Tuesday, January 09, 2001
Formulas vary for NFL contenders
If God is a football fan — and who says He ain't? — Minnesota will play Baltimore in the Super Bowl 19 days from now. Flash meets Crash. Super partygoers might actually watch the game. If God's a soccer guy, we'll get the Ravens and the Giants. Trent Dilfer and Kerry Collins. Heaven help us.
If the last two years have shown anything, it's that there is no one way to win big in the NFL. You can do it with Kurt Warner, a wooden Indian QB running a Nintendo offense. Or you can do it on the winged feet of Donovan McNabb.
You can win the way Warner's St. Louis Rams did, by exploding the scoreboard. Or you can win the way the Ravens and Giants are now,
by exploding the other team's offense.
One year, Warner is the name on everyone's lips. The next, it's Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis. The former is an erstwhile stockboy and forever Boy Scout, a God-praising PR miracle for the image-conscious NFL. The latter is an unrepentant badass, the best defender in history to beat a double-murder rap.
Lewis is the eye of the storm, the focus of everything that is great and ghastly about the NFL. Lewis is like Dick Butkus and car wrecks: You can't take your eyes off him.
Ray Lewis "possessed'
Did you watch the Ravens and Tennessee assault each other Sunday? Did you watch Lewis? It was as if he was trying to exorcise every offseason demon in one, three-hour purge. He was fabulous. I got sore just watching Lewis on tape.
“A man possessed,” Ravens owner Art Modell called him. Like Modell or believe him a shameful carpetbagger, the man has seen a lot of football. “I've never seen anything like it,” he said. “And I saw Butkus. I saw Ray Nitschke.”
Who wouldn't want to see Lewis dogging Daunte Culpepper in the Big Bowl?
The Vikings will get there, it says here, if the weather in New York is better than miserable. When the weather is awful, the Giants are great. Let the wind whip across the Jersey swamps and swirl into that mausoleum of a stadium, and the dome-team Vikings will freeze like Siberia. It's tough for receivers to make cuts in the mud, difficult for them to hold onto passes when they can't feel their hands.
This is a typical Giants team, built for January days just like these. Run the ball, don't turn it over and let the defense, the crowd and the elements destroy the other team's will.
Put the Giants in Minneapolis Sunday, they lose by a touchdown. In the mud of godforsaken Secaucus, Jersey, they'll show the Vikings how to play throwback-ball.
Meanwhile ...
Dilfer vs. Gannon
If Trent Dilfer makes the Super Bowl, conventional NFL wisdom — you need a good QB to get to the Bowl — will be set back decades. Against Tennessee, Dilfer completed five passes.
Raiders QB Rich Gannon, who is 35 with a well-worn suitcase, is far better than Dilfer, if only because he can run. That's why Oakland should beat the Ravens. But do not discount Ray Lewis and the mission he's on.
The Ravens are a bunch of crazed dogs. They're bouncers in shoulder pads. If the Ravens don't get to the Big Bowl, they're odds-on to take the first XFL crown.
If they do get to Tampa, let's hope it's against the Vikings. Float like a butterfly, smash like a fist. That would be fun.
Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at (513) 768-8454.
Complete playoff coverage from Associated Press
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DAUGHERTY: Formulas vary for NFL contenders