By Ron Borges

If the long shot Giants find a way to upset the peerless Patriots Sunday night in Super Bowl XLII, New Yorkers will immediately insist it’s the biggest upset since David dropped Goliath with a well placed stone to the noggin. New Yorkers would be wrong, not that that’s anything new.

They will talk about the odds against the Giants winning three straight playoff road games just to get to University of Phoenix Stadium (which a Vegas odds maker friend tells me boiled down to roughly 40-1) and the even deeper odds of any team winning 10 straight road games (3000-1) on its way to the Super Bowl.

The Giants opened as 12-point underdogs, making them one of the biggest ‘dogs in Super Bowl history but the fact is the betting line has been 12 points or more nine times in the 41 previous Super Bowls and three of those underdogs won, so mathematically and athletically New York would seem to have at least a 1 in 3 chance of pulling off the upset. If they do where would it rank among Super Bowl upsets?

Certainly not first or second, although people from Manhattan to Queens might argue otherwise because of their team’s wild-card status and the Patriots’ undefeated record. More significantly though, one can also debate what was the greatest upset in Super Bowl history.

The conventional wisdom is that it was the Jets and Joe Namath when they defeated the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. Not only were the Jets 17-point underdogs when betting opened and 18 point underdogs by game time but the historical importance of the victory serves to certainly make it the most significant Super Bowl.

That’s because the then American Football League was given no respect and no chance to compete against the allegedly unbeatable Colts. The public believed no AFL team belonged on the same field with the NFL’s elite, a case Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers had made quite forcefully in the first two Super Bowls by dismantling the Kansas City Chiefs and the Oakland Raiders. But none of that dissuaded Namath from guaranteeing a victory early in the week and then pulling it off, 16-7, that Sunday in the Orange Bowl.

That win established the legitimacy of the AFL in the public’s mind and made its merger with the NFL, which was to go into full effect in two more years, acceptable. It also sent shock waves through the stodgy NFL and the cocky Colts to the point that nearly 40 years later the embarrassment of that defeat still resonates with then Baltimore middle linebacker Mike Curtis.

“No one knows the despair, the abject humiliation we felt that day,’’ Curtis insists in a funereal tone. “We lost to somebody we would beat 1,000 times. It was humiliation…to be kind.’’

A loss that still stings so deeply four decades later says much about the importance of the game and the fact is the Jets were the biggest underdog ever to win the Super Bowl. They also won the most historically significant Super Bowl as well. But was it really the biggest upset?

The Colts had finished 13-1 that season, allowed a record low 144 points (10.2 per game) and were led by league MVP Earl Morrall at quarterback, who had replaced the injured Johnny Unitas all season. They were seen, frankly, as unbeatable.

Yet if one assesses what the Patriots accomplished in Super Bowl XXXVI against the St. Louis Rams, there is a strong case to be made that their victory was in fact the bigger upset.

The 2001 St. Louis Rams were first in the league in points scored (503), first in total yards, third in total yards allowed and seventh in points allowed. They averaged 31.4 points per game, the third straight season they’d scored over 500, and allowed 17.1, meaning they won by an averaged margin of slightly over two touchdowns (14.4 points per game differential).

They had the league’s Most Valuable Player and the Offensive Player of the Year AND IT WASN’T THE SAME PLAYER, Kurt Warner winning the MVP while Marshall Faulk won player of the year for the third straight season.

They had two receivers who had over 1,000 receiving yards and a back who rushed for 1,382 yards while also catching 83 passes and scoring 21 touchdowns. And then there was their defense, which was ranked third overall based on yards allowed.

The Patriots, meanwhile, had tied with Miami at 11-5 for the division championship although they won it based on having a better divisional record. They barely escaped their first playoff game due only to the obscure but now legendary “tuck rule’’ that saved Tom Brady from a game-losing fumble and allowed New England to eliminate the Oakland Raiders in overtime by virtue of two Adam Vinatieri field goals through a blizzard.

Frankly, no one outside of their immediate families felt New England could keep up with The Greatest Show on Turf but they did more than that. They beat them, 20-17, giving them the second biggest upset in terms of point spread but arguably a bigger one than the Jets pulled off because while the Colts had a tremendous defense their offense was outgained and outscored by both the Dallas Cowboys and the Cleveland Browns. The Rams were outgained and outscored by no one that season and few teams in NFL history.

Though dominate, the 1968 Colts were not as formidable as the Rams while the Jets had finished the regular season second in the AFL in scoring, third in total yardage, fourth in points allowed and first in fewest yards allowed. In other words, they were dominant themselves. The 2001 Patriots, by comparison, finished sixth in points scored but 19th in total yardage and while sixth in points allowed defensively, they were 24th in yards allowed.

In other words, the Jets were statistically more formidable than that 18-point spread would have indicated on paper while the Patriots were statistically no match for the Rams’ offensive and defensive package. Yet New England held off St. Louis, 20-17, winning perhaps the most dramatic Super Bowl game in history. Arguably it was also the greatest upset by all the normal barometers but the width of the point spread.

There are other contenders as well, like the Kansas City Chiefs’ 23-7 rout of the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV. Kansas City was a 12-point underdog in that game, thus making its upset victory a 28-point swing. The Chiefs’ quarterback, Len Dawson, was dogged all week with allegations that he consorted with known gamblers, although nothing was ever proven, and he weathered that storm well enough to win the game’s MVP Award after going 12-for-17 for 142 yards and a touchdown. That upset was nearly as colossal historically as the Jets’ victory over the Colts the previous year because it cemented the idea that AFL teams were not only competitive with the NFL but their top echelon teams might be superior.

The next biggest upset came in Super Bowl XXXII when John Elway led the Denver Broncos to a 31-24 victory over the defending champion Green Bay Packers after being 11-point underdogs at game time and 12-point ‘dogs when the line was first established.

The Packers, led by Reggie White on defense and Brett Favre on offense, seemed headed toward the kind of dynasty the Patriots have now established but the Broncos derailed them and they never fully recovered.

The NFC had won the previous 13 straight Super Bowls and in the eight Super Bowls prior to the Broncos’ victory the NFC representative had beaten its AFC rival by an average margin of 20 points. Yet Elway, who was 0-3 in Super Bowls on teams that had been outscored 158-50 in those games, combined his arm and the overpowering legs of Terrell Davis (30 carries, 157 yards and three touchdowns) to win the first of back-to-back Super Bowl championships.

Rounding out the top 5 Super Bowls upsets, the Giants’ 20-19 defeat of the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV seems fitting. The Bills’ K-Gun offense, a no huddle hybrid run expertly by Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly, was considered all but unstoppable, just as the Rams had seemed to be. Although the Giants had a powerful defense led by Lawrence Taylor, the Bills were seven-point favorites and the fact is they would have been even bigger favorites had the odds makers not known that much of the betting money would come down on the side of the team from New York city and so they kept it close to encourage equal money on both sides.

They got it and they also got one of the greatest Super Bowls ever, a game won by the margin of kicker Scott Norwood’s missed 47-yard field goal, which was wide by about a coat of paint on the uprights. That miss coupled with the Giants controlling the ball for 40 of the game’s 60 minutes and led to a major Super Bowl upset, although nothing of the magnitude of the Patriots’ win over the Rams or the Jets’ undressing of the Colts.

Where would another upset by the Giants rank if they knock off the undefeated Patriots? That depends on where you put the Jets’ win in Super Bowl III and the Patriots’ win in Super Bowl XXXVI. Personally, I think the Patriots’ win was a more unlikely upset than the Jets but there is no question they rank one and two one way or the other.

If the Giants, a 12 ½ point underdog, stop New England a game short of a perfect 19-0 season it would certainly be at least the third greatest upset in Super Bowl history for the same reason the Jets get the nod from most historians. It would be a stunning upset and one of deep historical significance because it would have stopped only the second team in the Super Bowl Era to enter the game undefeated one game short of perfection.

