Denver backs into playoffs with meager showing in final week
LOS ANGELES – The beeping you hear is coming from the AFC West champion Denver Broncos, who are moving in reverse, having lost three games in a row.
The bleeping you hear is coming from the Black Hole, which watched the Oakland Raiders blow a chance Sunday to get to the playoffs for the first time since 2002.
How the West was won? It was more like, does anybody want the West?
The Broncos, who will play host to Pittsburgh in a first-round playoff game Sunday, came into their regular-season finale against Kansas City in control of their destiny. Beat the Chiefs and the division crown was theirs. Denver lost, 7-3.
During Denver’s three-game losing streak, Tim Tebow has one touchdown pass and seven turnovers.
Broncos cornerback Champ Bailey wasn’t pointing at Tebow but the entire team when he said: “For us to go out there and play the way we did, expecting to do anything in the playoffs, it’s not going to cut it. We’ve got to find a way to get better.”
In losing, they left open the door for the Raiders, who could have claimed the West by winning their home game against San Diego. Oakland was torched, 38-26, losing to its former coach, Norv Turner, now likely to be dismissed by the Chargers. It was Oakland’s fourth loss in five games.
“This team needs an attitude adjustment,” Raiders coach Hue Jackson said. “What I mean by that is the killer instinct has got to exist here.
“This feeling that I’ve had has been here all year. You try to change it, change it, change it. You do a lot of different things, and I haven’t been able to get it changed.”
There’s plenty of change in this postseason. The regulars are there – Green Bay, New England, Baltimore, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Atlanta – but there are relatively fresh faces too, in the form of San Francisco, Cincinnati, Detroit, Denver and the first-timer Houston Texans.
That’s not to suggest all of those teams are on a roll. In fact, three of the four AFC teams playing in the opening weekend are coming off losses. Only Pittsburgh won Sunday, whereas the Bengals, Texans and Broncos are all looking to regroup.
Despite a 24-16 loss to Baltimore – a victory that secured the AFC North for the Ravens – Cincinnati claimed the sixth seeding in the AFC because the New York Jets lost at Miami. It’s just the third time in 21 seasons the Bengals have made the playoffs.
Cincinnati will play at Houston in the early game Saturday.
In the NFC, Detroit will play at New Orleans on Saturday night, and the New York Giants will play host to Atlanta in Sunday’s early game.
The Giants won the NFC East by beating Dallas, 31-14, in a winnertake-all Sunday night game that punctuated the regular season. Eli Manning threw for 346 yards and three touchdowns.
“We talked about finishing,” Manning said on NBC. “That’s what we wanted to do in the off-season. We’ve done great in the fourth quarter, and we finished the season strong.”
UNBELIEVABLE UNDERSTUDY
With the NFC’S top seeding locked up, Green Bay rested quarterback Aaron Rodgers for the finale against Detroit.
That didn’t prove to be much of a respite for the Lions, however, as backup Matt Flynn was spectacular. He set Packers records with 480 yards passing and six touchdowns.
“Just think of all of the great quarterbacks that have come through here,” Flynn said. “It’s very humbling. I just thank everybody around me and everything. I couldn’t have done it, obviously, by myself. There’s weapons all around me, and the line did a great job. It’s one of those games where it got to a shootout, and we just kept having to match each other.”
It was an amazing game for Detroit’s Matthew Stafford, too, who threw for 520 yards and five touchdowns.
According to STATS LLC, it was the first time opposing NFL quarterbacks each threw for 400-plus yards and five or more touchdowns in a game. What’s more, the teams’ combined 971 net yards passing broke the record of 906 set this season in a Week 1 game between New England and Miami.
A STROKE OF LUCK Indianapolis won by losing. In dropping their finale to Jacksonville, 19-17, the Colts are assured of the No. 1 pick in the 2012 draft, presumably Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck.
Indianapolis and St. Louis each finished 2-14, but the Colts have the edge with the strength-of-schedule tiebreaker.
Peyton Manning, recovering from multiple neck surgeries, insists he hasn’t given the draft much thought, although that’s hard to imagine for a quarterback who analyzes everything five times over.
“Like I said all along, the Colts are going to do what they have to do,” Manning said.
“The draft is something the personnel department will address. They’ll deal with that as they see fit. As far as can I coexist with anybody? I think I can coexist with any player I’ve ever played with. I think I’ve always been a good teammate in that way. To speculate on how we’re going to draft, that’s more for other people to do, not the players.
“I can play with anybody. It’s all going to shake out.”
Some people have suggested Luck is the best quarterback prospect since fellow Stanford product John Elway in 1983, the same player who snubbed the Baltimore Colts when they made him the No. 1 pick.
MO YARDS
Jacksonville’s Maurice Jones-drew finished in style, running for a season-high 169 yards to easily claim the rushing title with 1,606.
The two backs closest to him in the standings – Philadelphia’s Lesean Mccoy and Houston’s Arian Foster – were inactive Sunday, so the outcome was never in doubt.
Jones-drew, the former UCLA standout, also broke the franchise mark of 1,572 yards set by Fred Taylor in 2003.
“As long as Mo stays healthy, he’ll break every single record I ever set,” Taylor said in a text message to The Associated Press. “He’s a special talent with great work habits and deserves to be rewarded as such.”
A RECORD ROBBED
New England’s Rob Gronkowski set the single-season record for tight ends with 1,327 yards receiving, breaking the mark of 1,310 set earlier in the day by Jimmy Graham of New Orleans.
There was some irony in Gronkowski breaking the record the way he did, the Patriots still throwing to him with 1 minute 25 seconds left when they were up, 49-21. The Saints pushed it the same way a week earlier to get Drew Brees the single-season passing record, continuing to throw when the game was on ice.
LAST DANCE
That’s a wrap for Miami’s Jason Taylor, the NFL’S active sacks leader, who brought his 15-year career to an end with a strong performance in the Dolphins’ 19-17 victory over the Jets.
“It was a good way to end this thing, to beat your No. 1 rivals in your home stadium in your last game,” said Taylor, whose pressure helped force Mark Sanchez into a pivotal interception.
“I’m very, very happy and blessed to be where I am.”
Taylor, who finished with 139.5 sacks, lined up at tailback for the final two plays as the Dolphins ran Week 17 results: GREEN BAY 45, Detroit 41; JACKSONVILLE 19, Indianapolis 13; Tennessee 23, HOUSTON 22; San Francisco 34, ST. LOUIS 27; MIAMI 19, NY Jets 17; Chicago 17, MINNESOTA 13; NEW ENGLAND 49, Buffalo 21; NEW ORLEANS 45, Carolina 17; PHILADELPHIA 34, Washington 10; ARIZONA 23, Seattle 20 (OT); San Diego 38, OAKLAND 26; Kansas City 7, DENVER 3; ATLANTA 45, Tampa Bay 24; Baltimore 24, CINCINNATI 16; Pittsburgh 13, CLEVELAND 9. out the clock. His teammates then carried him off the field.
QUICK SNAPS
Minnesota’s Jared Allen had 3.5 sacks against Chicago to finish the season with 22, just behind Michael Strahan’s NFL record of 22.5, set in 2001 with the New York Giants.
Oakland set the record for the most penalties and yards in a season. The Raiders were penalized eight times for 64 yards in losing to San Diego.
Their record-setting totals for the season: 163 penalties for 1,358 yards. Kansas City set the previous record with 158 penalties for 1,304 yards in 1998. Six of the top eight most-penalized teams were Raiders squads.
(Los Angeles Times/mct)