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NFL GAMES TODAY

January 23, 2011 by · Comments Off on NFL GAMES TODAY 

NFL GAMES TODAY, (CP) – The NFL Final Four has a strong link with the big game; the first champion (Packers) to the winner of the game may be the most significant (Jets). And maybe the best team in the Super Bowl (1985 Bears) to the franchise’s most dominant at the time (Steelers).

Any match in Dallas next month will include a lot of history. So much so that Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy said to want to put up a picture of the Packers on the wall next to the other championship teams – including the winners of the first two Super Bowls (1966 and 67 seasons) and the 1996 team.

“We never lost sight because he is always behind me every day when I talk to the team,” said McCarthy’s Packers, who face 90 years, rival Chicago at Soldier Field on Sunday for the NFC title. “I stressed that we are again … half way. We talked about 16 / 4 as a football team. We have completed eight of them. And we need to capture these four Chicago, and it puts us closer to the image on the wall.

Where is the best place to watch the matches on Sunday NFL conference championship?

At home. Or in a sunny place like Honolulu … because the weather in both games today will be icy at best.

Neither Chicago (site of the Packers-Bears NFC tilt) nor Pittsburgh (site of the puck Jets-Steelers AFC) is provided to a temperature above 19 degrees on Sunday.

There is little chance of inclement weather or snow and winds should not be a factor in two places. But freezing temperatures are insured.

Details on each city: Chicago: A temperature of 18 degrees is expected to kick off 15 hours EST, and will fall to about 15 hours to 18 hours EST. wind chill factor will drop the temperature feel about 7-9 degrees. It is planned to be quite clear, with only a 10-20% chance of precipitation.
Pittsburgh: At 6:30 p.m. ET kickoff, the temperature should be around 15 degrees. It will fall to 12 degrees by 10 pm ET, and the wind chill it will feel about 5 degrees during the game Overcast skies are expected, but there is a 0% chance of precipitation.

Packers Bears Game Time

January 23, 2011 by · Comments Off on Packers Bears Game Time 

Packers Bears Game Time, The most curious aspect of the Bears’ 10-3 loss to the Packers in Week 17 was the suddenly unbalanced offense – 18 rushing attempts to 47 drop-backs. With Chester Taylor in a slump of post-bye (11-44 vs. Seattle last week) and Matt Forte works well, the Bears’ best bet is to establish the run early and let Jay Cutler take what the Packers give him. If the Bears can not run against the Packers rush defense ranked 18th, they have no right to be in this game Forte (25-80 vs. Seattle) has averaged 5.2 yards per scope of its last 7 games (112 to 582, two TDs). Cutler ran for 43 yards, 2 TD vs. Seattle last week, but cannot take too many chances against the Packers defense uncompromising.

Webb, a rookie drafted in the seventh round in April, has made steady progress since becoming the starter in Week 5, but it could soon be in the middle of a hurricane in it. The Bears in Week 3 have contained Matthews, but had a sack, a TFL and a QB hit in Week 17. He has 3 sacks in the playoffs.
Jay Cutler has been outstanding in his series debut last week, but now he goes to the big leagues face a defense that thrives on forcing SBC as Cutler to do things they know they should not. The key number is 25 – the average number of passages Cutler has thrown in 5 more than 100 games scoring pass he had in the Bears last 7 games. In four games against the Packers last 2 seasons, Cutler has thrown 4 TDs and 9 interceptions for a rating of 57.9 overall. Johnny Knox will be a key indicator at the beginning. He was cleared from the Pack in Week 17. Back to Earl Bennett cannot hurt – Packers are sensitive to physical WRs who are making tough catch. TE scored 7 TD vs. Pack this year.
The Bears closed the Packers’ ground attack in two regular season games – QB Aaron Rodgers was their best running back leading into week 17 with 21 yards. But the Packers to a size do not seem to slow them down too. Rodgers still gets defenses to bite on play action and finds ways to avoid heavier pass rushes. James Stark, who had 20 yards on 5 carries vs. the Bears in Week 17, rushed for 123 yards on 23 carries against the Eagles in the game wild card, but was held to 66 yards on 25 carries against the Falcons. Rodgers, who rushed for 356 yards (5.6 per carry) with 4 TDs this season, perhaps the most dangerous runner Packers.
The Bears inability to win special teams made the difference at Lambeau. Tim Masthay put 4 plates inside the 20, pinning the Bears at there 2 and 3 in the fourth quarter. The Bears have started 10 of their 13 players in there 30. Brad Maynard had 3 flat within the last 20 weeks. Devin Hester had a kick return of 62 yards for a TD vs. Packers in Week 3, but 19 was his long in week 17. Packers did not punt last week against the Falcons.

