Coming off last week’s playoff games, we had four badass teams, teaming with pure badassitude, going into the championship week. Two games were played. In the AFC, the Colts, despite a shaky first half, won handily. We knew they were badass. We knew they had gobbles of badassitude. Both things held. Two things were apparent and instructive, speaking of the total badassitude of the colts: a) The drive for a touchdown just before the end of the first half, and b) Watching their head coach, Jim Caldwell talk about the game at half time and what he thought they needed to and would do in the second half. Badassitude aplenty is what that was! The Jets were badass and to the extent possible, most of their badassitude held. They just ran into a superior Colts team. They lost, but one came away thinking they were badass and their badassitude held.
In the NFC championship game, the Vikings came in looking very badass. Across the board, led by Favre, Minnesota had proven without a doubt that they were badass. There was, again, badassitude aplenty on that team. And it held. Bret had his ass kicked every which way during the game. You saw clear indication that the old man was in with vicious young ‘uns. They knocked him down, pushed him around, roughed him up, but the old man kept picking himself up, dusting himself off, and kicking ass himself. The team lost fumbles, were intercepted, were pushed around but they fought to the very end. Badass, were the Vikings, holding on, without a doubt to their badassitude!!
The Saints came into the game looking very badass. Yours truly thought they came with more badassitude than any other team coming into this championship weekend. Yours truly thinks they were the one team that left the weekend with decidedly less badassitude than they came in with. The offense seemed to hesitate, couldn’t quite figure out how to kick ass with the many turnovers and advantages they had, and mostly got lucky. Luck does not a badass make and is not the stuff of which badassitude is made. In an interesting irony, a winning team, the New Orleans Saints, came out of the championship weekend having lost the most badassitude of all the teams we watched. If I was a betting man, and I am not, and I discourage it, I would put my money on the Colts.
New Orleans Saints Display Winning Badasssitude
In the New Orleans – Arizona game, there were no surprises, at least to me. New Orleans have been badasses all season. More importantly, for most of the season, they had scored awfully high on the badassitude scale. Arizona on the hand had not really been badass through the season. However, last weekend, against Green Bay they had scored pretty high on the badassitude scale. On the balance, the badass, with a high badassitude quotient will win 98% of the time against a sometimes badass, with only occasional high scores on the badassitude scale. New Orleans knocked Warner on his ass early and quick. Right there, you knew it was going to be a long day. You could see the Cardinals looking around like they were checking if they had remembered to bring lunch. The game was over early and quick. Badassitude, which New Orleans had aplenty, worn out as it always would, as it always has. No surprise there.
Baltimore Offense Lays An Egg, Is Shown Up
The Baltimore Ravens were to me, a surprise. The Ravens, particularly the defense, were badasses all season. The Ravens defense had and still has, badassitude to spare. The defense was good – no question. Now the offense?? They sucked, they laid an egg. The Ravens offense were never really badass – they lacked badassitude. They have lacked badassitude all season and yesterday, it showed. The Colts on the other hand, were true to form. Badassitude abounded on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball. And they kicked Baltimore’s ass (to my dismay).
Cowboys Crumble
I always thought the Cowboys beat the Eagles all the three times simply because the Eagles offensive coaches are probably among the most inept in the NFL (the offense often found prosperity in spite of the awful coaching). And the Eagles defensive coaches had zero imagination. Very simply, it was not that the Cowboys were a much better team than the Eagles, but that head to head, the Cowboys were coached to better match the Eagles perhaps more than any other team. Face to face, the Eagles fell down in the badassitude quotient and the Cowboys rose. On their own, it was a different story and it showed today Minnesota. I particularly liked the little fuck-you touch down play at the end of the game which had the Cowboys incensed, saying Minnesota was running up the score. Hello? If you don’t want the opponent to run up the score, stop them. It’s that simple.
Same Old Norv, Jets Win
Norv Turner brought the San Diego Chargers into the play-offs, and inevitably, disappointment. This was a guy who in seven years with the Washington Redskins was given every chance to succeed, every resource he needed, for whom the local press was in the tank, and he punked out. A team cannot be badass if their coach is a punk. Norv is not badass. The Jets are. Rex Ryan has badass and badassitude pedigree. His dad, Buddy had badassitude to spare. You could run a badassitude charity on the badassitude Buddy did not need. So it came to pass that the Charges/Jets match up was necessarily a mismatch. And it showed. Badassitude, which the Jets had in larger quantity than they needed, won out. Bye, bye Norv…
The game is not over yet but I can unequivocally judge that both the Arizona Cardinals and the Green Bay Packers have rich amount of badassitude. Interestingly, I had not thought much of the badassitude in the Arizona Cardinals before. One did not think of them as a team that exhibited much apparent badassedness. Having said that, they have today shown a quiet calm and steadfastness that only badasses know to carry themselves with. The Green Bay Packers, down 17 points calmly worked themselves back into the game as only badasses who know what they are capable of would do. Total double badassitude win! A good day in the realm of badasses and badassedness!