Farewell to the 2008 NFL Season - Some highs and lows

There’s only one game left, Super Bowl XLIII! So this is obviously the last NFL column until next fall. With that in mind, lets take a trip down memory lane and look at the year that was the 2008 NFL Season. Here are some week by week highlights:

Week 1: Obviously it’s Bernard Pollard knocking Tom Brady out for the year season and ruining fantasy leagues the world over. The guy in my league who had him went 1-13!

Week 2: Two words: Ed Hochuli.

Week 3: From a football standpoint, Miami going into New England and obliterating the Patriots with their Wildcat Offence. Ronnie Brown was THE week 4 fantasy pickup of the year. From a personal standpoint, either benching TJ Houshmanzadeh against the Giants where he scored two TD’s and caught over 100 yards, thus ruining my chances of going 3-0 in my league, or U of T crushing York 58-7. York students must have known it was going to be a crappy fall when you lose a game to a team that two weeks earlier hadn’t won a game in seven years. And you lose that game by 51.

Week 4: Well, it has nothing to do with football, but the greatest thing ever recorded at Shea Stadium still tops the list. In football news, Larry Johnson came out of his coma and destroyed my Broncos (would have made the playoffs if they had won), the ‘Skins went into big D and destroyed the Cowboys (also would have made the playoffs if they had won) and a girl I was sort of seeing came over for what ended up being the final time. In retrospect, week 4 was awful.

Week 5: One of the highlights of the year: Texans backup QB Sage Rosenfels attempting his own version of the John Elway helicopter dive from Super Bowl XXXII and fumbling the ball, in turn giving Peyton Manning a chance to run the Colts down the field for the winning score. I love how my two favourites included backup QB’s. The next one happened the week after…

Week 6: THE highlight of the year: Lions backup QB Dan Orlovsky scrambling in his own end zone and trying to avoid the sack, then running OUT of the end zone for the safety anyway, only he doesn’t realize he’s out and is still looking for a receiver for about 3 seconds. I will never tire of watching this. Also on the list: Wendel Clark breaking Curtis Joseph’s mask with a slap shot during the 1993 Norris Finals, Tiger Woods’ chip on the 16^th hole at the 2005 Masters, Gus Johnson calling Vermont’s upset win over Syracuse in the 2005 NCAA tournament, and any movie involving Bree Olson.

Week 7: Lowlight of the year: New England annihilating Denver on MNF. The only game the Pats running game won all year, and it was against my B-Men. Oh, and putting the ball on the ground 3 times in a row didn’t help either. At least Brad Johnson got his final taste of NFL football this week. Go Rams!

Week 8: Easily Chargers/Saints in London. My buddy Jimbo was in England at the time and said the whole place was watching the game. It was like a party. That the game turned out to be one of the most entertaining of the regular season didn’t hurt either.

Week 9: Either Cincy winning for the first time and Chad Johnson catching a touchdown and pretending to float around like an angel waving his arms (classic) or listening to Gus Johnson’s “Hell Yes!” mashup. It’s tough to call. Week 9 was also the week I jinxed my Broncos by stating that I assumed Pittsburgh would hang onto its division lead and Denver wouldn’t. Sometimes I don’t like being right.

Week 10: Lowlight: That we were robbed of what could have been the greatest extra point call in the history of man kind. Chiefs down by 7 with less than 15 seconds to go, Gus Johnson calling the game, they get the score and instead of tying the game and going to overtime they elect to go for two and lose. It was the right call, but I still would have loved to hear Gus’ head explode as the ball went through the uprights. Oh and Marques Tuiasosopo’s appearance in Oakland was one of the great unexpected highlights of the year.

Week 11: So much happened in week 11 it’s scary. We had that Thursday night game in New England where Matt Cassell teased the Patriot fans with his Brady-esque performance in a losing effort. We had Denver somehow winning on the road in Atlanta, as well as Cleveland somehow winning on the road in Buffalo. We had a tie game, and a massive beat down in Green Bay as the Packers clobbered the Bears 37-3. But the highlight for me was betting on the Steelers to cover the spread (it was 4.5) and then just as it seemed Pittsburgh would win 11-10, Troy Palamalu returned an errant lateral into the end zone for the score to make it 17-10, thus giving the SportsOne the win. But no, the officials changed the call, ending my chance to win that weekend and leading to at least two more instances where Palamalu would intercept a ball and attempt to get into the end zone if it killed him. (He finally did it in the AFC Championship game. Good job by him!)

Week 12: If you’re leading at home by 17 points in the first half, and then end up losing by MORE than 17, you just might go 0-16 in the regular season.

Week 13: If you lose by 37 points at home on Thanksgiving Day, you just might go 0-16 in the regular season. Also, Houston unveiled their Bloody uniforms this week. Hey, they won.

Week 14: Dolphins vs Bills in Toronto. Ok, that wasn’t much of a highlight other than just something that happened. Detroit on Thanksgiving was louder than the SkyDome for this game. I said it before and I’ll say it again: By the end of the 2010 season the Bills pull out of this deal.

