JOIN THE CLUB: Detroit’s Matthew Stafford was one of three quarterbacks to throw for more than 5,000 yards this season.
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The NFL’s Season That Almost Never Was turned out to be one for the ages.
Fears the lockout might wipe out an entire year of pro football gave way to one of the most exhausting and entertaining seasons — for lovers of the passing game, at least — in recent memory.
Footballs flew and records fell like so many hapless defensive backs trying in vain to keep up with what felt like never-ending fleets of sure-handed receivers.
What can you say about a season that included not one but two 99-yard touchdown receptions (by the Patriots’ Wes Welker in Week 1 and the Giants’ Victor Cruz against the Jets in Week 16)?
As we run down some of the trends and what to look for on the road to Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis, one only can hope the playoffs will be anywhere near as exhilarating.
FOOTBALLS FLYING
Will pass defense be any better in the playoffs than it was in the regular season?
You have to wonder, because defensive coordinators looked downright helpless to slow down — much less stop — all of the league’s souped-up air attacks in 2011.
Not only did both Drew Brees and Tom Brady smash Dan Marino’s nearly 30-year-old NFL record for most passing yards in a season, but Brees, Brady and Matthew Stafford — who will likely never be mistaken for Marino — also threw for more than 5,000 yards each.
Quarterbacks set league records for most 400-yard passing performances (18) and 300-yard passing performances (21), and both the NFL-wide passer rating (84.3) and touchdown-to-interception ratio (1.472-to-1) were the best in league history.
Either the lockout hurt preparation by defenses or all the rules changes benefiting the passing game the last few years finally came home to roost, but the NFL looked like flag football in the regular season. TV ratings set all kinds of records, too, so purists have to wonder how much the explosion of offense will lessen in the playoffs.
FRESH FACES
Want to know who is going to be in the playoffs next season? Just throw a dart at the list of teams that didn’t make it this year, and you probably will end up looking like Nostradamus.
Six teams that missed the postseason in 2010 — the Giants, Bengals, Broncos, Lions, Texans and 49ers — made it this year. This is the 16th year in a row at least five newcomers got in, an amazing streak.
The Texans and Broncos rebounded from last place in 2010 to win their respective divisions in 2011 — marking the ninth consecutive year at least one team has gone from worst to first.
The trend now appears so ingrained that the city of New Orleans probably should get ready to play host to a Buccaneers-Bills Super Bowl next year.
ROOKIES IN CHARGE
It’s fitting that after a regular season where newcomers made smashing debuts all over the place — see: Newton, Cam — that the playoffs would feature the first matchup between starting rookie passers since the Super Bowl era began in 1966.
Assuming T.J. Yates’ shoulder injury does not sideline him, the Texans-Bengals wild-card matchup this weekend will go down in the record books for its Yates vs. Andy Dalton showdown.
“It’s a pretty cool feeling,” Yates said this week about the rookie face-off. “It shows how much the game has changed in these days.”
Dalton was a second-round pick by Cincinnati out of TCU who started the entire season for the Bengals, and Yates was a fifth-rounder from North Carolina who took over late in the season following injuries to starter Matt Schaub and backup Matt Leinart.
Dalton and Yates are not exactly strangers, either. They met at the Manning Passing Academy in 2009, and Yates said they talked occasionally during the regular season.
TRULY WILD CARDS
The Giants certainly know this is true: The wild-card designation does not mean much anymore in the NFL.
Little more than playoff cannon fodder for many years, wild-card teams are now regularly contending for — and winning — the Super Bowl.
The Packers last season became the fifth team since 2000 to win it all despite reaching the postseason as something other than a division champ. That had happened just twice — the Raiders in 1980 and Broncos in 1997 — before the turn of the century.
STILL IN EFFECT
In case anyone forgot because it was not tested last year, the NFL’s playoffs-only change in the overtime format is still in place.
A quick refresher: In the postseason, each team will be guaranteed at least one possession unless the club that wins the overtime coin toss scores a touchdown on its opening drive.
That means teams no longer can win an overtime playoff game with a snoozer field goal immediately after the toss. An interception return or fumble return for a touchdown on the opening possession also will end the game, as will a safety.
Odds are we will go through another postseason without the change coming into play. Just three overtime playoff games since 1958 would have been affected by the change.
CONNECTIONS
This postseason features four of the past five quarterbacks to win the Super Bowl MVP award — Aaron Rodgers, Brees, Eli Manning and Brady. … A matchup between the NFC’s second-seeded 49ers and the AFC’s second-seeded Ravens would produce the first head-coaching showdown between brothers (San Francisco’s Jim Harbaugh and Baltimore’s John Harbaugh) in Super Bowl history. … Talk about stability: Ex-Charger Brees is the only starting quarterback in the playoffs this season that has started at least one game for a different team.
