In Battle of Equals, Each Will Meet Their Match

And then there were four. Next, in the NFL’s two conference-title games, look for the two hottest cold-weather teams, the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots, to survive the East’s January freeze today in combat with a Southern team, Carolina, and the dome team that employs Peyton Manning, Indianapolis.

Pro football’s famous and fabulous parity is still reflected in the new pairings -- as it was last week when only half the games were won by home teams and when half went into overtime, one double overtime.

What’s left are four nearly equal teams -- close to four co-favorites for the Super Bowl.

Any sports fan doubting that any team can win need only remember where Carolina came from.

The Panthers were nothing at all until tough-guy Jake Delhomme suddenly caught fire at quarterback. And, now, Delhomme seems as likely to win at Philadelphia on Sunday as Manning is at New England.

The problem for Delhomme is how to outscore running-passing star Donovan McNabb. The problem for Manning is that he can’t play defense. As Patriot passer Tom Brady has no doubt noticed, few Colts can.

Bottom line, these are the four most closely matched finalists of the Super Bowl era.

Chiefs Also Equal

The Colts won the most misunderstood game of this year’s playoffs last Sunday at Kansas City, where, sure, Manning was phenomenal. Sure, his passes moved the Colts to touchdowns nearly every time he had the ball. But with only four minutes left, Manning led by only seven points, 38-31.

He hadn’t yet won a beautiful pass-offense war in which Kansas City had matched him almost touchdown for touchdown with Trent Green’s throws and Dante Hall’s catches and runs.

Four minutes before it ended, the yardage totals were essentially even -- 394 yards to 395.

And after a 76-yard drive led by passer Green, the Chiefs had just scored, meaning it was their option to go for either an onside or an orthodox kickoff.

In the long history of playoff football, no pro club had ever chosen the onside kick with four or more minutes left. The conventional call is a deep kickoff, counting on one’s defense to wrest the ball back with two or three minutes left.

But for a team like Kansas City, a good passing team with an unsteady defense, the percentages are different.

The Chiefs had one chance in about four to recover an onside kick -- not good odds until you consider the alternative. They had no chance if they kicked off and expected their defense to suddenly do something.

Nonetheless, the Chiefs only faked the onside play and kicked off -- to a team so good that it hadn’t punted in two games.

And that fateful decision won it for Manning, as the Colts ran the clock down until there was time for only one fruitless Kansas City offensive play.

The fateful decision led the football world to conclude Peyton Manning was far better than Trent Green. Not so.

Marginal Penalty

Needing to go score-for-score with Manning, the Chiefs lost all chance when a strange call cost them a 28-yard second-quarter touchdown by Kansas City tight end Tony Gonzales on a pass from Green.

That kept Kansas City from closing to 21-17 at the half and 38-38 at the end of regulation.

Gonzales was penalized for pushing off. A variety of instant-replay pictures showed it to be a slight push, if that.

One hesitates to call out the officials for one little call against Kansas City -- on a weekend when the officiating seemed brilliant -- but that little call had unhappy consequences the Chiefs didn’t deserve.

What they earned on the field but didn’t get was a tie game, giving them a shot at the overtime coin toss that would have decided a sensational offensive duel.

Patriots vs. Colts

The Patriots, with Brady at quarterback, lack the finesse that Manning can bring to pass offense. Except for Brady, the Patriots lack the personnel to contend, if you are comparing offense versus offense.

The Colts have a great offense with Manning, a very good ballcarrier in Edgerrin James and three superb receivers. It is sometimes said that Marvin Harrison is foremost as an NFL receiver, but Brandon Stokley and Reggie Wayne are up there with him.

The Colts, however, as coached by Tony Dungy, have been the most unbalanced team in football. Their offense is among the finest and their defense among the shakiest.

At the same time, the Patriots, as coached by Bill Belichick, have been among the best-balanced teams, including withstanding potent Tennessee, 17-14, last week.

Though his receivers don’t compare with Manning’s, Brady reads the field as well as Manning and has perfected a quick passing motion.

He is also unflappable, whereas Manning makes mistakes sometimes when he falls behind.

Unaffected by game-time pressures, Brady has what it takes to customarily pull out close ones. In his first Super Bowl two years ago, his last-minute passes broke a 17-17 tie and beat the Rams.

Belichick has the most successful defensive scheme in the league and the most complicated. In time today, Manning will get it read, but the question is whether that will be soon enough to win.

Because Belichick is so flexible and because he has perfected the art of changing defenses at the last instant, Manning’s best chance is to forget the audibles he loves and hit the Patriots on quick counts.

Eagles vs. Panthers

The Eagles will have to run McNabb again for meaningful gains to turn back Carolina. Though Eagle ballcarriers Duce Staley and Correll Buckhalter showed some signs of life last week, the Panthers, with Stephen Davis, run more effectively than the Eagles.

This is scrambler McNabb’s game to win or lose because the Eagles lack the personnel to attack the Carolina defense successfully with conventional offensive plays. The Panthers are too tough.

On defense, Carolina Coach John Fox fields a powerful team, one with a system that’s as simple as it is sound.

It’s far simpler than Belichick’s in New England, but in part that’s because Belichick can’t match the athleticism of Fox’s tough young front four -- Julius Peppers, Brentson Buckner, Kris Jenkins and Mike Rucker.

They managed to stall the Ram running game last week and to rush the passer effectively.

The lesson for McNabb is that he’ll have to charge ahead with the kind of wide-open quarterback play that most troubles any defense -- quarterback scrambles and draws when the Panthers are playing pass defense and quick pass plays when the Panthers move up and in on him.

Failure of Nerve

The Rams disappeared from the playoffs in the Carolina game last week, although they were talented enough to have won handily. Their troubles are easy to trace.

At the turn of the 21st century, they had the most assertive and productive pass offense in football. When they choose, the Rams can still play that way.

It takes a lot of nerve, though, to play continuously aggressive offensive football. The risks are obvious and also enormous.

So the Ram season, as it played out, wasn’t a failure of offense. It was a failure of nerve. Time after time, quarterback Marc Bulger’s long passes put the Rams in position to score on Carolina, after which they ran the ball meekly and ineffectively into a Carolina wall -- sometimes with plays that weren’t as well-designed as Coach Mike Martz’s pass plays.

In the years when they were big winners, the Rams didn’t do it that way. Clearly, it was a strategic error to take a conservative turn so often against Carolina after typically aggressive Ram football by Bulger had moved the ball into position for better.

Martz’s view at the moment, which his fans hope is only temporary, is that there’s a larger danger of tipped-ball interceptions and other such problems in the crowded red zone than at midfield -- as indeed there is.

But when he reviews the film, he will surely conclude that in terms of winning, there can be even more dangers in conservative football.