Once again the NFL is the subject of my rant. Last week, I criticized the playoff seeding; this week, it's the scheduling.
Normally I couldn't care less about the Baltimore Ravens, but they are getting shafted by the league as the only team in the divisional round of the playoffs being forced to play on six days of rest. This is a subject close to my heart because the NFL did the same thing to the Eagles two years ago when they forced the Birds to travel to New Orleans on six days of rest. And like the Ravens this year, the Eagles were the only one of the eight remaining playoff teams forced to play that week on six days of rest. If you don't think that extra day makes a big difference, especially this time of the year after a season's worth of bumps and bruises, then you don't know football. The short turnaround was definitely a contributing factor to the Saints being able to rush for so many yards in that game; the Eagles just looked spent.
It would be one thing if there were other teams playing on six days of rest, but to force only one team to do this is blatantly unfair, especially when the scenario is so avoidable. Instead of letting the 8-8 Chargers play on eight days of rest tomorrow, the NFL could have scheduled the Pittsburgh/San Diego game for today, so that both the Chargers and Ravens would be playing on seven days of rest. All they needed to do was adjust the scheduling after the matchups were known last week. Would that have been so difficult?
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Well, the Ravens won, but my criticism of the scheduling still stands. They were outplayed for the majority of the game, only winning because the Titans apparently decided that they didn't feel like hanging on to the football.
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