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Playoff Rookies Draw Upon Their Own 'Big Games'
by Mike Spofford, Packers.com
posted 01/08/2008
Make no mistake, there is no substitute for the NFL playoffs. The stakes, the stage, the attention, the win-or-go-home mentality -- or better yet -- reality.
The Green Bay Packers can't hide the fact that, with the youngest roster in the NFL, they have numerous players who have never participated in the NFL playoffs. To be exact, 36 of the 53 players on the roster are postseason rookies.
But it's not as though all three dozen are novices when it comes to high-stakes football. Several of them have past experiences they can draw upon to mentally prepare for what Saturday's NFC Divisional playoff game against the Seattle Seahawks will be like.
Most recently, they all traveled to Dallas on Nov. 29 in a game described as a "playoff-like atmosphere," with two 10-1 teams vying for the inside track to the NFC's No. 1 seed for the postseason. The freshness of that experience will certainly help take away some of the potential wide-eyedness amongst the younger players.
But there's more to a playoff-like foundation than just that in some of the Packers' backgrounds.
Take second-year linebacker A.J. Hawk. The 2006 first-round draft pick out of Ohio State played in the BCS National Championship game as a freshman with the Buckeyes. There's no brighter spotlight than that for a collegiate player, and Hawk is far more excited than nervous about taking the field again with so much on the line.
"It's great," said Hawk, whose Buckeyes beat Miami (Fla.) in a triple-overtime thriller to take the national title five years ago. "That's why you play football, to be in those types of games, and to be put on a stage like that.
"Especially in the playoffs, you win or go home, and we like that. We like how much is riding on this, and I think guys on each team, we thrive on situations like that. This is playoff football and this is what you play the whole regular season for."
Others experienced college games with BCS bowls on the line. Rookie safety Aaron Rouse played in the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game as a junior in 2005 at Virginia Tech, and rookie first-round draft pick Justin Harrell played for Tennessee in the Southeastern Conference championship against Auburn as a sophomore in 2004.
Granted, in college football when quality teams are headed to bowl games anyway, a conference title contest doesn't signal the end of the season for the loser, but it can feel that way.
Fullback Korey Hall described how most of his senior season at Boise State was like one playoff game after another. The unheralded Broncos knew they had to go undefeated in the regular season to even have a chance at a BCS bowl berth, so the games took on increased significance with each passing week.
"Just the fact that if you lose you're probably not going to be able to make it to the BCS, with the position we were in, there gets to be a lot of pressure built up in those games," Hall said. "We played intense all the time, and it just gets more exciting more fun, just the fact that there's so much on the line."
If there's one player who has experienced the closest approximation to the NFL playoffs, it's ironically the one from perhaps the smallest school.
Second-year defensive end and special teams ace Jason Hunter came from Appalachian State in Division I-AA, which (unlike Division I-A) actually has a playoff system to determine its champion.
As a senior for the Mountaineers in 2005, Hunter helped lead his team to four postseason wins to capture the I-AA national title. Not that there's any real comparison between Division I-AA football and the NFL, but strictly psychologically, Hunter can feel himself recapturing that playoff mentality as he prepares to play this week. And like Hawk, Hunter isn't daunted by it but eager to truly feel it again on the field.
"It just feels good," Hunter said. "It just makes your preparation, your details in preparation a little bit sharper. You're more focused. Actually you're just excited, because this is it, you have one game to accomplish what you want to accomplish, and if you don't then you're going home. That's the type of football you want to be in.
"When it's for all the marbles, it brings out a different person, and it's time for the great players to emerge."
Hunter noted that one of the key lessons he learned during Appalachian State's playoff run was to be ready for big shifts in momentum in postseason games, and not to over-react one way or the other.
He remembered that in his team's first-round game that year against an underdog Lafayette team, Appalachian State's fired-up opponent was riding the wave of a possible upset with the score tied early in the fourth quarter. But Hunter said the Mountaineers didn't get too caught up in the emotion, and eventually the defense got a key interception in the fourth quarter that turned the game around.
Then three weeks later, Appalachian State was down in the championship game against Northern Iowa, and when the Mountaineers turned the tide with a fourth-quarter fumble return for a touchdown -- by Hunter himself -- the defense stayed businesslike and made sure to preserve the victory down the stretch.
"Momentum is something most teams thrive off of, but you have to be able to be composed and take your time and get yourself back calm and get back to the thing you've been doing well, what's been working well for the whole year," Hunter said.
"Expect the unexpected, because it is the playoffs and everybody is going to be playing harder and faster, and you have to be ready for whatever happens, to be able to adjust to it."
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Handling those adjustments well is predicated on preparation that recognizes the sense of urgency but at the same time creates a comfort zone for the players.
Hawk, who played in the BCS Fiesta Bowl three times in four years at Ohio State, said players appreciate a coaching staff keeping practice as even-keel as possible when the stakes are highest, because any emotion that's needed will come naturally.
"I think we just tried to stay in our same routine (in college), and that's what we're doing here," Hawk said. "Obviously it's a big game for us, but we've done some good things to get here, and we're going to make sure we keep doing that. We're not going to change things. We're going to stay the same, be the same team, play our same game and prepare the same way, and that's how you have to approach it I think.
"Everyone understands the implications of this, but you can't make it to be bigger than it is."
In a similar vein, the Packers recognize their overall lack of playoff experience. But they aren't going to blow that out of proportion either.
"I don't think anybody gets here without playing in some big game, whether that's like a national championship or a Division 2 championship, something like that," Hall said. "It's on a certain scale, and everybody ends up playing in a big game somewhere throughout their career." |
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