy tripping balls. He didn’t realize that a wide receiver’s hands are usually perpendicular to their shoulders, not their knees. I swear that Todd thought he was saving the team time outs by stopping the clock on every play. He then proceeded to roll around on the field laughing his ass off. Fun was had by everybody on the Green Bay sideline, especially BJ Raji, who couldn’t stop saying “Dat boi gawt the devil in ‘im!”

After an extremely short amount of time, Todd Collins retreated to the locker room to watch Boohbah. Meanwhile, there was still a football game going on. A good one, at that. And why, you may ask? Because of a man named Caleb Hanie. And who in the fuck is Caleb Hanie? Well, you may mistake him for Chicago’s punter, but he happened to be the man that led the Bears only two scoring drives. In fact, he played a hell of a lot better than Cutler ever could. He only threw 2 interceptions. This man is for real. In fact, I would have been honored to root this man on in the unlikely event that the Bears go to the Super Bowl. Only problem was, they should have started Caleb Hanie. Instead, he took the field midway through the 3rd quarter. This resulted in something called “too little, too late”, which is not a good thing to be told if you’re in a championship game. Somebody once said that to Phillip Rivers and the franchise still hasn’t recovered. In the end, it was BJ Raji [beast extraordinaire] getting the pick-6 that took the game out of reach.

In closing, I must say that I am excited as all fuckles to see the Packers in the Super Bowl. I have grown extremely smitten to the likes of Greg Jennings, James Starks and Jordy Nelson. Their defense makes me wish I didn’t hate defenses so much. For the past few years, they have played like a team with everything to prove. They kicked Brett Favre to the curb and they did so for a reason. A Super Bowl appearance only justifies their claim…

Pittsburgh Steelers 24, New York Jets 19
Just like the preceding game, it appeared as if this one was also decided from the start. Aside from Bart Scott’s Wrestlemania-esque rant last week [which got the personal approval of Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, TeeCoZee and others], there was no hype surrounding this game whatsoever. And what happens to the Jets when things aren’t hyped up to the max? They lose, that’s what happens. Shame on Rex Ryan for not calling Mike Tomlin a pussy. Shame on Mark Sanchez for not saying “…at least I can get ass consensually”. Shame on Antonio Cromartie for not taking a dump on Hines Ward’s jersey. If only they would have unleashed the great power of hype, the could have stood a chance against the Steel Curtain.

In fact, this game could have easily been won by the Jets if it wasn’t for 2 things:
1) Steelers rushing D = bodacious
2) Jets rushing D = whatthefuckwhointhehellletrashaardmendenhallrushfor121yardsyoufuckingcockstains!

That sealed up the entire game into a neat little package. It could also be said that in the first half, the Steelers were eating dinner. And the game clock was on the menu. On the first drive, Big Ben marched down the field and into the endzone. This process took 9 minutes and 6 seconds to complete. It became obvious that the Jets were becoming restless. Mark Sanchez was so bored that he decided to use backup QB Mark Brunell as his own personal snot rag.

Man that’s disgusting. It really makes you wonder about the relationship between Sanchez and his teammates. It was a painful first half to say the least. The Jets only had to ball for around 8 minutes of the half. Most of that was contained in an end of half field goal settling drive [that I ended up missing for unknown reasons].

At halftime, a few of us decided to partake in a little game called Thunderstruck. I’m not going to say much, except it involves Coors Light and AC/DC, and you end up drinking 3 beers in 4 minutes. You can fill in the blanks from there. We got Thunderfucked. Some of us more than others, as there are a couple of really long gaps in time of which the word “thunder” is not uttered.

Then as the Steelers took the field in the second half, it appeared as if they had the same idea that we did. Ike Taylor was drunk enough to allow Santonio Holmes to catch the ball twice in a row on the opening drive [and uh-oh, one of those were for a touchdown!]. Ben Roethlisberger must have gotten stuck drinking during the longest verse of the song, because he played like absolute trash. In the first drive, he fumbled the ball only to have it recovered by himself. The next play he threw an interception. On the next drive, he was sacked twice. And the drive after that? The one that started on their own 1 yard line? Oh, nothing. Big Ben just muffed the snap and fell onto the ball in the endzone for a safety. It appeared that the man was drunker than me. In fact, he only made one completion before the last drive of the game. All the while, Mark Sanchez wakes the fuck up and starts putting points on the board. It would even be fair to say that the Jets played really fucking good during the second half. The defense was making the right stops and the offense was pulling out all the right ones. But ultimately, it was Big Ben that sobered up and was able to put one meager drive together. Not a scoring drive, but a drive that would spend the Jet’s timeouts and end the game.

So Ben Roethlisberger takes his second knee to wind the clock down, and would you guess what fucking happens?

PAYBACK MOTHERFUCKER! YES! THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE JETS WINNING THE GAME!

Top 5 Things That Happened To Ben Roethlisberger After Being Accused of Rape
5) Losing all of his marketability [like he had any]
4) Being replaced by Charlie Batch, and watching him win games
3) Getting his nose broken by Haloi Ngata
2) Getting suckerpunched by Richard Seymour
1) Getting buttfucked by his own teammate

BOOM!

It would be easy to say that this hasn’t been a good year for Big Ben. But oh fuck, he’s going to his 3rd Super Bowl! His 3rd Super Bowl in 5 years! How in the hell does that work? What stars aligned to make this happen? Was God pissed that the Rams didn’t make it into the playoffs? Is there some demonic force behind the “Black and Yellow” song? Should we blame the president? Or maybe the changes in zodiac? What is it that makes the Steelers such a dominant force while being so boring to watch at the same time? How can a group of terrible people get such good publicity? How crazed must everyone in Pennsylvania be right now? I could only feel grateful that I was watching the game in Astoria, which feels like a million miles away from East Rutherford. If I was any closer, I would have become enveloped in the mopey madness. I’m sure my slobbery ass would have gotten mugged or brutalized in some fashion. But at least something positive came out of this game: I can now stop pretending to like the Jets. At least, for a little while…

So there you have it. The Super Bowl is in place and luckily it is a matchup that didn’t land on my “boycott list”. So two Sundays from now, you can see me sitting on the couch sipping on Gin & Gatorade cocktails while being surrounded with people that pretend to care about football. It’s the thing about the Super Bowl that you kind of just have to hold back and accept. At least for one day out of the year, we are not social deviants. And even if the game is shitty as all hell [which it very well may be], at least we had these two great games to remember fondly during the offseason and impending lockout season…

…but wait! They’re really weren’t “great” games! What the fuck?!!?

-TeeCoZee

P.S. There will be no Pro Bowl roundup because I don’t want to watch the Pro Bowl, let alone “round it up”.
P.P.S. My predictions- In a perfect world: Green Bay 35, Pittsburgh 20
In reality: Green Bay 17, Pittsburgh 20. Either way, the Steelers will score 20 points, and at least 7 will be on defense. Something bad will happen to Big Ben. The Black Eyed Peas will get booed. People will make money. The season will end after the game. Life will go on.