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Who Makes The Cut?...


There is no great secret to what intangibles a team must possess to win a championship in the National Football League. Easily identifiable traits are present upon a quick glance at several recent Super Bowl winners. Taking into account these qualities, one can quickly weed out the pretenders from the contenders among the playoff field.

First things first. There are a few prerequsites that must be satisfied before anyone can advance to the Super Bowl.

1)Don't be the New Orleans Saints.

2)Don't be the Cinncinati Bengals.

Now that this business is settled, lets review the identifiable traits necessary to win it all:

A DOMINATING OFFENSIVE LINE: An abolute must. Several past Super Bowl teams centered their entire championship teams around this unit, including the New York Giants under Bill Parcells and the Washington Redskins under Joe Gibbs. The Dallas championships in the mid-90s were largely contributed to a massive, dominating front, although the Cowboys possessed more playmakers than those squads. Gibbs and Parcells coached teams the way football should be played: By physically whipping the people in front of you. They didn't have an abundance of stud skill position players, but their bulls in the trenches made it easy for anyone. Mark Rypien was a Pro-Bowl quarterback with this unit. Enough said.

The loss of Tony Boseli for the season puts a huge damper on the Jacksonville Jaguars' chances. The mammoth tackle was the most dominating offensive lineman in the game and gave the Jags a measure of stability in an offense that was sometimes erratic. Even with the loss of Boseli, this is the best unit left in the playoffs. St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Tennessee all have above-average offensive lines, so no one team is eliminated by this trait, although Jacksonville gets the edge.

A VERSATILE, RUGGED RUNNING BACK: Another must. Denver, Green Bay, Dallas, Washington, New York, and even San Fransisco featured backs in their championship seasons that were the type that got better as the game went along. All could block and all could catch the ball.

This is another area where each of the "big four" remaining don't really distance themself from the rest. Marshall Faulk set the total yards from scrimmage record Sunday. Eddie George is a bruising back in the mold of an Ottis Anderson from the Giants. Edgerrin James is a more athletic George. Jacksonville again gets a slight edge due to depth with both Fred Taylor and James Stewart at their disposal in case one goes down.

The copyright of the article Who Makes The Cut?... in NFL is owned by Shane Andy Youngblood. Permission to republish Who Makes The Cut?... in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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