Cultural Cuisinart

This post should really be entitled, "How 'bout them [insert team here]?" because boy, who would have predicted at the beginning of the year that it'd be Eagles/Cardinals and Steelers/Ravens to decide who was going to the Super Bowl?


Hold on to the damn ball! The old chestnut "Teams that turn the ball over too much tend to lose" is pretty much true, and we've seen exactly how turnovers made the difference in the first two rounds of playoff action. While there will be much gnashing of teeth about the non-delay of game call against the Ravens, really, the reason they lost was turnovers (well, and Chris Johnson's injury). The Ravens are turnover forcing machines, and they make you pay for every slightly mishandled or mis-thrown ball. They forced Chad Pennington into throwing 4 INTs the week before, when he had only thrown 6 picks all season. They stopped several Titans scoring drives by forcing turnovers in the red zone. On the flip side, even with a rookie QB at the helm, the offense hasn't coughed up the ball at all.

Similarly, the Cardinals remarkable post-season run continues largely because of the 6 turnovers they "forced" against the Carolina Panthers. I use quotes there, because watching that game, I'm not sure "force" is the correct word to use, since Jake Delhomme seemed to almost intentionally throw to the Arizona defenders. Credit goes to Arizona's defense for successfully catching all those balls, but boy howdy - what a display of poor judgment from Delhomme. Every single throw was the result of a bad decision - there wasn't one errantly tipped ball in the bunch.