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msnbc.com News— Look, the NFL playoffs ain’t the NCAA Tournament. There’s probably not going to be some “Little Engine That Could” team chug-chug-chugging into early February, whimsically capturing the imagination of the nation.
If you look at our four wild-card games this weekend, you’ll find some teams with interesting stories. But they are merely that. Interesting.
The Cardinals, Dolphins and Vikings have as much chance of winning this year’s Super Bowl as the Toronto Blue Jays.
Arizona won its first division title in 33 years and celebrated by giving its defense the rest of the season off. Miami won the AFC East — tremendous accomplishment. But the fine print says that winning the AFC East in a year when Tom Brady was absent, the Jets were dysfunctional and the entire division got fat on the AFC and NFC West takes a bit of the shine off it. The Vikings needed a last-second field goal in their final game at home against a Giants team with nothing to play for to ensure a playoff berth. And, for my tastes, Adrian Peterson drops the ball too much to be trusted.
Only one game this weekend features two teams that could actually win the Super Bowl. That’s Saturday night’s matchup between the Chargers and Colts in San Diego.
I can hear your eyes rolling from here. The Chargers? The 8-8 Chargers? Winning the Super Bowl? Yep. And we’ll get to them in a second. But first, the Colts.
On Oct. 27, the Titans had a passing-of-the-AFC-South-torch win over Indy in Nashville.
The loss left them at 3-4. Colts coach Tony Dungy, unflappable as ever, assessed what the defeat meant.
“It’s going to make it doubtful for us to win the division, but it doesn’t mean that much … we’ll see what the last nine games bring,” Dungy said. “If we play well and get ourselves on a streak we can be a playoff team. And once you get in the playoffs anything can happen as we’ve seen two of the last three years."
They got themselves on a streak. Nine straight wins. They finished the season 12-4 and — as Dungy predicted — didn’t win the division. But they are playing the way teams want to be playing when the most important part of the NFL season begins.
You can question the quality of competition Indy rolled over — only three of the nine wins came against playoff teams (Pittsburgh, San Diego and a Tennessee team taking it easy in its finale). But there’s a gutty, tense win over New England in there. And those wins over the Steelers and Chargers were on the road. There may be teams in the playoffs that can play with as much composure at crunch time as Indy (Pittsburgh and the Giants) but no team plays with more.
The Colts have their warts. They finished 31st in the league in rushing yards per game (79.6) and 32nd in yards per attempt (3.4). As Thursday’s Indianapolis Star noted, only 12 of 78 teams that finished the year last or next-to-last in rushing earned a playoff berth (including the Colts and Cardinals this year). So far, those teams have gone 1-9 in their first playoff game. The only team that won its first playoff game — the 1978 Falcons — lost in the next round.
But ruling out any team quarterbacked by Peyton Manning based on the previous performances of other teams is foolhardy. Especially in a season when there is no playoff team that’s without its own Achilles' heel.
The Colts have proven they can win on the road (6-2 this season), which is good because that’s what they’ll have to do to get to Tampa. If they can survive San Diego, they’ll play at either Pittsburgh (where they won 24-20 in November) or Tennessee (which isn’t the team it was on that night in October). Meanwhile, the other team left standing in the AFC would likely be Baltimore which was annihilated by the Colts 31-3 in October.
Getting past the Bolts will be the tricky part.
They didn’t come by that 8-8 record honestly. Included in the losses was the blown-fumble call against Denver that led to a loss. They also lost on a last-second touchdown by the Panthers, lost to the Steelers 11-10 in a game where Pittsburgh failed to score a touchdown. They lost back-to-back to the Bills and Saints during the ridiculous cross-country, cross-Atlantic road trip. And their loss to the Colts came on a 51-yard buzzer-beater by Adam Vinatieri. In short, they are a whole lot better than that 8-8 indicates.
Let’s be honest, both teams have statistical smoking guns that would seem to make their journeys to Tampa difficult. The Colts can’t run it. The Chargers have injury issues with LaDainian Tomlinson, are shoddy against the pass and, at least according to Jay Cutler, won’t get past Indy.
But one of these teams is going to make it to Sunday with its season intact. And whichever team draws the winner next week — Pittsburgh or Tennessee — will not be happy to see them.
