Hey, What Happened to Ed Reed?

With the celebration of the Steelers AFC Championship game victory dying down late in the night (or early in the morning), one question popped into my head...what happened to Ed Reed? In case you forgot, Reed is that safety from Baltimore who is supposed to be the greatest defensive player on Earth and better than Troy Polamalu. Yeah...well after the Steelers crushing win over the Ravens, I'm trying to figure out where Ed Reed was because I didn't see him at all during the game. I did see him talking to Mike Tomlin following the game so he was, in fact, in Pittsburgh. Well, I came up with a couple ideas of where Reed was during the game tonight...

Maybe Ed didn't know how many more trips he would be making to the 'Burgh that he had to check out Primanti Brothers to see if it was as good as advertised.

Or he could of had a dinner date with Eagles coach Andy Reid last night to discuss Reid's failures as a head coach...again.

Ed possibly could have been too stressed out waiting for the game to start and decided to ride the Duquesne Incline on Mt. Washington and just lost track of time. That could be it.

Or Ed could have really wanted to cruise the three rivers and rode the Majestic up and down the river all night.

If you didn't catch the sarcasm in this post then you're a mess. In all seriousness, Reed was in the official stat line. You wants cold, hard facts?
Ed Reed, two tackles. Troy Polamalu, three tackles, one interception, one touchdown and one ticket to Tampa. 'Nuff said.

Conference Championship Picks

Today's the big day in the National Football League. If you're a fan of the Steelers, Ravens, Eagles or Cardinals, you're going nuts and your stomach has been in knots all week. If you're a general NFL and your team was knocked out already, you're still ready to watch history unfold today. I haven't made any picks all season on The Wheelhouse, but I decided these games were too big to pass up.

Eagles at Cardinals
For some reason I happen to like the Cardinals in this game today. They've been playing just as good as any team in the playoffs to this point. They are at home today in the desert. Their defense has been playing great in the playoffs while stopping two of the best running backs in the game in Michael Turner and DeAngelo Williams. Larry Fitzgerald is a beast and continues to make ridiculous catches. Anquan Boldin should return and be a factor for the Cards. And Kurt Warner has been to the Super Bowl before and got the job done. The Eagles, on the other hand, have been way too inconsistent this year for me to expect them to win for a fourth week in a row. I think the Cardinals contain Brian Westbrook today and Warner gets it going through the air and makes Philadelphia play the Cardinals way in a shootout.
Cardinals 31, Eagles 21

Ravens at Steelers
Here we go again. Baltimore and Pittsburgh meet for the third time in what is quickly becoming one of the best rivalries in football. Just like the first two games in the regular season, expect this game to be a knockdown, street fight between two teams that genuinely don't like each other. Pittsburgh won both games in the regular season on a final game-winning field goal in overtime, and they won the second game on a touchdown with under a minute to play. So it's tough to beat a team three times in one season right? Wrong. Read my post from a couple days ago if you disagree with me. I like the Steelers in this one today. First, the Steelers defense is better than the Ravens all season and they proved it in the first two games against the Ravens. Second, I'd rather have the Steelers offense than the Ravens offense led by a rookie. Joe Flacco has done a great job this year, but he really hasn't been asked to do much with that defense behind him. I just don't see a scenario where Flacco goes into Heinz Field and wins a game to the Super Bowl. Call me bias, but I think that's too much to call on a rookie to do. I think the Steelers move the ball well against the Ravens defense today and PROTECT the football, which is key anytime in the playoffs especially in a game like this. I like the Steelers today, and I actually like them by about two touchdowns. I pray I'm right on this one.
Steelers 24, Ravens 9

The Common Sense Rule

In a story that flew under the radar yesterday, owners voted to change a MLB rule that finally makes sense. The baseball owners approved the change to allow head-to-head records determine home-field advantage for one-game playoff tiebreakers following the season. It's a refreshing change that I applaud being made considering they previously used a coin toss to determine the home site.

That's right, a coin toss. As you can see, it's about time a change was made. I'm calling this the common sense rule from now on. If you remember back to last October when the Twins and White Sox met up for a one-game playoff for the division in Chicago. They played at US Cellular in Chicago because despite the Twins winning the season series, the White Sox won a coin toss. Under the new common sense rule, the Twins would be hosting the playoff in the Metrodome and would have won. Not that it would have mattered because neither team was getting past the Rays, but it's about time they made the change to dump the coin toss as a tiebreaker for something as important as a one-game playoff. I don't know who ever came up with using a coin toss to determine home field originally because that's garbage. The coin toss is used as a very last resort to breaking a tie in sports...I think the NFL uses it as like number 10 on a long playoff tiebreaking list.

Kudos to the MLB owners for making one good decision this offseason.

Defeating a Team Three Times in One Season? Never!

With the Steelers AFC Championship game against the Ravens looming this week, I've heard the same line over and over again, and I'm sick of it. Apparently it has become universally known that it's difficult to defeat the same opponent three times in one year. It's almost become a cliche. I thought it was tough to beat a playoff team once period. I don't know who ever came up with that idea, but did anyway think of actually researching it? Thankfully, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette took care of that.

According to the Post-Gazette, there have been 18 instances in NFL history where teams have met up for a third time in the playoffs with one team winning both regular season contests. The team that won both games the first two times around are 11-7 in the crucial third game, including a 7-3 record in the most recent 10 times it has happened. Not too mention that the Steelers are 2-0 in these games after beating the Browns (the old Ravens) three times in 1994 and more recently in 2002. I'm not saying that it can't happen, but these numbers clearly prove that the team winning the first two games are well over .500 in the final game. So can the media and experts please put this argument to bed? I'm tired of hearing it.

