NFL Divisional Playoff Weekend Power Rankings Edition

2011 NFL Football Power Ratings

Each week during the heart of the NFL season, and once or twice during the NFL Preseason, we’ll gather the troops around the roundtable and hash out the NFL Power rankings. We check out the stats, looks at the records, and, most importantly, we take a close, close look at the heart of each team.

We encourage you to come back each week and see how the NFL Power Rankings have changed.

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With apologies to the NFC, the best Final 4 matchups in NFL history might be on tap in the AFC this coming weekend.

The best and the brightest will be on display in the Northeast when the Steelers take on the Ravens in Pittsburgh, and the Jets and Patriots get it on in Foxboro.

All are in essence rubber games as they split against each other during the regular season.

The AFC South and AFC West have been sent home, and now the playground belongs to the big kids.

Not that the NFC is unwatchable. The Packers will unleash their defensive fury against the workmanlike Falcons in Atlanta, and Seattle – whose mere presence in the playoffs after a 7-9 regular season drew calls to adjust playoff seeding – will try to build on its upset of the Saints by facing the overachieving Bears in Chicago.

• New England Patriots – Gillette Stadium resembles the Kremlin once playoffs start, and everyone goes into “Loose lips sink ships” mode. When anyone on the team speaks, it’s only in generalities. Tom Brady will not reiterate this week that he hates the Jets. If anyone mentions the word Jets, it had better be accompanied with “fantastic team with lots of talent.” The media is shut out. Talk of any nagging injuries does not get past the trainer’s room. The Patriots are, as Sarah Palin would put it, locked and loaded. Warm up the helicopter. It’s time to shoot some wolves.
• Pittsburgh Steelers – Assemble a team of the greatest defensive players in NFL history. Dick Butkus. Lawrence Taylor, Ray Nitschke. Reggie White. All of them, plus anyone else you want to add. Put them in a room and to a man they will tell you that Pittsburgh-Baltimore is the game they want to see this weekend. Either team could have won both the regular-season games between these teams this season, with both being field goal games. Word out of Pittsburgh is that the Steelers’ practices have been chippy, but Troy Polamalu has been on the sidelines nursing an Achilles heel injury. Other than that, Pittsburgh heads into the playoffs with several advantages – the Steelers have won 6 of 7, they are playing at home while Baltimore has flown halfway across the country and back, and they are coming off a bye week courtesy of earning the No. 2 seed.
• Baltimore Ravens – So much for the Ravens defense getting too old to keep up with the high-flying, pass-oriented offenses of 2011. Baltimore’s last loss was Dec. 5 (home against Pittsburgh), and the defense is only getting better. Since that defeat, the Ravens’ defense has given up, in succession, 28 (Houston), 24 (New Orleans), 10 (Cleveland), 7 (Cincinnati) and 7 (Kansas City, last Sunday). Spot a trend here? And while the 30 that Baltimore laid on KC last Sunday was due as much to poor KC defense and the unwillingness of the Chiefs to budge from an ineffective zone, the Ravens should get some of the credit. Scoring 30 is out of the question against Pittsburgh, but the dominating victory over the Chiefs certainly got the attention of everyone in western Pennsylvania.



• Atlanta Falcons – The Falcons and Packers played in Atlanta in late November, and Matt Ryan turned in a solid game – 24 of 28, 197 yards, one TD, 107.9 QB rating. Another one of those, combined with half-decent defense, will get the Birds into the NFL Championship Game. The fantasy of getting Seattle at home evaporated when the Packers took out Michael Vick and the Eagles on Sunday, so the opportunity for a semi-bye against the road-challenged Seahawks  is down the drain. But beating the Packers and their complicated defensive schemes would toughen up Atlanta for what only Pete Carroll and a few people who eat funny brownies in the Northwest think would be a NFC title game against Chicago.
• Chicago Bears – The no-respect card is played way too often in the NFL, but the Bears can stake legitimate claim to it. 11-5? First-round bye? Yeah, right. But here they are, and just one home win away from a berth in the NFC championship. How cool is that? It’s of little consequence that one of the Bears’ five losses this season came against Seattle. Jay Cutler had one of those games (17-39), Matt Forte (8 carries, 11 yards) hadn’t yet turned the corner on a bad start to the season, and several Bears drives just stalled out. No one figures that to happen again.
• Green Bay Packers – Did Troy Aikman really say that Aaron Rodgers was right up there with Brady and Manning among great NFL quarterbacks? Time to get a grip. Rodgers may be at the top of the second tier, and his numbers this season are rock solid (101.2 rating, 28 TDs and 11 INTs). Plus, now he has the playoff monkey off his back. But let’s hang on a bit before we start throwing rose petals in his path. And truth be told, even if Rodgers is the team’s MVP, how far behind can defensive coordinator Dom Capers be? Capers has made the Packers D miserable to play against, and if you have any doubt about that, why did Michael Vick spend most of last Sunday’s game in the fetal position?
• New York Jets – Wins are wins, and under Rex Ryan the Jets are 3-1 in the playoffs over the last two seasons. You can say Cincinnati was a fraud, the Chargers were chokers and the Colts were banged up beyond recognition, but numbers don’t lie. Next up for the Jets is probably the most important game in franchise history since the Namath Super Bowl win over the Colts in 1969. Pressure will be on Mark Sanchez, who has turtled in both games he has played in New England, but the Jets’ chances could ride on their ability to control the ball. LaDainian Tomlinson, who despises the Patriots more than even Eric Mangini does, will need to turn in a decent game; if NY can control the ball a bit, it could reduce NE’s possessions. Then maybe a turnover  . . . who knows?
• Seattle Seahawks – The ball is headed for the pond but hits a rock, ricochets wildly toward the green and screams toward the cup, hits the pin, shoots into the air and falls into the hole. “Ok,” says one of the golfer’s playing partners, “do it again and I’ll be impressed.” Seattle’s win over the Saints may not have been the biggest upset in league history, but it will be the biggest of the season. Can they do it again? And again? And again, in the Super Bowl? No, because down deep they carry a 12-ton anvil in the form of lousy road play. But at least the victory has energized the fan base, no one is talking anymore about losing to get higher draft picks, and they’re just one win away from channeling the George Mason basketball team of a few years ago.

Comment on the Power Rankings below, or as always hit us with your pregame NFL picks and predictions…

Lawrence Paul is a regular contributor to the Cappers Picks Blog, and is a free-lance gambling and travel writer from Massachusetts.

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