NFL Divisional Round Playoff Picks

As a die-hard Eagles fan, I would much rather just put football completely out of my mind and focus solely on hockey, but America is a football country and that isn’t really possible. So instead I choose to embrace the football mindset and give my very unprofessional opinion on this weekends games.

NFC:

Saints at Seahawks- Lets just begin by getting this out of the way. I should pick the Saints and hope that the team that beat the Eagles keeps on winning so that it looks like we lost to the best, but I just don’t see it. The Seahawks are coming off a first round bye and they are playing at home. Up until week 16, Russel Wilson had been unbeaten at home. Drew Brees is a fantastic quarterback and will be sure to put up some numbers once again. Last week may have quieted the critics that  believe the Saints are a dome team that doesn’t play well in the cold, but it didn’t silence them completely. This week will be an uphill battle for the travelling Saints, and I think that while they will put up a fight, the Seahawks will be too much for them to handle.

Pick: Seahawks 

49ers at Panthers- I think this could be the best game of the weekend.  An early season match up between these teams saw Carolina come out on top in San Francisco. A defensive nail biter, this game could be more of the same, or it could be an offensive shoot out. The Panthers have the advantage, playing at home after a first round bye. Both teams are hot, with the Panthers winning 11 of their last 12 games, and the 49ers on a 7 game winning streak. There is no clear cut winner in this game, but I think that the 49ers will get their revenge on the road in a game for the ages.

Pick: 49ers

AFC

Colts at Patriots-  The Colts are coming off a comeback victory so great, that it might end up being the most memorable part of the entire playoffs. The game might not have been completely about the Colts offense it was exploding as it was the Chiefs severely imploding, but the outcome is not to be discounted. The Colts are coming into this game feeling pretty good about themselves, and there is nothing more dangerous than a team that is just getting hot. Meanwhile the Patriots are the same story as they’ve been for what seems like forever, quietly putting together a great season behind the consistent play of Tom Brady. The records of these two teams may seem similar, but the Colts went 6-0 in a bad AFC South, going 5-5 in other contests. The Patriots had a much more respectable out of division record. I just don’t think that the hot Colts will be able to match up with the consistent Patriots on the road. New England has what it takes to make it to another AFC Championship.

Pick: Patriots

Chargers at Broncos- I really, really wanted to pick the Chargers this week. Mostly because of that thing where apparently the Super Bowl champion over the last four years has been the team that the Eagles played in their home opener, which I find to be both amusing and frustrating. The Chargers happened to be that team this year, and I just think it would be crazy if they won the Super Bowl. That decision has absolutely nothing to do with football and absolutely everything to do with superstition and strange coincidence. As much as it would intrigue me to see that happen, I don’t think the Chargers have it in them this week. Do you pick the team at home after a bye week led by Peyton Manning, or the team that squeaked into the playoffs based on luck and a missed penalty call? If the Chargers come out of this game with a win, it will be the upset of the playoffs and would put them in great position for the rest of the playoffs, but it would take a lot for that to happen. The Broncos are the safe pick, but they are also the easiest pick to make.

Pick: Broncos

I think that all of these games have the potential to go either way, and there could be a lot of great football this weekend. It will be interesting to see how all of these games turn out, but as an Eagles fan, I will be following the divisional round with a heavy heart, not-so-secretly hoping and waiting for next season.

Olympic Hockey Outlook- A Flyers Fan Perspective

February will be a cold month as usual, but for fans of the NHL, it will be especially cold because of the 2 week absence of games on the schedule due to the 2014 winter Olympics. I am actually looking forward to the Olympics this year, mostly because it is the only way to get a hockey fix. Your view on the Olympics is all about perspective, and my perspective is that I will take hockey in any form I can get it in. 

The winter Olympics are extremely underrated. Most people just don’t find the games as appealing as the summer event. Skiing instead of swimming? Figure skating instead of gymnastics? And sports like curling and luge are seemingly laughable to most people. But the winter games are exciting to hockey fans. For those few weeks, the Olympics give us our only chance to watch the game that we love.  

