49ers: Linehan turns down the 49ers offer and at first it was thought to be for family reasons. Now, it turns out that Linehan has other suitors, namely the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. You can read this result a couple of different ways. The 49ers wanted to have a commitment from the next OC that he would be around for several seasons and Linehan has desires to redeem his disasterous first head coaching gig. The other is that the 49ers organization is not particularly attractive for prospective candidates, which is not good. Here's Kawakami's take.


NFL Playoffs

Cardinals v. Eagles
The Cardinals are on fire right now. Sure, there was a third quarter blip where they allowed 19 unanswered points to fall behind the Eagles by a point, but they came back and scored a touchdown on their last drive when the needed it. Really, the game should have been over in the second quarter when the kickoff was ruled out of bounds. The play was not reviewable even though the kick clearly didn't land out of bounds and was recovered by the Cardinals. The score was 21-6 at the time and Arizona would have had the ball at the Philly 27 yard line. Good for the Eagles, fighting back to take the lead and make a game out of it, plus hitting the over.

Steelers v. Ravens
The Ravens are a good team. They've been a good team all season. Joe Flacco is an okay quarterback. When the Ravens went 11-5 and then won two road playoff games, including beating the team with the best record in the NFL regular season, Joe Flacco seemed to be canonized by various media. Maybe they were just being lazy, looking for the easy story. I mean,. Joe Flacco was the first rookie quaterback to win two post season games, but to me, that's mostly coincidental. Well, the Steelers made St. Joe Flacco looke like rookie Joe Flacco. The Steelers could not run the ball against the Ravens, at all. Haloti Ngata is a beast (picked after Vernon Davis in '06), but Super Ed Reed wasn't very noticeable and Roethlisberger was able to keep plays alive and find open recivers. Troy Polamalu is The Man and his TAINT (Bill Simmons' acronym for INT returned for a TD) covered the spread and hit the over. Boo yeah!

Warriors:
The Warriors beat a bad Wizards team yesterday, at home. Monta Ellis will probably play by this weekend. This season is a wash for any type of hope, really, it's a season that is breeding despair. The return of Monta Elllis is exciting and Warriors fans have been dreaming about the return of the team's most electric players. I will readily admist, I haven't watched a lot of games this season. It's too depressing. Not jsut the losing, which Warriors fans have accepted on a certain level, but the evaporation of cap room, the forcing out of fan favorite Mullin, the un-development of rookies and the ugliness of the Monta injury.


Sharks: Man, that was a great game on Saturday against the Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings. I was a little nervous heading into the game since the team was coming off a loss at home to the Calgary Flames. Were the Sharks going to be able to forget about that game and play at a high level? Yes, yes they were. It wasn't a walk in the park, in fact in what a great test of the team's will. The Sharks scored early and Detroit came back and scored on their first shot on goal. The Sharks took the lead going into the second, but Detroit scored on it's first shot in the second period as well. Less than three minutes later, the Red Wings had the lead. The Sharks tied the game and then fell behind,but Cheechoo tied it up with a little over a minute to play in the 2nd. The Sharks turned it up in the third period and scored twice and held off a late rally by the Red Wings. ESPN's power rankings has the Sharks at #1, but offers a less than rining endorement. I'm not an expert on hockey, my hockey interest began with NHL Hockey on the SEGA Genesis in the early 1990's, but the Sharks are good. #1 in the NHL is up for debate, but the Sharks definitely have to battle the east coast bias which is even more apparent in Hockey for obvious reasons. I'll be watching the Hockey Skills competition during All-Star week closely. It's the type of All-Star event that can be exciting for fans without risking injury, are you listening NFL?