Tag Team: Pickin' Pigskin with Steve, and maybe Bob and Kristin - Playoffs Week 2

With the NFL playoffs just about finished, please enjoy one of the last Pickin' Pigskin Tag Teams of the year.

Steve says: Man, after that brutal weekend last week, I just feel the energy completely sucked out of any picking effort we were going to make. I think that's pretty clear from the response this week – I'm typing this on Saturday morning, at 10 a.m., while I'm waiting for my oil to get changed at Kingston Auto. I've started and stopped this column like four times, just because I haven't felt any desire to pick games anymore.

There are a couple reasons why. First, my poor showing last week no doubt has something to do with it. Second, this season has been long and arduous, and I feel like I should have switched the formats to a Tag Team well before Week 17. Even if it is just a paragraph, it is still draining to the soul to have to seriously analyze Lions, Browns, Raiders and Rams games week-in and week-out, and that's also overlooking the shit going on in Indy.

Speaking of the Colts, that brings me to the third reason why I've lost energy for these playoffs – I don't feel that strongly about any of these god damn teams. If I had to rank my Fan Interest Level in all of them before the playoffs started, then it would have went Bengals, Patriots and Packers, in that order. Of course, all three of them lost in the opening weekend.

So, who's left for me to root for? The Ravens and Jets are just miserable teams to watch. The Colts are gutless, since they intentionally punted their chances for a perfect season. The Saints have guts, but looked completely helpless down the stretch in their final games, and they weren't blowing teams out before the Dallas loss anyway. The Chargers and Vikings have detestable figures like Norv Turner, Merriman and Favre on their teams. The Cardinals make a mockery of the whole “regular season” thing by just randomly turning it on in the playoffs two years in a row now. And who the fuck ever wants to root for the Cowboys? The Cowboys are a fine team to follow if you're from Dallas, but their legions of carpetbagging fans – I have at least three friends from Rhode Island who are Cowboy fans – makes me dislike them.

Of all those teams, I find the Cardinals and Saints the least objectionable. Yeah, Warner is like a mini-Favre when it comes to Playoff Veteran BS Mystique, but at least they're fun to watch. Still, I find all of the remaining eight teams far less interesting than the Bengals, Patriots and Packers. Too bad only the Packers showed up last week, and for them, it was just the 11 guys on offense. Anyway, for the sake of consistency, here are my TV-NFL team comparisons, and my picks for this week.

Colts = ER. This one is more of a personal perspective thing. For years, ER did monstrous ratings, and, at least to me looking at it from the outside, it seemed like there was always One Big Star each season, with most years Clooney filling that role. Despite this though, I could never get into the show, primarily because the concept of a hospital drama just never appealed to me.

Likewise, while I understand that Manning is the consistent One Big Star for the Colts, I can never seem to root for them. Part of this is probably because I live in New England, and thus get subjected to a regular stream of anti-Colts everything. However, his storybook rise and greatness just makes it hard to root for him. It's like rooting for the house in Vegas or the Galactic Empire in Star Wars.

Chargers = Tough Love. A bit of an esoteric comparison, but bear with me. Tough Love is an odd dating show on VH1, where a dude professional matchmaker basically tears a bunch of prissy women a new A-hole because of their inability to settle into a relationship. This sounds odd, and like it would be a horrible show along the lines of Jersey Shore, which I railed against last week.

However, if you sit down and watch the show for 15 minutes, you do notice that Steve, the matchmaker, is interested in them actually improving themselves. For most of the women on the show, there is an underlying issue with why they act like they act. By the end of the first season, some of them had figured it out, and some clearly hadn't, but as an impartial viewer, it was interesting to see a show that did seem to care, just a bit, about helping out of the contestants instead of exploiting them for ratings.

Why are the Chargers equivalent to Tough Love then? Well, although the show clearly had some talent and good moments, there was at least one “hard cringe” moment per episode that would make me immediately change the channel. It was interesting to see how a woman would change as she received some constructive criticism, but downright painful and awkward to see another breakdown into a ball of anxiety and tears and cat claws. Similarly, the Chargers always look like a great team for three-quarters of a season or a game, before self-destructing in a cringe-worthy moment.


Vikings = Lost. An unquestionably great team most of the time, with no obvious weaknesses, except that things can unexpectedly go careening off the rails with irrelevant drama and issues. In the case of Lost, there are entire episodes devoted to secondary characters that end up providing nothing more than red herring information, and at one point, an entire episode devoted to deep background characters for the first season. Sometimes, Lost decides that, hey, even though we ended the last episode on a cliffhanger, why don't we see what Locke is up to on the other god damn side of the Island?

