Five for five posting in 2020, although I’m cutting it close.

I’ve been back in Russell for about 11 hours. No problems checking out of my hotel or the drive home from Kansas City.

I got home to see the Saints lose in overtime to the Vikings. New Orleans looked terrible and probably deserved to lose. Minnesota now goes to San Francisco Saturday. Ironically, the Vikings will be playing 50 years to the day after they lost Super Bowl IV to the Chiefs in New Orleans. Super Bowl IV was Joe Kapp’s last game with Minnesota; could it be Kirk Cousins’ last with the team?

The Seahawks defeated the Eagles, or at least what was left of the Eagles, in the other NFC playoff game today, sending Seattle to Green Bay in a week.

New England didn’t complete the comeback I thought it would. I don’t think Tom Brady is going anywhere.

It’s Titans-Ravens (Saturday) and Texans-Chiefs (Sunday) in the AFC playoffs. Kansas City fans were really rooting for the Bills, since Houston won at Arrowhead in October. Chiefs fans fear DeShawn Watson, who was drafted one spot after Patrick Mahomes in 2017 and pissed off Bruce Arians, who was hoping to get one or the other to replace Carson Palmer in Arizona. It took the Cardinals blowing their 2018 first round pick on Josh Rosen and going 3-13 under Steve Wilks, one of the worst NFL head coaches ever, to earn the right to draft Kyler Murray, who looks like he may work out in Arizona.

Just how stupid are the Bears, who not only picked Mitchell Trubisky instead of either AND traded an extra draft pick to the 49ers just to move up one spot? San Francisco didn’t draft either, which proved the Bears made a bad decision. Of course, it wouldn’t be the Bears without a bad quarterback, which has been their tradition since Sid Luckman retired in 1951. Ever heard of Billy Wade, Jack Concannon, Kent Nix, Gary Huff, Bob Avellini, Steve Fuller, Shane Matthews, Jim Miller, Henry Burris, Caleb Hanie, Chad Hutchinson, Craig Krenzel, Peter Tom Willis, Will Furrer, Rusty Lisch and Rudy Bukich? They all have been starting quarterbacks for the Bears over the last 60 years.

The 49ers traded for Jimmy Garoppolo, and after a 2018 season lost to injury, looks like he will fill the bill. San Francisco needs stability there after the Kaepernick mess.

There were some very eerie similarities between today’s Saints-Vikings playoff game to the one the teams played after the 1987 season, which happened to be New Orleans’ first postseason game. I’ll explain tomorrow.

Enjoy the first full work week of 2020.