The NFL regular season is over and what a season it was. For fans of the 20 teams eliminated, thoughts have already drifted to coaching changes, free agency and the draft.
Of the remaining 12 teams, five or six of them lay legitimate claims to being there on the final day in Arizona, the big dance.
The process of sorting out the respective conference championships begins this weekend, with the wildcard round. Some experts say that this will be a dull weekend but don’t buy it – these are all intriguing match ups.
Arizona Cardinals (11-5) @ Carolina Panthers (7-8-1) – Sunday 8.35am AEST
A bizarre situation of an 11-5 team travelling to a divisional champion with a losing record occurs this week. The Panthers have been the beneficiary of an inept division that has been the NFL South, winning their last four games to make the playoffs.
Despite this they will be favourite against the Cardinals, one of the hottest teams early in the season. Their offensive play has fallen away badly since losing quarterbacks Carson Palmer and Drew Stanton to injury, losing the last two games to drop behind Seattle in the NFL West.
Carolina will continue to ride their running game led by Jonathan Stewart for another week and set up an unlikely divisional round match up in Seattle.
Prediction: Carolina 23-10 Arizona
Baltimore Ravens (10-5-1) @ Pittsburgh Steelers (11-5) – Sunday 12.15pm AEST
It’s always a spicy match-up when these two divisional rivals meet and this will be no exception. The teams split their regular season series with the home team winning both times, the Ravens 26-6 in Week 2 and the Steelers 43-23 in Week 9.
In that Week 9 match Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown torched the Raven defence. These two will be vitally important to the home team, if star running back Le’Veon Bell does recover from a knee injury in time.
The Ravens running game has been off a little bit in recent weeks and they will need to rectify this to move on. The Ravens have a great recent playoffs history, winning the Super Bowl just two years ago.
The Steelers have gone 5-1 against other playoffs teams, while the Ravens have gone 1-5. The home field advantage and superior all-round offence will be enough for the men in black and gold to advance to a match-up in Denver in the divisional round.
Prediction: Pittsburgh 14-10 Baltimore
Cincinnati Bengals (10-5-1) @ Indianapolis Colts (11-5) – Monday 5.05am AEST
Andrew Luck took the Bengal defence for 344 yards in Week 7 when the Colts shut out Cincinnati 27-0 in Indianapolis, the place they will meet again this week.
The Bengals were in the middle of a mid-season slump at that time, while the Colts come into the playoffs off the back of an unconvincing win over the hapless Tennessee Titans and a 42-7 loss.
Much relies on Luck to drive the Colts, their running game is a complete non factor. Conversely the Bengals often win in spite of their much maligned quarterback Andy Dalton thanks to their running game led by Jeremy Hill and Giovani Bernard.
It’s just too hard to predict what Dalton will do. For that reason alone, the Colts will win. Assuming the Steelers win, the victor will earn the daunting trip to Foxboro to play the Patriots, a game either team is likely to make a competitive one.
Prediction: Indianapolis 42-24 Cincinnati
Detroit Lions (11-5) @ Dallas Cowboys (12-4) – Monday 8.40am AEST
Detroit head to Texas for just their second playoffs game this century (2011 the other appearance) with an offence full of weapons for quarterback Matthew Stafford to use, along with a defence that gave up the fewest points in the NFC (17.6 per game) for the season.
Dallas are riding high on the back of a four-game winning streak that took them to the NFC East crown. Tony Romo, DeMarco Murray and Dez Bryant have all had career best years and the defence has exceeded all expectations.
All four Cowboy losses have been at home, while the Lions were 4-4 on the road, including a loss in Green Bay last week 30-20 where they were really only competitive when Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was off the field with a strained calf.
All things point to this being the game of the week. There is often an upset or two on wildcard weekend and this could well be that.
Having said that, I’m tipping the Cowboys to sneak home and head off to the the frozen tundra at Green Bay in a weeks time.
Prediction: Dallas 28-27 Detroit
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