Holiday Hangover

Pardon the brief Holiday hiatus folks but all three of us were too busy to keep up with it the past few days. However, a lot happened in the past few days. Here's some of what we saw:

1. The Lions are the worst team in NFL history after losing the season finale and capping off a perfect season, 0-16! There's hope maybe, considering the turn-around the Dolphins had this year following a 1 win season last year. Plus, they play in the consistently "meh" NFC North so there's always hope.

2. The Denver Broncos have Swiss cheese for defense. Wait, Swiss cheese might do better. They allowed 52 points by the Chargers in a virtual playoff game. To make things worse, Jay Cutler was mediocre at best. I kind of feel bad for the Broncos losing 7 running backs to injury. That's no misprint, 7 running backs injured this year. The good news for Chargers fans? LT seems to be closer to his skill level of last year and Phillip Rivers played well, despite having a children's haircut.

3. Apparently you can win 11 games this year and not get into the playoffs while another gets in with a 8-8 record. That's what happened this year to the Patriots. Say what you will about Belichick, but to take a team that lost arguably one of the best quarterbacks in the league, a top 10 running back, and countless defensive stars to a 11 win season when everyone wrote you for dead in week 1 is a damn good coaching job I think. That 3 point loss to the Colts looks pretty costly now. The Pats better have a contract ready for Cassell considering there's already speculation that Brady could be out for all of 2009 season as well.

4. The Cowboys are out of the playoffs. Ha.

5a. Maybe Boise State shouldn't have been in a BCS game. I've made the argument that Boise State should have been in a BCS game over the Buckeyes. Which I still agree with, but probably just not in the same game that the Buckeyes are playing in. Imagine how bad the game between the Longhorns and the Broncos would be given UT's season long high octane offense and Boise's poor bowl performance against TCU in the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl.
5b. They really need to get back to just Poinsettia Bowl or New Mexico Bowl instead of the New Mexico Department of Tourism New Mexico Bowl. Oh I thought it would be Oregon Department of Tourism sponsoring it, my bad.

6. The NFL playoffs will be good this year. That's all I'll say for now about that. We'll do game picks as the weekend approaches.