Steelers coach Mike Tomlin had a great answer this week when asked about the myth...

"I personally don't subscribe to that hocus-pocus to be honest with you."

Me neither, Coach.

Worst Performances of the Divisional Playoffs

Everyone likes to talk about the top performances from the weekend and hand out game balls all the time. But that won't be happening here. The Wheelhouse will hand out the worst performances from the latest NFL week. We want to know who failed and really stunk it up each week. So instead of game balls being awarded for good play, this will be like eggs being thrown out for terrible play. We'll hand out a couple here each week, but there's no limit as we'll let the bad play deem how many to give out.

Jake Delhomme, 17/34, 205 yards, 1 TD, 5 INTs, 1 fumble.
Jake Delhomme is not a great quarterback nor is he a bad quarterback. He has good games more often then he has his share of bad games. On Saturday night, however, Delhomme was downright awful in the Panthers loss to the Arizona Cardinals. We're talking one of the worst performances by a player in the history of the NFL postseason. In a game the Panthers were heavily favored, Delhomme did not keep it close as he turned the ball over six times...six! He threw five interceptions and lost one fumble on way to Arizona's easy 33-13 victory.

Sometimes you can't put all the interceptions on the quarterback, but this game it was pretty much all Delhomme's fault. He was impatient from the start of the game, making terrible reads and throwing into double and triple coverage while a couple times tossing it right to the Cardinals defenders. He said after the game that he apologized to his teammates in the huddle during the fourth quarter. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone else do that before. It was such a terrible performance that it almost became laughable at some point during the second half as it just was not his night at all. And the kicker was that this all happened on his birthday. Ouch. I feel bad for ol' Jake, but he gets an egg for that horrendous performance.

Eli Manning, 15/29, 169 yards, 0 TDs, 2 INTs.
There were plenty of bad performances in the Giants-Eagles game Sunday because the defenses were pounding the offenses all game, but the blame for the Giants has to fall on Eli Manning. He got the much deserved credit last year for their Super Bowl run, but he was not the same quarterback late in this season when they lost Plaxico Burress from the lineup. Manning's quarterback rating drop almost 30 points without Burress and yesterday, he did not get the job done at home for the G-men. He threw two interceptions, one directly in the stomach of Asante Samuel, ran probably the worst QB sneak in NFL history on fourth and inches and he failed to find a deep threat or get the ball into the end zone as they settled for three field goals.

Playcalling was also suspect in this game by New York. In what was a close game all four quarters, the Giants continued to try and put the ball in the air in windy conditions instead of pounding it to Brandon Jacobs all day. Jacobs was effective with 19 rushes for 92 yards, but could of easily had another 10 carries while Manning continued to struggle. And just like that, the defending champs were out.

Honorable mention this week goes to the referees in the Titans-Ravens game. Refs never had control of this slug fest from the first whistle, and how does a back judge miss a blatant delay of game in a tie game when his job is to watch the play clock?

Is Peyton Manning Still a Choker?

Deadspin ran a post earlier this week posing the question if Peyton Manning was still a choker after his Colts were knocked from the playoffs again last Saturday. I don't hide the fact that I don't really like Manning. I like to watch him lose, it's fun to me. I don't know where that comes from, probably because I'm scared as hell when he's going up against the Steelers. He has those commercials that you can't help but laugh at, but besides those I'm not a big fan of him.

Will that being said, is he a choker that can't win the big game? Absolutely not. I've been reading other articles about this same thing from different news outlets, and I can't believe it. Manning won a Super Bowl just two years ago. I don't care how many times he loses in the playoffs before and after that...he defeated his rival Tom Brady and the Patriots in the AFC Championship game that year and then won the big game. Dan Marino couldn't win the big one. Peyton Manning has already won a Super Bowl.

To further my point, has anyone watched the Colts team this year? The Colts running game was horrendous and their defense was mediocre at best. Manning was the MVP of the NFL this year and that was the right choice because without him, the Colts would have been 6-10. The Colts didn't lose to the Chargers because of something Manning did or did not do. The team had other problems. Earlier in Manning's career, he was choking in playoff games and throwing three or four picks to the Patriots and Ty Law. But I don't recall him making any mistakes last week against the Chargers. Plus, no matter what happens in the future, Manning still has that ring to flash to critics.

James Harrison = MVP

If you're a diehard Steelers fan, then you've known about James Harrison's ability years before the rest of the NFL got the memo. You remember him dominating on special teams for years and at linebacker during preseason games before becoming a regular starter in 2006. And you also remember the game on Christmas Eve 2005 when Harrison body slammed a drunk, Browns fan who had run onto the field during a 41-0 beat down of the Brownies. Of all the accolades that Harrison has accumulated, that was easily my favorite James Harrison moment...



Today, Harrison (the pride of Kent State!) finally earned his due by being named the 2008 NFL Defensive MVP. His monster season includes breaking the Steelers sack record with 16 to go along with a career-high seven forced fumbles and he did all that despite being held on every single play and sitting out the season finale against Cleveland. When you're breaking the Steelers single-season sack record...that's getting it done. Congrats to Harrison on the very deserving honor, and let's hope he's well rested and ready to get after Philip Rivers this Sunday.