Rivalries New & Old

The NFL could not have drawn it up much better than this. Two conference championship games and two fascinating rivalries – one between the greatest quarterbacks of the last decade, and another between a pair of divisional foes who might just be gearing up to dominate the NFC for the next 10 years.

I wrote about Tom Brady vs Peyton Manning and Russell Wilson vs Colin Kaepernick already, so I will not go through it all again here, but suffice to say I am more than a little excited about this weekend’s games. If also saddened by the knowledge that it is almost all over for another year.

Right, here we go:

New England Patriots @ Denver Broncos (3pm ET/8pm GMT)

It has been some years since the New England Patriots have been able to get away with casting themselves as an underdog. A team that has won its division in 10 of the last 11 seasons, posting a 51-13 record across the last four, probably does not meet most people’s definitions of that term. But that has not stopped Brady from trying to sell them as such ahead of their visit to Denver.

“I’m sure no one’s going to pick us to win this week,” he said on Monday. “We’ve had our backs against the wall for a while. Really, the whole season we’ve lost players, and teams have really counted us out.”

If his initial claim was demonstrably false, then his broader point was not without merit. New England have indeed been plugging gaps in their roster all year, struggling to replace Wes Welker and Aaron Hernandez during the offseason and then losing Vince Wilfork and Jerod Mayo to injury after the games had begun. Tight end Rob Gronkowski played just seven games, sitting out the first six weeks with a back problem and then tearing his anterior cruciate ligament last month.

The combined effect of those absences would have been enough to sink most teams. That New England were still able to win 12 games is a testament to head coach Bill Belichick. After 14 years in New England it is easy to take his work for granted, but regardless of whether the Patriots win on Sunday, this might actually be one of his most impressive seasons yet.

It was his halftime adjustments eight weeks ago that allowed the Patriots to rally from a 24-point deficit and defeat Denver in New England. Belichick’s defense restricted Manning to just 19 completions on 36 passing attempts that day for a total of 150 yards.

The Broncos achieved rather more success on the ground, Knowshon Moreno rushing for 224 yards. They will doubtless lean heavily on him again against opponents who ranked 30th in the league against the run, but they will also need more from their quarterback. The good news for the Broncos is that this time Manning will have Julius Thomas with him. It was no accident that the quarterback looked his tight end’s way twice on key third downs during Denver’s final drive against San Diego last weekend.

But what Denver have gained on one side of the ball they have lost on the other, linebacker Von Miller and cornerback Chris Harris both going down with torn cruciate ligaments. With Denver’s pass rush and pass coverage both duly diminished, there will be plenty of opportunities there for Brady to exploit.

It seems inevitable that this game will go down to the wire. Six of the last seven head-to-heads between Brady and Manning have been settled by seven points or fewer. But, yes, Tom, some people are picking you this weekend. I am one of them.

San Francisco 49ers @ Seattle Seahawks (6.30pm ET/11.30pm GMT)

Nineteen weeks just to prove what these two teams would have told you from the outset: the NFC West is the best division in football. To listen to some of the chatter flying back and forth between Seattle and San Francisco this week you might even believe that this was actually the Super Bowl, and that the winner need only fly out to New Jersey next month in order to tie up a few simple formalities.

But which will it be? The team that won the division, or the one that arrives on an eight-game winning streak? The Seahawks fought ferociously to earn themselves homefield advantage throughout the playoffs, but some might feel that in doing so they caused themselves to peak too soon. The 49ers, by contrast, are playing their best football at exactly the right time.

The return of Michael Crabtree from the hip injury that kept him out for the first 12 weeks of the season might have something to do with it. The receiver quickly re-established his excellent rapport with Kaepernick, before going on to catch eight passes for 125 yards in the Wildcard win over Green Bay. A week later, Crabtree played the part of the decoy, drawing additional defenders to his side of the field while team-mate Anquan Boldin reeled in eight catches of his own for 136 yards.

Seattle will need to devise schemes to keep both men in check, while still accounting for 49ers tight end Vernon Davis. But if any team is up to the task, then they are probably it. This year the Seahawks became just the fourth team in NFL history to record the most interceptions in the league (28) and give up the fewest passing yards (273.6 per game) in the same season.

And after Kaepernick stole Cam Newton’s Superman celebration last week, it seems timely to note that Seattle have looked an awful lot like the San Francisco player’s Kryptonite so far in his career. In two games against the Seahawks this season he has completed less than half his passes and been intercepted four times. His passer rating averaged out to just 41.7, whereas it was 91.6 for the season as a whole.

As for so many opposing quarterbacks, the effect seems only to be magnified at CenturyLink Field. The 49ers have visited Seattle twice over the last two seasons with Kaepernick as their starter, and have lost on both occasions by more than 25 points.

There will be other factors in this game, from Russell Wilson’s struggles to move the ball downfield if Percy Harvin cannot play, through to the contributions of running backs Marshawn Lynch and Frank Gore. But while Kaepernick is improving rapidly, I am not yet sure he has it in him to consistently make the right decisions against this defense that has bewildered him during every meeting so far.