03/29/2024
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By Sonny Jones

The National Football League is Goliath to every other sports in this country being David. Unlike the biblical story, none of the other sports are going to take down the behemoth, certainly not with a slingshot, a stone nor better its massive television ratings.

Super Wild-Card Weekend proved, once again, how entertaining the NFL can be. Admittedly, the league and its TV partners could probably drop Super from the name. After all, we have the Super Bowl. Do we really need to call the first round of the playoffs Super?

However, the games were super and there’s one more wild-card game remaining tonight when NFC South champion Tampa Bay hosts Dallas to cap a weekend where, thus far, four of the five games were decided by a touchdown or less.

The one “blowout” was San Francisco’s 41-23 win against Seattle, but the Seahawks led 17-16 at half and trailed only 23-17 after three quarters. The game featured 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, who was the last player selected in the 2021 draft and took over for injured starter Jimmy Garoppolo seven weeks ago. He has guided San Francisco to the divisional playoff round and looks like he’s been the starter for a few years.

In other games, Jacksonville kicked a field goal on the final play to rally from 27-0 down for a 31-30 victory over the Los Angeles Chargers. Buffalo raced to a 17-0 lead, then had to hang on to beat Miami 34-31. Former Duke quarterback Daniel Jones guided the New York Giants past Minnesota 31-24 and becoming the lone visiting team to win thus far. Cincinnati escaped with a 24-17 triumph against Baltimore as a Ravens pass into the end zone fell incomplete on the final play.

The NFL rightly draws its fair share of criticism. It’s handling of concussions and brain injuries and inexplicable roughing-the-passer calls just to name a couple. There’s many more.

Some think the league is too “woke.” Some think it’s not “woke” enough. Some supported Colin Kaepernick several years ago when the former San Francisco quarterback took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality. Others vowed to never watch an NFL game every again after the league failed to discipline Kaepernick or other players who did the same.

I don’t get caught up in it. I watch because I enjoy the NFL games. It’s that simple. The games are a business and a career for the players and coaches, but it’s entertainment for the rest of us.

This entertaining weekend was filled with super games in the wild-card round, even though it wasn’t really shouldn’t be called Super Wild-Card Weekend.

TODAY IN SPORTS HISTORY

• 1988 — Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, the CBS NFL Today tout for 12 years, is fired for his racial comments during an interview the previous day with WRC-TV in Washington.

POTATO PICKS TO WATCH TODAY

• TENNIS: Australian Open, noon, ESPN2

• NBA: Boston at Charlotte, 1 p.m., NBATV

• NBA: Miami at Atlanta, 3:30 p.m., TNT

• NBA: Phoenix at Memphis, 6 p.m., TNT

• NFL WILD-CARD: Dallas at Tampa Bay, 8:15 p.m., ABC, ESPN, ESPN2

• NBA: Houston at L.A. Lakers, 10:30 p.m., NBATV

• TENNIS: Australian Open, 11:30 p.m., ESPN2

Sonny Jones can be reached at wibbyj@gmail.com.

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