Art of the payback: Wild-card week features 3 rematches of regular-season finales

New week, same teams gives playoffs familiar feel

The most interesting question heading into the wild-card weekend was how much contempt familiarity would breed.

Only nine times in the 20 years since the NFL adopted the current playoff system had the same teams faced off to end the regular season, then met a week later to open the wild-card round. Three of the four games kicking off this postseason, however, fit that bill — the lone exception is Baltimore at New England — providing a referendum of sorts on the art of the payback.

Because they had only so much to gain, the Bengals, Eagles and Cardinals benched key players and-or employed the most basic game plans last weekend and got pounded by the Jets, Cowboys and Packers, respectively. Blowouts lend themselves to bruised feelings and trash-talking just about any time, but rarely more than when the calendar matches the same two teams a week later with postseason survival on the line.

“It’s hard to sit there for the game and do that,” Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt said earlier in the week, still smarting after Arizona was embarrassed by Green Bay 33-7.

“There’s always some things you would like to pull out and use, but then again you certainly want to save them. I don’t want to make excuses. We obviously need to play better than we did.”

Teams resting their starters has been a touchy subject this NFL season since the Colts, 14-0 at the time, benched Peyton Manning and most of the regulars at intermission and wound up losing to the Jets. After hearing from fans angered by their teams relying heavily on second-stringers, commissioner Roger Goodell promised to explore ways to persuade teams to play their front-liners longer, even in meaningless games.

Past results don’t provide a definitive answer about whether resting starters in the first of back-to-back games against a playoff opponent is a smart move, and Whisenhunt wound up with the worst of both worlds. He benched quarterback Kurt Warner early on against Green Bay, but for different reasons, let receivers Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin, as well as a few important defenders, play longer. As a result, as many as five starters could be limited by injuries when the Cards play host to the Packers on Sunday.

“I think we’ve learned that if you’re going to have a chance to be successful in this league you’re going to have to have guys step up and play when other guys can’t go,” Whisenhunt said, trying to make the best of a tough situation.”

Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy, on the other hand, has been roundly praised for sticking with his starters deep into the regular-season finale, saying he didn’t want to risk losing momentum — Green Bay wound up winning seven of its last eight — or pass up an opportunity to provide additional schooling to his still-young squad. Then again, luck might be the only reason his team came out of the game relatively free of nicks.

Those tactics haven’t endeared him to Whisenhunt, going back to the exhibition season, when McCarthy also elected to leave the first string in longer than customary and rolled to a 38-10 halftime lead.

At this point, many coaches would play the “disrespect” card for all it’s worth. And to be sure, Whisenhunt did just that a season ago, when he guided a team that few outside Arizona thought even deserved to make the playoffs within a few plays of upsetting the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl. But he’s also a coach who understands the dynamic of a team changing from year to year.

Whisenhunt made his chops as an assistant under Bill Cowher with those same Steelers, and toughening up the Cardinals was one of his first priorities after taking over as head coach in 2007. Players still talk about how in 2008, coming off a bad loss to the Patriots, Whisenhunt made them practice in full pads on Christmas in a cold, miserable rain as a character-builder.

This year, though, Whisenhunt was as generous with days off as any coach in the league, reflecting his judgment about the squad’s increased professionalism, but also recognizing that because the Cards had the earliest bye week in the NFL, they were going to play a long stretch of games without a break. And that was before last Sunday provided the opportunity for yet another day off.

“We stuck with our plan, what we intended to do,” Whisenhunt said. “That’s difficult, especially when the score got the way it did. Hopefully, that will help us this week.

“Ultimately,” he added, “that’s what the most important thing is.”

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org