Yes, it’s the playoffs. Here’s your slate for Super Wild Card Weekend:
Saturday
4:30 pm: 5 Las Vegas Raiders @ 4 Cincinnati Bengals (-6)
8:15 pm: 6 New England Patriots @ 3 Buffalo Bills (-4)
Sunday
1:00 pm: 7 Philadelphia Eagles @ 2 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-8.5)
4:30 pm: 6 San Francisco 49ers @ 3 Dallas Cowboys (-3)
8:15 pm: 7 Pittsburgh Steelers @ 2 Kansas City Chiefs (-12.5)
Monday
8:15 pm: 5 Arizona Cardinals @ 4 Los Angeles Rams (-4)
This will be the first Monday night playoff game ever, which is probably exactly how Martin Luther King Jr. always dreamed people would celebrate his holiday. The continuation of the Bills-Pats rivalry should be good, and I’m excited for the renewal of the 49ers-Cowboys rivalry. I’m picking the Niners as the only upset win.
Which games will be blowouts (besides the Steelers-Chiefs)? Which ones will come down to the wire? Let’s hear it.
I think the Raiders, Patriots, and 49ers are the wildcard teams with the best chance of beating the division winners. The Cardinals/Rams game might be close, but I think the Rams are a better team.
Raiders - Bengals could be close. Cowboys have looked really good the last few weeks, admittedly against lesser teams. But I think they’ll handle SF without difficulty.
I’m not sure why, but I’ve decided to root for the Eagles, so hoping for an upset against TB.
Eagles are doing it AGAIN, baaaaby! Brady doesn’t have Godwin and Fournette, two of his favorites. I’m sure he’s already got their backups in line. OTOH, you can never tell what Jalen Hurts is up to. So we’ll see.
We won’t make the SB, but it’d be great to take out the GOAT and Gronk for everyone else.
I couldn’t pick the winner this year even if I knew the teams. Totally varied and I love it. Great season all around.
I assume Cards-Rams being Monday Night means it’s MNF on ESPN, which sucks because I don’t have ESPN and I’d like to watch that one, but not enough to be bothered to do a Sling trial or whatever.
I hadn’t watched the Bengals this year, but am enjoying this game. The Bengals have an exciting offense. If they can draft a few good offensive linemen this year, they’ll have a great team for the next several years.
On a side note, is it just me, or are some of the announcers, especially the ones in the studio, calling them the Bangles?
I know it exists in baseball, but is there such a thing in professional football as “playing the rest of the game under protest”? If the Raiders lose by a touchdown, they’ve got a strong case that they were screwed.
Not as far as I know. On rare occasions, the league’s head of officiating may, upon review of a play (and how it was officiated) after a game, issue a statement that it was not officiated correctly, but I’ve never seen a situation in which the league changed the outcome of a play, much less a game, due to such an error.
Reversing the result of a play due to a blown call is what replay reviews during the game are for, but (a) such reviews aren’t applicable to every situation (the rules on replay reviews are strict on what can and cannot be reviewed/reversed), and (b) sometimes the replay review still doesn’t seem to get it right.
What did I miss? Certainly not the Bengals touchdown that was a real-life touchdown? I have no sympathy if the Raiders are bitching that a mistake by a ref (an inadvertent whistle) means an actual touchdown shouldn’t be a touchdown. They gave up a TD, it was TD, and trying to rely on a technicality to wipe out that TD is just whiny, manufactured controversy.
Enraged, Browns fans began throwing objects onto the field, mainly beer bottles. A few especially rowdy fans began throwing the stadium’s trash cans down to the field. After a few minutes, the officials announced that the game would end 48 seconds early and the officials and players exited the field. However, the league office called, telling them to finish the game. The teams and officials came back onto the field and, after two quarterback kneels by the Jaguars, the game was over, 15–10.
Imagine the outcry if the refs negated a clear touchdown because one of them fucked up in a way that had no effect on the play whatsoever. Avoiding a great injustice by not stupidly enforcing a technicality is not a bad thing.
Whining that you could have had a tie if only the refs fucked up in your favor, however, is.
, Niners, Rams and Chiefs. For fun, not money. 