NFL Divisional Round Playoffs Predictions

Well Tennessee sure showed me, huh? Not really, the Chiefs are just chokers. Other than the TN/KC game for the title of being knocked out by New England, my bracket is still intact so let's go over the Divisional round matchups. I do actually have one revision from last week, which we'll get into.

5) Tennessee (10-7) at 1) New England (13-3)

I will eat something strange if New England loses this game. Despite New England's sketchy defense as of late, the Titans are not well positioned enough to take advantage of it, with Marcus Mariota at quarterback and a lack of consistently dangerous weapons at receiver. I fully expect old man Brady to pick the Titans' weak pass D apart and New England to coast to the AFC championship on his back.

Prediction: 31-14 New England

3) Jacksonville (11-6) at 2) Pittsburgh (13-3)

While Pittsburgh unquestionably has the much better team on paper, they are notorious for playing down to their competition and I expect this to be closer than it should be. Despite Jacksonville's front 7 clashing against Brown and Big Ben (Wednesdays at 9:30 on CBS) being the marquee matchup in the game, I'm really looking forward to seeing how Pittsburgh tries to contain Leonard Fournette. With Blake Bortles' suboptimal performance in the Wild Card round, expect the Steelers to blitz early and often, and a healthy amount of easy checkdown passes from Bortles in response. It will be largely on the Steelers'  linebacking corps to combat this flood of up the middle runs and short passes to the outside, and I expect them to contain it  relatively well. In classic Pittsburgh fashion, I expect them to play poorly for 2 and a half quarters then turn on the jets and win fairly handily. God the AFC sucks.

Prediction: 23-13 Pittsburgh

6) Atlanta (11-6) at 1) Philadelphia (13-3)

The Falcons look really good, and the Eagles have looked significantly less good since the injury of their Messiah. Nick Foles is one of the better backups in the league, and I expect a decent performance from him, but Matt Ryan has capable weapons in Julio Jones, Mohammed Sanu, and Davonta Freeman. It will be on the Eagles' secondary to contain them and  keep Foles in the game, but that is a fairly tall order against a team of veterans getting hot at the right time. The Falcons D has proven their mettle the last couple weeks, and they should be able to hold the Eagles' fairly inexperienced offense led by a backup out to prove himself. This game will be close, but in the end without their field general the Eagles' don't quite have the tools or leadership to pull it out.

Prediction: 27-23 Atlanta

4) New Orleans (12-5) at 2) Minnesota (13-3)

This is the matchup I'm most looking forward to this weekend, with two well rounded teams squaring up for a showdown at the Super Bowl venue. While New Orleans does have Drew Brees, and he is still great, this is a different team that plays hard nosed football up front with a stout defense and two running backs capable of carrying a game on their combined backs in Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara. Minnesota was a bit of a surprise this season, with Case Keenum rising to the occasion of a starting role, and with the help of breakout receiver Adam Thielen, has proven himself as a competent NFL quarterback. However, Minnesota's identity of rooted in it's defense, specifically it's linebacking, which was one of the best in the league this season. I expect this to be a scrappy game with whoever can convert a two minute drill at the end of the game to pull it out. While Case Keenum has had a good season, it's very difficult to compete with Drew Brees in the clutch, and for that reason I give New Orleans a slight advantage. Despite that, this game could easily go either way, and I think the winner of this game is likely the winner of the NFC.

Prediction: 34-31 New Orleans

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TF2 Map Analysis Part 1: Why do so many people play 2fort?

Image
I was playing a TF2 pub the other day and since the new (by new I mean a year and a half old) casual mode implementation, I've experienced joining a Badwater server, only for the match to immediately end and everyone voting to switch the map to 2fort pretty often. Obviously, I leave the server, because 2fort is a bad map, but it got me thinking, why exactly is 2fort a bad map? Why do people still play 2fort when it sucks wieners? What makes other disliked maps like cp_standin and tc_hydro so disliked? What makes very well liked maps like pl_upward and koth_viaduct so beloved? Why do I keep formatting my paragraphs this way? Well in this multi-part series we'll find out. This is a chart of all the maps in the casual map pool and their percentage of play out of all the casual games from March 2017, and is a good enough sample size for us to do some analysis on. I'd like to preface this by saying that I've tried mapping before, and it is really freaking hard. I have mas...
Read more

Rivals of Ixalan Limited Set Review: Red

Image
Welcome back friends. 0.0 bad, 5.0 good. White Blue Black Rating: 0.5 This card cantripping makes it marginally better, but it is almost textless against most decks. I wouldn't play this except against a deck with a bomb flip card that your deck can't beat otherwise. Rating: 3.5 And here we have part 4 in the cycle of "boring, efficient common removal." It kills what you need to kill in the mid game at instant speed for as cheap as you're going to get in limited.  Rating: 0.5 If you can afford to take 7 mana to not affect the board, you're probably already winning the game, in which case having double mana the next turn is not very helpful, especially when compared to the beaters you could be playing at this mana cost. I would not want this effect in almost any deck. Rating: 3.0 This is a solid card in any deck, a Hill Giant with some acceleration and fixing that ...
Read more

Mountain Dew Ice Tier List Update (January 2018)

Image
Mountain Dew Ice Tier List Update Mountain Dew just released their latest flavor onto store shelves, a lemon/lime flavor called Mountain Dew Ice. Let's talk about it. Here is the tier list as of November 2017 with the release of Mountain Dew Holiday Brew: Baja Blast, still hanging onto relevancy by being sold at Taco Bell, leads the pack, followed by the seasonal DEW-S-A which has since been taken off of store shelves. The limited run Middle Earth Shadow of War Game Fuel flavors have also been discontinued. This leaves the current tier list, including the new Mountain Dew Ice, as: Mountain Dew Ice was a flavor I was heavily anticipating, looking forward to how well the Dewologists could brew a twist on the ever popular Lemon-Lime Soda. Right off the bat, the soda looks incredibly refreshing. The label and bottle designers did a great job complementing the transparent color of the beverage to invoke a sense of thirst in all but the most hydrated of consumers. However, o...
Read more