That would be an upset and then some.

NOTE: In case you were wondering, the biggest Super Bowl point spread was not the 18 the Colts were favored by against the Jets, despite the insistence of some. It was the 18 ½ that the San Francisco 49ers were favored by against the San Diego Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX.

In fact, at least one Las Vegas odds maker, Sid Diamond, opened with San Diego as a 20-point underdog before ultimately cutting it down to 18 ½.

“I wanted to get as much money as I could down on San Diego early because I was so sure the 49ers would win,’’ Diamond recalled. “I wanted to encourage people to go in that direction, which they did.’’

The 49ers easily covered the number, winning by 23, 49-26.

By Ron Borges

NEW YORK – Time does not stand still but Felix Trinidad did. That’s why he ended up on the floor Saturday night.

Once one of the most feared punchers in boxing, a man who had not fought in nearly three years squared off with a 39-year-old opponent who was 2-3 in his last five fights and had twice been left quivering on the canvas, wondering why the lights kept blinking on and off above him.

It was Trinidad who was coming off that lengthy retirement (his second but hopefully not his last) and it was Roy Jones, Jr. who was coming back to Madison Square Garden to try at 39 to convince a skeptical public that he was still relevant. He isn’t really but he was relevant enough (not to mention big enough) to send Trinidad collapsing to the floor twice on his way to a convincing unanimous decision that left the Puerto Rican icon reportedly $15 million richer and Jones much less so but still believing his own hype that he had found what Ponce De Leon could not.

The fact is there is no Fountain of Youth in Florida and most definitely none in boxing. As a fighter ages his skills erode, his reflexes slow, his power decipates with the loss of timing and flexibility but his ego often expands. The latter would be difficult in Jones’ case since he was an early practitioner of addressing himself in the third person (to wit: “Roy can do whatever Roy wants to do in boxing as long as Roy’s motivated by being Roy.’’ Or something like that) but the erosion of his talents has been on display for some time and no one should be fooled by what he did to Trinidad into believing he is what he once was.

The 35-year-old Trinidad proved to be the more decipated of the two though, a dilemma intensified by the fact Jones was the naturally larger and faster man. Those advantages of size, power and speed ultimately cut Trinidad down in the second half of what was actually a more entertaining fight than many had anticipated.

In its early stages, Trinidad was able to use his jab and some consistent and surprising body punches at and below the belt line to keep Jones at bay. But late in the sixth round, only minutes after Jones complained to referee Arthur Mercante, Jr. about Trinidad’s punches straying too often below boxing’s demilitarized zone to be an accident,  the four-time world champion began to press Trinidad, closing the gap on him and beginning to back him up with lead right hands and several combinations that seemed to come at Trinidad faster than he could react.

At the end of that round, Jones smiled slyly as he walked back to his corner. Ninety seconds later Trinidad was knocked to the floor for the first time by a sweeping right hand to the temple that caused the kind of delayed reaction one sees in aged fighters and stubborn buildings after the wrecker’s ball strikes.

Trinidad took two short steps back and then simply fell straight down to the floor as if someone had pulled a chair out from under him. That collapse was so stunningly unexpected that Jones was not able to react quickly enough to land what would have been a second telling blow and that remained the case even after Trinidad got up.

The Trinidad who pushed himself off the canvas was not the same one who had been trying to outbox Jones up to that point. He was now a wary combatant, a good example of why governments don’t send old men to fight wars. It is a young man’s game because whether in the ring or on the battlefield participation demands a cessation of wise judgment, a trait more common in youth.

Trinidad seemed to realize at that moment that he was up against an opponent who was too big, too strong, better conditioned and better schooled in their shared craft. Trinidad had always been a powerful puncher but because of it he became someone who’s other skills remained under developed, especially defensively.

As a welterweight and junior middleweight champion he went down more than a few times but was always able to get up and make his opponent pay dearly for damaging him. But nothing he landed against Jones seemed to affect the older man after the first few rounds. The same could not be said for Trinidad, who from the moment where Jones first drilled him with two hard combinations in Round 6, fought a fight for survival not victory.

“He took a lot of hard punches,’’ Jones (52-4, 38 KO) said. “Everyone said we were too old but we had a great fight. I can’t believe he stayed in there 12 rounds with me.’’

The fact that Trinidad did said as much about how diminished Jones is as it did of the courage of the former welterweight champion. Once there was a time, five or six years ago, that Roy Jones would never have let Trinidad off the hook after dropping him in both the seventh and 10th rounds. Though overly cautious much of his career, Jones was a great finisher because he had the quickness to leap on an addled opponent and batter him with flurries so fast people at ringside couldn’t see them coming much better than his woozy opponent could.

But though his hand speed still exceeded Trinidad’s Saturday night it was not the machine-gun fire it once had been. Now it was more like a powder-and-musket attack, still lethal but requiring more time to lock, load and land.

Both had come to the Garden willing to do the best they could though and had they never been what they once were what they accomplished would have been satisfying to the 12,161 who gathered at the Garden to observe them. But these fighters were once Titans, as promoter Don King kept insisting for weeks, and that was the problem. Now they are not even titans.

Jones clearly hammered out a unanimous decision by dominating the final seven rounds though, with judges Nelson Vasquez and Tom Kaczmarek seeing him a 116-110 winner while Julie Lederman took it a step further and scored the bout 117-109, meaning she gave only one round to the shadow of what Trinidad has become.

Yet as one watched Jones’ superiority in size and speed one unmistakably had to see that the assault on Trinidad in rounds seven and 10 would have gotten Jones off his shift early not so many years ago because he would have finished the job right then.

“I tried to put him away a few times but he slipped a lot of my good punches,’’ Jones admitted, perhaps forgetting this was the kind of thing that never used to happen to him. “I felt like I was missing knocking him out by inches. He’s got a pretty hard head.’’

Once Jones was sure of his size and strength advantages the concreteness of his opponent’s cranium mattered little to him and he opened up and took over the evening, knocking Trinidad down with that right to the temple in the seventh round and then with a quick, straight left in Round 10 that slammed into the middle of Trinidad’s face and creased his features, sending him down on the seat of his pants.

“Roy Jones was very fast,’’ Trinidad (42-3, 35 KO) said. “He fought a good fight. I take nothing away from Roy but I took off two years and eight months. If I could have avoided the knockdowns I think I would have won the fight.’’

Trinidad then said the required “I have no excuses’’ after having just made them. The real point is that the layoff was not the problem. The problem was that his speed and legs are gone and he could never match firepower with bigger men like Bernard Hopkins or Winky Wright, who both beat him up worse than Jones.

Once Jones knew was on relatively safe ground he began to go after Trinidad more forcefully, a fact made clear by the edge in power punches thrown by both according to CompuBox’s statistics (97-52) over the final seven rounds. In the first five, those numbers were nearly even, but when Jones began to step up his pressure and close in Trinidid could not rely any longer on the punching power that had made him one of the more feared knockout artists in the history of the welterweight division.

That was 23 pounds and nearly eight years ago, which is a lifetime in boxing, so by the final rounds, a beleaguered Trinidad faced a difficult choice. He could take a great risk and try to land the kind of left hooks that won for him on so many nights in his youth or he could accept the reality of what he no longer seemed to be and box only to survive. In the end, that was the choice he made and, frankly, who could blame him?

As the fight wore on and Jones began to realize Trinidad could not hurt him nor contend with his strength, he inexorably closed in like a shark but not a ravenous one. The more he moved in, the less Trinidad threw to his body as he had done effectively in the first half of the fight, perhaps calculating like an insurance adjuster the risk-reward ratio and opting to avoid the inherent dangers. But the less he threw the more he got hit until boom! – he was down.

