New England won 2-0 Saturday night. Washington won 3-1. On Sunday, Carolina won a blowout 5-0, while Pittsburgh won a close one 2-0. 

No, this isn't Major League Soccer. And those weren't the actual scores of this weekend's NFL playoff games. But if you listened to the folks on TV, you'd think they were. These numbers represent what most pundits believe to be the most important aspect of playoff football: turnovers.

Win the turnover battle and you win the game. That's what you hear on the pregame shows, during the games, and in the post-game wrap-ups. Former players spout the phrase right along with their non-playing counterparts.

And while the sheer numbers bear this out (teams winning the turnover battle win more than 75% of the time), it's almost akin to saying that whoever scores the most points wins. Of course it's true, but how teams scored and why is what we want to hear.

Let's take a closer look at what actually happened in this weekend's games. The Patriots led 7-0 before the Jaguars fumbled on the 37-yard line. 3 plays later the Patriots punted (no harm on that turnover). They were up 21-3 in the 4th quarter when Asante Samuel returned a Byron Leftwich pass back for a touchdown. That interception was an exclamation point on this game, not the reason for the win. The Patriots were going to win no matter how many turnovers they forced.

The Carolina Panthers trounced the Giants 23-0 on Sunday. Long before Eli Manning threw 3 interceptions and fumbled once, the Panthers were dominating the Giants in every phase of the game. Sure, a turnover on a punt just before halftime led to 3 Carolina points. But there was no way the Giants were winning this game-turnovers or no turnovers.

It was 28-17 Pittsburgh (and the Steelers were stopping the Bengals every time they had the ball) early in the 4th quarter before Jon Kitna's interception represented the first turnover of the game.

The only game of the weekend in which turnovers played a major role was in the Washington-Tampa Bay game. LaVar Arrington returned an interception to the 6-yard line. One play later Clinton Portis was in the end zone. Just over four minutes later, the Redskins forced a fumble, and Sean Taylor returned it 51 yards for a touchdown. The 'Skins scored 14 points off two turnovers. Since they would total a paltry 120 yards of offense for the entire game (the worst ever for a winning playoff team), without these two turnovers, Tampa Bay would be moving on in the playoffs, not Washington.

That's only one out of four games in which turnovers were actually the key plays of the game. Yet everyone on TV fell back on the old reliable clich