NRO Weekend, January 13-14, 2001
A Long Season’s Journey
Win or go home.

By Geoffrey Norman, NRO sportswriter

t feels like this has been an exceedingly long NFL season; but, then, everything seemed to last longer this year. The political season went on and on — from the primaries to the conventions to the campaign — and then, just when you thought you couldn’t take any more, it was election day . . . and, by God, you had to take some more. Clinton keeps going and going, like the Eveready bunny. World Series games lasted forever.

The National Football League began playing football back in mid-summer and the games have been going on ever since. There have been all the usual Sunday games. Sunday night games. Monday night games. Thanksgiving Day games. And this year, something new — a game on Christmas.

One wonders if even the most obsessive fan didn’t feel, at times, like it was just too much. Too many games; too many mediocre teams; too much time wasted on replays … just too much.

But this is the weekend, above all others, when the weary fan feels renewed and rejuvenated. Resurrected, almost. This is the next to the last weekend of the season. What was murky before has now been clarified. We no longer see the season as through a glass, darkly, but in sharp focus and clear relief. The bad teams have quit playing. The bad coaches — most of them, anyway — have been fired. The bad owners have peddled their alibis and disappeared off the sports pages. Only the strong are still standing. Four teams that will play two games this weekend. Winners go to the Super Bowl; losers go home.

In a normal year, the football this weekend would be the best of the year. However, it doesn’t seem to be shaping up that way. Neither of the games this weekend feel very compelling and none of the teams playing in them seem either exciting or quite complete. You feel, going into the weekend, the way you would going to a Broadway play knowing that you will be watching the understudy. Good theatre but something will be missing.

The two underdogs — the New York Giants and the Baltimore Ravens — got this far almost entirely on defense. Both won last weekend without scoring a single offensive touchdown. Trent Dilfer, the Ravens quarterback, completed only five of his passes and given his history, the wonder is that the coaches let him throw that many. The star of the game was Ray Lewis, Ravens middle linebacker, who hits hard and conclusively and reminds you of Butkus and Lanier and the other great ones whose game was pure ferocity. You can almost hear Lewis, saying to Dilfer has he comes onto the field, “Don’t let ’em score, Trent. Just hold ’em.” The Ravens game, then, is siege warfare. Effective but not especially interesting to watch.

The New York Giants are only slightly more exciting offensively. Their quarterback, Kerry Collins, has a strong arm and a couple of capable receivers. But the team relies largely on the ground game which consists of Ron Dayne and Tiki Barber, called by some flack “Thunder and Lighting.”

The Giants only wish. Barber is a pretty good back who can hit a hole and break one now and then. But he is no Emmit Smith or Barry Sanders. Dayne is a truck and, perhaps because he is a rookie and unaccustomed to the long professional season, has been running on empty lately. He has a way of going low when he is about to be hit and when defenders pile on, instead of carrying them, he goes down the rest of the way. Dayne is supposed to be one of those runners who will “get you the tough yards.” Trouble is, he makes all of them tough.

The Giants defense is good. And it might be very good, though some pretty good teams did a number on it during the regular season, so the jury is still out. The star of the show is probably Jason Sehorn, a safety with movie star looks and the kind of personality that gets him invited on Letterman where he manages to hold his own. He goes out with actresses and is engaged, one gathers, to one of them. The brunette with the cheekbones who plays on Law and Order. Angie Harmon or something like that.

Sehorn will be covering Randy Moss, the Viking’s receiver who is easily the best in the league at catching passes and running them in for touchdowns. Also one of the least appealing men in football because he works on it. Moss is a surly exhibitionist and complainer who sulks when he doesn’t get the ball. But when he does, he is dazzling. Sehorn had best bring his lunch.

The Vikings have other weapons. A very good running back named Robert Smith, another exceptional receiver named Chris Carter, and a very young and awesomely strong quarterback named Daunte Culpepper. So many weapons that one wonders if even a good defensive team, like the Giants, can stop them. The Vikings are accustomed to playing inside on carpet (a game which some of us think barely deserves to be classified as football) and Giants fans had hoped for some awful weather since the game will be played outside, in the Meadowlands. Predications, however, are for relatively mild weather.

The Vikings might look like a potential Super Bowl winner if they had the defense to go along with their quick strike offense. They don’t; though they probably have enough defense to stop the Giants.

This leaves the Oakland Raiders, the closest thing to a balanced team left standing. Their quarterback, Rich Gannon, is an old pro. A former journeyman who has come into his own this year and is a good bet to be named Most Valuable Player in the league. He is resourceful, smart, and tough. One hopes, for his sake, that he does not find himself in the cross hairs of Ray Lewis, which may be the best chance the Ravens have to win this game: knock the quarterback out. Brutal but effective.

Otherwise, the Raiders have a running game, some big time receivers, and a defense that won’t get chased off the field. Certainly not by Trent Dilfer.

By Sunday night, the season will be down to its last game — the Super Bowl. Raiders vs. Vikings. The Raiders will win and then we can all stop thinking about football for a few months.

Duke/Carolina in early February and it can’t get here soon enough.