Round 7 seemed to be going along fairly quietly until with about 90 seconds to go Jones unleashed a short right hand to the temple that landed flush. Trinidad backed up two steps and then suddenly dropped straight to his knees without Jones moving a step closer to him. Trinidad seemed shaken as he watched Mercante count. He slowly pushed himself up and worked his way through the rest of the round without further damage but Jones had seen what he’d been waiting more than half the fight to be sure of. He was on safe ground with the smaller man.

Clearly more sure of himself, Jones began to potshot Trinidad, snapping his head back with a quick left uppercut late in Round 9 and then coming back with a rapid-fire left-right combination that left Jones smiling again as the bell sounded.

He had reason to smile all the more by the time the bell tolled to end the next round for he had again caught Trinidad with a hard left jab that drove the former welterweight backwards and then down on the seat of his pants so quickly that the right Jones threw behind it missed the target, although at first it didn’t seem so. That was only because Trinidad went backwards like an out of control school kid wearing sneakers with roller blade wheels on them.

Again he was up quickly but with two rounds to go, Trinidad had fallen so far behind he had to put himself at further risk to punch his way back into the fight against an opponent who was both stronger and quicker. As the final bell sounded Trinidad sat on his stool with the grim look of a man who knew how this was going to end and uncertain whether to try to avoid it at great risk or content himself with accepting defeat.

In the end, Felix Trinidad chose the latter. He boxed the last round not to lose on the floor rather than trying to win on his feet. There was no shame in choosing to avoid the indignity of a third trip to the canvas or worse but it was not a decision he would have had to face only a few years back.

As for Roy Jones, he said again after the fight that he can beat “110 per cent of the champions out there’’ if properly motivated. He insisted he would travel to Wales soon to challenge super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe, the kind of overseas trip he was never willing to make when he was in his prime and the undefeated light heavyweight champion, Dariusz Michalczewski, lurked and longed for him in Germany.

In his youth Jones was not willing to challenge Michalczewski or anyone else in their own arena but old age fools many of us into thinking we still are what we used to be. Saturday night in New York it appeared to Jones that nothing had changed but appearances can be deceiving. Fortunately for him. Felix Trinidad could not be.

“A lot of people thought I was done, but I’m still capable of doing a lot of things,’’ Jones said. “I’m capable of beating anyone I get my mind right for. I’ll fight anyone, anywhere, anytime.’’

If Roy Jones, Jr. really means that one thing is sure. Before too long he’ll leave the ring looking like Felix Trinidad, forlorn and fearsome no longer.

By Ron Borges

NEW YORK – This is the part the public seldom sees – the sad vulnerability of the journeyman boxer revealed in its near nakedness.

Alex Bunema had come to Madison Square Garden well aware of what was expected of him. He was supposed to lose to former IBF super welterweight champion Roman Karmazin, a crackling puncher whose nickname “Made in Hell’’ seems well deserved considering the difficulties of his youth in Russia and the wars he’s gone through to win and then lose a world title in rapid succession.

Bunema is the classic opponent for such a man, a 32-year-old native of Zaire who came to boxing because, in his life, such a dangerous occupation was considered an opportunity. It led Bunema to the United States and to several potential breakthrough fights against the likes of Kassim Ouma, Bronko McKart and Jermain Taylor when they were all on their way up. In all three fights, Bunema went down, being stopped by Ouma and Taylor and losing a split decision to McKart.

After that his fate was sealed. He would fight and most of the time he would win but not on nights like Saturday at the Garden. Not on nights where he was facing a guy like Karmazan, whose lankiness, power and connections to promoter Don King were all giving him enough problems that by the end of nine rounds he trailed badly on all three judges’ cards and had in fact won only one round in the opinion of one of them, former world champion Billy Costello.

But then, out of the dark night, Bunema caught Karmazin with a left hook early in the 10th round and sent him to the floor. When the Russian got up he was like the Soviet Union. He was all but gone as a super power. Bunema sensed this instinctively but he took his time, sizing up the former champion and waiting for the right moment to unleash a three-punch combination that left Karmazin crumbled on the floor in his own corner, no life left in him.

Bunema’s joy was evident once he realized what he had done. He stood in the center of the ring hollering like a madman and beating his chest with his gloved fist. He was demanding the title shot Karmazan figured to get with WBA champion Joachim Alcine if he’d done what was expected. He wanted his due and he wanted the world, and King, to understand he knew what that should be.

“I was not surprised I did what I did,’’ Bunema (29-5-2, 15 KO) said immediately after the fight. The fight was close until I knocked him into the corner in the 10th round. I knew he was in trouble then. I thought it was over when I hit him with the big right hand but he stayed up.

“I followed him and landed the big hook that knocked him down. Now I want a title shot.’’

It was the kind of thing you hear from some fighters who have waited many years for such a moment. Bunema was making demands he knew might never come to fruition once the ring lights went down and men like King went back to their big offices so this was his one chance to state his case before he slid back into the dark shadows where fighters like him recede.

And then he was gone, back in his shared locker room space in the bowels of Madison Square Garden as the crowd moved on to the bigger fight, the one between Roy Jones, Jr. and Felix Trinidad that they’d paid good money to see. Few of had shelled out their wages to witness what Bunema had done for he was a footnote quickly forgotten.

That’s what made the scene back in his locker room all the more startling. With the area jammed with the detritus of victory – sudden hangers on, friends he never knew he had and his few loyalists – Bunema sat down on a bench. And then he wept.

He didn’t intend to, just like Don King never intended to see him knock out the fighter he favored, Karmazin. But emotion coincided with good fortune and all the weight Alex Bunema had carried these many years across the ocean from the Republic of Congo formerly known as Zaire to this moment burst like a long-crumbling dam and tears didn’t just well up in his eyes. They burst forth as he hung his head, his still wrapped fists holding the sides of his face as his body shook.

For a few moments no one knew quite what to do or say. Joy had suddenly been replaced by something else but no one outside of Bunema quite understood what it was.

He had won against all the odds, odds that began to mount against him the very day he emerged from his mother’s womb in Zaire, a country where poverty is not news. Now, at last, he had won in a sport that seldom rewards men like him and neither bravado nor elation could hold back any longer the real emotions of what such a victory meant to him.

Who knows if this will lead to a shot at Joachim Alcine? History says probably not but you never know in boxing, and if it comes who knows how Alex Bunema will fair? The smart money will bet that it will be another night like the ones he had with Taylor, Ouma and McKart, nights in which he played the role Karmazin did on Saturday.

Deep inside The Journeyman might even have realized that even as he sat, shoulders slumped in his locker room, but that reality was not the source of those tears. They were tears of relief, relief because no matter what happened from here he had come to Madison Square Garden and had his moment on the big stage and done something with it.

All his efforts had not been in vain. He made little money Saturday night and he won no world titles but, for all the rest of his years, even in his dotage, Alex Bunema can say, “You should have seen me that night in the Garden when I was young and strong and put Karmazin on his ass.’’

It’s a small victory in the wide swath of a man’s life but it was his. And he wept for wanting so long for it to come.

 
Getty Images

By Ron Borges

Almost since the day the Patriots came from behind to beat the Indianapolis Colts in November, the pundits, prognosticators and pigskin prophets (not to mention the pigskin profiteers) insisted that the “real’’ Super Bowl would be played this Sunday in Foxborough between the defending Super Bowl champions and the best team of the New Millennium. Obviously, things didn’t turn out that way.

A funny thing happened to the Colts on their way to Foxborough. Some guys from the West Coast came into their house and pulled off a drive by. The San Diego Chargers, of all teams, and Norv Turner, of all coaches, beat down the Colts by A) knocking their top running back out of the game at a critical moment, a situation that led to Peyton Manning throwing a perfect middle screen that should have been a touchdown but turned into a dropped ball when Addai’s young replacement didn’t react quickly enough and saw the ball coming too late to hold on to it. San Diego KO.

