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Kar-ma
(kär’ma)
n.
1. The total effect of a person’s actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person’s existence, regarded as determining the person’s destiny.
2. Fate; destiny.

As you may or may not have noticed, for the most part, the NFL articles on Monkeyinmymind are not about X’s and O’s.  Our observations here are only tangentally concerned about gameplans, playcalling, or locker room cliches.   Instead, we are more focused on the transcendent cultural and verily, mythological aspects of this modern-day incarnation of gladiatorial stuggle.

In this light, looking at the eight playoff teams remaining in contention for the NFL Superbowl Championship, the Monkey and I considered some the karmic implications of  the journey ahead for several players and teams, and thought we’d share our observations here.

The Arizona Cardinals, Kurt Warner, and the Greatest Show on Turf Version 2.0

Kurt Warner, the one-time league and Superbowl MVP, joins what will likely be his last team, the Arizona Cardinals, after being cut from the Rams, signed by the Giants and then benched in New York in favor of young Eli Manning.  His last chance to be a NFL starting quarterback begins to slip away in Arizona thanks to poor play, and Warner is benched again in favor of another highly-touted young draft pick, this time former USC star Matt Leinart. After a few seasons of ocscillating back and forth between the bench and the starting lineup, he finally wrestles the mantle of the starter from Leinart during open competition before the 2008 season, and aided by a corps of superhuman wide receivers, returns his new franchise to relevance.

 Warner helps his team capture a division championship, 10 wins and counting, and a home playoff victory, something this franchise hasn’t accomplished in like half a century. All this after leading the St. Louis Rams to a pair of Superbowls nearly a decade ago.

When Warner led the Rams to Superbowl glory in 2000 (against the Tennesse Titans, in one of the greatest Superbowl games ever), his story was already stuff of legend.  An undrafted free agent, Warner had to cut his teeth in the Arena League and NFL Europe before finally landing in St. Louis to back up starter Trent Green.  If Green hadn’t gone down in a preseason game prior to the 1999 season, the sporting world would likely have never known the Greatest Show on Turf, or the statistical heroics of Kurt Warner, who, should he “complete the circle” in this his 14th professional season and deliver a Superbowl title to the lowly Arizona Cardinals, could go down as one of the game’s greatest quarterbacks.

Interesting plotlines: Should the Cardinals weather the storm in Carolina this weekend and the Eagles fall to the Giants, Warner would face the young quarterback he once mentored and to whom he lost his starting job, Eli Manning, in the NFC Championship game.  Each starting quarterback has already won a title, so the Football Gods might favor Warner putting an exclamation point on his unlikely career with a victory over his old team and a third chance at a Superbowl championship.  And should Warner manage to make it to the big game, it would be sweetly karmic for him to once again face the Tennessee Titans, the team he defeated 9 years ago by a matter of inches.

The Titans of Tennessee, Jeff Fisher, and his Quarterback

Speaking of the Tennessee Titans, perhaps no head coach in the AFC “deserves” another shot at an NFL title more than Titans Coach Jeff Fisher.  Fisher, the game’s most tenured coach, is emblematic of what an NFL coach should be: steady, effective, humble, and aggressive.  The Football Gods smile upon steady tenacity and would like to not only reward Coach Fisher with another shot at the title, but would also like to honor Titans’ ownership for sticking with their guy over the years and not giving into the “revolving door” syndrome pandemic in the league, whereby frazzled owners constantly hire and fire head coaches in desperate attempts to wrestle up interest and enthusiasm for struggling franchise, at the expense of consistency and a master strategic plan.

Outside of Jeff Fisher, the Football Gods may also show interest in the karmic journey of another grizzled quarterback.  On the path to the Superbowl, the Titans, led by veteran QB Kerry Collins, will have to face the surging Baltimore Ravens, the team that annhiliated Collins and his former team, the New York Giants, 34-7 in the 2001 Superbowl.  Could the Football Gods favor the possibility of Collins redeeming himself against the team that handed him one of the most painful losses of his career?  Now that Collins has a decade of sobriety under his belt and the tools of mental discipline and self-care that accompany such a program of recovery, the Kerry Collins of 2009 and the Kerry Collins of yesteryear are like night and day. 

Now Collins is sober, seasoned, and focused, and like Warner, has taken the starting reigns from a young, highly touted first round draft pick, Vince Young (who ironically faced and defeated Warner’s backup Matt Leinart in one of the most exciting college football games in recent memory).   That Collins is now in a position (leading the #1 seed in the AFC)  that no one with any semblance of a football mind could have predicted prior to the 2008 season, might be an indication of the Football Gods at play to arrange his opportunity to complete his own Karmic Football circle.

