Saturday, January 21, 2023

Rainy Day Hunkering Down with NFL Playoffs on TV

Today I'm hunkering down at home on this miserably rainy, cool day in Gainesville, sleeping in late and watching sports on TV.  Later this afternoon and evening will be two NFL playoffs games: Jacksonville at Kansas City and the New York Giants at Philadelphia.  It bugged me a little that the Jags and Chiefs will be playing each other at this stage since they happen to be my favorites out of the remaining teams...oh well, that means that at least one of them (probably KC) will survive until next week's conference championship game.  Tomorrow the Buffalo Bills will host last year's AFC champion Cincinnati Bengals while my current pick to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl, the San Francisco 49ers, will be at home against the Dallas Cowboys.  Who do I want to win these four games? Jax, Philly, Cincy and San Fran.  A few years ago, when Lamar Jackson began his stellar career as the running quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens, I wondered how long that career would last before injuries caused by that aspect of his game caught up with him like it has done with others such as Robert Griffin III and, this season, "my" Miami Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa.  Well, it seems that Lamar has become something of a fragile athlete like these, dooming his team to an early playoff exit and raising doubts about his future effectiveness in the league.  It's no accident that Tom Brady has made it to the ancient age of 45 in premier-level sports by adhering to a more traditional drop-back-or-hand-off quarterbacking style, with his running almost exclusively focused on scrambling from tacklers in passing situations or short yardage sneaks behind his offensive line.  It seems, though, that the trend is more for the young quarterbacks of this era to have a few short, explosive seasons before they soon become too hobbled to be effective...so sad.  Are you getting this, Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes?  I didn't think so...but at least these two aren't quite as run-crazy as Lamar has been... 

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