Early in the game future Hall of Fame wide receiver Marvin Harrison, who hadn’t played in 11 weeks because of a nagging injury, fumbled away what would have been the Colts’ second consecutive scoring drive when he was hit in a way that guys don’t get hit in their living rooms and coughed up the ball after a long gain. Instead of a 14-0 march to the inevitable for the Colts, San Diego had the ball and soon were back in the game. San Diego KO.

Late in what would become the final drive of a long, losing day for Manning, he appeared to complete a critical pass to his All-Pro receiver, Reggie Wayne, but Wayne was dislodged from both the ball and his senses by a crushing hit from the Charger defense and it became a crippling incompletion at a critical juncture in what was now a contest slipping away from the Colts. San Diego KO.

In the end, that’s why the Chargers will be in frigid Foxborough Sunday wondering why the sun no longer works in this part of the country. As glittering as some of their offensive players may be when healthy the Chargers are in the AFC championship game because they have what in boxing is considered the great equalizer. They can knock you out.

They to Gillette Stadium as a well-deserved 15-point underdog but they are an underdog with bite. The Chargers, known through much of their history as a pass-happy team of surfer boys from sunny San Diego, have a puncher’s chance to do what no one else has done all year. They have a puncher’s chance of knocking out the undefeated Patriots.

Frankly, that’s not much of a chance as so many big punchers have found out over the years but it’s more than the Colts have sitting at home. They have no chance. At least the Chargers have that chance.

San Diego has made its reputation in recent years with its ability to run the ball first, last and always with LaDainian Tomlinson and then throw it to the likes of tight end Antonio Gates. That will all change come Sunday because Tomlinson is limping with a hyperextended knee, Gates is limping with a broken toe and quarterback Philip Rivers has been limping for a month with a bad knee as well.

So how could the Chargers limp into Foxborough and be competitive with a team that beat them 38-14 when everyone was healthy in Week 2? They may not, but there have been positive changes for the Chargers since the last time New England saw them as well and they should not be ignored.

First, Antonio Cromartie was not starting at corner in September but he has since not only taken the job from Drayton Florence he’s taken the NFL by storm. Cromartie may be the leading playmaker among defensive backs in the AFC today and he is a guy who can play in single coverage against anyone, thus freeing up defensive coordinator Ted Cottrell to do what he wasn’t doing in September, which is letting his pass rushers attack the quarterback.

As team after team has learned, or should have learned a long time ago, to beat Tom Brady you have to beat him up. If you try to stay back in coverage you can drop 15 men and it won’t matter. Brady is too smart and thinks too quickly. Unwisely, the Jaguars tried it in last weekend’s playoff game, blitzing only eight times. For a time they confused Brady but once he got the hang of what they were doing he simply riddled their soft coverages and then sent them home.

Cottrell is aggressive by nature and has turned Shawne Merriman and Shaun Phillips loose in the second half of the season, in part because he’s finally sure of what they can do and in part because the elevation of Cromartie and the shifting of Florence to nickel back has bolstered his secondary in two areas, thus freeing the rest of the defense to attack the quarterback.

That is what puncher’s do. They wait for an opening and then attack. George Foreman, for example, lost every second of every round against then heavyweight champion Michael Moorer except for the few seconds it took him to land a massive straight right hand and the 10 seconds necessary to count Moorer out after it did to make Foreman the oldest heavyweight champion in history. That’s the Chargers only real hope. The knockout.

San Diego must land several massive shots on Brady and hope it forces him out of his rhythm. Forced to throw before he wants to, Brady has seemed human at times, as he was against the Eagles and Ravens. What San Diego must do is reprise what the Eagles did defensively and then turn it up a notch to force Brady into making the kind of turnovers San Diego has ridden all the way to the AFC title game.

Several nights before their September meeting I ran into John Madden walking through downtown Boston and we stopped and chatted for some time about the game. Madden felt, quite correctly as things turned out, that the Chargers were not at that time ready for a big game because they had a new head coach and eight new assistants. They simply were not coordinated enough, nor familiar enough with their players and each other, to know for sure how to react to the kind of pressure New England would put on them several days later.

The wisdom of that statement was obvious when they played. But today’s Chargers, while still facing an uphill battle, are not the same ones that were embarrassed here in September. San Diego has won eight straight and 10 of its last 12 in large part because it’s defense has allowed only 13.1 points per game during that winning streak.  More importantly, it has forced 26 of its league-leading 48 turnovers, and sacked the quarterback 26 times.

Now that Merriman is free to come off the edge, it’s a nightmare scenario for Pro Bowl left tackle Matt Light, who struggles with speed rushers and allowed two sacks in their first meeting, although shutting down Merriman after that. If Merriman can make Brady feel his presence, the KO punches that finished the Colts will be landing again.

“This defense will challenge us more than any defense we’ve faced all year,’’ conceded Brady, although few believe he’s losing any sleep over the Chargers. “I hope we play as well as we can. That’s the only way I think we’re gonna be able to advance through this round is to play our best football.’’

What San Diego must do to be in the game at the end is punch the Patriots in the mouth and they must do it more than once. Offensively, even if Tomlinson and Gates play as expected and regardless of whether Rivers or backup Billy Volek is at quarterback, they are not likely to win a pitched scoring battle with the best offense since the early days of Napolean’s Army. They have to score but they can’t win a fast-break style of game.

Several teams have matched New England for a while score for score but eventually the pressure Brady, Randy Moss, Wes Welker and the rest of their weapons put on them causes them to wilt. Mistakes are made, balls are forced, silly chances are taken and the game is lost.

San Diego can’t afford to get into that kind of tit-for-tatsdown confrontation. If they are to win, and when you’re a 15-point underdog no one expects you to, they have to do it by forcing the team that has produced the fewest turnovers in the league into mistakes. The only way that will happen is if that defense attacks and attacks and attacks. San Diego must hit their receivers, their running backs and most of all their quarterback repeatedly. If not, they go home with their playoff dreams in a box.

Once there was a time when it was the Patriots who wanted to turn games like this into a street fight, as they did when they upset the St. Louis Rams in the first of their three Super Bowl victories and in several wins over the Colts in the post-season. But they are about offense now. They are the new Rams, the 589-point scoring machine that would rather play offense than defense and rather throw it than run it.

It would be too strong to say the 17-0 Patriots have gone soft but they are no longer guys spoiling for a fight. The Chargers have become that kind of team, especially with their depleted offense, whether they like it or not. Their choice is simple – land haymakers or get embarassed.

In the first meeting Moss and Welker shredded the San Diego secondary but that was before Cromartie took over and emerged as a Pro Bowl cornerback and before Cottrell had enough confidence in the secondary and the rush to let them both loose. Still, Moss will be geared for a big game because he knows he has disappeared in these kind of games in the past, when he was with the Vikings.

In an odd way, for San Diego to make this the kind of game everyone thought it would be if the Colts were in town, it will also have to land several big blows with its offense. Whether they come from Tomlinson, the league’s best runner but one limping with one bad wheel, or wide receivers Chris Chambers and 6-5 Vincent Jackson or from Gates, who played the entire game in Indianapolis but was ineffective, doesn’t matter. But someone has to hurt the Patriots, as Jackson did the Colts, to give that defense more freedom to deliver the kind of blows it landed in Indianapolis.

Chambers’ arrival in a mid-season trade with Miami energized a dormant passing game and he’s shown his value in the playoffs, catching six for 121 yards against Tennessee and opening up the field because of the respect a defense has to have for his ability to get deep.

What has been more surprising is the recent emergence of Jackson, who in the playoffs has 12 catches for 207 yards and two scores. He’s a huge target, as is Gates, and he and Chambers will put pressure on the Patriots weakest link – its secondary.

