One Win Away

I have been an avid NFL fan for thirty-two years, and a Seattle Seahawk fan for almost as long. I am also an accountant. Those two factoids should provide all the background you need to know as to the perspective from which I'm coming with this post and the "x's & o's" level my analysis is going to attain. Suffice it to say, while I know football superficially, this isn't going to be impenetrable, geek-level "hardcore football" talk.

I'm simply a fan trying to establish a feel for the likely outcome of Sunday's NFC Championship Game at Qwest Field between the hated Carolina Panthers and America's Team (if they knew better), the Seattle Seahawks.

Hey, I never said I was objective.

Let's start with the betting line, which has Seattle favored by four points. Then let's take my numerical formula, which is based on my own power rankings adjusted throughout the season (and which has produced a 72% accuracy rate picking straight-up winners), which favors the Seahawks by 2.5 points. Then compare respective league rankings for their total offense versus our total defense and vice versa - that favors Seattle. Then compare the same thing for scoring offense/scoring defense - that's Seahawks as well. Actually points for/points against - Seattle again.

NFL.com has a matchup breakdown page that projects a final score based upon the previous five games' results and cumulative statistical breakdowns. Making some adjustments (for DeShaun Foster being out and Steve Smith playing at the level he's been playing the past two weeks), the result I come up with is Seattle 29, Carolina 21.

So by all these aggregate measures, the Seahawks should win on Sunday and advance to their first SuperBowl. But, of course, football games aren't played on a spreadsheet, but on the "gridiron." Play by play. Assignment by assignment. By real, fallible human beings. As Chris Berman gets such a kick out of saying, "That's why they play the games."

So the question becomes, "Why will the Seahawks win?"

This is where a Hugh Millen would descend into a blizzard of incomprehensible jargon that really doesn't mean a whole lot to anybody, like me, who didn't play the game beyond the seventh grade level. Instead, I'll do a little trend analysis, and regurgitate an X/O factor that has persuaded me later.

Here's a little historical perspective: In the twenty-eight seasons that the NFL has had a three-round playoff format, only one team - the 1985 Patriots - has ever won three consecutive road playoff games to get to the SuperBowl. And Carolina will be playing its third consecutive road playoff game on Sunday.

But wait - there's more!

Those '85 Patriots had their final regular season game at home. Why does that matter? Because the '05 Panthers didn't. They were at Atlanta in Week 17, and had to win that game just to get into the playoffs. Which means that, in reality, they've already won three consecutive road playoff games and are going for a fourth. And even the '85 Pats didn't pull that off, getting flattened by the Bears in SuperBowl XX (which was in all practical respects another road playoff game).

It is difficult to win on the road in the NFL. Not as much as in the NBA, but difficult nonetheless. What makes this task prohibitively daunting for Carolina isn't so much the Seahawks' homefield advantage - which is formidable - but the sheer magnitude of trying to win a fourth road game in a row. NFL regular season schedules rarely deal any team more than a two-game road trip, and never more than three. Four-game trips are unheard of.

There is some parallel to be made with the NBA on this score. Not entirely, since NBA games can be played on consecutive nights, but in the more general sense of even the best teams wearing down at the end of a long road swing. Guys get tired, accumulate nicks and dings and aches and pains. You get heavy-legged, half a step slow. Plays you might have made in more favorable circumstances fall half a step short. "A game of inches" is one of the oldest sports clichés, and is universally applicable to all of them, but it really does apply to even the stoutest "road warriors."

Now look at the Panthers' last three games. They blew out the Falcons at the Georgia Dome by 33 points. Then they handled the Giants at the Meadowlands in the Wild Card round by 23. And last week they got by the Bears in Chicago by 8. Anybody notice a trend? Also take note of how the nondescript Bears offense succeeded in hanging three touchdowns on the third-ranked defense in the NFL this year. And how in the second half last Sunday it seemed like one Panther after another was being helped or carted off the field. Coach John Fox may have instilled a "road warrior" mentality in his team, and there is nothing about it that isn't impressive and commendable, but sooner or later something has to give. And recall, just in passing, that the last time Carolina played three road playoff games in a row was two years ago, and they lost the third one (SuperBowl XXXVIII).

But what about Steve Smith, I can hear the naysayers saying. Okay, let's talk about the hottest receiver in the NFL right now.

Let's get back to the Panthers' divisional round win over Chicago for a moment. A whole lot has been written this week about how the Bears inexplicably left Smith in single-coverage for the entire game. This was done in order to bring a safety down to help stop DeShaun Foster and the Panther running game. So what happened? The Panthers piled up 125 rushing yards anyway and Smith caught two long TD passes on which he was embarrassingly wide open and made a tremendous catch in double-coverage to set up a field goal.

Well, I'm an accountant, and I have several ten-key adding machines, so I can therefore do arithmetic. If you change those three plays to double-coverage, I figure the 58-yard score doesn't happen and the 37-yard strike becomes a field goal instead. Now, suddenly, a 29-21 Carolina lead becomes a 21-19 Carolina deficit. Would it have been that linear? Not necessarily. The different game situation might well have led to different plays that would have given the Panthers the win anyway. But would it? DeShaun Foster was out of the game by that point (i.e. fourth quarter), rendering Carolina essentially one-dimensional. With Smith contained (nobody can really stop him), could Jake Delhomme have won the game Joe Montana-like?

