Championship Game Picks: Packers, Steelers Look Super

Green Bay (-3 1/2) at Chicago

Green Bay's 48-21 win in Atlanta last week was impressive.

Was it so impressive that the Packers deserve to be 3 1/2-point road favorites in Sunday's NFC championship game in Chicago, where they lost 20-17 on Sept. 27? Well, Sept. 27 was almost four months ago, but it was just three weeks ago that the Packers won just 10-3 at Lambeau Field in a game they needed a lot more than the Bears did.

Nonetheless, Aaron Rodgers' performance in Atlanta last week -- heck, the Packers' performance in Atlanta last week -- seems to have convinced the Vegas lads that the Packers are special. It's convinced bettors who already have moved up the line a half-point to a point, helped perhaps by all the talking heads whose view of every team extends no farther than the last game.

There's certainly an argument for Chicago in this game.

Until the Bears let up, perhaps a bit too much, they dominated Seattle last week -- the final score of 35-24 doesn't reflect how one-sided that game was. Granted, the Seahawks really weren't a playoff team, but league rules dictated the NFC West champs get a spot regardless of how bad the division is.

By comparison, were the Packers as good as their win in Atlanta? Maybe Atlanta wasn't as good as its 13-3 record in what was a strange season for most of the NFL's 32 teams. If Aaron Rodgers played the best game any quarterback has played in football history (Mike Ditka's hyperbolic assessment), does it mean that he'll do in cold and windy Soldier Field what he did in the perfect conditions of a dome?

OK, now that I've argued myself out of the Packers, I'll argue myself back into picking them, largely because I picked them before the season to get to the Super Bowl and now they're a game away.

And I'm doing it because of Rodgers, who is less prone to error than Jay Cutler. The defenses cancel each other out, so ...

PACKERS, 24-20

New York Jets (3½) at Pittsburgh

This one pits another favorite that lost to the same team in the same place -- much more recently than the Packers-Bears game in Chicago. On Dec. 19 at Heinz Field, the Jets won 22-17, but with an asterisk -- Troy Polamalu didn't play for the Steelers and when he doesn't play, they lose a lot more games than they do when he does play.

In fact, Polamalu wasn't his special self last week, his first game back, in the 31-24 win over Baltimore (Sorry for recommending the under in a 31-24 game, but there was less than 400 yards of offense between the two teams.)

Back to the present. The Jets are shutting their mouths this week, although they made a big deal about telling everyone they were shutting their mouths because they respect Pittsburgh more than they respect New England. The politicians didn't shut their mouths -- the governor of New Jersey claimed the Jets, just like his predecessors have done when the Giants have gone to the Super Bowl, allowing the folks who run New York-area television stations to turn it into a "story.''

But that's got nothing to do with anything, really, just part of the silliness that surrounds sports these days.

The key to this game is the performance of the Pittsburgh offensive line, the team's weak link.

If it allows the Rashard Mendenhall to run, it can protect Ben Roethlisberger better than it did last week when he was sacked six times, three by Terrell Suggs. The Jets got five on Tom Brady in New England, so the threat is there, although Ben is harder to sack than Tom.

But the Jets have to run too -- they got 106 yards rushing in that first meeting, hardly an overwhelming figure but more than 40 yards over the Steelers' league-leading pregame mark. If they can do it again, it makes James Harrison and friends a little less aggressive.

Then there's Polamalu.

He makes the difference.

STEELERS, 17-13

LAST WEEK: 3-1 (spread); 3-1 (straight up).
PLAYOFFS: 6-2 (spread); 6-2 (straight up).
REGULAR SEASON: 137-116-3 (spread); 164-92 (straight up).

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