After outcoached by defensive coordinator Dom Capers Packers when the Bears lost to the Packers on Jan. 2 at Lambeau Field, the answer Martz NFC Championship at stake today at Soldier Field will be one of the bears’ biggest key of victory.

Every football game is finally a game players, but because they are the only ones on the ground. Coaches make the difference. There is a reason why the Bears lost badly to the Seahawks at Soldier Field in October and beat them even more decisively last week in the same place. Lawyer Milloy or why was sacked Jay Cutler twice in October and continuing Greg Olsen in the end zone in January. This is not seulement”l’exécution.”

Thus, while Jay Cutler to thwart Charles Woodson today, Julius Peppers has to beat Chad Clifton or Bryan Bulag or both, and Urlacher is to defeat Aaron Rodgers is the key game vs. Martz Capers – two coordinators made to repair damaging leaks if Lovie Smith and Mike McCarthy does not mind hiring someone who has done their job better than them. Neither bears nor the Packers would be here without them.

But Martz has the advantage because he has the most room for improvement. Cutler was sacked six times in week 17 – more than he had been sacked over the previous three weeks combined. Johnny Knox cannot get less than zero crossings he grabbed at Lambeau. And the bear appears to be better to make the Packers pay to put pressure on Cutler.

Unless the Packers have already provided the answer, capers and adapts to adjustments Martz. In this case, Martz will have to adapt to adjustments Capers. This is a classic game of chess.

”We all do,”Capers said. We study”. We know what we’ve done the last four, five, six games. They certainly know what we did.

”You always anticipate what they want to tape. And then there are certain elements of your system you just do. Only for you. So that’s what small adjustments you make out of it.”

On the other hand, fears that Martz does not think beyond that seem like it may be challenging for a guy like him.

”It happened to me once before,”he said. ”It must be very careful of it. You make assumptions and give them more credit about knowing more about you than you perhaps. You can leave why you’re there first, and you start doing stuff you do not really need to do. ”

Capers and Martz have been around for a long time, but have faced each other as head coaches or coordinators only four times – in 2005 when the Rams (Martz) beat the Texans (capers) 33-27; in 2006 when the Dolphins (capers) beat the Lions (Martz) 27 to 10, and two Packers-Bears games this season.

The Steelers should send a Hallmark card of thanks for the Jets beat New England, but will wait until the end of the season. Mike Tomlin’s team is not in the mood to give that day and will harass Jets QB Mark Sanchez turnovers. Ben Roethlisberger advantage of short fields and put up enough points to punch a ticket from the Super Bowl.
Whereas Rex Ryan & Co. already won in Pittsburgh and is coming off consecutive victories over perennial heavyweights Indianapolis and New England, just say thank you and pocket the points here. QB Mark Sanchez factor X that, despite its faults, has achieved well results in a crucial moment.
1. Rodgers Rattle. Packer’s quarterback has six touchdowns and zero interceptions, but he can not throw if he is on his back. DE Julius Peppers and the D line will do better than two sacks in eight quarters.
2. Plated on the spot. Frank Omiyale and J’Marcus Webb will be responsible for ensuring that blitzing the Packers D has eight sacks to get Cutler series of his comfort zone.
3. Not a man of games. The Bears cannot expect Cutler to himself. Playmakers Matt Forte, Chester Taylor and Devin Hester kick return special need for their help have no chance of victory.

Jets Vs Steelers

January 22, 2011 by · Comments Off on Jets Vs Steelers 

Jets Vs Steelers, (CP) – Rex Ryan is a better talker than any of his peers – glib, self-assured and cunning like a fox – and only his R-rated material. If games were decided in the interview room rather than a field, you can hand the trophy to the Super Bowl Jets right now.

Guys who play for him swear he is even funnier when the cameras are off, most profane and a whole lot more convincing. But Rex has not always been so sexy.

“Pffff! Buddy Ryan practically snorted into the phone the other day. “You’ve never seen the two of them when they were children.”

The head of the retirement of the most famous family in the day still laughs remembering Rex, more than five minutes, and his twin brother, Rob, taking in the scenery during his coaching odyssey wild and woolly in the college- and NFL ranks.

If nothing else, Buddy was determined to give an unvarnished picture. Along the way he made the pick up dirty clothes on the floors of locker rooms, the work of the margin as ball boys and sit in the back of his office by hundreds of film sessions and meetings. Instead of being bored, they studied the plans, got hooked on the camaraderie and learned to curse a storm.