Here's where the aforementioned Hugh Millen comes in. Millen, a former Washington Husky and NFL quarterback, is the king of "breaking things down," a huge x's & o's dork. Co-hosting on KJR with Dave "Softy" Mahler this morning, he shared something that he discovered after reviewing the tapes of the Bear-Panther game: when the Bears sent a safety to crowd the line of scrimmage against the run and left Steve Smith in double-coverage, Jake Delhomme's quarterback rating was (rounding off) 125; when the Bears went with their front seven and left the safety back to help in coverage, his quarterback rating was 65. Not only that, but the Panthers' average yardage per rush was nearly twice as much in the former instance as in the latter.

The bottom line on last Sunday is that da Bears were beaten by three big pass plays to Steve Smith that accounted for more than half of his 214 receiving yards, which in turn accounted for nearly half of Carolina's total offense. And the case can be made that Smith, for all the hype that's following him around this week, was as much the beneficiary of the Bears' head-scratching defensive scheme and their defensive staff's failure to make any adjustments as he was the stud that he most definitely is. I find it impossible to believe that Ray Rhodes and John Marshall, the 'hawks' defensive braintrust, will repeat those same mistakes.

Besides, with DeShaun Foster out, there'll be no need to cheat a safety down "into the box." No disrespect toward Nick Goings, but he's a glorified fullback, and Seattle has given up exactly one hundred-yard game to an opposing back all year long (Tiki Barber's 151). And Nick Goings ain't no Tiki Barber. Or Clinton Portis, either, who was held to under fifty yards rushing by the 'hawks a week ago.

So, with no real running game to speak of, and Steve Smith harder to find, Jake Delhomme is taken out of his comfort zone, returns to the ranks of the ordinary, and the Panthers' offense is reduced to the same scuffling Mark Brunell and the Redskins were last Saturday. And on the other side of the ball? Well, Shawn Alexander is good to go by all reports, and I'm not buying the "he wasn't concussed, he's just a pussy" trash talk floating around the past couple of days. I have no doubt that the Panther D will try to intimidate him the way the 'Skins did, but all it'll take is one of his patented breakaway runs to put that strategy to rest. And if you'll recall, whenever the 'Skins blitzed, Matt Hasselbeck made them pay with big pass completions virtually every single time.

The one Achilles heel I can see for the Seahawks is turnovers, especially on special teams. Five fumbles against Washington, three of them lost, two of them on punt returns, did much to keep the Redskins in the game. And let's not forget the three balls Hasselbeck threw up for grabs, including one that should have been a Washington touchdown. If the 'hawks had taken care of the ball, that game would have been the blowout that my gut instinct had me expecting.

Will they do so on Sunday? Well, they have all season, as you might expect of a team that won thirteen games, including eleven in a row. The track record argues in favor of a resumption, as well as Carolina perhaps succumbing to the turnover bug, always more likely on the road and especially after this long away from home.

But if there's one thing that the Seattle Seahawks are known for above all else, it is their propensity for coughing up big leads. So here's what my gut, which has been conflicted this week, has finally told me:

Seattle scores first (a hallmark for them this season) and then again off a turnover. Shawn Alexander is pushing a hundred yards by the second quarter. They're up at halftime something like 21-7. But the Panthers make adjustments that take him out of the game (in terms of effectiveness, not injury). Carolina gets a long TD drive. But at the end of three it's still a solid Seahawk lead, say 24-14.

Then comes a big play for the Panthers - say a long bomb to Steve Smith. Bammo, 24-21. The Seahawks, as has also been their penchant this year, answer with a long march of their own that stalls inside the red zone when the injured but heroic Julius Peppers stops Shawn Alexander on third and short. A Josh Brown field goal pushes the lead to six.

Back come the Panthers right down the field, into the red zone, where their own drive stalls (a common outcome against the 'hawks). One John Kasay kick later, the lead is three again.

Needing just a couple of first downs to run out the clock, the Seattle special teams strike again and get surprised by an onside kick that the Panthers recover. After incompletions on first and second down, and a sack on third down that takes Carolina out of field goal range, they go for the jugular on fourth down - Steve Smith going long. And - take your pick, Marcus Trufant, Jordan Babineaux - knocks the Delhomme pass away at the last possible moment before Smith can get his powerful hands on it.

Qwest Field erupts. The Seattle Seahawks are NFC champions by the score of 27-24 and bound for SuperBowl XL.

Yeah, it's a homer pick. But it's an honest one. And at least it isn't fueled by nothing but unbalanced hype.

And if I'm right, I'll have the greatest challenge of all: trying to get my mind around the Seattle f'ing Seahawks playing in the f'ing SuperBowl. I'll have to tape the game just to prove to myself that it really happened.

And my pick? As Ted Kennedy once said, "Let's cross that bridge when we come to it..."