New England covers the middle of the field well but teams can make yardage and do damage on out routes and out and ups because tiny Ellis Hobbs struggles there and Asante Samuel has a bad habit of trying to jump routes and thus opens himself up to being beaten even though he remains one of the AFC’s top corners overall.

The return of Richard Seymour has done much to shore up the run defense, which slammed the Jags down last weekend and could do the same Sunday. San Diego will likely find it tough going between the tackles but Tomlinson is one of the league’s most dangerous backs when he catches short passes in the flat with room to run. Add powerful inside runner Michael Turner and again the potential lies for damage to be done.

In the end, the question is simply this. Will the Chargers come into frozen Foxborough on one of the coldest days of the year and deliver the kind of blows necessary to upset one of, if not the, the greatest team ever assembled?
Probably not but they have a chance - a puncher’s chance.

Roy Jones, Jr. vs. Felix Trinidad

By Ron Borges

NEW YORK – Don King is selling memories at Madison Square Garden this weekend but few people are buying.

King has done all he could to convince the boxing public that there is a reason to be interested in watching two old geezers well past their prime fight for nothing special, unless one considers fighting for their lives and to avoid embarrassing themselves something special. For one of the few times in King’s career, bombast and bullshit have failed him.

Six or eight years ago, a match between Roy Jones, Jr. and Felix Trinidad would have been electric. Pay-per-view sales would have challenged the best of the non-heavyweight numbers. The Garden would have been jammed with Puerto Rican fans waving flags and hollering Trinidad’s name and Jones supporters arguing that on this night he would finally convince the doubters that he was more talented even than the greatest fighter who ever was, Sugar Ray Robinson.

There would have been a buzz in the air at 33rd and 7th Avenue. Tonight there are only bits of trash swirling in the air. Instead of a rush to the box office there is the sound of slush under the shoes of commuters slogging their way to that address not to go to a fight but to get on a commuter rail train to the suburbs. Nobody’s flocking to the Garden to see two shadows fight. Not even Don King could pull that off.

King went so far, at one point, as to compare this fight with the Rumble in the Jungle, when Muhammad Ali went to Zaire to facedown the fiercest young heavyweight in the world at the time, George Foreman. That night was history. This night will not even be a footnote.

Mike Tyson once said, when talking about his many missteps, “Old too soon, smart too late.’’ That, sadly, seems to be the case here for the 39-year-old old Jones. Jones could have been SOMEBODY in boxing instead of just somebody in boxing but when he was in his prime he was the most reluctant dragon in the game. He wanted no part of guys who punched like Trinidad or even guys who boxed like Dariusz Michalzewski and so his reputation never caught up with his self-esteem.

Jones’ vast physical gifts were obvious. Speed, timing, quick hands, ring intelligence. He was arguably the most gifted boxer of his day. Problem is he wasn’t a fighter. Jones never seemed to come willingly to the arena and because of it he missed too many of the big names and big fights that he should have had. He made money but he fought every form of municipal employee. A teacher, a trash man, a cop, a firefighter, a mail man. What he didn’t fight were the guys who the world wanted to see him in with.

Even when he won the heavyweight title, to become the first former middleweight champion in 106 years to accomplish that feat, he beat a carefully selected champion named John Ruiz. No Klitschkos for him. No Holyfield in his prime. No Tyson in his prime. No Lennox Lewis. Not even a follow up unification fight with a guy who never could have hurt him, then IBF champion Chris Byrd.

Jones said a Byrd fight didn’t interest him. Maybe that’s why he didn’t interest many fight fans. They admired his skills but they loved lesser boxers like Arturo Gatti, Micky Ward and Marco Antonio Barrera far more fervently.

Roy Jones, Jr. chose Ruiz because of what he knew he wasn’t. He wasn’t a skilled enough fighter to hit him very often. He won but then he went back to Pensacola and no one much cared. Now he’s back trying to win what he lost long ago – the love of fight fans.

Once I was asked if I thought Jones belonged in the boxing Hall of Fame. I said yes because I thought he was one of the greatest managers who ever lived. A manager’s job is to get maximum money for minimum risk. No one ever did that better than Jones did but now even that is in question.

Rather than leave the stage as his skills decline, Jones now insists on fighting on. When he could fight he didn’t want to. Now that he’s a bad imitation of what he used to be, Jones won’t leave even though the public began to reject him a long time ago.

Jones is 2-3 in his last five fights, two of those losses coming via crushing knockouts. His two wins came against third tier opposition in backwater towns like Boise, Idaho and Biloxi, Mississippi. His career is at least ending in the same places Sugar Ray Robinson’s did. In jerkwater towns far from the big fights.

Even this night is not what it appears. The names are well known but the men behind the names are not the same ones who made those reputations. They are facsimiles of those fighters. They look the same on the outside but on the inside they are not.

Saturday night Jones is back at the Garden facing a blown up welterweight whose had four fights in the last 6 1/2 years and was 2-2 in them. Trinidad is facing a guy who has fought once a year the past three years. The public, for once, has not been fooled. They’re not coming.

King and the Dolan brothers, the same guys who gave the Knicks Isiah Thomas and Stephon Marbury, tried to charge $15,000 for premium ringside seats for this fight in an attempt to prove P.T. Barnum was right when he said there’s a sucker born every minute. Judging by the way those tickets sold, the people behind them will have plenty of room to put their coats.

The fight itself is supported by an atrocious under card, although the match between young prospect Devon Alexander and former WBO junior welterweight champion DeMarcus Corley is worth noting because it is a step up for Alexander, who is arguably King’s hottest young prospect and a fighter with a crowd-pleasing style.

As for the main event, the inevitable seems to be that Jones (51-4, 38 KO) will give poor Trinidad (42-2, 35 KO) a beating because he is too big for him and still too fast for him. Trinidad has not fought in nearly three years and when last seen in the ring was losing every round to Winky Wright while absorbing a one-sided beating.

The former welterweight champion failed to carry his punching power up with him from 147 pounds to the middleweight division and that does not bode well for him. Neither does the fact that 160 pounds is the highest weight he’s ever fought at until he meets Jones at 170. Judging by the way Bernard Hopkins beat him to the floor and Wright beat him to a pulp one does not need a crystal ball to see the likely outcome. Trinidad simply is not a true middleweight, despite some limited success there with undersized guys like William Joppy and Ricardo Mayorga. When pushed in with a legitimate 160 pound man, the 35-year-old Trinidad got beaten up. Why should he fare better against a guy weighing another 10 pounds more?

Trinidad’s defensive lapses have been well exposed by Hopkins, Wright and Oscar De La Hoya but when he was in his prime it didn’t matter as much because his punching power destroyed most of the welterweights he faced. He continued to hit with authority even after he moved up to junior middleweight but not with the same kind of concussive force. At 160, he hurt no one who was truly a middleweight but they all hurt him.

Now he’s in with Jones, who has fought as a light heavyweight since 1996, won a version of the heavyweight title and then got himself knocked cold by Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson when he tried to move back to 175 too quickly. He has not been the same fighter since because as his reflexes have slowed, his technical flaws have been exposed. Yet he is still the bigger man and the better boxer, two things that have previously led to Trinidad not just being beaten in the ring but being destroyed there.

The same thing that has happened to Jones happened to another guy who fought too long, as they all seem to do. Ali was one of the greatest fighters of all time and perhaps the most important sports figure in history but when age began to put a layer of rush over his reflexes the fundamentals of the game that he had always ignored came back to haunt him. The differences between Ali and Jones are many but the one to focus on in this case is that Ali was blessed with a rock for a chin. Roy Jones, Jr. has fragile china.

That is the one chance Felix Trinidad has. If he can catch Jones with one of those crushing left hands at a moment when Jones has put himself in a perilous position because of his own technical flaws Jones’ reflexes will no longer be able to pull him out of harm’s way. If Trinidad lands a bomb, he could take Roy Jones out of boxing for good.