“I made sure they put in the time to learn the basics wherever they went with me,” recalled Ryan. “All the other children, there was always trying to grab-ass or just s’ fun. No Rex and Rob. They were attentive. ”

A month before his 77th birthday, his reputation as one of the best defensive coaches have secure, Buddy pretends always surprised that his son followed him into the business (Rob Ryan is defensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys). He was head coach of the Eagles in the late 1980s when both were finishing college and offered spots in a power sector program management training.

“If it was me,” Ryan said, “they probably still go to school.”

When he was outvoted, Rex and Rob Buddy piled into his car and drove to a motel near his family home in Oklahoma. He spent the next two days to teach them everything he knew, especially the “46” plan he developed with the 1985 Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears. Buddy then wished them good luck and told them to call once they found work.

Each coach makes its way onto NFL staff knows how to draw a diagram. But intriguing real – or the clever calculation needed to sell the project to their players week after week – is rare. It did not take long for Highlands University coach George Martinez, who gave Rex Ryan one of his first jobs and later became an assistant NFL itself, understand that we had on hand.

“He did not have to interview 10 minutes and I knew he was the guy,” Martinez told ESPN.com recently. “I knew when I hired this guy is big time stuff.”

Bears Packers

January 22, 2011 by · Comments Off on Bears Packers 

Bears Packers, (CP) – Love those great rivalries anything you want – Lakers-Celtics, Yankees-Red Sox, Ohio State and Michigan. They have nothing on Packers-Bears sand. For 90 years, from a time of leather helmets these days of instant-replay challenges and penalties excessive-celebration, the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears played rough. With cold winters and wind and snow and bitter, bloody knuckles these two pioneers of the NFL and its founder, Curly Lambeau and George Halas, have left their mark on the game that will never disappear. Twenty-one NFL championship between them, dozens of Hall of Fame that line the walls, in the canton and a robust combat history, emotional confrontations.

The only names resonate throughout the game.

There Lambeau Field and Halas Hall. This Sunday, when the Bears and Packers meet for the 182nd, they will play for the championship trophy Halas NFC. From there, the winner goes to the Super Bowl trophy named to hunt for the legendary coach Vince Lombardi Packers.

“When I think of Green Bay and Chicago, I think the football at its best,” said former linebacker Mike Singletary Bears, now an assistant coach with the Vikings.

“I think that’s what it is. I think the rivalry, the tradition, George Halas, Lombardi, Butkus; I mean all the names and the greatness of Fame. It’s a story there. So it will be very interesting. ”

Halas and Lambeau Bear Packers made it a point not to shake hands after games; competitive rage already in these early years, laying the animated series that has not diminished over the decades.

A season, as the former star running back Paul Hornung Packers he said, Halas knocked Green Bay locker room, asking to speak to and then telling the Lombardi Packers coach who built a dynasty in the 1960s that the Bears were about to whip his behind, a psychological ploy if ever there was one.

Dick Butkus meanness set to middle linebacker with his tubes of bones in a pot and play hard. Butkus remembers preparing for the Packers during a practice at Wrigley Field and Halas said was carefully watching the buildings that surround the home district of Chicago Cubs. There was nobody north of watching his team.

“The old man (Halas) would have a security guy there. We have always been concerned about spies during the week Packers,” Butkus said. “I’m sure that Green Bay did the same thing.”

Hornung, the centerpiece of Lombardi Packers sweep that included the famous incident pulling guards Jerry Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston, recalls several conversations with Halas in a game at Wrigley Field.

Coach Halas paid me the greatest compliment I ever had, “said Hornung, adding that he originally hoped to rejoin the Bears after winning the Heisman Trophy at Notre Dame.

Hornung pointed out that Halas had strayed too far from the margin of the judiciary and, as the Packers’ star, the car was almost in the end zone when he was “Raising Hell” with the referees.

Halas response?

He said: “Shut up Hornung. ”

“I came and did a block near the Bears bench and said,” Hornung, you SOB. And I approached him after the game and said “Thank you.” He said, “What for? I said,” You made me the nicest guy in the world, you ‘ have called an SOB. ”

With all their confrontations over the years, the Bears and Packers – their cities separated by about 200 miles – have met only once before in the post-season, making Sunday’s game at at Soldier Field all the more significant.

The game of the playoffs in 1941, challenged one week after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, saw the Bears win a 33-14 victory when they limited Green Bay wide receiver Don Hutson in a single dose.

There are so many memorable games since the series began in 1921. In this first meeting, the Bears, then known as Staley, blanked the Packers 20-0.

