My favorite journalistic feature is the Conventional Wisdom column created by my Newsweek colleagues. What makes it so brilliant is that while it takes its shots at the major characters on the world stage, it is, above all, self-mocking. Our dearly-held opinions are, in fact, ephemeral and what's up one week can be down the next--without anything much changing except public perceptions.
The New England Patriots are a perfect embodiment of the up-to-down arrow phenomenon. Was it just Thanksgiving when the football talk at the table was how the Pats were making their scorched earth way toward a historic and seemingly inevitable Super Bowl triumph, arguably the best team in NFL history. Now, after eking out a come-from-behind victory over the Eagles and lucking out a come-from-behind win over the Ravens, the Pats are overrated, ripe for the picking, destined for a fall and clearly the former best team in the history of the NFL.
I thought it was kind of ridiculous how the football cognoscenti kept insisting there was a blueprint for upsetting the Pats in last week's performance by the Eagles. It had something to do with knocking Tom Brady around, which seems like a pretty good blueprint for beating almost any team. For my part, I just thought the Eagles, particularly backup quarterback A.J. Feeley, played particularly well and that was confirmed for me by his stumbling performance against Seattle this weekend.
However, there was definitely a blueprint in the Ravens game plan. On offense, they challenged the Pats' front seven with Willis McGahee, exposing the weaknesses in the slightly too old and slightly too slow Teddy Bruschi and Junior Seau tandem. It reminded me of how, for all Peyton Manning's brilliance, the Colts' running game was the key to victory over the Patriots in last season's AFC Championship. On defense, they took a cue from the 2001 Patriots as well as a couple former champions in other sports, the Philadelphia Flyers' "Broad Street Bullies" and the Detroit Pistons' "Bad Boys".
They hit, tackled, held and tugged on the Pats' receivers all night long, the theory being that the refs won't call all of them, won't even call most of them. It was reminiscent of the way the Pats smacked around the Rams receivers in their first Super Bowl win and Indy receivers in the 2003 AFC Championship. Though rule changes were supposed to curb that approach, it worked beautifully for the Ravens for almost 60 minutes until the refs finally blew the whistle on the tactics. Certainly the Steelers, who come into Foxboro this Sunday with the added boost of the Pats playing on short rest, would seem capable of employing exactly the same run-up-the-gut offense, smashmouth defense, only with a far better quarterback in Ben Roethlisberger than the Ravens' Kyle Boller.
Perhaps nobody should be surprised when an underachieving team--the Ravens were 13-3 last year--with a Monday Night Football national showcase almost pulls off a major upset. And bad weather or a bad field can prove a great leveler, which is how Pittsburgh went down to the final seconds before beating the hapless Dolphins 3-0 on Monday night a week earlier. The weather factor may haunt the Patriots again later in the season. At 12-0, they have essentially clinched home-field advantage for the playoffs. That has proved to be a huge boost in past seasons when Antowain Smith or Corey Dillon provided the Patriots with some running muscle that made frigid temperatures and an icy field the home team's friend. But Laurence Maroney is a different kind of runner, much more of a dancer, and he hasn't yet demonstrated any "get on my back" capabilities that would make anyone think he can consistently lug the ball down the field.
All of the Pats' likely playoff opponents in Foxboro--Jacksonville, San Diego, Pittsburgh and Indy--boast better running attacks. New England has become a high-flying dome team and dome teams have not fared well in Foxboro come January.
