It’s really, ridiculously hard to beat a team three times in one season. AFAIK, the only team to do it was the 1999 Titans, who gave the Jaguars their only losses in the regular season and then bumped them from the playoffs too.
I think the Giants did it to the Redskins in 1986; I imagine it’s rare partially because it doesn’t come up all that often.
Every Packer fan I hear is holding onto that saw about it being hard to beat a team three times like it’s holy writ. It’s unusual, but the opportunity just doesn’t arise that often, and when it does, it doesn’t usually involve a large disparity in the quality of the respective teams.
It’s not that hard if one team is flat out better, and has homefield advantage and has a HOF QB who is strongly motivated to beat the other team as many times as possible.
The Packers also showed no ability at all to stop the Vikings defensive line in the first two games, so I don’t know why they think it would be any different in the playoffs.
Personally, I don’t think the Packers would be likely to get past the Cards in the first place. The Eagles, maybe, but not the Cards.
They’d probably go to the Saints instead of the Vikes in this case, though, unless the #6 beat the #3 as well.
If I were the Packers I’d rather play the Cards than the Eagles.
Yeah, you’re right. In that case, they’d be toast in the 2nd round regardless.
I agree that its hard to do, but didn’t the chokes back vomit Steelers do that last season to the Ravens? Regular season sweep then again in the playoffs (AFC Champ game?)?
I’m sure Rob Neyer or someone like that will be all over this if Green Bay and Minnesota (or, say, Cincy and Baltimore, or whoever) meet in the playoffs, but I wonder what the actual record is for teams that win the first 2 and then meet in the playoffs.
This is the actual question we would have to have answered to know how likely it is.
A little too much time on my hands here. I found an article from last season that said that Pittsburgh’s defeating Baltimore was the 12th time since the merger that one team took 3 games in a season from another team out of 56 playoff games resulting in a third meeting.
I looked back through the past pairings and found 58 times since the merger that divisional teams opposed each other in the playoffs, although 3 of these were in 1982 - only 1 of these 3 was actually a third game. So, it seems that the 56 number was correct.
Now, how many of these resulted in a regular season sweep? Just 19 out of 56. In these games, the sweep was completed 12 out of 19 times, or about 63% of the time.
Not that it would have mattered much, but I was reviewing a penalty call during the Vikings/Bengals game. After a pass breakup by CB Jonathon Joseph (#22) along the sideline against Visanthe Shiancoe (TE), Shiancoe clearly gets up and head-butts Joseph. Joseph points at Visanthe, the ref runs in, sorta pushes Shiancoe along, tosses the flag, presumably for unsportsmanlike conduct against Shiancoe, right?
WRONG! The ref calls offsetting unnecessary roughness penalties against both players!
Dan Dierdorf was calling the game, and said something similiar to “You can’t just walk up to a guy like that!”.
Its stupefying.
Well, I guess it really isn’t that hard to beat a team three times if you’ve already done it twice.
Nice legwork there, PJG.
From looking at it I’d say the refs made exactly the right call.
Seemed pretty clear to me – Shiancoe headbutts Joseph, starts to walk away, when #90 on the Benglas gives Shiancoe a little shot.
Neither one was really flag-worthy, so offsetting looks fine by me.
Joseph walked up and stuck his head right in there too as Shiancoe is standing up. Both guys initiated the contact. I agree that it really probably should have been a no-call on all counts.
Joseph looked to me like he was jawing at Shiancoe. So what?
#90 (Pat Sims) wasn’t called for the penalty, Joseph was. I thought it was bullshit.
Ah well, though. Like I said, I don’t think it affected the outcome.
I had to listen to the audio to that game and what’s his face says “you can’t just walk at another player!” about 17 times.
But isn’t that in and of itself just patently ridiculous, especially coming from a former player that should know better than to spew such an inane utterance?
Looks like Chris Henry may be dead or dying. Apparently he was involved in a serious car accident, allegedly thrown from the back of a pickup truck being driven by his fiancee during a domestic dispute.
Details are a little hazy now, but the links are out there.