But don’t bet on it. Although Jones is a shadow, he’s a lesser one than Trinidad. He has more hand speed, far more boxing skill and a considerable size advantage. In other words, Roy Jones, Jr. has what he always tried to make sure he had back in the day when he still could fight. He has all the advantages in this match.

All but one. There is no Fountain of Youth in boxing. Not for Jones. Not for Trinidad. Not even for King. Men grow old inside the ring at their peril. When the first bell tolls Saturday night, both Jones and Trinidad will be trapped in a place where they no longer belong. Often times that can make for a thrilling fight because the slippage in skills leaves both more vulnerable than in their youth and hence more interesting.

The sport of boxing is as much about vulnerability as it is dominance and sadly it is the former that is the most compelling aspect of this fight. Each man is at a dangerous time in his professional career. He is at the confluence of diminishing skill and self-delusion.

The view Trinidad and Jones have of themselves as boxers no longer coincides with reality. The fighters they see in their heads are still the ones who strode across the boxing world years ago like dominate lions but now they are graying lions. Lions in winter whose arrogance now outstrips their ferocity.

When two such lions meet anything can happen but, at the worst, we can be left with a mutually assured destruction pact. It would be sad if that’s how it ends for Roy Jones, Jr. and Felix Trinidad but they are grown men who made this choice to go on.

Jones has said this week that, “I know I can beat 110 per cent of the champions out there right now. I just have to be motivated.’’

Trinidad has countered by arguing against the facts that, “I still have my power.’’

Both are in for a surprise Saturday night. A sad surprise that, thankfully, at least won’t be witnessed by as many people as Don King hoped.

By Ron Borges

If consistency is a key to playoff success no one was more consistent than the Pick 6 picks last weekend, which were 0-for-4.

This is typical of the kind of weekend it was. Take the Seahawks plus 8 and Seattle turns two early turnovers into touchdowns. What we had at that point was the Seahawks plus 22 points. Who wouldn’t have taken that bet? Only a Cheesehead.

So what happens? By halftime the Packers have that number covered on their way to a snow-filled blow out. That’s why they call it gambling.

That’s also why gaming stocks seem to do pretty well in a down stock market. And in an up stock market. And in a becalmed stock market. Those guys in Vegas don’t lose.

But we press on with a format change since we’re down to only two changes to be wrong.

UPSET SPECIAL: AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
NEW ENGLAND – 15 vs. San Diego – The Patriots are one of the greatest teams ever assembled. They are far healthier than the upstart Chargers, who few people thought would even be in this game. They are one win away from reaching the super Bowl for the fourth time in seven years and two wins away from immortality as the first team in NFL history to go 19-0. It is also going to be so cold some of these guys from San Diego will think they’re trapped in a documentary on the Discovery Channel about Antarctica.

So the choice is obvious right?

Yes it is. Take the Chargers and the points.

Why? Because it’s simply too many points to spot a team with a defense that has given up an average of only 13.1 points per game in the last eight weeks, all of which produced victories. It is too many points to give up to a team who’s defense leads the NFL in producing turnovers, which by the way is something that tends to occur in frigid weather.

Might the injured Chargers, whose top three offensive players are all freshly hurt, get blown out on Sunday? Yes, they might. But it is always unwise to bet against defense, especially the kind that produced 48 turnovers in the regular season, 26 during this winning streak and five in its first two playoff games. It is unwise because weather effects defense less than offense and the Patriots these days win with offense.

LOCKADINI: NFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
GREEN BAY - 7 vs. NY Giants – Not much of a spread considering that the Packers at Lambeau Field in January are more difficult to deal with than seal blubber on the Barbie. Still, the Giants have been an impressive road team all season and they have shot through two upset playoff wins on the road in Tampa and Dallas by virtue of not asking more than young quarterback Eli Manning can deliver.

That may all change today because Brett Favre loves to play in the kind of weather the late Sir Edmund Hillary found exhilarating while becoming the first man to climb Mt. Everest. Favre, though from Mississippi, has become a Cheesehead after all those years in Green Bay. At 38, he’s also become Cinderella in a helmet after putting together the kind of remarkable storybook comeback season surrounded by mostly young kids who were barely in high school when Favre was the most feared quarterback in football.

The Giants do have a solid defense but so does Green Bay. The Giants also have a two-pronged running game made up of two battering ram backs, who have taken some of the heat off young Manning during this stretch run.

But the run ends for the G-men in Green Bay. The Packers are going to demand that Eli Manning beat them. He is going to try but, like his older brother, he is going to leave Green Bay with some extra time to do a few more TV commercials. Take the PACK and lay the points.

Last week: 0-4.
Playoff record: 3-4.
Regular season record: 20-32.
Lockadini: 4-6.
Upset special: 5-5.

By Ron Borges

You have to hand it to the Herald and to Patriot fans.

The Herald came up with this idea of naming the all-time greatest Patriot player by on-line balloting and turned it into an interesting bracketing tournament that has now advanced through four rounds and left, like the NFL playoffs, only eight men standing.

Whoever did the seeding should apply for a job with the BCS because two of the four brackets have the No. 1 and 2 seeds in the Elite Eight while the other two have No. 1 against No. 3. If the BCS had that kind of clear headed analysis we’d actually know who the best college football team in the country is.

In fact, half the seeds had 1,2,3 and 4 as the final four in their bracket while one had 1,2,3 and 5 and the other had 1,3,4 and 10 with Mike Vrabel being the wildcard entrant.
The fans deserve credit for putting history ahead of sentimentality or the moment and picking top seeded Steve Grogan ahead of Tedy Bruschi by 21 votes, which now leaves him vying with Adam Vinatieri to reach the Herald’s Final Four.

Tough call there. Vinatieri made the most memorable, and most important kicks, in Patriot history. Without him there wouldn’t be three vince Lombardi Trophies on Bob Kraft’s mantle. Then again, Grogan has always optimized toughness and grace under pressure to Pats fans, who fell in love with him twice at both the start and end of his careers while booing him in the middle. In the end, it seems Vinatieri should win out because, after all, he won the games Grogan could not.

The Schaefer Stadium bracket has top seeded Tom Brady against No. 2 Mike Haynes, a Hall of Fame cornerback. You know the way this is going to go but if you have even a little guilt about picking against a Hall of Famer tell yourself many of his best years were in a Raiders uniform. It’ll be easier to accept.

In the Sullivan Stadium bracket New England’s only real Hall of Famer (meaning a guy who played the bulk of his best years in Foxborough), guard John Hanna, goes up against a surprise in the Elite Eight, wide receiver Stanley Morgan. Some folks like Grogan will tell you Morgan belongs in the Hall of Fame himself and maybe he does considering he averaged 19 yards a catch but despite all his spectacular plays you can’t vote him ahead of a legitimate Hall of Famer who some argue is the greatest guard to ever play the game.
That leaves Brady vs. Hannah in one half of the Final Four, if the voters go that way, which will make for an interesting debate.

In the other bracket it’s a battle that was predictable between the two greatest defensive players in Patriot history, linebacker Andre Tippett and defensive end Richard Seymour. Seymour beat out No. 2 seed Drew Bledsoe and the Herald was kind enough not to say by how much. My guess is probably by a wider margin that it should have been, although Seymour has been more dominate at his position than Bledsoe was at his. When one combs through Patriot history who played defensive end or defensive tackle better than Seymour? If we ask who played quarterback better than Bledsoe a barroom brawl tends to break out so we move on instead.

Tippett reached the final 10 last year in Hall of Fame balloting and is again in the running for election with the list down to the final 25 nominees (it will be cut to 15 on Jan. 15 and it’s expected he will again make the finals). Seymour has played heroically the past two years with bad knees and elbows and remains a dominate force. But Tippett is still the best defensive player in the franchise’s history and thus should move on to challenge Vinatieri or Grogan in one half of the final four.

