BACK IN SEPTEMBER, while recovering from a hernia operation, I conjured up an NFL season preview because there’s very little else you can do in a hospital bed. Looking at it now, I was quite accurate for someone enjoying the benefits of high dosage painkillers.
For a start, I nailed the disappointing seasons that both the Saints and Jets would endure and named six of the eight teams that played in last week’s divisional round. I also said the Lions would implode but that was fairly inevitable from before the season started.
However, I did write the following:
“While a lot of people are tipping San Francisco to repeat their playoff run of 2012 or, indeed, go one better, I don’t think it will happen for the 49ers. They’ve an awesome defence, one of the league’s best and a corps of top notch running backs. On top of that, Vernon Davis could be the league’s standout tight end not wearing a New England Patriots jersey.”
On reflection, that looks like the worst call ever made in the history of NFL punditry. Thankfully, I added the following disclaimer:
“However, the 49ers will never win a Super Bowl with Alex Smith at the helm. For all his qualities as a game manager, he very rarely wins games for his side. For as long as that continues, the 49ers will continue to play the bridesmaid.”
Blessing in disguise
Skip forward to November when Alex Smith was forced to leave the game against the Rams with a head injury. In stepped Colin Kaepernick and a franchise actually capable of winning the Super Bowl was born.
Of course, Smith’s benching has probably set player safety back a decade as players will try to hide concussion symptoms for fear of losing their starting job but it was a blessing in disguise for the 49ers. As good as Alex Smith is, there’s no way he drags the 49ers out of the 17 point hole they found themselves in on Sunday.
They missed an easy field goal, failed to score off two turnovers and still won because Harbaugh stubbornly stuck to their gameplan when most coaches would have started airing it out to chase the game. If that’s not proof that it’s better to be lucky and good than either on its own, then the season the Baltimore Ravens have had certainly is.
Comeback
November 25, trailing the Chargers by three points with less than two minutes to go, the Ravens went for it on 4th and 29. For some reason – he’ll tell you it’s because he is elite – Flacco decides to throw a check down pass to Ray Rice who runs for 27-yards, past eight Chargers defenders, and gets the benefit of a generous spot for a first down.
If the Ravens didn’t win that game, which they did in overtime, they would have finished 9-7 and faced the Texans on the road rather than the Colts at home in the wild-card round; an entirely different prospect.
Baltimore got lucky Sunday night too. The loss of Gronk coming into the game was big for the Patriots but the loss of Aqib Talib on defence early in the game was fatal. In the nine games this year before Talib joined the Patriots, opposing quarterbacks completed 66% of their passes. In the eight games since, the figure had dropped to 58%. Once he left the game last night, Flacco and the Ravens offence took full advantage.
And then of course, there’s Ray Lewis.
If the NFL hadn’t brought in their new ‘designated to return’ injury status this year, Ray Lewis’s (alleged) last season as a Raven would’ve ended in week six and the Ravens would instead be hanging their Super Bowl run on the death of former owner Art Modell. Instead we see a hundred shots a game of Lewis crying, praying or shouting ‘come on, man’ over and over.
Lewis has been a phenomenal servant to the Ravens, but he and Ed Reed looked like old, broken men for most of the game last night. Indeed, for all the pre-match hype surrounding Lewis, his biggest contribution was to fall on Tom Brady after a referee had already tackled him. However, it is clear his teammates believe in him and that’s been enough to get the Ravens this far so who knows what might happen in New Orleans?
As I’ve said, you have to be both lucky and good to win these games and the Ravens were very good at times last night, particularly attacking and defending in the Redzone. Joe Flacco is playing like a man who sees a whopping new contract coming up at the end of the season while the whole team is benefiting from having an offensive co-ordinator not named Cam Cameron.
We know, on their day, both these teams can be brilliant. Who will have that slice of luck needed to win Super Bowl XLVIII though? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see but my money’s on the 49ers.
That’s not something I’d have ever said with Alex Smith at quarterback.
