Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-05 (Sunday)

On 2025-01-06 16:46:11 +0000, Ian J. Ball said:

Yesterday was a "football day", as it was the last day of the regular season. For once, I enjoyed the results of (most of!) the games:
     In the morning game, it took them a while, but eventually Tampa Bay bested New Orleans, sewing up the NFC South title (Atlanta also lost their last game which put an exclamation point on that).

I'm in the Nashville media market so I saw the Titans getting thumped by the Texans. Local fans are starting to get grumpy about the past few seasons. The team is getting ready to play in an extravagant new stadium in a couple of years and as far as I'm concerned they don't deserve one with their recent record -- it was claimed the current stadium built as recent as the 1990s wouldn't be cost effective to upgrade. Kansas City has played in the same stadium since 1972.

    In the afternoon games, first CBS decided the air the Kansas City-Denver game over the San Diego-Las Vegas(Oakland!!) game (WHAT?!!), which was a big mistake as Kansas City already had sown up the #1 seed in the AFC Playoffs, and so played their *fourth-string(!!)* players in this last game, which allowed Denver to absolutely crush Kansas City on Denver's way to a shutout win! Eventually CBS got the hint and switched to the San Diego-Las Vegas game,

I thought that sucked, I wanted to watch Kansas City getting their asses kicked for once until the bitter end, not just for three quarters. Of couse the story would've been entirely different if Mahomes and several other starting players hadn't been sitting the game out.

In the evening game - in the game to decide who gets the #1 seed in the NFC Playoffs - Detroit played Vikings for the NFC North title. After a fairly even start, the Lions ended up manhandling the Vikings (probably as expected) to win the NFC North title, and the #1 seed (and 'bye') in the NFC Playoffs, with a 15-2 record, tying Kansas City for the best record in the league.
    Outside of the 49ers' awful effort this year, and Seattle not making the playoffs, I'm actually fairly interested in this year's NFL Playoffs.

We're probably looking at a KC/Detroit Super Bowl. Should be a good one.