What still looms is what I expected all along when this whole process began – Brady vs. Tippett in the final vote. Best offensive player vs. best defensive player. That’s how it should be?

But they have to get there first and that’s still two weeks and two more votes away, which is good because it gives us two more weeks to argue over whether or not Vinatieri ever should have beaten Ty Law out in the last round.

By Ron Borges

Most people in football feel this is the most enjoyable weekend of the year. Not as much hype as Super Bowl weekend but two days filled with usually highly competitive and always fiercely contested match-ups between the best teams left standing in the NFL.

The detritus from wildcard weekend has been cleared away and what remains really are the eight best teams in pro football. By Sunday night that number will be halved and although you may have heard much this weekend that home field advantage doesn’t mean as much in the playoffs as some theorize the truth is it does on divisional weekend.

In another week, when the conference championships games are played, home field advantage is all but meaningless unless it involves a dome team in or out of its element. That could effect the Indianapolis Colts if they survive Sunday’s showdown at home with the Chargers and have to come to New England but not as much as it would have a few years ago, when they were so clearly a team that lived or died on offense alone.

But this weekend home field advantage often proves critical, although one might argue it is not so much that teams are at home but rather than the home teams have the previous week off to heal up, rest their legs and re-focus themselves for a two-game push to the Super Bowl while the visitor began its playoff run, with its inherent pounding both mentally and physically, a week earlier after completing the regular season.

That week off is what is most important at this time of the year and it, more than who is wearing the home jerseys, is what often separates the winners from the losers.

Speaking of winners and losers, last weekend we here at Back and Forth came up big, winning three of four wild-card games. Had instinct been fully followed it would have been a sweep because I didn’t trust Jon Gruden’s Buccaneers, thought they were overrated as a team and mishandled coming down the stretch. But I trusted Eli Manning even less and he came out and played better than any of the other seven quarterbacks in playoff games that weekend.

If Manning can do it again, the Giants could advance to the NFC title game without it being a shock, despite Dallas’ alleged dominance of the NFC all season. But can he? Let’s take a look around and see what we come up with.

LOCKADINI
INDIANAPOLIS – 9 vs. San Diego – Nine is a big number any time and especially so in the playoffs but the Chargers barely eked out a regular-season victory over a Colt team that was missing three of its four top receivers, half its offensive line and some parts of its defense only because Peyton Manning threw six picks and Adam Vinatieri missed a chip shot field goal at the end that would have won it. That game came the weekend after Indy had blown a lead against New England as well. Oh, and did I mention the Chargers needed two big kick returns for scores to win 23-21? San Diego has won eight straight but was nearly derailed by the Tennessee Titans on wildcard weekend. They said Norv Turner was brought in to replace 14-2 Marty Schottenheimer to win a playoff game. He did. He won’t win two. Lay the number and take the COLTS.

NEARLY FIFTY-FIFTY MEANS YOU LOSE THE VIG
DALLAS – 7 ½ vs. N.Y. Giants – The media has fallen for the Giants because if Eli Manning can rise to the occasion it’s a great story. Problem is his team isn’t good enough even if he is. Sure they beat an overrated Tampa team last weekend on the road in the wild-card game and have now won eight straight road games. And yes Eli Manning played like Peyton Manning (almost) but the more salient fact is these are the same Giants who were 1-4 against divisional champions this season. That includes two beat downs at the hands of the Cowboys. Terrell Owens has a bad ankle but says he’ll play. Last time he played a playoff game with a bum wheel he caught 10 for over 120 yards on the Patriots in the Super Bowl and nearly won the game for the Eagles. He knows he scored four touchdowns and wracked up 212 receiving yards this season against New York’s secondary. You think he’s not salivating at the chance to burn them again? The bigger news on the injury front is that Giants’ CB Sam Madison is hobbled and young Corey Webster may have to cover Owens or the returning Terry Glenn. Either situation and Tony Romo will be looking at him more lovingly than he does Jessica Simpson. Lay the points and take the COWBOYS.

THIS IS WHY THEY CALL IT GAMBLING
NEW ENGLAND – 13 ½ vs. Jacksonville – If you’re good enough to go 12-4 and get to the second round of the playoffs you’d think you’re good enough not to be the only double-digit underdog in the playoffs wouldn’t you? Well, simply put, the Jags are not. Now normally I wouldn’t advise laying 13 ½ points in any game, especially a playoff meeting, but the Jags proved last weekend that what I feared most had come true – they’ve gone from an underrated team to an overrated team. Sure they’re physical and they have two very talented running backs and a good return game and solid kicking and a tough defensive front but they’ve also got a quarterback who escaped Pittsburgh last weekend with a win while completing only nine passes and 42.9 per cent of his throws. Tom Brady won’t allow David Gerrard to get away with that football version of the four-corner offense. If Gerrard has to keep up, and he will have to keep up with Brady, the Jags won’t win. But will they lose by 13 ½ with that ball control running game, sound kicking game and tough defense? That’s the question. The answer? Yes. Lay the points and take the PATRIOTS. Then hope for the best.

UPSET SPECIAL
GREEN BAY -8 vs. Seattle – The Pack is back but don’t ask me how. If the MVP award was actually given to the individual most valuable to his team Brett Favre would have won in a landslide because Green Bay is nowhere without him. If you’ve ever been to Green Bay, the town is nowhere with him either but that’s not his fault or the Packers but I digress. Seattle has been unreliable on the road (3-5) and has to worry if quarterback Matt Hasselbeck’s sore wrist will bother him at some point today. But no one knows the flaws in Favre’s game better than Seattle head coach Mike Holmgren. He won a Super Bowl with Favre and would love to come back to Green Bay and remind his old team he still can coach. Seattle’s defense could pressure Favre into errors and the chilly weather could also be a factor but if you’ve ever been in the Pacific Northwest this time of year it’s not exactly Bermuda and balmy either so as long as it’s not frozen tundra time in Green Bay the weather may not be a factor. Other than Favre, the Pack has to rely on young playmakers like RB Ryan Grant and WR Greg Jennings and who knows about them? Their pass rush also comes primarily from its front four and they’ll have trouble getting to Hasselbeck in time because his game is the short West Coast throws Tim Brady favors. The Pack has won 17 of its last 20 and that’s more than a trend and will probably hold off the Seahawks at Lambeau but the points are too big. Take SEATTLE and the eight and hope Hasselbeck’s wrist holds up.

Last week: 3-1
Year to date: 20-32
Lockadini: 4-5.
Upset special: 5-4.

