Matz Bowl II, otherwise known as Super Bowl XLVI, Preview!

Manning vs. Brady in Indy-we've seen it before, but never like this.

Before I get into any analysis & the pick I’d like to take this moment to gloat, so if you don’t want to read that skip a paragraph down. For the third straight year I’ve correctly predicted (in the pre-season) one of the Super Bowl participants (New England). In addition I saw the Giants/Patriots rematch coming before anyone else. As soon as the wild card round was over I saw it lining up even as Packers fans cried about how they were being disrespected prior to their loss & 49ers players & fans were yelling about how nobody had it better than them before the revived Alex Smith fell apart on third down.¹ & realizing this helped lead me to go 9-1 predicting the winner in the playoffs (Ok so picking T.J. Yates against the Ravens proved to be ill advised). Now we’ll have to see if I can finish this year with a correct Super Bowl XLVI pick.

Championship Game Picks

Will the Harbaughs be all smiles at the end of the day?

This year’s championship games are more ripe with potential Super Bowl storylines than any in recent memories. Let’s break them down potential matchup by potential matchup. 

Patriots vs. 49ers: Tom Brady faces off against the team he grew up watching, a team then quarterbacked by Joe Montana-the only QB of the last 30 years any unbiased fan can claim is better than Brady.¹ Brady also has the chance to win in his greatest rivals home stadium, the final crushing blow for Peyton & the Colts this year. Plus we get a classic offense versus defense matchup & a chance for the 49ers to prove no one really does have it better than them.

¹Career regular season QB ratings & winning percentages, playoff QB ratings & records, & Super Bowl titles of the top 10 QBs of the last 30 years (minimum 100 career starts):

Aikman-81.6; .570; 88.3; 11-4; 3 Super Bowls

Brady-96.4; .780; 89.1; 15-5; 3 Super Bowls

Brees-94.0; .601; 104.2; 5-4; 1 Super Bowl

Elway-79.9; .643; 79.7; 14-7; 2 Super Bowls (In fairness Elway was also a great runner)

Favre-86.0; .624; 86.3; 13-11; 1 Super Bowl

Manning-94.9; .678; 88.4; 9-10; 1 Super Bowl

Marino-86.4; .613; 77.1; 8-10; 0 Super Bowls

Montana-92.3; .713; 95.6; 16-7; 4 Super Bowls

Warner-93.7; .578; 102.8; 9-4; 1 Super Bowl

Young-96.8; .657; 85.8; 8-6; 1 Super Bowl

To recap Brady & Montana are the only ones to win at least 70% of their games or win 15 playoff games; & their QB ratings stack up with anyone (especially when we take into account Brees, Manning, & Warner played primarily in domes). Sorry Peyton fans.

Patriots vs. Giants: The rematch of Super Bowl XLII gives the Patriots a chance at revenge against the team that ruined their undefeated season (& their 20 game home win streak earlier this season), while Eli gets a chance to double Peyton’s Super Bowl victories & do it in his brother’s home stadium. Also bragging rights between my brother & I would be up for grabs.

Sunday's Divisional Round Picks

The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly: which will we see from Flacco?

Woohoo! 6-0! To hell with modesty. I’ve never picked the first 6 games of the playoffs correctly before, & my perfection may well end today, so I’m going to savor this for a moment. Alright, enough of that. Besides I’m a more pedestrian 4-2 against the spread so hopefully any advice you’ve taken from my picks has been used to make bets with your friends rather than your bookie (Because I assume if you’re reading this you’re an addictive gambler, as all good football fans are). Anyway today I put my surprising streak of near omnipotence to the test, & oh what a test it will be.

Saturday's Divisional Picks

Can Tebow & the Broncos run past the Patriots?

It’s time for the best weekend of the NFL, the divisional round. We get to watch the 8 best teams (well, 7 & the Broncos) play in 4 games over 2 days. It should be awesome (unless the Giants lose, then all of life is pointless). Interestingly 3 of the 4 matchups are rematches from the regular season, 49ers/Saints being the lone exception. Not surprisingly the team that won the previous matchup is favored in each game, & at home, so one may well be inclined to just go with the favorites in all 3. However if you really think I’m that lazy with my picks (or smart, depending on your point of view) you don’t know me. & speaking of my picks I went 3-1 against the spread & 4-0 overall last week, my best week ever. Does this mean I’m finally figuring the NFL out, or that I just got really lucky? This week we’ll find out!

NFL Wild Card Picks

Can Calvin Johnson & the Lions dive past the Saints?

The NFL playoffs start today, which of course, means it’s time for my wild card round picks. Now before I get to them I’m going to offer a bit of honesty. I love to talk about how I have correctly predicted 3 of the last 4 Super Bowl teams in the pre-season & nailed the Packers over Steelers-coming within 6 points of the actual score & saying: “Rodgers asserts himself as a truly elite quarterback & Green Bay wins the Super Bowl in Brett Favre’s last season (I think).” However what I don’t like to mention is how terrible I am at predicting playoff games. Despite going a solid 6-5 last year my combined record over the last 3 years is an embarrassing 13-20. In fact last January was the first time I managed to avoid an 0-4 weekend. Hopefully this year will be different but, just in case, I’d like to apologize now for picking your team.

I would also like to add, before getting to my picks, that Sunday will mark the anniversary of the shooting that robbed 6 people of their lives, including 9-year-old Christina Taylor-Green, and injured Representative Gabriel Giffords and 12 others. While I stand by my original position that one of the best ways to honor the victims of that day is to cherish every moment of our lives, and if your like me that means watching football this weekend, I think it would benefit us all if we took at least some time out of our weekend to think about and pray for the victims, the shooter, and their families, as well as thank God that that day was not worse and for the blessings that are our lives and the people we love . And I think we should all strive to “[re]commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of [Christina’s] gentle, happy spirit.”

