E-Mail This Article to a Friend Handicapping 2004’s Final Four in the NFL playoffs BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

So here we are. Four teams remain in contention for the Vince Lombardi Trophy that will be awarded sometime between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Sunday, February 1, at Houston’s Reliant Stadium. The NFL’s 32 teams played a total of 64 exhibition games and 256 regular-season games to get to where we are now, which is the tournament semifinals. The AFC’s top seed, the New England Patriots, toughed it out in Saturday’s six-degree weather to outlast the rugged Tennessee Titans, while the Indianapolis Colts exposed the Kansas City Chiefs for the defensive frauds that they were in a 38-31 shootout victory on the road on Sunday. Meanwhile, in the NFC, both games were decided in overtime. The underdog Carolina Panthers upset the cocky St. Louis Rams, 29-23, on the first play of the second OT. And the Philadelphia Eagles rallied from what appeared to be certain defeat to upend the Team of Destiny du jour, the Green Bay Packers, 20-17, to advance to their third-straight conference final.

In three weeks it will all be over, a new champion will be crowned, and New England sports fans will be faced with both an emotional letdown and the unappetizing prospect of concentrating on their other two winter-sports teams — at least until the Grapefruit League gets under way in March.

The Red Sox did their darnedest to take some of the attention away from the Patriots during their miraculous run to the AFC East title. Now, however, New England’s helmeted hulks stand front and center as the region’s top story, as the whole football world waits to see if the team can actually win two world championships in three seasons (after not even winning its first until 35 Super Bowls had been played). In North Carolina, even basketball is taking somewhat of a back seat to the stupendous run of the Panthers, a team that lost 15 straight games en route to a 1-15 season just two short years ago. In Indianapolis, another hard-core round-ball region is rallying behind the Colts as they make their bid to capture the state’s first-ever professional championship, and the Horseshoes’ first since the former Baltimore incarnation won Super Bowl V in 1971. And in Rocky-town, the country’s most ferocious fans are again hoping their Eagles will make it to the Big Game for the first time since 1981, although such a proposition would not have been remotely imaginable after the team’s 0-2 start this past season. Yo, Adrian, indeed.

Four teams, three games, to determine the number one. Here goes.

• Carolina at Philadelphia (Sunday, 6:45 p.m.): The Eagles, the NFC East champs, rebounded nicely from a 2-3 start to reel off nine straight victories before inexplicably losing to the 49ers in week 15, yet should be mildly surprised (and relieved) to have the opportunity to represent the conference in Houston. How the Packers managed to allow QB Donovan McNabb to convert a fourth-and-26 late in the game when all signs pointed to a Green Bay victory will be discussed long and hard in Titletown over the long, cold winter. Brett Favre’s heave toward the heavens that was intercepted by the Eagles in overtime will also be a tasty topic in the Spartan diners of America’s Dairyland, since it was Favre’s heroics that not only got the team a quick two-touchdown lead on Sunday, but also got the Pack into the playoffs in the first place when logic dictated it was Minnesota’s year. FOX Sports officials no doubt breathed a sigh of relief when the Eagles ultimately pulled out Sunday’s thriller, since the idea of a Packers-Panthers match-up was second only to a Seahawks-Panthers tilt on the God-help-us-bring-excitement-to-this-game interest scale. The Packers and the accompanying storybook tale of Favre’s late father are now out of the picture, and the Eagles — the Atlanta Braves of the NFL — are again in the hunt for a conference championship after losing to the Bucs and Rams in the past two NFC finals. The Eagles didn’t beat that many playoff-caliber teams during their late-season surge into contention. But they did beat Dallas and Miami back-to-back in December, have already beaten the Panthers once (25-16 in Charlotte on November 30), and will have the advantage of playing on their home field in front of their fanatical fans in the chilly gloaming on Sunday.

Yet it’s said that defense wins championships, and in this head-to-head, it’s the Panthers who have the superior D. Carolina is third overall in the NFC in total defense, while Philly is only 10th, although the Eagles are fourth-ranked against the pass, while the Cats are next to last. Still, the Eagles’ running game will be put to the test against Carolina’s fourth-ranked ground defense, and former number-one pick Julius Peppers will be hunting down the elusive McNabb all evening long. Offensively, the two teams are remarkably similar statistically, so the game will probably come down to turnovers (where the Eagles were plus-four this season versus the Panthers’ minus-five) and coaching, where Philly should have the edge based on experience and its recent history of success. And this may sound unfair, but isn’t it much easier to imagine the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl than the Carolina Panthers — a no-name team that will be a veritable stranger to any viewer outside the Tar Heel state? Still, the Eagles are lucky even to have reached this level given their performance on Sunday, and Carolina’s run has a whiff of fate and providence attached to it, despite the fact that the team had beaten only one over-.500 team the entire regular season. The Panthers could win this, but a Super Bowl title would seem to beyond their grasp, at least at this point.