Getty Images

By Ron Borges

Usually this time of year somebody surprises. This first playoff weekend will be no different but the surprises may be more surprising than usual.
For the first time in recent memory, the Pittsburgh Steelers are underdogs at home in a playoff game, the odds makers having made the Jacksonville Jaguars three point favorites. Far be it from me to question the wisdom of people like Robert Walker at The Mirage but the prevailing opinion on the Jags have taken them from underrated to overrated in a matter of three short weekends.
Sure the Jags have a physical team built to beat down their division rivals, the Indianapolis Colts, but they haven’t yet managed to do that yet, in case anyone hasn’t noticed.
Ad, yes, they did beat down the Steelers in a Week 15 assault in which they rushed for 216 yards and pounded them down in overtime, 29-22, but it seems like that victory so shocked some folks that it seems as if people have forgotten the game was tied 22-22 in the fourth quarter. It was an overtime victory on the road against a Steeler team that has been erratic all season and may be running out of gas but it was not a one-sided blow out, the way some commentators seem to be playing it now.
Listen to some of these guys and you have to wonder why the Steelers are bothering to show up. The Jags have been anointed as this year’s wild-eyed wild-card team. Maybe they’ll prove to be just that but the Colts handled them twice this season and though physical they have yet to prove they’ll have a second game in Pittsburgh in which they harass Ben Roethlisberger the way they did three weeks ago.
Those five sacks kept the Steeler passing game out of sync all day and it dovetailed with the Jags’ own ability to protect David Garrard, who threw 33 times without being sacked. Couple those things with their powerful running game and you see why people are excited in Jacksonville but before you go and blow the kids’ college fund loading up on the Jaguars remember this: the Steelers defense had allowed only two 100-yard rushers in 63 games up to the afternoon Fred Taylor and Maurice Jones-Drew ran over them.
Worse for the Jags, the Steelers were embarrassed at the way they were manhandled at the line of scrimmage both offensively and defensively and intend to prove that was just a bad day at the office.
And they’re playing at the home office not on the road and are still being seen as underdogs, which also is eating at them. None of those things will mean anything if the Jags can again run the ball down their throats but the Steelers have the second stingiest defense in the league this year, allowing only 16.8 points a game, and they have the better and more playoff-tested quarterback in Roethlisberger.
Remember too, that for as well and as physical as the Jaguars played that day, Pittsburgh running back Willie Parker also ran for over 100 yards. He’s out now with a broken fibula but if you don’t think Najeh Davenport is capable of rushing for more than 100 the hard way – three yards at a time – you haven’t been paying attention. Then again, maybe that’s the problem because he does lack Parker’s explosiveness.
Taylor and Jones-Drew carried 35 times for those 216 yards to literally carry the day while the defense got to Roethlisberger five times in 33 pass attempts. All notable achievements. The question I have is this: can the Jags do all that again?
The reason I ask is even with all that they had to go into overtime to win. What happens if the better quarterback, Roethlisberger, gets better protection? What happens if the Steelers’ run defense has just an average day for them instead of the abominable one they suffered through? Or are the Jaguars really just superior to the Steelers?
Certainly the fact Taylor is averaging 111 yards rushing a game the past five weeks speaks well for Jacksonville as does the fact its defense has allowed only 16 points a game in those past five weeks.
Then again, the Steelers come into his game with the No. 1 defense in the league in terms of yards allowed (262 a game) and the second stingiest in terms of points allowed and they’re playing on familiar turf in front of a friendly crowd with ample motivation.
Those things don’t mean the Steelers will break Cinderella’s cleats but they tell me they shouldn’t be underdogs in their own building to the only team to beat them at home (in overtime we point out again) this season.
The conventional wisdom however favors the Jags, who come into this game hot while the Steelers have lost three of their last four and are without their leading rusher. So why do I feel Pittsburgh will come up with something wild themselves?
As for the other three games, I don’t like the ‘Skins having to go to Seattle on a short week. They’ve won four straight and seem buoyed by the memory of Sean Taylor but they could have used Taylor against the Seahawks’ passing attack and he won’t be there. A week from now I’m not sure Joe Gibbs and his Redskins will be As for Sunday’s games, don’t be fooled by last Saturday’s gutsy effort by the Giants. Eli Manning played well enough…until he had to make a play to keep his team alive with the pressure on. What happened then?
He fumbled the first snap and two plays later threw a terrible interception. Then he wasted nearly a minute in the final scoring drive of the game even though his team needed two scores to win or tie. In other words, he played the way he’s played whenever the real pressure has been on him since first arriving in New York.
Why should that performance convince you he’s capable of elevating his game and his team in Tampa against a superior defense? It shouldn’t.
As for the Chargers, A.J. Smith may be glad he got that five year extension BEFORE the owner sees Norv Turner coaching in the playoffs. He has the superior team to the Titans, a runner who can carry the load and finally is and a lot of motivation after what’s happened to the Chargers in the post-season recently.
Is that enough to get San Diego a playoff victory? Yeah but it may not be as easy as it should be against a team with Kerry Collins running their offense.

By Ron Borges

Patriots nose tackle Vince Wilfork is a good fellow, one of the best young nose tackles in the game and a valuable part of New England’s undefeated season. He is also a guy who needs to get a grip on his emotions and it will take more than the $15,000 he was fined for poking at Giants’ running back Brandon Jacobs’ eye to do it.
Wilfork was quite rightly fined Friday for that act but he should have been suspended for a game because when a 360-plus pound guy starts poking his finger inside an opponent’s facemask, as Wilfork did last Saturday night, what could easily result is an injury no amount of money could have repaired.
Were it a solitary event one could say fine him and move on but in Wilfork’s case he has become a serial cheap shot artist while insisting, “I’m not a dirty player. I respect the game too much.’’
Perhaps he does but this is the third time this season he’s been fined for excessive violence and even in baseball three strikes and you’re out. That is not the case for Wilfork only because NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is walking on eggshells these days when it comes to dealing with the Patriots on matters of discipline. I wonder what Albert Haynesworth would have gotten for the same act?
The action occurred during a heated exchange between Wilfork and Jacobs not long after Jacobs had begun to run roughshod over several of Wilfork’s teammates, including the king of cheap shots, safety Rodney Harrison. Wilfork has written on his website that he not only didn’t poke Jacobs in the eye but wasn’t trying to, even though that raises a simple question: if you weren’t trying to poke him in the eye why were your big, fat fingers inside his facemask at eye level? Were you trying to clean his contacts?
Wilfork seemed to hang his hat on not having actually succeeded in poking Jacobs in the eye, as if that good fortune proved he wasn’t trying to do what he was clearly trying to do. If this were a first offense the fine would have been enough but Wilfork is now a serial offender when it comes to cheap shots this season.
He was fined $12,500 earlier this year for injuring the knee of Bills’ quarterback J.P. Losman when he hit him low illegally with his elbow, a blow that was both against the rules and unnecessary. In that case, too, Wilfork pled innocent, saying he didn’t mean to hit Losman even though the video tape clearly showed him reach out with his elbow and strike Losman in the knee, causing an injury that kept him out of the next two games. When a guy as big as Wilfork slams you in the knee, brother, it ain’t no accident and it doesn’t feel good, either.
Wilfork insisted then that he wasn’t a dirty player either but he was fined $5,000 a few weeks later for unnecessary roughness on a late hit on Dallas tight end Jason Witten. Do we see a trend here?
Now it’s up to $15,000 per assault but on his site Wilfork said yesterday, “When things like that happen its all heat of the moment and once the moment is gone it’s over. There was no hard feelings and I really think the commentators did a great job of blowing it up.’’
Translation? “I still don’t get it.’’
Playing hard is laudable. Pushing, shoving, hitting late, hitting illegally low or sticking your pudgy fingers inside someone else’s facemask is neither laudable nor playing hard. Do it once and you can argue it was an accident. Do it twice and you can maybe cop to “heat of the moment.’’
Do it three times, Vince, and take a seat.
Goodell didn’t have the stones to do that and one can understand why with the playoffs looming for New England’s undefeated team, which is clearly on a historic mission. But the quest to make history shouldn’t give Vince Wilfork a pass to try and maim or blind an opponent.
Was it his intention to injure Losman’s knee when he hit him low? No, but that’s what happened when he did. Was it his intention to blind Jacobs when he poked two very large fingers inside the running back’s facemask? Only Wilfork knows but it was only blind luck that he didn’t and there’s no excuse for doing what he did. You want to talk trash, as he claims was going on, then don’t talk with your hands.
Vince Wilfork dodged a bullet last weekend but he better be careful because he’s getting a reputation around the NFL for being exactly what he insists he isn’t. A cheap-shot artist.
For a player as talented as he is, and for one with as light-hearted a personality off the field, that’s a shame. It’s also something he better take note of because in two weeks people in black-and-white striped shirts will be watching him very closely.
Judging by his actions this season, sadly they should.