Before Looking Ahead to Playoffs, Look Out for Rivals

Before folks here start booking nonrefundable flights to Detroit for the Super Bowl they might want to consider the next two opponents. The Texans and 49ers are not on deck; the Giants and Eagles are. The most difficult opponent, almost always, is a division rival. Yes, if the Washington Redskins win their final two games they'll make the playoffs, probably as a wild-card team. But to do that, to run the table and win five straight to finish the regular season, the Redskins will have had to beat the Cowboys, Giants and Eagles.

There's no easy out in that group. The coaches are distinguished, and their teams recently distinguished. There's no Arizona Cardinals because the Worst Franchise in NFL History is in the NFC West now, so there's no twice-annual homecoming game within the division. There's no storming through the NFC East, no single guaranteed victory. Even when one of the four teams is down, as Philly appears to be now, the division is terribly difficult to negotiate.

So winning three straight in the division is difficult, perhaps not even possible at the end of the season with so much at stake. You know how often the Redskins win three straight weeks against NFC East teams? Rarely.

Spread over six or eight weeks, the Redskins have won three straight against division opponents. And it's not often the schedule-maker even sets it up for any team to play three consecutive weeks within the division, much less at the end of the regular season.

Even so, the last time the Redskins pulled off such a feat was late in the 1992 season when they beat the Cardinals, 41-3, on Nov. 29 at RFK, the Giants, 28-10, on Dec. 6 at Giants Stadium, and the Cowboys, 20-17, on Dec. 13 at RFK. That's 13 years ago.

The Redskins have had seasons when they've made it to the Super Bowl but been unable to win three straight over NFC opponents. It's highly unlikely that will happen this year. Yes, the Redskins could possibly make the playoffs by beating the Giants this week, and wouldn't have to beat the Eagles in Philly on New Year's Day. But it's a little much to expect the Redskins to win, while the Cowboys, Vikings and Falcons all lose.

So, it's probably going to come down to winning in Philly on New Year's Day. Only a fool would suggest the Eagles, now 6-8, are going down easy because they're already eliminated from the playoff race. Yes, without Donovan McNabb and Terrell Owens the Eagles are the weak team in the NFC East, as the 42-0 home field Monday night loss to the Seahawks clearly illustrated.

But otherwise, the Eagles are a respectable 2-3 without McNabb and T.O. (with wins over the Packers and Rams) and that includes a 26-23 loss to the Giants in Philly that could easily have been a victory. Anybody who has been with the Redskins longer than a year has to know what kind of nastiness awaits in Philly, for a 4:15 kickoff. The only thing the Eagles have had to play for the last five weeks is ruining the season for the Giants and Redskins. It would make Philly's season to lay waste to the Redskins and keep them out of the playoffs.

The Giants, obviously, have more to play for, like a division title and home field for at least one round of playoffs. Tiki Barber, who along with Seattle's Shawn Alexander would have to be considered one of the favorites for NFC offensive player of the year, has had some pretty huge games against the Redskins. The Giants are fairly loaded on offense, with Barber, Jeremy Shockey, Plaxico Burress and Amani Toomer. That's a whole lot more offense than the Redskins have.

This isn't to suggest other divisions are going to be easy to negotiate. The Falcons, just to keep hope alive, have to beat NFC South rivals Tampa Bay and Carolina. San Diego, coming off the huge victory over the Colts, goes back into the division to play at Kansas City and finish at home against Denver. As fabulous as the Chargers were last week in handing the Colts their first loss of the season, winning in Kansas City and beating the Broncos in successive weeks seems to be too much to ask. At least in the AFC West, everybody can beat up on the Raiders these days.

All four of the NFC East coaches are the real deal. Washington's Joe Gibbs has three Super Bowl rings and four appearances as a head coach. Dallas's Bill Parcells has two Super Bowl rings and three appearances. Philadelphia's Andy Reid has one Super Bowl appearance and four in conference championship games. And Giants Coach Tom Coughlin, while he hasn't taken a team to the Super Bowl, has been to a pair of AFC championship games and once went through John Elway in Denver to get there. There's no chump in the group. And the bet here is that Coughlin, after seeing how the Redskins handled the unprepared and unmotivated Cowboys on Sunday, will have put the fear of God into the Giants before they get here on Saturday. They'll be as prepared for the Redskins' best punch as the Redskins will be bent on avenging that 36-0 disaster of a defeat this year in the Meadowlands.

The most optimistic folk out there would suggest the Redskins need only to win back-to-back division games now, what with the Cowboys dispatched. But it took a great expenditure of energy -- physical and emotional -- for the Redskins to knock the life out of the Cowboys. Now, they're being asked to come with the same energy and a greater sense of urgency to face the Giants. And if successful, Gibbs and his assistants will try to jack the players up for one more hated rival, Philly, one that can play freely and boldly with nothing to lose.

The real hero the final two weeks is the schedule-maker. Too often, the NFL matches division rivals twice before Thanksgiving. Clearly, churning up the drama in the final three weeks is preferable. The Bears, as high as they've been riding, face the prospect of ending their season in Green Bay and Minnesota, where they've suffered many a disappointment. Folks who presume the Steelers will roll over the Browns on Christmas Eve don't have a sense of how much Cleveland hates everything about Pittsburgh.

This is the note of caution, the warning against smugness the final two weeks. The Great John Riggins, to this day, laments the season finale in 1979, when all the Redskins had to do was hold on to a two-touchdown lead in Dallas to not only reach the playoffs, but have home field throughout. Only Roger Staubach-to-Tony Hill came back, won the game, and kicked the Redskins out of the playoffs entirely. And 10 years later, with the Cowboys en route to a 1-15 season, a rookie coach named Jimmy Johnson and a rookie quarterback named Troy Aikman led Dallas to a victory over the Redskins, who would go on to finish 10-6 and miss the playoffs by a game. You could go right ahead and start obsessing over potential playoff opponents -- or wait.