On to day two of the divisional round. Day one wasn't the greatest, but maybe things will improve today.
We start out today with the Browns at the Chiefs. This has the feel of a massacre, but who knows? The Chiefs do start out pretty slow sometimes then rally at the end. Maybe that'll happen today and the Browns can get far enough ahead to hold off the Chiefs. You don't want to see Patrick Mahomes with the ball in his hands with time on the clock and needing a score to win though if you're a Browns fan.
The Browns got the win last week largely through the help of the Steelers. I don't think they can count on that help from the Chiefs. It would certainly help if the Chiefs snapped the first snap of the game into the endzone and let the Browns recover, but I doubt they'll do that. The four interceptions the Steelers threw would help also, but once again, the Chiefs don't generally do that. I'd love to see the Browns pull off the upset, but I have a very hard time coming up with a way they do.
Our second game is the old-timers game featuring Brees versus Brady. The Bucs and Brady probably aren't as good as Brees and the Saints, but the Saints are more than a bit snakebit in the playoffs and that gets in a team's collective headspace after a while and can lead to more issues for them. The Minneapolis Miracle knocked them out a few years back. The no-call pass interference got them another year. If they aren't a bit paranoid, they probably should be. Pretty much everyone on that roster has the question of "What will kill us this year?" in the back of their minds. All it takes is one bad call, dropped pass, lucky break for the Bucs, and they'll start thinking, "Here we go again." A whole lot of football gets played between the earholes and right now that's probably not a great place for the Saints.
Coaches always harp on forgetting the past and moving forward, but if you're a player who's been through that before, you just can't. Those memories are there, just waiting to emerge, and you can't ignore them. You may desperately want to wish them away, but they're there. They're a demon that haunts your soul and it's a hard demon to exorcise.
That demon does strange things to a team. Instead of possibly giving up another Minneapolis Miracle, the DB may interfere with a receiver and get called for pass interference when the receiver was unlikely to catch the ball anyway. A receiver may have the thought of not dropping the ball enter his mind as a perfectly thrown pass comes to him and that's the worst thing you can think of. The more you think "I can't drop this!" the more likely you are to drop it. The same with a running back and fumbling. Bad things happen when you let the past demons into your mindset. And those past demons have set up camp in the minds of the Saints. A win today would help drive those demons away, but the least little adversity can let those demons emerge and knock them out of the playoffs yet again.
It should be an interesting day of football. I kind of wish the games were on earlier though.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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