• Indianapolis at New England (Sunday, 3 p.m.): What was that foreign feeling swirling in the frigid Foxborough air Saturday night? Could it have that long-forgotten element known as "doubt"? For New England fans along for the magical mystery tour that is the 2003-’04 season, it seemed momentarily possible that the euphoria of the 12-game winning streak would finally be snuffed out, with the Titans moving the ball seeming at will and tight end Daniel "The Iceman Droppeth" Graham doing all he could to sabotage the Patriots’ offensive juggernaut. Against a healthy Steve McNair, it’s very likely that New England would have lost this game. But the combination of the conditions, the home field, and the Pats’ bye week conspired against the lion-hearted Titans, and the inopportune penalties and dropped passes didn’t help the Tennessee cause. The Titans’ defense never really got to QB Tom Brady, but the same could be said for the Pats’ blitzers against the largely immobile McNair, although Tennessee’s running game (26 carries, 84 yards) was consistently stoned by New England’s third-ranked run defense. But it had been a while since Patriots fans had seen their secondary get picked apart as McNair was able to do, throwing for 210 yards in the arctic conditions (on 18-for-26 accuracy). For the Patriots’ fifth-rated overall defense, it will not get any easier with the arrival of the Colts’ Peyton Manning, who torched the visitors for four TDs, 34 points, and 278 yards passing in the thrilling 38-34 Patriot victory in the RCA Dome back on Nov. 30. Manning was so efficient in Sunday’s shoot-out with the Chiefs that the Colts did not have to punt once all day — the second-straight week that Hunter Smith got paid to do nothing. Against two pretty good teams in back-to-back weeks, Manning & Company have put up 79 points and moved the ball mercilessly at the expense of playoff-caliber competition. Sunday’s win was particularly impressive because it came against a rested team playing on its home turf in one of the most hostile environments in the entire league.

But again, if defense does indeed win championships, then Indianapolis will ultimately fall short, because their third-ranked offense is offset by an overall defense that is eighth in the conference and 12th in scoring defense (allowing 21 points per game). The Colts can take pride in their second-ranked defense against the pass, but this is a team that allowed two kickoffs to be returned for touchdowns during the regular season and another one on Sunday in KC. Indianapolis has not played a defense as tough as New England’s since it went to Nashville on December 7 and gutted out a 29-27 victory. In their two playoff victories, the Colts ran wild against a road-weary Broncos team that didn’t come to play, then followed that up with a veritable offensive stampede against the NFL’s 29th-ranked defense.

The Colts will be anxious for payback after the Patriots nearly derailed the team’s playoff hopes back in November, and meteorological conditions will be unlikely to affect the outcome for either team unless there’s significant snowfall. Indy knows that it lost that previous encounter by failing to convert a game-ending fourth-and-goal from the one-yard line, and believes that the talent-level discrepancy between the two teams is probably also measured in feet and not yards.

New England is admittedly red-hot, given its 13-game win streak, but Indianapolis has won nine of its last 12 and has the most balanced and feared offense of the remaining tournament teams. Still, the Colts have not beaten the Patriots in Foxborough since 1995. Indianapolis is a different team than the one that routinely met New England twice each season as a member of the AFC East, but when Bill Belichick does the game preparation, Indy rarely wins, especially on the road. The Colts also sustained some significant injuries against the Chiefs, and this weekend’s game will be Indy’s third road game in the last month. It’ll be a real challenge to maintain the emotional level at which they’ve been playing, and the Colts can’t deny that New England has already beaten them once already on their preferred surface, the artificial turf of the RCA Dome.

So what will happen? Look for a game decided by a field goal on the final possession of the game, and don’t be surprised if these two evenly matched teams fight it out in epic overtime as well. But based on the likely critical factors — defense, home field, experience, and health (both emotional and physical) — the 2001 Super Bowl champs have a slight edge.

In many ways, this will be the real Super Bowl XXXVIII, and frankly it could go either way. If you’re a Patriots fan, defeat remains a real, albeit distant, possibility. If you’re a Colts fan, history dictates that defeat looms as a very vivid scenario in spite of the optimism surrounding this team.

There’s a Super Bowl coming up, and one of these teams will have the horses to get to the big round-up in Houston.

Giddy-yap!

"Sporting Eye" runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com