Maybe the off week was not a good thing for the Naughty Figs.  Winners (by a mile) of the Eastern division, the Figs got a pass straight into Championship Week, while the wild card entry Colossal Waste of Time had to get past the Abstract Machines first.  Usually, the rest allows the players to recover somewhat from the pounding of the season.  But sometimes the bye week causes a team to come out flat, and that surely seemed to be the case Sunday, when there were just not enough Figs left on the tree to handle what was, in all fairness, a mediocre C.W.O.T. squad.  In their first trip to Championship Week since 2004, the league’s best team fell on it’s collective face, and lost to the Colossal Waste of Time, 27 – 15.

As in last season’s Championship game, the Jodys were led by running back Steven Jackson.  “Mr. December” tallied 10 points to hit double digits for only the third time this season.  Quarterback Aaron Rodgers had somewhat of a sub-par game, but still had 8 points.  Receiver Calvin Johnson and kicker John Carney rounded out the meaningful scoring for the C.W.O.T., with 7 each, while running back Ronnie Brown (3), league-leading receiver Roddy White (3), and receiver Anthony Gonzalez (0) were basically just wasting time.  The most telling stat of this game is that running back Jonathan Stewart’s 6 points was the Figs’ team best.  Quarterback Jay Cutler stumbled to a 4, running back Clinton Portis likewise, kicker Nick Folk added just 2 PATs, and the receiving trio of Brandon Marshall, Lee Evans, and Anquan Boldin managed but 3 points between them.  Boldin’s shutout was the first time all season that the gifted wide receiver had taken the field and failed to contribute.  The Figs’ faithful took little consolation that their Steelers D won the defensive side of the game, with a 14 points-against score vs. Jody’s 8-against and a DTD from his Bears.

So the Figs’ spectacular season comes to an inglorious end.  At 12-2, they can – and should - take pride in having established a new regular season mark of success.  The postseason is all about getting hot and/or lucky for two or three weeks, and that just didn’t happen for them.  The 9-6 C.W.O.T. now head to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa for the Super Bowl.  This will be the Jodys’ league leading sixth appearance in the Big Game, and maybe this time they can come away with their first win.  But they’re going to have to crank it up a notch over last weekend’s play to do it.

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The Thomas Bock Boys head to Tampa for a Super Bowl matchup with the Colossal Waste of Time, after a 41 – 29 dethroning of last season’s league champion Anderson Brewmeisters.  Winners of the Western Division, the Bock Boys were rested and ready, and pulled away in the 4th quarter while the Brewskies ran out of steam.

The game started well enough for the visiting Brewmeisters, with wide receiver Steve Smith matching his best game of the season with a team best 12 points.  Kicker Ryan Lindell added 10, Peyton Manning had 9, LaDanian Tomlinson scored 7, and Tory Holt woke up from his season-long funk to contribute 6 points as the Brewskies roared out to a huge lead.  But as the game wore on, the Boys decided to play some defense.  Suddenly the Brewskies quit scoring, as Thomas’ Cowboys D made sack after sack.  Allowing just 218 yards, and making two interceptions, the Cowboys’ 26 points put the home team right back into a game which had started to look like a Brewmeister blowout.  At the end of the 3rd quarter, the two teams were separated only by the Bock Boys’ 4 point home field advantage.  It came down to Anderson’s Brian Westbrook against Thomas’ David Akers on Monday night, and in the decisive 4th quarter, it was all beer for the Bock Boys, mostly foam for the Brewmeisters.  Akers scored early and often with three field goals and three PAT’s, while Westbrook was held out of the endzone.  12 – 4 in favor of the Bock Boys was how the last quarter of Mark and Eric’s season played out as the Bock Boys put the game away.

The Bock Boys’ win sends them to the Big Game for the first time in five years, where they will try to not be the first team to lose a Super Bowl to the Colossal Waste of Time.  The Brewmeisters, just lucky to have made the 2nd round of postseason, can immediately start evaluating talent for next year.  Players like Holt, Isaac Bruce, and even Tomlinson and Manning saw their production dramatically decline in 2008.  Who stays and who goes will be an interesting challenge for Mark and Eric.

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