2014 NFL Tournament of Champions First Round: Larry Csonka Bracket

Hope you're having a wonderful Valentine's Day so far today. As my continued gift to you: a second batch of games for the NFL Tournament of Champions. The bye teams are pretty loaded in this bracket, but they get a week to prepare for the upcoming matchup.

Looking at teams, I almost named this bracket after Ray Lewis, since his two title teams with the Ravens were on here. Then after better thought, I felt the Dolphins of the early 70's deserved the namesake. That meant looking at Super Bowl MVP's, so I opted for Csonka. When you play for lone undefeated team (including playoffs) in Super Bowl history, you have to get some recognition, even if I think you're kind of a jerk for having a champagne celebration when the last undefeated team loses every year.

Neither of his squads plays today since they both were seeded in the top 16, but there are some compelling matchups anyway.  I think I'm more excited though for seeing my 3-seed Packers next week, and there's one more 70's Steelers squad on here.

The method of playing these games out will be like the one I did earlier this morning over in the Montana Bracket. All of these will be simulated best-of-three, with the "clinching" game being the official one. I will grab weather forecasts from each locale in an effort to make the game as realistic as possible for the sake of home field advantage. All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. Let's go.


(XXXV) '82 Washington Redskins @ (XXX) '00 Baltimore Ravens
Game 1: '00 BAL 18, '82 WAS 3
Game 2: '00 BAL 23, '82 WAS 6
Baltimore's defense held the Redskins to just 23 yards on the ground while Joe Theismann went 13-28 for 172 yards and an interception. Tren Dilfer really wasn't any better, only notching 124 yards on nine of 20 passing with a pick. The ground game did enough damage though, as Jamal Lewis ran for 79 yards and Priest Holmes had a 30 yard second quarter touchdown.

(XLVI) '12 Baltimore Ravens @ (XIX) '71 Dallas Cowboys
Game 1: '12 BAL 26, '71 DAL 7
Game 2: '71 DAL 17, '12 BAL 10
Game 3: '71 DAL 28, '12 BAL 23
Dallas seemed to be in control throughout. The Cowboys sacked Joe Flacco twice and forced an interception while holding him to 207 yards passing. Roger Staubach went 13 of 19 for 182 yards, but had a pair of touchdown passes to Lance Alworth and ran for one more.

(XXXVIII) '83 Los Angeles Raiders @ (XXVII) '02 Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Game 1: '02 TB 12, '83 LA 10
Game 2: '02 TB 20, '83 LA 6
Despite Brad Johnson's struggles (15-30 for 200 yards, a touchdown, but three picks and was sacked four times), Jim Plunkett might have been worse, only picking up 84 yards passing with three interceptions. Michael Pittman ran for 88 yards and a score for the Bucs.

(XLIII) '80 Oakland Raiders @ (XXII) '95 Dallas Cowboys
Game 1: '95 DAL 24, '80 OAK 21
Game 2: '95 DAL 20, '80 OAK 0
Leon Lett had two of Dallas' four sacks on Jim Plunkett, how completed ten of 24 passes for 174 yards and an interception. Tory Aikman struggled a bit too, throwing a couple picks as well, but he had 226 yards and a touchdown still. Emmitt Smith ran 26 times for 124 yards and a touchdown.

To see the bracket so far, click here.

We rocked chalk this time around, with all four higher seeds advancing, so the metric that Pro Football Reference uses to compare teams obviously works fairly well. As for recency, three out of the four teams that advance in this bracket are more recent. This seemed like more of a defensive bracket than an offensive one, with all the quarterback struggles, but there are good quarterbacks still lurking in this bracket.

This is it for today. Tomorrow I'll post the remaining results from the opening round. Have a Happy Valentines Day!