Christmas Day Predictions and Thoughts

-Prediction: The Falcons will finish 9-7 and for the first time in franchise history have a winning record in consecutive years. Regardless, the team needs to get more talented and in a hurry.

-Thought: I hope I'm not the only one who finds it just a little sad that Tony Gonzalez, perhaps the greatest Tight End in NFL history, so far in his career has played in a grand total of......THREE playoff games with zero playoff wins. With the elimination of the Falcons from playoff contention last week, he'll be shut out once again this year.

-Prediction: Regardless of how much Panthers QB Matt Moore can take advantage of the Giants injury depleted secondary, the 'finally playing up to their potential now that it doesn't matter' Carolina Panthers will defeat the New York Giants and strike a major blow to their playoff chances this Sunday.

-Thought: It's looking more and more likely that the New York Giants will face a Minnesota Vikings team next week that actually will have something to play for in week seventeen. The Vikings stumbles these last few weeks have allowed the Philadelphia Eagles and the Arizona Cardinal's to get in the race for the NFC's second bye likely forcing the Vikings to play their starters the entire game when the Giants come to Minny. Perhaps even with the second by sowed up by game time and nothing to play for, Coach Brad Childress may still elect to play his starters, not wanting to see his guys not playing until the divisional round. The Giants are the NFC wild card contending team that most need to win their final two games to get in, and right now they're the NFC wild card contending team with the toughest final two games.

-Prediction: A 9-7 team will make the playoffs in the AFC. Not bold enough? I'll even go one further: one of the two AFC Wild Card representatives will not be one of the two teams currently slotted in the AFC's two wild card slots. Yes, that means the either the Broncos or Ravens will not be extending their season into the playoffs.

-Thought: Just because these guys play on some seriously bad teams doesn't mean they shouldn't be recognized. Yes, I'm looking at you Eric Wright, Brandon Flowers, Tamba Hali, Aqib Talib, Jamaal Charles, Joe Thomas, Jerome Harrison and Jamar Williams.

-Prediction: Interim Bills Coach Perry Fewell, who's black, won't just be a rquisite Rooney Rule interview on the coaching circuit this January. He deserves to get some legitimate looks at being a head coach in this league. In a season were the Buffalo Bills have been crippled by injuries, the team, or whats left of it, have played with nothing but passion under Fewell.

-Thought: Nick Barnett is one of the biggest reasons for the Packers turnaround on defense this year. He'll make a couple eye popping plays per game while also playing about as good a pass defense as any inside linebacker in this league. If he wasn't just a role player the first few games of the season as the team was trying to slowly adjust him back to meaningful football, he'd be a legitimate all-pro candidate.

-Prediction: Wade Phillips will indeed be the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys by the time training camp opens next July. It'll just remain to be seen if Wade Phillips can shake his reputation of being a poor coach in the playoffs. Currently, Wade has the same number of playoff wins as the number of playoff wins the Cowboys have since 1997: Zero.

-Thought: If the NFL is serious about broadcasting NFL games on the NFL Network, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to give the broadcast a slightly larger budget. This is the fourth year for these games and we've seen virtually no improvement in the game production value.

-Thought: Yeah, I know it's two straight, but...... Well, there are lot of things currently wrong with the Notre Dame football team. One thing thats not wrong is their television coverage. While it's debatable whether you think it's right that one team gets national coverage on a major network, I think the broadcast team of Tom Hammond and Pat Haden is actually pretty good. You'll hear no complaining from me if NBC decides to use that team for the early game of their Wild Card Weekend coverage.

Chargers vs. Titans from the Titans side

Yes, we're on the eve of the Chargers and Titans tomorrow in Nashville, (yes, I know what day they're playing on, doesn't mean I have to acknowledge it) and because it's the only meaningful football that day, your average december game with postseason implications gets thrusted into the spotlight.

The Titans, if anything, bring some badly needed drama to an AFC Wild Card chase thats high on quantity but relatively low on quality. Indeed it would be a dramatic for a team at one point 0-6, and staring down perhaps another painful rebuild this offseason, to turn it all around and make the playoffs. Sure the 7-7 record looks awfully pedestrian for a team coming off a thirteen win season, but it's the Titan's record in their last eight games thats gives Titan's fans hope: 7-1 with the one loss coming against the undefeated Colts. Consider that if the Titans had just played average red zone offense in that Colt's game, the Titans may well be 8-6 right now and we could very well be talking about the possibility of this team running the table to win their last ten games, an unprecedented NFL feat.

A victory tomorrow for the Titans seems like a daunting task against San Diego and their painfully simple yet freaking hard to stop-Offense. If NFL offenses were old world European cuisines, the Chargers would be sicilian: simple recipes, world class ingredients. Even more daunting for the Titans is the surprisingly average defense they'll trot out against the Chargers tomorrow night. The Titans, while disappointed they lost a player of Albert Haynesworth's calibur, looked like they would do just fine in withstanding it. Whether it's Big Albert's absence to blame for it or not, the defense has taken one big step backwards from last year. At one time a dominant passrusher, DE Kyle Vanden Bosch hasn't been the same player since his groin injury in the second half of the 2008 season. SS Michael Griffin looked like he was ready to join the Polamalu-Reed class of Safety in this league before the season began. Now, he'll fall far short of his big play totals he achieved in 2008.

Perhaps the most consitent Titan of this decade, is the one that won't be available to the team friday night. Just a few days ago it was announced that LB Keith Bulluck will miss the rest of the season due to a torn interior cruciate ligament.

It's looking likely, the Titans best chance to win this ballgame may be by way of shootout. Not to say Vince Young, Chris Johnson, and a superior Offensive line can't pull it out though. The Titans can also take solace in the fact that if they do dispose of San Diego, the only obstacle remaining on their schedule to a winning record is the very injury depleted Seattle Seahawks in week seventeen. Again, not to say a playoff berth won't happen, but a 9-7 record after starting 0-6 is a nice victory for the franchise in itself.