USA TODAY Sports’ Tom Pelissero breaks down next weekend’s wild-card playoff games. USA TODAY Sports
Remember the last game you lost?
“It was a close game until the fourth quarter,” Green Bay Packers linebacker Julius Peppers recalled the other night, amid the locker room buzz in Detroit that came with winning the NFC North crown. “Then it got away from us.”
Peppers was referring to a November night in Washington, when a certain team’s celebrating owner was caught on video during the 42-24 blowout dancing wild, like nobody was watching. It would have been logical to conclude it was time to stick a fork in the Packers.
But it turns out they were very much alive, despite that four-game losing streak. Now you can stick a thermometer in them to gauge the heat.
Ben Roethlisberger can relate. His Pittsburgh Steelers had a four-game losing streak, too.
“This game is about when you can get hot,” the quarterback said Wednesday. “It’s important to play your best football late in the season, when it matters the most.”
That’s why the Steelers and Packers are so dangerous as the NFL playoffs open this weekend.
Sure, the top-seeded New England Patriots and Dallas Cowboys have earned home-field advantage. But momentum is the mother of all playoff dreams. Green Bay has won six in a row since the much-discussed “run the table” remark by quarterback Aaron Rodgers. The Steelers are carrying a seven-game winning streak that matches New England’s as the longest in the league.
So beware, top seeds. In each of the past three seasons, the No. 1 seeds from both the AFC and NFC advanced to the Super Bowl. How rare is that? Since the playoff field was expanded to 12 teams in 1990, that had never happened three years in a row. No. 1 vs. No. 1 occurred just three times — and never in consecutive years — in the first 23 years of the 12-team format. There almost always seems to be some hot team poised to shock the world.
The Packers won their last Super Bowl, following the 2010 season, as a sixth seed — although Mr. Win ‘Em All was quick to clarify the other night that the current squad is a bit different even if Rodgers is a common denominator. The Steelers won Super Bowl XL as a sixth seed following the 2005 season after they rode Jerome Bettis home to Detroit. The Baltimore Ravens won both of their Super Bowls as a No. 4 seed. The New York Giants won crowns as fourth and fifth seeds.
That history reminds you that one or both of the Super Bowl LI participants might be playing this weekend.
“As long as the Big Three are healthy, the Steelers have a chance to beat anybody,” said Hall of Fame general manager Bill Polian, referring to the Roethlisberger-Le’Veon Bell-Antonio Brown trio that triggers an explosive offense.
Polian, now an ESPN analyst, downplays the home-field advantage that the top seeds possess.
“Number one, it has to do with health more than anything else,” Polian said before a production meeting Wednesday morning.
That’s why he’s also bullish on the Packers. The hot streak sparked by Rodgers, who has 15 touchdown passes and zero interceptions during the current winning streak, is one thing. Yet Green Bay’s resourcefulness in developing a running game and tightening the defense has been just as critical.
“Dom (Capers), as usual, has patched together a secondary with bailing wire and scotch tape,” Polian said, referring to the defensive coordinator. “But the change has come because they got functional at running back. That’s the difference between the last four games and now.”
In Pittsburgh’s case, an evolution on defense has been critical, with an improved pass rush complementing better coverage on the back end.
Norv Turner, who resigned as Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator two months ago, said the turnarounds by the Steelers and Packers remind him of the 1989 season with the Los Angeles Rams, when he served on John Robinson’s staff. The Rams started 5-0, then lost four in a row. They eventually went 11-5 and advanced to the NFC title game.
“You’ve got to find a way to fight through it and keep grinding,” Turner told USA TODAY Sports. “You can get on a roll.
“(Bill) Belichick says it so well: It’s 16 one-game seasons. So you win one, then another, and so on.”
That’s even more relevant in the win-or-go-home playoffs. It helps to come in on a roll.
“Man, there’s a lot to be said about that,” Peppers told USA TODAY Sports. “The main thing it says about this team is that guys have stuck together in the face of adversity and trusted the process.”
That process always had a purpose, and now it has a hot new beginning.
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