Week 15: Not so much a highlight as a “WTF” moment. If the Chiefs hang onto an onside kick attempt, they win and Denver stamps their ticket to the playoffs. But no, they fumble it, the Chargers get it back and we all know what happened the rest of the way. I still remember getting out of the shower and calling my buddy Stewart for a little “Denver in the Playoffs” celebration and then seeing that SD had come back to win. It was an awful day; worse than week 4.

Week 16: Maybe the best game of the season was played in New York this week. It was the NFC Championship we all expected; oh well. Another lowlight: My friend Margaret happily texting me updates on the Denver-Buffalo game while I was on the train to London.

Week 17: Detroit losing in Green Bay to go to 0-16. Dallas getting gang beaten by a possessed Philly team, the Bears and Bucs BOTH losing allowing the Eagles to make the playoffs with the win, the obligatory Week 17 Jim Sorgi appearance in Indy, Brett Favre helping to end the Patriots season by giving the game to Miami, Houston finishing on a high note and giving all of us a reason to make them our “sleeper” team next year for the fourth time in six seasons, and of course, fulfilling my prophecy from two months earlier, Denver going into San Diego and getting crushed by the flea that is Darren Sproles and thus becoming the only team in the history of the league to lead their division from the first game till the final game of the season and then not make the playoffs. Well done boys. Well done indeed.

On the plus side I’m 6-4 with my playoff picks so guaranteed to go over .500 which is all anyone really wants. So for Super Bowl XLIII I am picking with my heart and not my head because there is no way on earth I want to be cheering against the story that is the Arizona Cardinals.

CARDINALS (+7) vs Steelers

The relationship between me and the state of Arizona dates back to 1994. You see, I have been there. In the summer of 1994 we all packed into the 1994 Plymouth Voyager and drove, yes drove, from London to Phoenix, with stops in St. Louis, Flagstaff, and the Grand Canyon along the way. We also made our way to Tombstone; site of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral as well as some desert movie studio theme park in Tucson. But all that stuff doesn’t matter, because it was in Phoenix where the real stuff happened.

The Phoenix Cardinals (as they were called in those days) had begun preseason football, so for the two weeks I was there they were the only game in town. It was the first time I had ever been to an NFL city during the actual NFL season (or preseason). It was also during my time in Phoenix that I begun using the Cards’ as my team of choice in Tecmo Bowl on my SNES. (Steve Buerlein, Garrison Hearst (yes he got injured all the time in the game too) and Mr Head Hunter himself, Chuck Cecil.) Obviously the Cardinals team I fielded in the game performed way better than the one in real life, but that didn’t matter. From that point on there was always a soft spot in my football heart for this complete waste of a franchise.

Football aside, Phoenix was also the first (and so far only) time I have ever seen a hippo in real life. I don’t know why, but I love hippos. Love them. Read into it if you want to, but hippos are my favourite animals on earth and BOTH of the zoos in NYC didn’t have them. (I’ve been told the one here in Toronto has some, but really, who has the time to go way out there?) It was also in Phoenix where my brothers and I discovered exactly how to do the super fast “mushroom” start on Super Mario Kart. That easily shaved three to five seconds off our time trial times on Ghost Valley 1. But even that wasn’t the biggest thing that happened.

It was in Phoenix, on a scorching hot day, that my middle brother, perhaps subconsciously punishing me for years of psychological torture, smashed me in the forehead with a steel beam (so there you go, THAT’S what happened) causing me to pass out in a pool of blood in the pool. (The ladder you used to get into the pool was loose. You could pull this huge bar to the side, and it would spring back to the center. My brother Matt called me over, pulled it back and THWACK! Right in the forehead. It was a scene, man.) A short visit to a plastic surgeon and some stitches later, and I was good as new (on the outside anyway). That is the single biggest memory for all of us of our trip to Phoenix. So you’re asking yourself: What the hell does any of this have to do with football and why the Cardinals will win on Sunday?

The answer: Nothing. Nothing at all. I personally think Pittsburgh should win the game. They had the best defence in the game all year, and have a QB who although he gets sacked far too often, can scramble and make plays in the face of danger. On the Arizona side, their success depends on whether or not they can move the football on Pittsburgh. Their defence has over achieved all postseason and are due for a let down. To tell you the truth, I would be shocked if Arizona won the game. But I would really love for that to happen.

The franchise has won nothing for sixty years. They had never hosted a playoff game in Arizona before this year. They had one playoff win in twenty years. The Lions at least had Barry Sanders for a decade. The Saints at least have New Orleans. The Steelers may win a close game (7 points for a team that doesn’t score a lot is too many) but it would really make me happy to see Kurt Warner winning the championship for a team that has had zero successes since the 50s. It really would.

SportsOne’s take: Arizona 27, Pittsburgh 24

Last Week: 2-0

Playoffs: 6-4

Season: 135-125-8

Oh, and my brother Jordan (when he was 7) bought a Cardinals hat at a mall outside of Phoenix. You’ve been waiting 15 years to wear it kid, wear it loud and proud on Sunday. Enjoy the game everyone.