NFL Divisional Playoffs: My Three Wishes: Raiders, Seahawks, and THAT Game

1. I Wish People Wouldn't Call It The Game Of The Season

I know that it was the highest scoring playoff game ever. And I know that it was exciting from the first series—where Aaron Rogers threw an interception with arguably his worst pass of the season—to the last. But am I the only one to think that a great game requires two teams to do a bit more than lob the ball into the endzone every five minutes?

One of the beauties of football is that it gives you the sustained periods of offense and defense that other sports don't give you. If neither defense shows up, the game just becomes as good as a fight between two punch-drunk boxers, neither of whom can do anything to avoid the other's blows.

In the end, this game was won by the side that cracked second. Surprisingly, it wasn't the one which featured the regular season defensive MVP. But it wasn't a great game, just an entertaining one.

2. I Wish Al Davis Would Just Sell Up

I'm not a Raiders fan and I don't care if the rumors that Tom Cable is about to be fired are true or not. The fact is that, without Davis, there would be no rumors.

Another fact is that this is supposed to be a league of 32 teams who are fairly evenly matched. Now that Daniel Snyder has finally seen the light, it is currently a league of 31 teams who are fairly evenly matched and one which is being royally screwed up by Davis.

Davis thinks he is a general manager, because he has a large amount of money. Unfortunately, being a general manager requires you to know a lot about football and Davis simply doesn't. He is still the only person who thinks JaMarcus Russell is a franchise quarterback. He was the only person who thought that Darrius Heyward-Bey was a top 10 pick, a better wideout than Michael Crabtree or Percy Harvin.

That Davis might sack Cable for benching Russell is insane. Cable is the first Raiders coach in years to have the backing of his players. He might not be everyone's cup of tea, but Davis is effectively having his franchise commit suicide if Cable goes. This is not what the NFL is about. Get out, Al, get out.

3. I Wish I Thought The Seahawks Had Done The Right Thing

There's only one team who have fallen further than the Bears in these past five years and that's the Seahawks. They have very different problems, though. The Bears have crashed and burned because they have drafted badly, traded badly and seem unable to do anything if Brian Urlacher isn't there to watch over them.

The Seahawks, on the other hand, have simply grown old and tired. Even when Shaun Alexander was cutting a swathe through opposing defenses, he was old—at least for a running back. That was the 2005 season. In 2009, the bulk of the side are geriatric in NFL terms (or, if they are not, playing like geriatrics).

The upshot of which is that the problem wasn't Jim Mora and won't be cured by appointing Pete Carroll. It doesn't matter who coaches them—Lombardi? Shula? Belichick? Me? You?—it won't make a blind bit of difference until they find a quarterback to replace Matt Hasselbeck, an offensive line who can offer some protection against any opponent under the age of 12 and someone to actually put some points on the board for them.