Interesting Plotlines:  Should the Titans survive the Divisional and Championship rounds of the AFC Playoffs, either of the two top seeds in the NFC (Giants and Panthers) would be worthy opponents, as these contests would be opportunities for Collins to put the past behind him in facing the team who used their first-ever draft pick on him in 1995 and then later banished him after poor play and even worse off-field behavior (the Panthers) or in facing the team for whom he failed to deliver the title once before (the Giants). 

Donovan McNabb and His Adoring Fans

It is appropriate that Donovan McNabb, one of the modern game’s most accomplished “athletic” quarterbacks (a moniker he incidentally despises), plays for the same team that also started another fabulously gifted “athletic” quarterback, Randall Cunningham.  While the Philadelphia Eagles have fielded numerous competitive teams over the years and have always been a feared opponent on any team’s schedule, they have never enjoyed a Superbowl Championship and might just be “due” for one.  

Finishing the regular season at 9-6-1, it’s already implausible that this team has advanced as far as they have into the playoffs, and they just very well might be this season’s 2007 New York Giants.  Is the implausibility of their ascent evidence of the Football Gods at play?  Well, only other-wordly forces at work could explain their rebirth after being left for dead in Cincinnati and the unlikely scenarios that had to play out perfectly in their favor (Tampa and Chicago losses along with the Cowboys complete self-destruction) with respect to the NFC Wild Card race? 

And if the Eagles of 2008 are the Giants of 2007, then who is the Eagles potential Superbowl foe, because there’s certainly no opponent as daunting or treacherous as last year’s New England Patriots, arguably one of the greatest teams in the history of the NFL?

Well, there’s nothing that the Football Gods revel in more than a good old redemption story.  Instead of facing down Goliath, like Manning faced down Brady and the Pats, Donovan McNabb will face down an entirely different foe should he make it all the way to the big game: the Philadelphia fans.  

While charismatic and supremely talented, Donovan has been embattled for much of his career in the City of Brotherly Love.  Granted, his play of late had been rather erratic, so much so that Head Coach Andy Reid benched the Pro Bowler during a particularly ugly loss to Baltimore nearly two months ago.  Since his benching, however, Donovan has led his team to a 5-1 mark and has transformed his club into one of the most feared playoff opponents in the National Football Conference.  While criticized at the time for yanking his star in an effort to “create a spark,” it now looks like Coach Reid is the Mastermind who did just that. 

While leading his team back into the ranks of the NFL elite, there is no doubt that McNabb is savoring the opportunity to display to his on-again/off-again fan base just how hard to come by a franchise quarterback is. 

Interesting Plotlines:   From a karmic perspective, the most fitting foe for McNabb and the Eagles to face in the Superbowl would be the Baltimore Ravens, as it was obviously against this team in a losing effort that McNabb was benched.  Only Karmic Football could explain how an event that at the time may have been one of the lowest points of his career could have sparked this most unlikely ascension.  It would only make sense that Donovan would complete the circle of his karmic journey leading his battle-hardened, hardly perfect, 12-6-1 club against the team that in another lifetime, might have brought about the end of his career in Philadelphia.

Lil’ Eli

Two thoughts about Eli Manning’s Football Karma: 

1) What could be a better matchup of “what could have been” than a San Diego Charger-New York Giant Superbowl?  Famously traded for one another following the 2004 NFL Draft, quarterbacks Eli Manning and Philip Rivers are now two of the games brightest young stars at the quarterback position.  While a potential Chargers/Giants scrum might lose a bit of its luster given the fact that Eli already won a championship last season and has proven his worth to the Giants, there is no doubt that seeing these two young quarterbacks lead their teams against one another would be an intriguing intersection of the collective karmic destinies of these two players and their respective franchises.  The only reason I believe the Football Gods might favor Little Eli in a matchup against Rivers and the Chargers is because while swagger is an essential component of success on the fields of friendly strife, the Gods smile upon humility and quiet professionalism, two attributes that hot-headed Philip Rivers doesn’t seem to embody.

2) After living his entire life in the shadow of his famous father and even more famous and accomplished brother, who would have thought that little Eli might actually go down in history as the best of all of the Mannings, at least in terms of accomplishments on the field?  If Superbowl rings are a measure of a quarterback’s excellence and legacy, then Eli has already matched his older brother’s feats and is poised to surpass his accomplishments as the odds-on favorite to win the big one yet again in this year’s Superbowl.  While Peyton’s days certainly aren’t over in the NFL, there is no doubt that Eli achieved Superbowl success earlier in his career than his brother and has perhaps another decade of his professional career still ahead of him, while Peyton may have only 4 or 5 healthy years yet to play.  Only the passage of time will reveal how history views Eli’s career, but there is a distinct possibility that one of the game’s greatest quarterbacks of all time (Peyton Manning) might end up playing second fiddle to his kid brother.

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