America at Large:The National Football League play-offs start a week from Saturday, and with this weekend's slate of games yet to be played, it is already guaranteed that at least one team without a winning record will be among the participants.
"We're not worthy!"
- Mike Myers, Wayne's World
Five NFC clubs (the Giants, Packers, Falcons, Panthers and Rams) enter the final week of the season with 7-8 records, and even should they all lose, one will qualify for post-season play.
The 2006 season will be recalled as the one in which "parity" became a nightmare. The New York Giants, for instance, are in total disarray, having lost six of their last seven games, but will almost certainly join the Super Bowl tournament if they beat the lowly Redskins on Saturday.
Never has the gulf between the have and have-not teams been wider. Seven of the eight divisional championships were virtually foregone conclusions. (The Chargers, Ravens, Colts and Patriots in the AFC, the Bears, Saints and Seahawks in the NFC.) The Eagles and Cowboys were neck-and-neck in the NFC East; the former will likely win the division after their head-to-head win on Monday, with Dallas taking one of the two NFC wild-card spots.
And then there's the rest of them.
Of last year's Super Bowl participants, the world champion Steelers have already been eliminated at 7-8, while the Seattle Seahawks, last year's NFC champions, have clinched their division despite losing three games on the trot, and could host a wild-card play-off game even if they lose in Tampa on Sunday to finish 8-8.
The Broncos lost four games in a row from in mid-November, but now stand on the verge of the play-offs because the Cincinnati Bengals, who could have all but assured themselves a post-season berth, botched an extra point attempt late in last Sunday's game in Denver.
The Broncos and New York Jets each have nine wins, but four other AFC teams go into the final weekend 8-7. (The 8-7 Chiefs play the 8-7 Jaguars in a game somebody will probably win.) Even the Tennessee Titans, who started the season 0-5, and the Green Bay Packers, who were 4-8 (and were shut out, at home, twice, for the first time in their 85-year history), have come back to remain in mathematical contention.
Among the other NFC pretenders, Carolina (losers of four of their last five games), Atlanta (who have lost six of their last eight), and St Louis (3-7 since early October) are still alive.
Should history prevail, the unworthy teams should be eliminated in the first round anyway, but the mere possibility that a 7-9 team could match up against an 9-7 team in Super Bowl XLI is, or ought to be, a cause for concern.
No team has undergone a more pronounced swoon than the New York Giants, whose head coach, Tom Coughlin, has plainly lost control of a squad characterised by finger-pointing and back-biting. But the Giants remain more or less in control of their destiny, since they currently own most of the tie-breaking criteria and would emerge at the head of the class should one or more teams match them at 8-8.
We say "currently" because some of the criteria remain in flux. Should the Giants and Packers, for instance, be deadlocked at 8-8, they would be even on the first three - head-to-head competition (they didn't meet), conference record and record against common opponents - in determining the final play-off spot.
The issue would then revert to "strength of victory" - the aggregate winning percentage of the teams each beat during the regular season. While the Giants' seven victims are 46-59 (43.8 per cent) and the Packers' 33-72 (31.4 per cent), an enterprising actuary at the New York Times this week figured out that if the Giants' defeated opponents all lose and the Packers' all win this weekend, Green Bay would have a nose in front at the end.
"Every team has to win," suggested Steve Maricuci, the former 49ers and Packers coach who now works as an analyst for the NFL Network. "Then let the nuclear engineers figure it out."
The possibility, though a slim one, exists that the final tally won't be known until shortly before the ball drops in Times Square on New Year's Eve. This is because under the terms of the NFL's new $3.1 billion per year television package, NBC, the network with the rights to Monday Night Football, was allowed to cherry-pick one of Sunday afternoon's games and move it to Sunday night for its grand finale.
NBC had promised a game likely to be fraught with play-off implications, but the game most likely to qualify under that definition - Giants vs Redskins - is scheduled for Saturday and was hence literally the only one unavailable to the network.
Ergo, the nation's viewers will get Chicago vs Green Bay, a game which could well be meaningless by the time it kicks off at 8:30.
The Bears, at 13-2, have already clinched home field throughout the play-offs, and can only be affected one way or the other by an injury to a key player, which is why you won't see much of their key players. And if the Giants win, the Packers could well have been eliminated 24 hours beforehand.
Nowhere have the howls of protest been louder than in Chicago, whose fans have been abruptly forced to alter their New Year's Eve plans in deference to the re-jiggered, television-mandated starting time.
New Year's Eve party hosts aren't the only ones to have been inconvenienced: the Chicago constabulary aren't very happy about it either.
Although the Bears will attempt to address the problem by cutting off beer sales at Soldier Field at half-time, this night-time start could put an extra 20,000 or so drunk drivers on the road around midnight.
