Every Saturday morning, I'll take a quick look at all the week's games, offering my own brief take on what I think will happen, as well as touching on significant injury news since our Weekly came out. I'll check in over the course of the day to answer questions, too.
What follows is a brief look at all the games with how I'd react in my own lineups to injury developments or other news. The official rankings are the ones in the Weekly. Those take precedence. But sometimes players are very close, and in those cases I'm glad to offer opinions on how I'd approach those situations. Sometimes I like certain players more or less than Ian, and sometimes I have different risk tolerance with injuries etc.
"Super Wild Card Weekend"? Is that really necessary? Yes, we have six games now rather than four. It's still Wild Card Weekend. There's no other Wild Card Weekend in existence that makes it necessary to distinguish. Is it more exciting if we say Super? It shouldn't be. It's Wild Card Weekend. That's enough, NFL.
Seahawks at 49ers: Every playoffs there's one game that everyone gets totally wrong. And maybe it will be this one, with sloppy weather conditions (lots of rain) and the old saw about it being tough to beat a team three times playing a factor in helping Seattle spring an upset. San Francisco's secondary was beatable at times late in the season, as shown by Jarrett Stidham. But Seattle's offense doesn't have a lot of great players, needing overtime to beat the Rams in a must-win game last week. (I also just got done reading a story on ESPN indicating the league believes officials blew a bunch of calls that helped the Seahawks win that game -- yeah, guys, that happens every week.) Their defense is poor. And they played the 49ers twice during the season, including recently, and their offense did almost nothing at all. So I'm expecting San Francisco to score plenty of points and win. I'm a little skeptical of the passing game and the receivers, with the thought being that Christian McCaffrey and Elijah Mitchell combine for about 125-140 yards on the ground. Give me San Fran and a quick exit for Pete Carroll's bunch.
Chargers at Jaguars: So no Mike Williams, with Brandon Staley getting burned doing something other coaches have done plenty in recent years without getting burned, so they don't have to worry about everyone speculating they'll be fired. I don't think Staley should or will be fired for playing Williams last week. It was idiotic, but coaches do idiotic things all the time, including playing starters in meaningless games because momentum and whatnot. Main thought on this game is that neither defense is great. Jaguars are weak against the pass, so there should be a lot of Herbert, Allen, Ekeler, Palmer and perhaps Everett production through the air. Chargers are weak against the run and really not tough against the pass, when matched up with good passing offenses, so I think Trevor Lawrence and his receivers should be pretty good. Basically I'm not expecting a lot of defensive stops. I'm also feeling like it's a little more likely we get a big Herbert playoff game than Lawrence, but it's only a slight lean -- Lawrence has actually been the one playing better, until last week's relative dud in the win over Tennessee. I think the Chargers get the win, but definitely a close one that could go either way.
Dolphins at Bills: I don't remember who the 7th playoff teams were a year ago, but I doubt they could be weaker than the 7th seeds this year. Great job expanding the playoffs, NFL. Miami has done a nice job making the case for the importance of having a viable No. 3 quarterback, but they're not alone in that regard this year -- the Ravens, Rams, Cardinals and of course the 49ers have also been in that particular boat. It will be Skylar Thompson starting, Teddy Bridgewater backing him up, and Mike Glennon apparently as the emergency No. 3, although really even Miami's starter is an emergency, desperation option. Anyway, Miami's defense didn't play well on the road, and the offense didn't play well with Thompson at quarterback, so I can't fathom how this game will possibly go well for the Dolphins. Nice week to start any and all Bills, will be a surprise if they don't score in the 30s and win going away.
Giants at Vikings: This is an interesting game, and I think there's a little too much optimism about Minnesota getting the win. Yes they went 13-4 compared to 9-7-1, but impressive as all their close wins on last drives were, the fact is that they played mostly close games with a lot of last-drive wins, which is nice for Cardiac Kids labels and whatnot, but not a recipe for a long playoff stand. Eventually it's going to be the other team getting the ball down a few points with 2 minutes left and your defense not getting the stop (because it seldom got any stops the second half of the season). I don't want to overestimate a Giants team that really didn't play well down the stretch -- just 2-4-1 in its last seven, even if we don't count the Week 18 game where it rested starters. That's right, in the NFC you can even look askance at the No. 6 seed as far as whether or not it's playoff caliber (before even getting into the fact that the No. 4 seed was a sub-.500 team, just as it was when Washington made the playoffs a couple of years ago). I view this one as similar to the Chargers-Jaguars game: more offense than defense, could go either way. Nice game to use players from for Week 19, just not to count too heavily on them playing in Week 20. Even though half of them will.
Ravens at Bengals: AFC North playoff games. Seldom ones to get excited about, because they're just extensions of the multiple regular-season meetings that usually feature more defense than offense, whether it's Ravens-Bengals, Browns-Steelers, or any combination of those teams. This one should be similar, with the Ravens starting their backup quarterback, and having a really, really good defense. Depending on who you ask, there are three legit Super Bowl contenders on the AFC. If I have to pick one to be 3rd, and I do for my various playoff rosters, I'm going with the Bengals, even though they finished the season really strong. Rationale isn't overly scientific. One reason is that they'd have to win two away games over the other teams. Two is that they went last year, getting some breaks along the way -- surely that won't happen again. Like I said, not too scientific. But anyway, between thinking they're 3rd-likeliest to get there and knowing they have a really tough matchup this week against one of the league's very best defenses, especially the second half of the year, I'm leaving Bengals out of my postseason lineups, in favor of Bills and Kansas City players. They should win this one, by something like 23-13 or whatever, but I don't think they'll put up huge numbers and don't like their chances to win next week. For Baltimore, Mark Andrews is the only starter I'd really be interested in using. And Justin Tucker. The league usually wants to pick one of the best games for primetime, which goes to show you how anemic some of these Wild Card Weekend games look (Giants-Vikings would have been a better choice).
Cowboys at Bucs: This being on primetime obviously is not surprising, seeing as it's the so-called America's Team facing the guy everyone considers The GOAT. Helpfully, neither defense played quite as well down the stretch, creating the possibility this is a very good, high-scoring game, and with the other NFC games being played first, we'll know beforehand if the winner heads to Philadelphia or somewhere else. In general, I don't think Mike McCarthy is a good coach, and Dallas hasn't established much of a reputation lately for being a clutch team, and their defense hasn't played well. So if I'm betting, it's the Bucs, even though they were an 8-9 team who wouldn't have made the playoffs in any other division. I think Tom Brady and his main receivers should be good, probably Leonard Fournette too. With Brady mystique and Playoff Lenny involved, maybe the Bucs will be the surprise team that goes on a run. But I'm also interested in the key Dallas starters: both running backs, Prescott, Lamb, Schultz. I'll give the slight edge in a close game to Brady and company, but should be the most compelling game of the weekend (so of course it's on Monday).
For my own playoff teams: I'm doing an RTSports league where you pick your entire 14-player roster before the playoffs start. I favored KC, SF and Buffalo players. I'm also doing the Footballguys challenge, where you pick one player from each team -- so you can have Kelce or Mahomes, but not both -- at the start of the playoffs to fill a 12-player lineup with several flex players, and get cumulative points all the way through the Super Bowl, hoping that by that game you have two high-scoring players left. Finally I'm doing a challenge that involves filling a lineup each week of the playoffs but not using any player more than once (so you want to pick high-scoring players each week from teams that lose their games). Glad to discuss any of these competitions, or others, in the comments below.
Enjoy the games.