NFL: Playoffs, Jan. 12-13  //  MLB: Fame, Cooperstown

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.  .  .   SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner.

NFL   ---   TOMORROW and Sunday, eight NFL teams will do battle in order to advance during the 2012/13 playoffs---four will survive to be at war next week. Within the NFL’s American Football Conference, it will be the Denver Broncos against the Baltimore Ravens, and the Houston Texans will be up against the New England Patriots. The National Football Conference will pit the Green Bay Packers against the San Francisco 49er’s, while the Atlanta Falcons attempt to undo the Seattle Seahawks.

In all eight games, exceptional football savvy will be among the several differences underpinning a win, along with team exploitations of their own strengths and a solid dampening of their vulnerabilities. Part of that savvy will be the ability to transition to new ideas when planned plays stop working. Make no mistake, each of the eight teams will be trying at the outset to cause disorientation, hoping to take opponents off their game, bringing enough chaos and confusion to where, say, repeated successful pass rushes cause a quarterback’s timing and a receiver’s ability to connect with that to be lost, which is not something that can happen often to Broncos quarterback, Peyton Manning, and to Manning’s favored wide receivers, Eric Decker and Demaryius Thomas, or to Manning’s reliance on running backs, Willis McGahee (if he plays, having come back recently from an injury) and Knowshon Moreno. It is these athletes that the Baltimore Ravens will have to deny purchase of time and space. Not easy, in that the Ravens have a fairly readable defense, relying more on speed and power for employment of standard tactics than on canny and surprising moves. Anyway, should this defense style of the Ravens transform for a surprising set of tactics, a Manning skill is his ability to read “at just a glance” what a defense may be up to.

On paper, the Ravens seem to have little chance of beating the Broncos. The Denver franchise puts the Baltimore team in the dust when it comes to total number of points accrued in the latter half of the NFL regular season, in total number of first downs, net rushing yards and net passing yards, in total average number of ball possession minutes gained during each game, and just about every other statistic that contributes to a winning record, to include the big lead that QB Manning has over Baltimore QB, Joe Flacco, re. pass completions and touchdown passes..

Yet QB Flacco and his favored receivers are still close enough in quality to the Manning + ensemble to exploit the occasional opportunity and streak ahead if Denver’s linemen, among them, Von Miller and Elvis Dumervill, fail to be “on their game,” and if Denver’s cornerbacks fail at going into action as speedily as during Denver’s last five games should Denver’s pass rush unit fail to undo the opposing QB. These being unlikely occurrences, this page’s pick for Saturday is a Broncos win by at least 10.

To finish off the Patriots, the Texans defense will have to be as effective as it was during the first half of the regular season, thus capable of outwitting, if not outstorming, Patriots QB, Tom Brady and Brady’s preferred receivers, keeping the Patriots scoring under 14. With enough ball possession time, Texans QB, Matt Schaub, who has a slightly higher pass completion rate than Brady, can top that score with a single touchdown and multiple field goals, providing that the Texans defense can deny Patriot first downs repeatedly, a difficult task considering that during the regular season the Patriots posted one of the highest total number of first downs within both the AFC and the NFC. When adding to the win/lose equation the exceptionally mobile and nearly impenetrable Patriots defense, an appropriate take on the outcome becomes a Patriots win, by seven.

The key to a Packers win over the 49er’s will likely  be number of ball possession minutes allowing Packers QB, Aaron Rodgers, wide receiver Jordy Nelson and running back, DuJuan Harris, to reach TD and field goal opportunities in spite of a lot of this obtained from third down conversions to first downs. Tough for the 49er’s will be a pro-active Packers defense, in effect, a defense that puts an opposing quarterback and receivers on the defensive rather than being in control of their planned assault, a defense that can force an opposing team to rely on the punt or experience turnovers minimizing the number of first downs that an opponent will need to occupy an end-zone. The 49er’s pass protection will be crucial if the San Francisco team is to rack up any points, enabling QB, Colin Kaepernick, to fire off short passes, engage RB LaMichael James or rush the ball himself, implementing a steadily moving offense via short gains. This page’s pick? Packers by a TD and FG.

The Seahawks have proven to have remarkable flexibility, adjusting plays according to the strengths and weaknesses noted about opposing teams, and so strategy vs. the Falcons will be a tough assignment for Seattle’s head coach and QB, Russell Wilson, in that the Falcons have so few vulnerabilities. Alongside the qualities shown by the Denver Broncos, the Falcons have been a 2012/13 close-to-perfection football franchise. Falcons QB Matt Ryan’s pass completion rate of 68 percent is higher than that of Denver’s QB, Peyton Manning, and that of the Patriots QB, Tom Brady, and Ryan’s total yards gained to date exceeds 4,700, while Russell Wilson’s total yards gained remains below 3,500. So, the Seahawks highest priority will probably be to curb QB Ryan’s prowess via standard tactics, therefore use of a secondary to stay between a receiver and the football, and linemen limiting a running back to 2.0 or fewer yards per rush. A likely outcome? Falcons ahead, by 13.

All of which brings us to the possibility of an AFC shootout between the Broncos and the Patriots, the NFC with a Packers vs. Falcons challenge.

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MLB ---   THERE’s a myth about a warrior who, after climbing for many years,  reaches a prized summit. When he started the ascent, it was to beat all others to the top. Now, having summitted without any technical aids, that is, having “free-climbed,” he is crowned king of the world’s steepest hill by a warrior-God. But instead of staying at the summit to meet and slay a number of foes that came atop earlier because they took advantage of pulleys and stationary ladders, the new warrior-king flings his sword and his crown into a cloud and strolls down the other side of the mountain, never to be seen again.

Surely the myth is about retiring from a long effort “satisfied,” having found victory in the struggle more than in the achievement, the real prize being in the ascent and not in being at the top and slaying others, not in obtaining a title and wearing a crown. Well, it may seem excessively dramatic today to say that the departing warrior-king could be a reflection of certain professional baseball retirees, athletes who chose to stay clean during the steroid era, who if the Hall of Fame wants them now, fine; if not, then that’s okay, too---they played baseball to play baseball.

Glory-seeking isn’t a crime; it’s how one goes about it that has hit nerves within the American Baseball Writers Association that decides whether Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and other steroid-using ballplayers deserve praise at Cooperstown. Presently, those steroid-using athletes are also at the other side of the mountain. If grieving there about the recent decision that they NOT be inducted into the Hall of Fame, the Cooperstown gatekeepers response is that those baseball retirees haven’t yet seen the difference between the pure ascent-motivated warrior and the warrior more interested in using illegal aids to slay others, gain a title and a crown.

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