Hockey has a special place in the Olympics, because it takes the fan base of the NHL and puts a divide among North America. During the NHL season, we split up by city and region, but for the Olympics, we split up by country, and there may be no greater Olympic rivalry than that of the United States and Canada for the sport of hockey. The NHL is a league in which there are teams in both the United States and Canada competing against one another on a regular basis, and the players don’t always represent teams in their own country. Then the Olympics come along, and your favorite players are playing for the enemy, and the guys that you never root for are suddenly the ones representing your country. It’s a battle of loyalty and pride like no other. Hockey is special because it captures that national pride in such a different way than other sports. It’s hard not to get excited about it.

As a Flyers fan, this year’s Olympics have brought up some serious debates. Are we happy or mad that our best player wasn’t chosen to represent his country, which also happens to be our enemy in all of this? What about the local player that was blasted by the US committee and left off the roster, does that even change anything? The debates created over the past few weeks in regards to hockey rosters for the Olympics have been interesting to say the least, but the best part is that at the end of the day, none of it matters.

Claude Giroux is a great player, and as fans of his, it is bothersome that he wasn’t chosen for the Canadian Olympic team. But at the same time, now we don’t have to root against him (barring an injury replacement). We can happily watch the US go up against Sidney Crosby and the Canadians and wholeheartedly root against them. We can look at Giroux and see him as what he is to us- the dynamic captain and leader of our favorite hockey team.

Bobby Ryan is from Cherry Hill. Bobby Ryan has never played for the Flyers, yet for some reason we look at him as one of us. The people that follow hockey enough to know about Bobby Ryan were rooting for him to be on the US Olympic team, because he would not only be representing the United States, but Philadelphia as well. Like Giroux, he was snubbed by his country, but unlike with Giroux there was a quite a stir created by this snub because of the in depth story that came out about the selection process and the harsh words spoken about Bobby Ryan as a player. Even though he never played for the Flyers, in a way, this seemed like slap in the face to many Flyers fans who are also big fans of Bobby Ryan.

We root for the players that play for our team, and sometimes we root for players that have never played for our team. But what the Olympics really shows us is that we really and truly do root for the name on the front of the jersey more than we root for the name on the back. It’s one of the biggest cliches in sports- but it is also one of the truest concepts. As players or as fans, our allegiances will always lie with our cities, or our countries long before they lie with the players. Because as much as we love our players, and as much as we look to them for the great sports moments, the players come and go, but a team is forever.

After the Olympics are over, Claude Giroux is going to be our star in Philadelphia. It doesn’t matter that he isn’t playing in the Olympics, just like it won’t matter if he ends up on the roster because of an injury replacement. We wouldn’t be rooting for him anyway. it doesn’t matter that Bobby Ryan isn’t playing for the United States, because we are still going to root for our country. All politics aside, the Olympics are what they are- a chance to cheer for your country. Hockey fans all over the country will put their differences aside and cheer for Jonathan Quick, Ryan Miller, Zach Parise, Patrick Kane and the rest of team USA. And when the Olympics are over we will go back to rooting for our NHL teams and the players that we love. We’ll go back to borderline-disliking many of the players that we cheered for just weeks earlier, and we’ll get into arguments over why our team is better. It’s one of the great things about sports. People can put their differences aside and unite over a common goal, and then people can go back to what they know. It’s what makes sports exciting, and it is exactly what is going to make these Olympics great. 

Time To Get Flyered Up

Welcome to Get Flyered Up! A blog about the Philadelphia Flyers, the sport of hockey, and all other sports related topics- including all Philadelphia sports and lots of baseball and football. Posts will include all kinds of in depth looks at sports topics as well as humorous pieces around certain concepts, and lists based around different aspects of sports and athletes. I will be trying to post a few times per week at first, and hopefully people will tune in.