The start of the playoffs is a bittersweet time. We’ve a month of excellent football drama to look forward to, but we’re on the verge of losing football from our lives for eight months – just 11 games left.
Anyway, fun fact about this weekend’s games: all of the away teams are favored – or, to put it another way, all of the division winners are underdogs.
Saturday
4:30 PM (ET); Atlanta (-1) @ Arizona
8:00 PM; Indianapolis (-1) @ San Diego
Sunday
1:00 PM; Baltimore (-3) @ Miami
4:00 PM; Philadelphia (-3) @ Minnesota
I’d bet the farm on Philly. The only home team I think will win is San Diego, and even that’s a big “maybe.”
I think the Cardinals beat Atlanta. Chargers beat the Colts, Miami beats the Ravens and the Eagles beat the Vikings.
I’ll take the veteran Kurt Warner over rookie Matt Ryan any day. That’s also why I took the Dolphins. Flacco has been good, but the run is over for this year for the Ravens. I’m also picking the Eagles because of QB. In the playoffs, I like a veteran.
Chargers/Colts was the toughest to pick. The Colts have been on a hot streak, but a lot of those wins came against lousy teams. The Chargers seem to have woken up at the right time and since they’re at home, I"ll take them.
Every road team is favorited. That has got to be a first. I’m leaning towards all the road teams. If I had a pick a home team I’d probably go with Zona
Philly over Minnesota: I’m not at all sold on Philly, but no way Tarvaris Jackson leads Minny to victory.
Indy over San Diego: If the Chargers couldn’t make it to the Super Bowl with LT in his prime, there’s no way they’re going anywhere when he looks washed up and they’ve still got Norv Turner as their head coach.
Miami over Baltimore: I expect Miami and Baltimore to be a tough defensive battle with plenty of fun trick plays mixed in.
Atlanta over Arizona: Arizona doesn’t deserve to be in the playoffs.
Most interesting wild card subplot for me is whether Flacco and Ryan can continue their solid play.
As a Colts fan, I’m REALLY nervous about this game. As I understand things, Bob Sanders will be back and Peyton and co on offense have looked reasonably good recently (save the Cleveland game) so I know they CAN win but damn San Diego is a good 8-8 team. It’s also a bit tough for me to forget the first 7 games of the season for the Colts. Still, I’ve got to go with my team…Colts in a close one.
As for the others:
Atlanta/Arizona - Turner runs the Hawks past Arizona and the Hawks win by 10 or 15
Eagles/Vikings - I don’t know what to make of Minnisota. I’m still not convinced Westbrook is his old self so I don’t expect the Eagles to be able to run (despite Williams being out). I fully expect Peterson to be amped for this game, he seems like the type. I say he’s the ex factor and the Vikings win a close one
Miami/Baltimore - Beats me. The thing about Miami is that they don’t turn the ball over all that much and that will probably bode well playing against a team like Baltimore and their D. If Ed Reed doesn’t get the ball, Miami wins a close one.
I expect this’ll be a pretty good weekend overall. The Colts looked terrible so this offseason is really just gravy as I didn’t even expect them in the playoffs after their struggles early (their defense was atrocious, I figured they’d end the season looking more like Denver). All that makes their San Diego game a LITTLE easier to watch.
There is no doubt about it, the Cards had a rough stretch at the end of the year. Still, that schedule was brutal. Play the Super Bowl Champs on Sunday, then fly to the East Coast to play Philly in a Thursday night game. The New England snow game was a debacle and there is no doubt the Cards live and die by the pass. We need to get Anquan Boldin back.
But, we did run the ball against Seattle and the Edge had a 100 yard game. The Cards are 6-2 at home and I think that might be a bit much for Atlanta.
These games all seem impossible to pick with any certainty. All of the games seem fairly evenly matched, but any of the 8 teams could win in a blowout and it wouldn’t be too surprising.
I think the Ravens are going to be a much tougher out than some of you think. Miami has been pretty solid, but they aren’t the type of offense that can deal with the kind of defensive pressure that Baltimore excells at.
So I pick Ravens, Colts, Falcons and Eagles. I also find it unlikely that any of these teams aside from the Colts will advance past the divisional round against the likes of the Steelers (gag!), Panthers, Giants and Titans.
I’m picking a brother versus brother Superbowl this year. That would be kind of interesting.
Yeah, all they do is throw half an ocotpus onto the field.
I’m going with San Diego, Philly, Miami and Atlanta.
Frankly, the toughest one to predice is that Philly/Minnesota game. You don’t know which version or either of those teams is gonna show up any weekend.
You know what the Giants could use? A gimme. If both Minnesota and Arizona win, the Cardinals travel to New York for the Divisional Round, and in the playoffs that counts as a gimme.
On the other hand, if Philly beats Minnesota, then we get a heart-attack rubber game at the Meadowlands. God the Eagles are scary.
I think a lot of people are expecting Philadelphia to run over Minnesota like a Humvee over a crippled squirrel. Maybe part of that comes from Philly’s thumping of Dallas, but honestly Dallas just seemed to give up and totally implode in that game. I think if, somehow, Philly would have switched places with Detroit in the second quarter, it still would have been a blowout loss for Dallas.
McNabb is past his peak. I think (especially if Pat Williams is ready to play) that Jared Allen gets McNabb at least twice this game, and makes him rush more often than not.
For Minnesota, Jackson is actually less of a question mark for me than Peterson’s ability to just hang onto the damn ball. There’s no question that Jackson is a more mobile quarterback than Ferrotte, able to elude tacklers and still make some plays, and he’s shown some marked improvement over his early games this season in terms of decision making. Special teams have been horrible for the most part for the Vikes but they played better recently. But Peterson and those fumbles…! Doesn’t matter if he rushes for 300 yards; if he fumbles on the 1 every time, it’s all for naught. Someone teach him how to protect the ball, and he could be one of the greatest of all time. Otherwise, he breaks your heart with those turnovers. I think that’ll be the difference in this game; if Peterson starts coughing the ball up, Philly wins. If not, I think that Minnesota wins, 20-17.
