It’s the time of the season for the wild card windstorm, teams with a hope and a prayer wishing for favors to just get them into the playoffs. Like every year, circumstances of all kinds have popped up this season to take teams that shoulda, coulda, woulda looked like division champs stumble. Chicago, can I buy you a quarterback? Detroit, can I buy you some anger management classes? San Diego….yeah well, you know where I’m going with that one.
The crazy thing about this part of the season is that the teams that should turn it up seldom do and the teams that should put a fork in it and pray for draft day usually play spoiler. And there’s a certain amount of certain-tude in that; the NFL is about parity. On any given day, any given team can beat another.
This season has really pushed the question: why the heck didn’t this team beat this other team? But now, now it gets to be crazy pants, what I like to call the “Wild Card Willies.” Yeah, I’d like to pick the Pats over Redskins, no question….BUT the Pats have a bad record against the ‘Skins. I’d like to pick the Jets to clobber an undermined Chiefs…BUT the Chiefs have retooled so many times this season, they might be pointing at Joe Cool in the stands to come play.
It’s a flurry of Wild Card Willie games today where anything can happen but a few things seem clear: The Packers seem poised to be perfect and Tebow seems poised to eek into the playoffs. One because the team is that good and the other, because other teams are that bad.
What it boils down to is some “Who the Hell Knows?!” games which make it awfully exciting just to savor the season.
You hear that NBA? You may want to take note.
The Picks
Steelers over Browns WIN
Falcons over Panthers
Lions over Viks
Packers over Raiders
Bucs over Jags
Dolphins over Eagles
Pats over Redskins
Saints over Titans
Ravens over Colts
Chiefs over Jets
Texans over Bengals
49ers over Cardinals
Bears over Broncos
Chargers over Bills
Giants over Cowboys
Monday Nite
Seahawks over Rams in the what else is going on that evening on TV? night. Score? Really. Who cares?
Fantasy Island
I’m hovering in the middle of the pack after a big win last week bolstered by top notch Chargers play by Gates and Rivers. It makes one wistful for what coulda been if Kaeding going down on the first play of the first game hadn’t been so predictive of the rest of the Chargers season. The margin of success? 0.68 points.
This week, I’m up against another of the league’s heavyweights and it will again come down to Rivers-Gates to try and afford me another win.
Thinking of Playoff Challenge? Yeah, maybe. Got to get through the holidays first!