NFL:  Week Six, Possible Outcomes; Broncos vs. Chargers // MLB: the 2012 Division Series & League Championship Races

For more analysis, go to Mile High Sports Radio AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team, milehighsports.com

“SPORTS NOTEBOOK” will continue to post its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week---Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone.

NFL:    THERE’s no way of knowing which of the NFL franchises that are leading their divisions today will be post-season competitors when the regulation 16 game season is over. NFL reality is about that which has gone down since the season started, plus that which tells us might happen in the next round of games, for example, during the current NFL season’s Week Six when two 5-0 and five 4-1 teams will be pressuring their Sunday and Monday challengers to give them one more win before the arrival of Week Seven.

So, will the American Footfall Conference’s leading franchise, the 5-0 Houston Texans (AFC South), defeat the National Football Conference North’s third place team, the 2-3 Green bay Packers, and will the NFC Conference’s number one franchise, the 5-0 Atlanta Falcons (NFC South), beat the AFC West’s third place team, the 1-3 Oakland Raiders? 

As for the Texans humiliating the Packers moment by moment, yard after yard, forget it! In spite of how the numbers have fallen, Green Bay is still a credible team led by a star quarterback, Aaron Rodgers. Last year, Rodgers led a team that finished the season, 15-1. The 2012 slowed-down Packers are a team with time enough and the smarts, skills, strength and endurance to pull ahead, and the team’s turnaround could be versus the Texans, doubtful though it could seem. That by halftime last week against the Indianapolis Colts, the Packers had managed a 21-3 lead, well, that says something, as does the fact that QB Rodgers has a pass attempt/completion record that stands up well against that of the Texans QB, Matt Staub.

But also telling is the fact that last week the Packers couldn’t hold its lead in the second half vs. the Colts, and lost, 30-27.

Without question, The Packers weaker defense will be a problem for them against the Texans. What’s a proper take, then, on the outcome? Because of injuries among Green Bay’s backs and a weaker defense, the Texans will probably defeat the Packers, but not by a wide margin.  

The Atlanta Falcons, however, they can embarrass the Raiders coolly and without mercy. If they do on Sunday, it’ll be the final game of a Falcons sweep vs. the entire AFC West (40-24 against the Kansas City Chiefs, 27-21 vs. the Denver Broncos, 27-3 vs. the San Diego Chargers). Adding to this Atlanta’s 2012 wins against the Carolina Panthers and the Washington Redskins, the Falcons have accumulated high end among teams of four or more wins during Weeks One through Five---148 points. 

The Falcons defense, while not the more strategic and mobile in the NFL, is barrier-strong, comprising quickly placed logjams hard to escape through---it is this that will confound the Raiders offense, defining the Raiders as a low-scoring team, while Falcons QB Matt Ryan and his offense could be touchdown-heavy from the greater share of the Falcons first downs after numerous and necessary punts executed by the Raiders.

The Falcons could win on Sunday by as many as 17 points.

            Broncos vs. the Chargers (Monday night, October 15)    

IF the defense secondaries of either team are equally adept,  the Broncos will have an edge, being that the team’s QB, Peyton Manning, and his favored receivers, are more in synch for pass/catch plays and deep rushes than the Chargers QB, Phillip Rivers and company, but with one exception, this: the way in which San Diego linemen can execute the pass rush, it advises that Manning’s protectors in the pocket have to be more alert, tighter and swifter than in previous 2012 games, and Manning has to be “more deceptive” than in recent games (no “tells”).

Thus far in the season, the Broncos have accrued a total of 135 points, and given away 114, while the Chargers have accumulated 124 and dropped 102.

The Broncos lowest score of the season happened in its first regulation game, a loss to Pittsburgh---31-19. The Chargers lowest score from a game against the Falcons was a 27-3 loss. Each team has two wins from 30 or more points.

Whatever the number of TD’s and field goals on Monday, the final score will probably be close---this page’s pick, Broncos 24, Chargers, 21.

            *          *          *

            MLB:   Thursday’s bottom-of-the-ninth solo home run by Jayson Werth of the Washington Nationals (from a 3-2 count by the way), it decided a 2-1 Nationals win, keeping the Nat’s alive for the National League’s division championship and a chance to go for the year’s league crown. The Werth home run changed a 2-1 division series lead held by the St. Louis Cardinals to a 2-2 tie of a five-game series, a great relief for Washington after an 8-0 loss to the Cardinals the day before.

Also among NL battlers, the San Francisco Giants defeated the Cincinnati Reds, 8-3 on Wednesday, and again on Thursday, 6-4, a game that turned in San Francisco’s favor from a Buster Posey grand slam/HR (Posey is the NL’s batting champion). The five-game SF/Reds series went to the Giants after a two-game deficit, the Reds now eliminated from post-season contention.

American League post-season teams, they have held to tighter games, the New York Yankees beating the Baltimore Orioles, 3-2, on Wednesday, in a 12 inning game that included a ninth-inning Yankee HR turnabout, which put the Yankees ahead in its series vs. the Orioles, 2-1, with Baltimore creating a 2-2 N.Y./Baltimore series on Thursday with its 2-1 win vs. N.Y. after 13 innings of play.

And, the Oakland Athletics took down the Detroit Tigers, 4-3, on Wednesday, and in the same manner that the Nat’s broke the Card’s yesterday---a ninth inning game-winning HR that created a 2-2 series situation and Thursday’s fifth and final challenge of the A’s/Tigers series, won by Detroit, 6-0.

Within the NL, it’ll be either the Nat’s or the Card’s playing San Francisco for the LC, depending on which team wins game five of the Washington/St. Louis series.

Within the AL, it’ll be either N.Y. or Baltimore challenging Detroit for the ALC, depending on which team walks away with the N.Y./Baltimore five-game series.   

Most games so far in the post-season have remained low-score, interspersed with wide margin wins, e.g., that 8-0 takedown of the Nat’s by the Card’s. Several wins have been Hollywood endings (the Nat’s Jayson Werth as the hero of Robert Redford movie, The Natural). And, how about the N.Y. slugger Alex Rodriguez’ slump avoided by having a pinch hitter bang out the N.Y. HR that made the difference for the Yankees?

Too, we haven’t seen “sweeps,” yet, i.e., a shut-out series, though we’ve had shut-out games.

Thus far, the post-season has been more of a replica of the regular season than a period of games entirely different than the 162 played in order to yield division and league champions. There haven’t been an unusual number of high on base percentages, yet there’s been a number of game-saving HR’s, and games dominated more by strategic pitching than by 95 mph+ power-pitching “yet only for so long,” and closers have been “off game.” Still, the mound has had its hero, Detroit’s Justin Verlander, and the plate it’s numero uno, San Francisco’s Buster Posey.

If there’s a lesson so far from both the regular and post-season games, it could be that baseball is striving for an era of multiple and positive attributes, no longer being slaved to a power-hitting era or a decade of mound dominators. Maybe in 2013  “everything will matter,” all tools and weapons front and center, all strategic and tactical options on the table, baseball no longer suppressed and askew by power hitters and super-star hurlers. See it now: more singles and extra-base hits but still the game-winning HR, lots of base-stealing attempts, the clever bunt, the deliberately placed sacrifice fly, with the well-hurled knuckleball, cutter and elegant curve still feared.

END/ml