This weekend is the perfect illustration of why I don't pick football games for a living.
If you'll recall my bracket from the start of the playoffs, my NFL Final Four was Seattle vs. New Orleans in the NFC, and Baltimore vs. San Diego in the AFC. Well, of those four teams, only one actually reached the Championship game in their respective conference.
Instead of the matchups that I predicted, we're getting New England travelling to Indianapolis in the AFC, and an NFC matchup of Chicago hosting New Orleans. . .or, as I like to refer to the Saints, "the only NFC team with even a remote chance of beating an AFC team in the Super Bowl."
Actually, I think I'll just stick with calling them the Saints. TONTWEARCOBAATITSB isn't really much of an acronym.
(But hey. . .the word "tits" is part of the acronym. . .that ought to increase the hits on the search engines.)
As yours truly is located about an hour away from New Orleans, and there's going to be Saints-mania running wild down here in addition to the Mardi Gras festivities, and since SBNation doesn't have a Saints blogger (yet). . .and since they ARE the only team that I picked to get to the NFL's final four that actually made it that far, we here at DN will be loudly cheering for the Saints until such time that they're eliminated from the playoffs. Given my current track record, I'd like to apologize in advance to any Saints fans that might read this blog. But, in the meantime. . .
GEAUX SAINTS!!!!
In non-playoff related news, it looks like Mike Tomlin is going to be roaming the Vikings' sidelines next season after all. He's in the running for the Pittsburgh and Miami jobs (and even got a second interview from the Dolphins), but Miami just made THEIR defensive coordinator, Dom Capers, the highest-paid assistant coach in the league. . .and according to some of the stuff I've read, I would take that to mean they're looking for a more offensive-minded head coach.
Now that San Diego is out of the playoffs, my guess is that Wayne Huizenga is going to gas up the jet and head to the left coast to have a talk with Chargers' offensive coordinator Cam Cameron. Cameron is the guy that I was hoping would have gotten the job as the Vikings' head coach last season, but he didn't.
If Childress tanks again this season, hopefully Tomlin will be next in line for the Minnesota job. At age 34 (if memory serves me correctly), he's one of the real up-and-comers in the NFL's coaching ranks, and his defense was the sole reason that this team wasn't the worst team in the National Football League this season.
More Vikings' stuff tomorrow, where I'll try to touch everyone's inner stat geek. . .and not in that Michael Jackson sort of way, either.