This is a maddening aspect of Lost, and the Vikings share it. With Peterson, their defense, Rice and The Good Brett Favre, they are the most dangerous team in the playoffs. But every couple of games, they seem to go on a meandering side quest that mostly seems like an attempt to get their fan base to shit their pants in fear. I'm referring mostly to the drama between Favre and Brad “hey little kids who wants candy?” Childress. I sometimes get the feeling that Adrian Peterson is like the neglected spouse, who has two crazy exes both using his as a neutral third-party for support.

Saints = Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Some weeks, there is blow-your-mind-out excellence, and some weeks, it is look-away-bad. There is almost no continuity from week to week, except in very rare instances.

My picks:
New Orleans over Arizona (-7)
Indy over Baltimore (-6.5)
Minnesota over Dallas (-3)
Chargers over Jets (-7)

Yeah, that's right, all favorites. Suck it, underdogs. I don't trust any of you to do it two weeks in a row.

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Bob says: Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to write this week. I, like you, started three or four pieces but there was nothing that seemed particularly compelling or interesting to write about. I do concur with your feeling that writing the football picks columns became burdensome over the course of the year. I felt as though the problem, though, was not having to try to find things to write about sucky games (like Oakland, K.C. or the Rams), but trying to find something interesting to write about in general. There comes a point after a few weeks where storylines have developed for most teams. After that, what exactly are you supposed to write about? Even about teams I generally cared about, I had a hard time finding anything to write about them that I hadn't already written. I applaud you for finding interesting things to write about, in general, week after week.

Bob's picks:

NEW ORLEANS over Arizona (-7)
INDIANAPOLIS over Baltimore (-6.5)
Dallas over MINNESOTA (+3)
SAN DIEGO over NY Jets (-7)

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Kristin says: The best thing about the playoffs is that I have so many fewer games to write about. And, honestly, it feels relaxing not to need to watch as much football - I'm looking forward to the break until pitchers and catchers report. Anyway, I have serious doubts about the Saints winning this game - haven't they lost the last 3 games they've played? I was really into the Saints up till they should have lost to the Skins and beat the Pats - now I'm kinda rooting against them actually.

I think that Baltimore can take the Colts. The game they played earlier this season was very tight and P. Manning has been throwing a lot of interceptions. I don't think the Colts are as scary as they have been in past season. Furthermore, the Balimore Colts vs. the Baltimore Ravens is an interesting angle, and it makes me really want to see the Ravens win. Plus, it would be nice to see some different teams in it.

I'm unsure what to think about the Dallas game. They've been talking about Favre choking in his last playoff game and repeating that in this game, but I'm not so sure about that considering Romo is by far the bigger choker. I guess it comes down to, even though I have been talking smack against Minny all season, I hate Dallas more. Okay, last game. Two teams I hate, and I think San Diego is the better team.

Arizona over New Orleans
Baltimore over Indy
Dallas over MINNESOTA (+3)
SAN DIEGO over NY Jets (-7)

Oh, and now that you're all about TV... Grey's has restarted, and this week Lexie and Mark broke up so that Mark can take care of his newly discovered pregnant 18-year-old child (yes, you heard right, he went from 0 to grandpa in 60 seconds). I really liked them together before this new story line so I'm really annoyed. This show keeps getting worse and worse, but I can't stop.

Project Runway also has a new season. It's really hard to tell how the season will go based on the first show. They had Nicole Richie - who does not dress well herself - on as the guest judge. She loved the clothes by Ping - nutbag crazy girl - that looked like a pile of cloth slung about her body. The scary thing is that the other judges liked it as well. There are some very stereotypical, annoying gay men and one clueless recent RI School of Design chick. Go RI! So, there is your update on two shows you would never watch yourself :)

Kristin is absolutely correct about Grey's, but I have watched plenty of Runway in the past. Anyway, the delicious pork (a.k.a. pigskin) picture is from here. George Clooney is a beautiful bastard, and his picture is from here. The picture of Jessa, my crush from Tough Love, is from VH1's official site. The picture of Nikki and the science teacher comes from this exhaustively-thorough blog on Lost. Teri Hatcher applauding is from here. The Baltimore Colts logo is from here And the hot Dr. Lexie is from here.