Originally posted by Sec19Row53Was this the half-in strategy that led to the starters playing the whole game?
Yeah. Exactly that. Playing the starters but probably not doing as much preparation and in-game strategery as you would if you considered the game more important than "it would be nice to win." I don't think the Bears are that great but that and the divisional factor are why I'd see it being a much harder game than the one against the ostensibly better Falcons team.
Bears coaches were pretty insistent on having played a vanilla scheme and holding back their best plays in the Week 17th game, even though they didn't hold back their best players. This is something they've been saying for a couple weeks, not something they saved for this week.
(On the other hand, if the stuff they were saving includes that Forte pass, maybe they were better off vanilla.)
Speaking with my heart and hope, I think it will be the Jets and Bears. I think the Bears are the better of those two teams, but the Bears certainly depend on which Cutler shows up. I think the Bears Defense wins.
I haven't even seen the Steelers play much this season. Saw about a quarter of Saturday's game. Jets looks like a team on a roll, but I know the Steelers are always good.
You sure couldn't find much more different head coaches than Smith and Ryan. You have the old Buddy Ryan angle to play. Plus Rex's foot fetish, and all the old head coaches who work for Lovie.
We'll be back right after order has been restored here in the Omni Center.
That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy - Swift
Picking the Packers over the Bears. The Bears offense will have a nightmare of a time against the Packers D, whereas the Packers O can possibly handle the inverse, and I'll take Clay Matthews as being one of the marquee players of the coming decade.
STILL picking the Jets, for no other logical reason other than fandom. Last time Polumalu was out, and he's a beast, and I think the front 7 of the Steelers will be far superior compared to Indy and NE so far as the running game is concerned. We will have to score on defense at least once to win this one, and Roethlisberger is not one to throw away a game. I predict James Harrison gets pancaked once thanks to one D'Brickashaw Ferguson, whose jersey I still haven't washed since the Indianapolis game and has been worn an inordinate amount of time. Again, not sure if I have faith in Sanchez, not concerned with Rex Ryan putting his own or his wife's foot in his mouth, and definitely not listening to the million plus telling me why I shouldn't have expectations of my team, who is appearing in the AFC title game for the second year in a row. Flat out, how epic would it be if we got to the Super Bowl beating the Colts, Patriots, and Steelers in consecutive weeks? Get 'em boyos, the Jets can do this.
(edited by Lexus on 17.1.11 2324) "Laugh and the world laughs with you. Frown and the world laughs at you." -Me.
Thread ahead: 2010 NFC CHAMPIONSHIP: Green Bay Packers 21, Chicago Bears 14 Next thread: AFC DIVISIONAL ROUND: New York Jets 28, New England Patriots 21 Previous thread: NFC DIVISIONAL ROUND: Green Bay Packers 48, Atlanta Falcons 21