Other:

-In one of the most bizarre endings ever, try Chester Marcol field goal in overtime was blocked by the Bears ‘Alan Page and somehow the ball bounced right to the Packers’ place-kicker, who caught it and ran into the end zone to give the Packers the 12-6 win in 1980.

-In a game at Lambeau Field in 1989, Don Majkowski passed Sterling Sharpe for a TD with about half a minute, but officials ruled the Packers quarterback was on the line of scrimmage when he threw. But a closer examination, and after a recovery, they ruled that Majkowski had not crossed the line of scrimmage and the Packers ended up with a victory 14-13. The Bears were so angry they originally marked the score with an asterisk in their media guide; it indicates that the game instant replay.

-One of the craziest games ever came to Soldier Field on Halloween night 1994, with winds of 50 km / h and heavy rain turned the game in a virtual monsoon and to all forms of kicking and pass almost impossible. Rightly, the teams wore uniforms back and Green Bay has Brett Favre played like a happy child on a sandy rainy hurdles in the end zone after a long and TD leader of Green Bay to a 33-6 victory.

And what about when the Refrigerator, William Perry, Chicago, more than 300 pounds defensive lineman, was used as a battering ram strokes per backfield coach Mike Ditka? Perry rumbled into the end zone for a touchdown in a game Monday night to call a victory over the Packers over the Bears’ run to Super Bowl after the 1985 season, they celebrate an anniversary this season.

It was the time when the bitterness between the teams really degenerate, as did a fight between Ditka and Packers coach Forrest Gregg, both former members of fire as players. As coaches, they have entered into an altercation during an exhibition game at Milwaukee County Stadium in 1984 when both benches were on the same side of the field.

The animosity reached a peak in a game in 1986, when Green Bay defensive lineman Charles Martin slammed quart Bears Jim McMahon on the turf after he released a pass, injuring his shoulder McMahon and leading to a suspension for Martin.

“We always wanted to beat Green Bay. It was part of our behavior,” said Ditka. “They went after some of our players. We never did that. It is part of what happened. Why it happened, I do not know. We had the best team at the time. ”

Dan Hampton, the Bears’ Hall of Fame defensive end, put it this way: “It was a long time ago there was much bad blood, and he was favored by both head coaches Shamelessly…”

Ditka previous memories of the series as a race-to-defender-tight end centered on how many great players, he participated cons and some tough physical battles with the Green Bay Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke.

“It is what it is. As good as it gets. You’re talking about a small town like Green Bay and Chicago. I think our rivalry has never been based on flawed, it is based on respect. I really do. I do not hate anyone, “said Ditka.

Butkus said he also held no grudge against the Packers, who were as a championship in his debut.

“It’s always a challenge, just to see how you could do against teams in the championship. Do not play for a championship is no reason not to play hard, “he said.

And not to complain about the ground conditions, whatever, no matter how difficult they might be.

“You can drop a ball on the ground on the pitcher’s mound and he would go to the end of the end zone,” said Butkus winter days at Wrigley Field, where the Bears have played before leaving after the 1970 season. “You do not hear anyone complaining. You get what you get. That’s why you’re a professional. You play in all weathers. Even if it was a field of study upper corner, it does was not much? ”

Bart Starr, the Packers’ Hall of Fame quarterback who led Green Bay to wins in the first two Super Bowls when the NFL was mounted on a victory over the upstart AFL, remembers the game very cozy Wrigley Field, where the Bears played their first 51 years before moving to Soldier Field for the 1971 season.

“The south end zone at Wrigley Field, which was a danger. Oh yes,” Starr recalled. “It was a unique competition. The ferocity of it was sometimes part of the tradition. Games were just very intense and at a high level. ”

If Ditka and Butkus and Nitschke were among the hardest players of all time, so was Packers Hall of Fame running back Jim Taylor.

“You had to defend yourself and meet the challenge,” said Taylor. “Sometimes it was cold, sometimes snowy. Whatever the conditions. ”

Longtime-safety LeRoy Butler Green Bay came to Green Bay in 1990 by the Florida sun. It did not take him long to discover that the game was the Bears a larger deal that he could have imagined, both fans and participants.

With influenza during a “week of the Bear” at the beginning of his career, Butler said coach Mike Holmgren approached him, then, who delivered an impassioned speech to go well his defensive back talent.

“Putting on 10 pounds, they’ll run the ball. This is the division into black and blue,” Butler said he was told. “I said,” OK. “He said,” You do not understand. It’s the most physical game you’re ever going to play yourself, because we do not lose to the bear. ”

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AP National Writer Nancy Armour AP Sports Writer Jon Krawczynski contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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