AFC & NFC Conference Championships: Patriots vs. Chargers, Packers vs. Giants

Blogging the National Football League, Blogging the NFL

It’s a one-game season for the teams in this weekend’s Conference Championship games. Win and you’re on your way to sunny Glendale, AZ for Super Bowl XLII on February 3. Lose and it’s the sudden beginning of a long offseason. “Our whole season is at stake and so is theirs,” says New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick in describing his AFC Championship Game against the San Diego Chargers. The same can be said for the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game.

• Both games are rematches of Week 2 meetings this season (it is the 16th time since 1970 that both championship games were rematches). But both winning coaches, Bill Belichick (Patriots) and Mike McCarthy (Packers) say that their opponents are different teams now.
• The clubs combined for an .800 regular/postseason winning percentage (56-14).
• The teams are hot, no matter what streak you look at. New England is scalding, continuing on an unbeaten season at 17-0. San Diego has won eight in a row. New York is 10-1 on the road (no road team has ever played in a championship game with that road record). Green Bay has won eight of its nine home games this year.
• In action this Sunday will be the NFL’s career leader in quarterback wins and touchdown passes (Brett Favre), the season TD-pass record-holder (Tom Brady), the season sack leader (Michael Strahan), and the running back who has led the league in rushing the past two years (LaDainian Tomlinson).

SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (13-5) at NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (17-0)
The players and personalities on these teams can exert their own game-changing influence on the matchup, but the bottom line to the meeting could be turnovers. San Diego led the league in takeaways (48; with a league-leading 30 interceptions), while New England had only 15 giveaways, best in the league (and only nine interceptions, third-best). That said, San Diego will face an offense seldom seen in the NFL. The Patriots set the season record this year for points (589) and touchdowns (75) and scored at least 24 points in 16 of their 17 games. Led by the 2007 NFL MVP, QB Tom Brady, New England seems capable of adjusting to anything defenses throw at it. Limit the pass (if that can be done) and they go to the run, or vice versa. Perhaps nothing illustrates this ability more than the Patriots’ Divisional Playoff game against Jacksonville. The Jags double- and sometimes triple-teamed WR Randy Moss, who set the NFL season TD-reception record (23) this year. What did Tom Brady do? He completed 26 of 28 attempts (for an NFL record 92.9 completion percentage) to eight different receivers for 262 yards – with only one pass going to Randy. The Chargers will come in to their rematch with the Patriots (they lost at New England 38-14 on September 16) somewhat limited. But that concerns Coach Belichick. RB LaDainian Tomlinson (knee), QB Phillip Rivers (knee) and TE Antonio Gates (toe) are hurting. Phillip would be replaced by veteran Billy Volek, who led San Diego to the winning score in the Divisionals. MY PICK: How can I go against the undefeated Patriots, a team I’ve been touting as the eventual Super Bowl champion since before training camp started? I can’t. I won’t.

NEW YORK GIANTS (12-6) at GREEN BAY PACKERS (14-3)
If anyone exhibits how teams can change during a season, it’s these two. Back in Week 2 (a 35-13 Green Bay win in New York), the Packers were worried about their running game, and even Brett Favre (who would become the NFL’s winningest QB ever in that game) was saying the Pack needed to be able to mix the run with the pass. The Giants? Their concern — a big one — was their defense, with new packages put in under new coordinator Steve Spagnuolo. By the end of the Green Bay game, the Giants had surrendered 80 points in the season’s first two games. Going into the NFC Championship, how things have changed. It took five more games for Green Bay to find its running game — in Ryan Grant, who grew up 20 miles from Giants Stadium (Ramsey, NJ). Ryan was a practice squad player/injured for the Giants for two years before Green Bay traded for him right before the season. All Ryan did since Week 8 was run for 1,130 yards and 11 TDs, including a Packers’ playoff record last Saturday with 201 rushing yards. Meanwhile, from a gritty goal-line stand against Washington in Week 3, the Giants’ defense began to take form, Spagnuolo’s shifting schemes and player rotation up front began to mesh, and New York has allowed only 18.9 points-per-game through the Divisionals since the Green Bay game. So how will this all pan out Sunday in what is expected to be sub-freezing temperatures at Lambeau Field? You have to think the running game will be a big factor. The Giants can match Ryan Grant’s production with their own RBs – Brandon Jacobs, the 6-4, 264-pound freight train who usually needs a good two or three guys to bring him down, and elusive Ahmad Bradshaw, one of the team’s two seventh-round draft picks this year. Giants QB Eli Manning — looking to become the second consecutive Manning to win a Super Bowl after brother Peyton did it last season — has a 100 passer rating in each of his last three games, along with eight TDs and one interception. He will go against one of the best corner tandems in the league in Al Harris and Charles Woodson, who excel in man-to-man. And Brett Favre, who also became the career TD leader this year — who knows what he’ll pull this week, from last-ditch shovel passes that set up scores to out-and-out bombs to the Pack’s “Big Five” alignment of five wides and an empty backfield. Brett has a strong O-line in front of him. He was sacked the third fewest times in the league (19, tie), but faces a defense that led the NFL in sacks (53) this season. MY PICK: I believe the Giants’ road win streak ends here at Lambeau. Brett Favre in the NFC Championship on the frozen tundra? Yeah, I like the Pack.