The success stories and failures of 2011

By BARRY WILNER

AP Pro Foot­ball Writer

With one week to go in the post-lockout sea­son, it’s not too early to look at the suc­cess sto­ries and utter fail­ures of the NFL.

Cel­e­bra­tions are war­ranted in Hous­ton, Detroit and San Fran­cisco. In Den­ver and Cincin­nati, too — even if their teams don’t make the playoffs.

Protests already have bro­ken out in Philadel­phia, Indi­anapo­lis and San Diego over the flops by those cities’ teams, and the folks in the New York area might be ready to picket the Mead­ow­lands if both the Jets and Giants fall short of the playoffs.

Some thoughts on tri­umphs and down­falls this season:

SUCCESS

Start in the Motor City, where Lions fans haven’t seen their team in the play­offs since 1999. Worse yet, they’ve seen the Lions at the bot­tom of the stand­ings in many years in between, includ­ing that humil­i­at­ing 0–16 in 2008.

Now, at 10–5, the Lions own an NFC wild card — to the aston­ish­ment of cen­ter Dominic Raiola, who has spent more than a decade los­ing in Detroit.

I mean, 11 years — it hasn’t really soaked in yet,” Raiola said. “I don’t know how to feel. I’ve never been here before. It’s a long time coming.”

Although the Lions don’t appear capa­ble of chal­leng­ing for the Super Bowl quite yet, just hav­ing them in the con­ver­sa­tion is unplowed ter­ri­tory in Detroit.

Same thing, of course, in Hous­ton, which hasn’t had a play­off team since 1993 — and that was the Oil­ers, who now reside in Nashville and call them­selves the Ten­nessee Titans. The Tex­ans (10–5) com­mem­o­rated their 10th sea­son by win­ning the AFC South even though such keys as LB Mario Williams, QBs Matt Schaub and Matt Leinart, and WR Andre John­son sus­tained injuries. A vastly upgraded defense under new coor­di­na­tor Wade Phillips — who him­self was side­lined by kidney/gall blad­der surgery this month — and a pow­er­ful run­ning game have been the catalysts.

“We want to keep it going,” line­backer Con­nor Bar­win said.

Get­ting this far should be sat­is­fy­ing for now.

One team that deservedly has designs on a run deep into Jan­u­ary or beyond is San Fran­cisco. The 49ers (12–3) have dou­bled their win total of 2010 and by beat­ing St. Louis on Sun­day will secure a first-round bye in their first play­off appear­ance since 2002. A staunch defense, ter­rific run­ning game, supe­rior kick­ing and an infu­sion of confidence/brashness from new coach Jim Har­baugh make the Nin­ers a for­mi­da­ble foe.

“I think we’ve taken another step. We have more steps we can absolutely take,” defen­sive end Justin Smith said. “We’ve put our team in a posi­tion to win a lot of games.”

Includ­ing play­off games.

Tim Tebow, Von Miller, Willis McGa­hee, Elvis Dumervil and, most notably, the acu­men of coach John Fox, have put the Bron­cos (8–7) in posi­tion to win the AFC West. That’s stun­ning stuff con­sid­er­ing how in flux this fran­chise was after 2010, and that the Bron­cos were 2–5 this season.

While many dis­miss the Tebow phe­nom­e­non and note how ugly many of Denver’s vic­to­ries have been, they still are vic­to­ries. San Diego and Kansas City, also-rans in the divi­sion, would surely take some of those.

Cincin­nati (9–6) grabs the last AFC wild card by beat­ing Bal­ti­more on Sun­day. Yes, the Ben­gals were in the play­offs two years ago and also in 2005, but they are con­tend­ing now with a dif­fer­ent cast, led by rookie quar­ter­back Andy Dal­ton and receiver A.J. Green. Regard­less of how they fare, the Ben­gals have given rise to opti­mism in Cincin­nati, and that’s worth celebrating.

FAILURES

Many teams basi­cally have been under­achiev­ers this sea­son, includ­ing three — Cow­boys, Jets, Giants — who still could make the post­sea­son. While Tampa Bay has taken a huge nose­dive a year after going 10–6, maybe that 2010 suc­cess was an aberration.

Clearly the biggest rejects are the Eagles, Charg­ers and Colts.

Indy, of course, can place a dis­claimer on its 2–13 mark: Pey­ton Manning’s absence. It’s vir­tu­ally unheard of for a team to col­lapse in the man­ner the Colts did with­out their star and leader, but it’s still a valid rea­son for all the losing.

More trou­bling is how nobody picked up the slack until the team was threat­en­ing to go win­less for the entire sched­ule. That could cost coach Jim Cald­well his job.

San Diego finally sprinted to a strong start under Norv Turner, going 4–1. Then it fell apart as Philip Rivers’ strug­gled, penal­ties and frus­tra­tion mounted, and injuries hit. Even though the Charg­ers (7–8) got back to .500 with a three-game win­ning streak, that’s not the ter­ri­tory peo­ple pro­jected for them.

“Every loss is dis­ap­point­ing, but know­ing you are not going to the play­offs is even more dis­ap­point­ing,” line­backer Shaun Phillips said. “There are going to be pos­i­tives in your life, there’s going to be neg­a­tives in your life, so it’s what you do with those negatives.”

They’ve piled up the neg­a­tives in Philly: The Eagles are sit­ting out the play­offs despite their tal­ent haul in free agency.

Bring­ing in such prizes as cor­ner­back Nnamdi Aso­mugha, DE Jason Babin, DT Cullen Jenk­ins and WR Steve Smith raised expec­ta­tions in Philadel­phia. Most of the addi­tions, par­tic­u­larly RB Ron­nie Brown and backup QB Vince Young, didn’t help raise the level of play, though.

“This is an unfa­mil­iar feel­ing, an unfa­mil­iar sight,” wide receiver DeSean Jack­son said. “I’ve never really wit­nessed this. It’s a real­ity check. Look in the mirror.”

What they will see is the biggest flop of 2011.

Posted by AP News on Dec 27 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.