NFL Conference Championship Preview/Predictions

Credit to Brad Stewart for the Graphic

BY: Joe Smeltzer
This week, two games will be played in the National Football League. The winners of said games will earn themselves a trip to the city by the bay to participate in Super Bowl 50. Me and my kin have our picks in. I have just about sealed up the family championship. No more needs to be said.

3:05
AFC Title Game
Patriots (13-4) at Broncos (13-4)

Gotta love Gronk. Photo creds to itiswhatitis.com

Will New England survive Denver's vaunted secondary with virtually no running game? Will C.J. Anderson and Ronnie Hillman take advantage of a banged up Pats front seven? Will Denver's receivers get the butter off their fingers? Will Aqib Talib suffocate Julian Edelman and still not get called for pass interference?

All of these storylines are more compelling than yet another Brady vs. Manning clash. I have an immense amount of respect for both Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, as they are two of the greatest players in the history of the sport. While Brady is the best quarterback of all time and still among the best right now, Manning does not have a lot left in the tank, and if the Broncos win this game, it will likely be in spite of him, not because of him. When only one of the parties involved is still a star, the story is not as memorable as it used to be. So this game should be billed as ''Denver vs. New England'', not ''Brady vs. Manning''.

Denver is a weird team. They are the #1 seed in the AFC, but they sure don't feel like a team worthy of that honor. They have the league's best defense but have not been a dominant team all year. New England, on the other hand, has been dominant for the majority of this season, and now that Edelman is back, I think they are a force once again. The Denver team that my Steelers fell to last week did not look like a team primed for a Super Bowl birth. The receivers were terrible, the quarterback can't throw anymore, and the secondary was vulnerable. If Martavis Bryant can have a big day against Denver, so can Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski. You can bet your life that Brady will bring his A game, and, at least, one of those two targets will benefit greatly from that. While New England's defense is banged up, they are more than capable of handling the Bronco, um ''attack''.

Patriots 24, Broncos 14

Player to Watch: Rob Gronkowski 

6:40
NFC Title Game
Cardinals (14-3) at Panthers (16-1) 

Photo creds to www.sports360az.com

Most of you are probably thinking that the Super Bowl will be played on February 7th in San Francisco. Not true. It is being played on January 24th in Charlotte. The winner of the NFC Championship Game will win the Super Bowl. I say that pretty comfortably because the two best teams in the NFL are in the NFC. This game will be great to watch, but I think Carolina's dream season will come to an end. The Panthers are great, but they have not been in great form the past few weeks, particularly when it comes to closing out games. I think that this will come back to bite them. Carolina will get out to an early lead, but Arizona, who I have long believed, is the most dangerous team in the NFC, will be led back by one Carson Palmer. As with Green Bay, the Panthers will be done in by Palmer and Larry Fitzgerald. Palmer will throw for 250+ yards in the second half and connect with Larry Fitz in the end zone twice in the final 30 minutes to lead a thrilling come-from-behind win. Cam Newton will make some nice plays, but he will make one or two crucial mistakes. This can go either way, but Palmer, Fitzgerald, and Bruce Arians have all paid their dues, and now is Arizona's time to be rewarded.

Cardinals 30, Panthers 27

Player to Watch: Carson Palmer

So your Superbowl match-up will be Arizona vs. New England. Palmer vs. Brady. It should be fun. 

Now for a quick edition of things that tick me off. On Friday, I was listening to Pittsburgh's sports radio station, 93.7 The Fan. They were discussing the NFL Playoffs and brought up that Steelers fans would love nothing more than to see the Patriots lose. They then went on to talk about how the Steelers felt cheated in the AFC title endeavors with New England in 2001 and 2004. So the overall gist that I got was that plenty of people in this city feel that Steelers-Pats is a rivalry. While Steelers fans have every right not to like New England, there is a difference between disliking a team and having a rivalry with them. Aside from the two championship games, along with  being two of the most popular franchises in the NFL, there is nothing about these two teams that fits the qualifications of a rivalry.

The Steelers have had rivals away from their division before. Some of the most heated contests in NFL history took place when the Steelers and Raiders faced off in the 1970's. But Steelers-Raiders qualified as a rivalry due to how much the teams hated each other and how that hate could be felt by whoever watched those two teams play. I never got that type of feeling when watching a Steelers-Pats game. Aside from the two contests mentioned above, all this ''rivalry'' is is two great teams who play each other about every other year. The Steelers and Cowboys played in different conferences, and yet there was something beautiful about how those two teams and cities, represented entirely different ways of life in the 1970's, with Dallas being a glamours team in a glamorous city, while Pittsburgh was a blue-collar team in a blue-collar city. The two teams did not get along, and they were also the two best in the NFL throughout a large portion of that decade, and took part in two of the most memorable Super Bowl's of all time. All of that made Steelers-Cowboys a unique rivalry. Steelers-Patriots does not have that same type of beauty.

If Steelers fans are still pissed off about things that happened 10+ years ago, they need to get over it. You would think that winning two championships would heal the wounds of the New England losses, but I'm sure that is not the case with some people.  The Patriots are recognized as an unlikable team, but nobody associated with the Steelers should feel that they are more entitled to hate New England than, say, the St. Louis Rams, who's Super Bowl loss to the Pats was a little fishy. Or the Oakland Raiders, who were victims of the ''Tuck Rule''. So fellow Steelers fans, root whichever way you want, but none of us should feel that we have more reason to root against New England than anybody else does. Well, unless the fact that the Pats crushed Kordell Stewart's dream of being a Super Bowl winning QB strikes a chord with you. Then it would make perfect sense.