The Chargers have won 11 straight – no one wants to play them. The Colts haven\u2019t played a real game in months – they\u2019re rusty. The Cowboys are on fire – they can beat anyone. The Saints lost all their energy by losing their last three games – they can\u2019t handle a high-powered offense.<\/p>\n
Whoops. Shows you what momentum does for you.<\/p>\n
Momentum is like a basketball team\u2019s record on Fridays or head-to-head results from 50 years ago – it gives the media something to talk about for the days leading up to a game. And who can blame them? Writers and broadcasters have to talk about one matchup for days, so they have to keep coming up with new angles to discuss. There\u2019s only so much you can say about schemes and players and statistics.<\/p>\n
Of course, momentum does mean something<\/em>. Anyone who has ever played a sport can tell you that it\u2019s easier to play well when you\u2019ve been playing well already.<\/p>\n Professional athletes should be able to bounce back and neutralize momentum though, and the NFL is probably the least conducive league to maintaining momentum. Football is played once per week, so there\u2019s a long time for momentum to wear off. Also, football is such a physical game that players mainly react by instinct rather than feeling the pressure of the moment or trying to maintain positive momentum.<\/p>\n The proof of this could be seen this past weekend. The two hottest teams coming in, San Diego and Dallas, were by far the biggest disappointments. The Chargers were expected to steamroll the happy-to-be-there Jets, but the home team looked like the nervous underdogs, making numerous errors in crucial situations and allowing the unspectacularly consistent Rex Ryans to come out on top.<\/p>\n The Cowboys were the trendy upset pick of the weekend. In fact, so many people projected a road victory for \u201cAmerica\u2019s team\u201d that the betting line was nearly even. Instead, Dallas ran into a far superior team in Minnesota, and the Vikings dominated their overhyped counterparts, racking up more sacks (six) than the Cowboys had points (three).<\/p>\n The other two games also defied the expected rust vs. momentum battles. The Ravens and Cardinals both impressed a lot of experts with offensive explosions against good defenses in the first round. Although both were expected to lose in the wild card round, Baltimore and Arizona combined for 84 points to defeat New England and Green Bay, respectively.<\/p>\n These two teams rode their apparent momentum into matchups with two \u201crusty\u201d number one seeds in Indianapolis and New Orleans. Both home teams had fallen off after undefeated starts, and both teams had question marks on defense, so many people expected the Ravens and Cardinals to have success on the offensive end. Instead, the Colts and Saints shut down their opponents, holding them to 17 points combined while forcing six turnovers.<\/p>\n Thus, in two short days, the whole concept of momentum was completely turned upside down. What does that tell us? Well, maybe there\u2019s a reason these teams had the records they did. Maybe there\u2019s a reason the Colts and Saints won their first 27 games combined. Maybe there\u2019s a reason the Cowboys had the largest ups and downs of any team in the league, while the Vikings were consistently among the top teams in the NFC. It all comes back to execution – you can have all the momentum you want, but the team that plays better at the right time will win.<\/p>\n It sounds simple, but the stats don\u2019t lie. So far in these playoffs, the team with more total yards is 8-0. The team that forces more turnovers is 8-0. That\u2019s about as sure-fire of a formula as you\u2019ll ever see.<\/p>\n Predictions and analysis are great, and I memorize the facts experts say on television as much as anyone. But things often don\u2019t go the way people expect (in case you didn\u2019t notice, the Jets are in the AFC Championship Game.)<\/p>\n As Chris Berman so appropriately says, \u201cthat\u2019s why they play the games.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Chargers have won 11 straight – no one wants to play them. The Colts haven\u2019t played a real game in months – they\u2019re rusty. The Cowboys are on fire – they can beat anyone. The Saints lost all their energy by losing their last three games – they can\u2019t handle a high-powered offense. Whoops. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1306,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1306"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}