It seems like the trend in recent years has been for teams that have byes to fall flat in the playoffs. We saw it again today in Tennessee. The announcers kept saying that the Ravens might get tired in the second half because they had played last week, but that didn't happen at all. They had an edge that allowed them to beat a team that was better than they were.

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The Titans made key redzone mistakes. They got stupid out there at the WORST times. That was sad.

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Ravens forced them to key mistakes at the right times. Who cares who had a bye and who had a better record after the regular season.

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I think you've got to want to play for the top two spots. Having to win twice to get into the super bowl is much more attractive than having to win 3. But, evidence shows that it's tough for the bye teams to keep up the intensity when they don't have a game for two weeks.

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Congratulations to Joe Flacco for becoming the first rookie quarterback ever to win 2 playoff games.

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Baltimore's D saved the game for them.
The Titans should have won by 3 TD's.
That shows you how important a great D really is.
If we had a decent D, with all the points we score, we'd be on top.

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Here's my theory: There used to be bigger differences in talent between teams. So teams that had byes were usually quite a bit better than teams that didn't. And when you added in the fact that they had extra rest coming into the game, they would often just roll over the opponent.

Nowadays, with the talent so evenly distributed, more games are toss-ups. Maybe also the game has become more complex in terms of timing, so it is diifficult for a team to be in rhythm after a week off. And homefield advantage seems to be fading in recent years, in the regular season as well as the playoffs. It might be that coaches figured out why they were losing so many road games and have made adjustments in preparation to minimize that factor and maybe even to feed off the energy of the home team's crowd.

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