The Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin has come out with a clarification about his team. Both Ben Roethlisberger and Hines Ward will be playing this weekend in the Super Bowl. I mean, I guess I didn’t expect that they would miss out on the chance to play for the championship. And I’m not sure why Big Ben wouldn’t be playing anyway. It’s a great year for QBs and Roethlisberger is one of the best. He has led this team back to the Super Bowl again, despite his concussion near the end of the season. It’s going to be great to see these two teams face off. They are both underdog teams of a sort, so it’s going to be even better, as they both play games that are worthy of underdogs.

With all the hullaballoo about the Super Bowl, a former Minnesota Vikings player is lucky to be in the spotlight when all the spotlights are otherwise engaged. Carl Eller has been convicted of assault and failing to accede to a field sobriety test. This is all following an incident last spring, in which he swerved and nearly hit a police car. The officers claimed that he punched one of them and slammed them into the hood of his car. He claims that the system has let him down, that there was excessive force and concealed evidence of the arrest circumstances. Who knows what the truth of the matter is, but he faces up to one year on each of the two counts he was convicted of and these would be served in a workhouse, rather than a proper jail.

This is an appropriate moment for us to sit back and think about the Super Bowl, coming up in 9 days. It’s going to be a fun game where we can look at a couple really interesting teams play against each other. It’s not like either of these teams are big, high-rolling teams, like Indy and Tennessee or NY Giants. These teams play small ball, with tight defenses and smart offense. These teams don’t have real big stars, as you can see from these rankings, but they work well as teams, using what they have really efficiently. It’s hard to tell exactly what it is that Arizona has. Kurt Warner has been leading this team quite well and there are several other good teams involved too. Any thoughts?

Arizona has won the NFC Championship to advance to the Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history. They haven’t won a championship game for more than 60 years, when they were in Chicago a long time ago. But Mr. Kurt Warner has taken this team to the next level, giving them the chance to win the championship at the end of this year. It’s going to be an uphill battle though. Then again, everything else has been an uphill battle for them this postseason too. For a team that was doing so horrendously at the end of the regular season, they have turned into a surprisingly strong team during January. We wish them luck, although there’s still a couple weeks until the actual Super Bowl.

With both the Ravens and Steelers moving on to the next round of the playoffs, they will now meet for the AFC Championship and bid to goto the SuperBowl. After beating them twice in the regular season, the Steelers are hoping to eek another one out with the aid of their stifling defense. However, no one seems more fired up right now than the Ravens’ D. After dismantling the usually protective Titans offense last week, they’re ready to beat the Steelers when it counts in the playoffs. Since the first meeting was decided by only three points and the second by four, the third game is very much anybody’s guess.

San Diego’s season rested in large part on 17 seconds. And, just so we’re clear, these weren’t the last 17 seconds of the game. Sometimes that happens, but in this case the 17 seconds occurred in the 3rd quarter. The San Diego Chargers held ball possession for 17 seconds in the entire quarter. They had it for exactly one play, which was an interception. And there was a punt that bounced of a special teams helmet and was recovered by the punting team. Anytime your team goes so poorly in a whole quarter, you’re in big trouble. And this is why the Pittsburgh Steelers took the AFC Divisional playoff yesterday, by a score of 35-24. The Chargers had a fine season, but they just couldn’t hold on. Pitt is the highest ranking team left in the game.

The Giants won the first, the Eagles won the second. This weekend’s rubber match couldn’t have weightier implications. Not only is there a score to settle for each team, but more importantly, the berth for the NFC Championship is on the line. More specifically for the Eagles, they have a chance to knock off the returning Super Bowl champions and gain a lot of momentum against their potential opponents. For the Giants, they need to prove that they are still the team to beat this year. Click here and see what Pat Kirwan of NFL.com thinks.

The San Diego Chargers have made another bitter January in Indianapolis. Indy was one of the best teams in the league the last part of the year. After starting off with some difficulty and trailing Tennessee the whole season, they really picked it up with a long string of wins. Now we’ve seen them fold up in the playoffs once again. They tried to put the game away several times, but the Chargers came up with some big plays at several key moments, holding the Colts back. The game was tied with about 30 seconds left when the Chargers kicked a field goal. And in the overtime period, the Chargers Darren Sproles ran the ball into the endzone to win the game. And ended the Colts’ season. With some of SD’s big players out, you’d think they would be able to take the game, but it didn’t work out this time.