Columnist Dean Juipe: No sure bets as playoffs open in NFL

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2002 | 9:33 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Twelve teams, 12 teams with problems.

Yet one of the 12 will win the Super Bowl.

Foot faults? The National Football League playoffs are comprised of nothing but teams with faults.

Yes, they're the best of the lot. But no, there's not a truly great team in the bunch.

So who wins? Who knows?

But with no dominant team in sight, the playoffs that open Saturday are assured of being competitive and intriguing. Hence, fans and bettors alike go blindly into a postseason in which anything's possible.

Of course that has been the way it has been all year. And don't let anyone kid you: This season hasn't been atypical at all. Parity -- with its endless string of supposed upsets -- has been the rule in the league for several seasons.

It's why the NFL is exceedingly popular -- and exasperating.

I've quit betting on regular-season games, although I will say I successfully predicted (in print) that Philadelphia would win 10 or more games and New England eight or more as my two best bets on over/under victory totals for the season (that were posted in August).

But on a game-by-game or week-by-week basis, betting on the NFL can be futile. Take this past Sunday, for instance, when three-quarters of the teams in the league were still in the running for a playoff berth, yet the games followed no form or predictable pattern. For the record, five teams won and covered the point spread; four won but didn't cover; and four favorites outright lost.

It was like that all year, and the playoffs aren't apt to be any different.

No one is immune to mistakes of judgment. Sports Illustrated picked St. Louis to defeat Pittsburgh in the 2003 Super Bowl, but the Rams didn't even make the playoffs. Nor did the team they faced in last season's Super Bowl, New England, making it the second time in four years that neither of the participants in a given Super Bowl made the playoffs the following year.

And no matter what teams you think will advance to the next Super Bowl, each comes into the playoffs harboring doubts and indecision.

Consider: Green Bay was thought by many to be the best team in the league until it was blown out Sunday and lost its home-field advantage; Philadelphia is the NFC's top seed but can only hope to have its regular quarterback, Donovan McNabb, back for its playoff opener; Tampa Bay finally won a cold-weather game but is apt to have to do it again; the New York Giants fumbled seven times in their most recent game; San Francisco hasn't looked as sharp as it did early in the season when it was 7-2; Atlanta doesn't even belong in the playoffs; Oakland has had its bad streaks; Pittsburgh just surrendered 422 yards to a team ranked 27th in offense; the New York Jets opened 1-4 and needed an unlikely sequence of events to fall into place last weekend to remain alive; Indianapolis is so underwhelming it is an underdog to those same lucky Jets; Cleveland will try to c arry on without quarterback Tim Couch, who just broke his leg; and Tennessee has been hot of late but has the unpleasant memory of a 52-25 loss earlier at Oakland to consider.

Call 'em the all-or-nothing playoffs: All of the teams have a chance, and nothing in anyone's analysis will help you decipher the winners.