Well, it's playoff time again! That means one thing: I'll be recapping each game by making notes of my thoughts as the game progresses and posting my streams of consicousness after each game! First up is Cincinnati visiting Houston for the Texans' first ever franchise playoff game. I think Cincinnati is up and coming, and Houston has a third string quarterback starting for them, but if I had to pick, I'd go with Houston (in large part because I want to see New England have to play Pittsburgh next week rather than Cincinnati). Anyway, here we go:
Bonus: Analysis on the Pregame show... Charles Barkley just said that he really likes the Lions over the Saints. I don't buy his logic, and I am just not sure I see it happening. However, I learned my lesson last year for automatically advancing the Saints through round 1, so we'll just have to wait and see.
1. I harped on it last year...turnovers lose playoff games. First play, Arian Foster mishandles his balls. They better hope that's just early jitters and not a sign of things to come, or they'll be home next week again.
2. Marvin Lewis is challenging a bit much here, and he's going to have no more in the game after this Owen Daniels' catch. The announcers don't seem to understand that with Daniels being on the ground with a Bengal on him that the tight end is down by contact. Lewis should have held onto his red flag on this one and used it for an actual wrong call. (Update: during the commercial break, the announcers got their sanity back and gave the correct explanation.)
3. The Brewtender is fun....Every football fan needs one for football watching.
4. Neil Rackers definitely made it interesting on that field goal before half. The refs took their sweet time thinking before making the call.
5. And Dalton throws the first TD pass of the game...to JJ Watt! That was one of the finest defensive efforts I've seen. I've seen guys do it on a batted ball (sometimes that the DL bats up himself), but this was caught without any bobbling. Thank God he's not dancing like BJ Raji in the NFC Championship game last year.
6. Houston's defense is looking hungry and fast. It helps that they can pin back their ears with a 14 point lead after Johnson destroyed the Pacman Jones with his double move.
7. Not to rag on the announcers more, but the camera is showing the Bengals in a punt formation on 4th and 3 early in the 4th quarter, and the announcers said, "And the Bengals are lined up to go for it." ::Smacks forehead::
8. That pick by Manning with seven minutes left ought to ice it. The thing that's rough here is that I think his right heel may have landed out of bounds, but Cincinnati has no more challenges. This game belongs to Arian Foster (he didn't have huge holes all game) and that Wade Phillips led Houston defense.
-FSG
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