Shock'n'Y'all, Part 1, January 16, 2010

"Playoffs!? Playoffs!? You kiddin' me? Playoffs!?!" -famous sound bite from post-game speech by former Indianapolis Colts head coach Jim Mora

That seems the appropriate way to start this piece which is, indeed, about the playoffs. The divisional round (second week) of the 2010 NFL Playoffs, that is.

What a show it's been. In the first week, the defending champion New Orleans Saints were ousted by a team with a losing record (the Seattle Seahawks); Peyton and co. were eliminated a year after a Super Bowl berth, ending a season held together by paper clips and chewing gum; the Baltimore Ravens shellacked the bewildered Kansas City Chiefs, and The Michael Vick Traveling Show came to a screeching halt at the hands of Brett Favre's first team.

This week, sound bites of all kinds came from New England, from Atlanta, from Chicago, and from Pittsburgh.

My last post detailed the Steelers' characteristically tough win over the Baltimore Ravens, effectively giving them a leg up in the rivarly, and putting them back in the AFC Championship Game. It also keyed in on what was then breaking news, how the sky appeared to be falling on the #1-team-in-the-NFC Atlanta Falcons at the hands of Aaron Rodgers and some of his Green Bay Packers buddies.

Well, it fell.

Rodgers wracked up a quarterback rating of 136.8 and prompted comparisons to the greatest quarterbacks of this or any era with a sterling performance, going 31 for 36 with 366 passing yards (10.2 completion average), and three touchdowns in a game in which the Packers punted just twice. They scored touchdowns on five consecutive possessions (not including a 70-yard pick six by corner Tramon Williams at the end of the first half), four of those capping off drives of 80+ yards.

Basically, the Packers humiliated the NFC's "best" team, the Atlanta Falcons, in front of some 68,000 of their own fans, pounding them 48-21. Matty Ice threw for just 186 yards and 1 TD (two interceptions), and after the 102-yard kickoff-return-for-touchdown by Eric Weems, Atlanta went 27 minutes of game-time between scores. Their defense looked horrendous, and the Georgia Dome emptied out well before the game ended, and Aaron Rodgers became one of the kings of the world.

If this doesn't help you figure out how one-sided this game was, nothing will: the Packers had 442 yards of total offense, the Falcons had 194. The Packers won the first down battle 28-15, and won the turnover battle 1-4. It was an unexpectedly thorough pounding.

And I thought the FOX pre-game crew, of whom four of five picked the sixth-seeded Packers to win the game over the top-seeds, didn't know what they were doing.