Rob's NFL Yard: Week 16 Power Rankings

Hi NFLers

Welcome to my weekly NFL Power Rankings, a look at how I rank the 32 NFL teams after the Monday Night Football fallout. The figures to the right of the logo denote each team’s current record while the number to the left in brackets is where I had them placed last week.
The biggest opportunity missed last week wasn’t Green Bay’s shocker in KC that leaves the ’72 Dolphins as the only unbeaten team in the modern era. No, step forward the Pittsburgh Steelers, the unlikely winners of an accolade as dubious as Doing All You Can To Win The Super Bowl The Hard Way.
Had they won in San Fran on Monday night, all that was required to secure homefield advantage throughout the playoffs was a win against the Rams at home (a spread of the Steelers – 60 anybody?) followed by a victory in Cleveland. Granted, the latter is no guarantee, but it’s nice to have the chance to fulfill such dreams. So, from being 60 minutes away from holding the number one seed in the AFC and thus the easiest route to Indianapolis in February, they now find themselves fifth in the pecking order. Fifth? Wow.
Now I have no love for Pittsburgh after they conspired with the officiating crew to beat my Seahawks in Super Bowl XL, but I did want them to beat the 49ers on MNF as I was hoping for a Steelers/Saints Super Bowl. What became blatantly obvious on Monday though is that without a healthy Ben Roethlisberger (even 75% would be a huge upgrade on the 50% he appeared to be), they look to have little chance outright, but if they are to beat what are now rather large odds, they’ll have to take the same route as they did on the way to the aforementioned victory in Super Bowl XL, when they won three playoff games on the road before reaching Detroit on Super Sunday. However, all roads to Indy should now be going through New England and that frigid climate.
If I may be able to delve into the history books here, there’s an interesting note to Super Bowl XL. Yes, heaven only knows why I’m choosing to linger on this one! As it was an even numbered Super Bowl, the AFC representative is deemed to be the ‘home’ team, which means that they have the privilege of choosing which jersey to wear in the game. Pittsburgh had won three playoff games on the road (in Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Denver) wearing their white away jerseys and because of this subsequently defied tradition by choosing not to wear their home coloured jerseys as the ‘home’ team in a Super Bowl. They remain the only team in Super Bowl history to do this.
Now, some of you will rightly point out that both the Cowboys and Redskins have donned white jerseys as the ‘home’ NFC team in an odd numbered Super Bowl (XIII, XVII and XXVII to be precise), but they traditionally wear white jerseys at home so their choice of jersey colour was not unexpected. I am something of a team uniform geek (of course unashamedly!) and facts like these fascinate me somewhat and if you are of a similar persuasion, go look up how the Cowboys believe their blue away jersey to be somehow a little jinxed.
On other uniform matters, how good did the Rams look on Sunday in their throwback blue and yellow gold colours against the Bengals? I hated the change to navy and old gold in 2000 and am at a loss to explain why fans don’t petition for a return to such sartorial glories. For those who do care enough to voice their opinion on internet forums, there ain’t many Ram followers out there who don’t want to see them revert back. I used to have a soft spot for the old L.A. Rams, but pretty much despise the St. Louis version and yes, those awful uniforms help form that opinion.

Big love for: Patriots (if only for showing Tim Tebow what the NFL big boys eat for breakfast), Lions, Chargers, Eagles, Panthers (they scored a TD with a play nicked from ‘Little Giants’ a 1994 kids film…are you kidding me???), Chiefs (how on earth did you just do that?)

No love for: Patriots (for ruining the Hollywood story that was Tim Tebow and making the season feel, well, normal again…hey, Bill, Tom, I was rather enjoying the mancircus that is Tebow!), Steelers, Giants, Jets, Titans, Bears

I’ve realised that there’s more teams than usual in the above mini lists and it’s because I usually only reserve a place for teams who’ve risen or fallen at least five spots, but this week’s different. And I haven’t even mentioned the Seahawks and Redskins either…but that’s partly due to the fact that you’re sick of me harping on about Seattle. The Redskins? I did write in my abridged preview of their trip to the Giants that they’re kind of hot right now and they took sweet revenge on the city of New York for their capitulation against the Jets two weeks ago by destroying the blue half of the city in their own back yard.
That back yard hosts both NY teams this Christmas Eve with the Jets officially the home team. That one and Philadelphia’s trip to Dallas are the two outstanding games on Saturday (oh, go on then…Seahawks/49ers is the third one and is what I’m watching) before we indulge ourselves properly on the 25th, something the Packers will be doing when they host the Bears.
Merry Christmas to you all and I hope you enjoy every second of the football on offer.

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