The NFC Playoff Picture

Can Suh & the Lions save their season?

Now to take a look at, & make some predictions about, my favorite conference... the National Football Conference!

NFC Playoff Picture

East

Dallas 7-5     Remaining Schedule: NYG, at Tampa, Philly, at NYG

Prediction: 9-7, I like Dallas to lose twice over these last 4, to the same team. Part of this is obviously because I’m a homer, & I’ll get into another, more obscure reason below. Either way expect their games against the Giants to be close (15 of their combined 24 games have been decided by 1 possession). As for Tampa, they’ve fallen apart, & against Philly I expect Dallas to be awfully motivated to avenge the 34-7 Sunday Night beat down they experienced back in week 8.

10 Terrible Predictions & the AFC Playoff Picture

Tim Tebow's blowing up my 5-11 Broncos prediction.

Thanks to my inability to manage my time I’ve been on hiatus from the blog for about 2 months, & haven’t posted anything about sports since September 24, well it’s time to rectify that. In order to atone myself for the many horrible predictions I made in my NFL Preview I’m going to now correctly* predict how the last 4 weeks will unfold and who will make the playoffs. First though, for a good laugh, let’s take a look back at some of my horrible predictions.

*Yea, I don’t really believe that either but it’s possible. I got the Super Bowl right last season!!! Remember? You don’t? Well it happened, & I’m going to cling to that till the day I die.

My 10 worst predictions in descending order:

10.  Prediction: Bears 6-10

        Reality: They’re 7-5 & with the injuries to Cutler & Forte they’re unlikely to finish strong, but before that this was the third or fourth best team in the NFC & the biggest threat to the Packers undefeated season. This team was much better than I expected.

A look back at "Face Off," & the rest of season 4 of "Breaking Bad."

After over a season of conflict there could only be one.

Breaking Bad just wrapped up its 4^th season &… well… it was freaking amazing!  First a look back on the brilliantly named “Face Off,” what the finale means for the characters going forward, & a look back at season 4 as a whole. Spoilers galore (for The Wire & Lost as well) after the break…

This Week In TV: Tuesday

Awkward, MTV's best show. You heard me Jersey Shore!

Tuesday:

Glee (FOX at 7)-No really, I’m a straight guy. I’m serious. Whatever, I don’t care what you think! Glee used to be a good show, a show that I enjoyed, & one that I would defend when people made fun of it and/or me for watching. That lasted all of half a season and then it took a nosedive as the writers chose to almost completely ignore any character continuation, made episodes fit around the music rather than the other way around, completely forgot many of their actors’ strengths, & forever ruined the character of Mr. Schuester. Now it’s a show I watch mostly so I can mock how terrible it’s become (though every once in a while there are still glimpses of something decent), & while last week’s season premiere was no exception, this week brought some hope.

This Week in TV: Sunday & Monday

Barney Stinson, a man of many talents.

This will be a new installment on Joe’s Junk in which, every day or two, I give brief thoughts on the shows I watch during the week. In the past I’ve done in depth recaps of The Office and Community but those tend to be overlong & a number of people (including Alan Sepinwall, James Poniewozik of TIME, & the fine people at the AV Club) do a much better job of it, so now I’m keeping it short & sweet. Now I must warn you my viewing habits are odd. Some of these shows I highly recommend as the best television has to offer (Breaking Bad & Parks and Recreation) & some I would recommend to no one, but watch anyway (Glee). So this will be all over the place in terms of taste, but hopefully that will help keep things interesting. Also the grades I hand out will be somewhat arbitrary in that to some degree I’ll be grading on a curve based on what I expect from each show. A B+ episode of Castle or Glee is not likely to be better than a B- episode of Breaking Bad or Parks & Rec, & an A- episode of The Office would likely be one or two grades lower 3 years ago when it was the best sitcom on TV, so don’t take them too seriously. Enough talk, let’s do this…

Arizona vs. Oregon: Can the Cats Slow Down the Ducks? Is Zendejas the Answer? Will the Pain Finally End?

Juron Criner's scored 5 TDs against Oregon.

Ok… So that wasn’t a great start to the PAC-12 (& thank God, for a number of reasons, we’re not about to be the PAC-16). Yet another beat down against a ranked opponent. In fact in our current 7 game losing streak to D-1 opponents we lost to 2 unranked opponents by a combined 4 points, & to 5 ranked opponents by 120 points. On the plus side we hung with Stanford for most of 3 quarters & if we’d switched back to Zendejas like I’ve been calling for or if Juron Criner’s appendectomy hadn’t also removed his ability to catch touchdowns who knows what might’ve happened. Also after last year’s disappointing finish to my predictions (I correctly called every game in Arizona’s 7-1 start, & then missed 3 of 5 in their 0-5 finish) I’m 3-0 so far this year (I know only one of those is posted on here but I think you can trust I called the NAU & Ok St. games correctly). Now it’s on to #10 Oregon, the third straight top 10 team Arizona has faced, the first team to do so in 3 years. A game that absolutely no one outside of the Wildcat organization thinks they’re going to win.

Emmy Preview-Who Should, & Will, Win

The Emmys are tonight  & alas I have failed yet again to finish my major category preview (this time only getting through the comedic supporting categories). So now I’ll just list who should win & who I think will win.