NFL Divisional Playoffs: The Other Games

This is probably my favorite week of the NFL season. Eight hours a day of great football played by the NFL’s best eight teams.

from huffingtonpost.com

This will probably not be Sean Payton's face after the game.

Saints (+7.5) over SEAHAWKS

No, I’m not picking the Saints to win this game outright. I’m hoping for it, but I’m not stupid enough to expect it. The Seahawks are one of the top three teams in football, hands down. The Saints are not. The Seahawks defense presents a really difficult matchup for the Saints, who don’t have a lot of receiving talent on the outside. Watch any football game involving the Saints and you’re inevitably treated to a bevy of stats and graphics about the ridiculous number of targets by Drew Brees to backs and tight ends. The Seahawks can match up one on one with the Saints receivers, the linebackers have the speed and tackling ability to make life difficult or impossible for pass-catching backs and defensive coordinator Dan Quinn can expend extra resources to the task of limiting Jimmy Graham. The Seahawks don’t have to do anything exotic or out of the ordinary to slow the Saints offense—we all saw that clear as day in the first meeting.

It sounds like I’m predicting a blowout, so why am I picking the Saints to cover? Sean Payton. If anyone can scheme offense to keep this game within reach, Sean Payton is the guy to do it and Drew Brees is an excellent choice to execute whatever genius plan his coach is going to concoct. I wrote in my last post that the quarterback-coach complex is the strongest indicator of a team’s playoff legitimacy, and Payton-Brees is the elite duo in the NFC (second only league wide, maybe, to Belichick-Brady). The Saints might be overmatched from a personnel standpoint, but given the experience of playing in Seattle once already this season, plus the added motivation of the embarrassment they suffered, and I expect the Saints to put up one hell of a fight. I would not be confident laying the points on the Seahawks—even if they are the superior team in the building with the most superior home field advantage.

Seahawks 27, Saints 23.

from barstoolsports.com

I have been waiting for an excuse to use this picture. God I hate that guy.

PATRIOTS (-7) over Colts

This is a matchup of two incredibly similar teams. The offenses are led by highly capable quarterbacks who raise the talent of the fairly mediocre receivers around them (T.Y. Hilton excluded), the running game is largely manufactured off the fear of the pass and headed by second-chance backs in LeGarrette Blount and Donald Brown, and the defenses are mediocre despite the fact they have shown they are capable of playing very well for stretches.

The major differences in this game are; the home field advantage, the fact that Luck has a much stronger penchant for turnovers than Brady, and that the Colts pass defense is weaker than the Patriots pass defense (while the Pats run defense is weaker than the Colts). This game isn’t about running the ball though, even if the Colts try to attack it that way. It will inevitably end up as a quarterback duel, and despite my complete faith in Luck and my longstanding hate of Tom Brady, it’s a duel I fully expect Brady to win.

Patriots 38, Colts 27.

from fantasybuzzer.com

He's listed as questionable, but if Mathews plays he's going to impact the game in a big way; whether that's with breaking off runs like this, or with fumbles remains to be seen.

Chargers (+9.5) over BRONCOS

The Broncos are probably the best team in the AFC, and the honor of me saying so is completely earned by their offense. Their offense is so far and above anything else in the AFC that it entirely makes up for their defense. They are not a complete team. They don’t just have holes here and there the way they Seahawks and 49ers do, they are simply bad as an entire unit on the defensive side of the ball.

So despite their incredible offense and the fact that I think that offense actually makes them the superior ball club in this game, I am picking them to lose this game.

The Chargers are just more balanced, and balance is a necessary component to postseason success. Shut down Peyton Manning and the pass game and you cut the metaphorical head off the Broncos. It’s so much easier said than done obviously, and no one has figured out how to “shut down” Manning this season, but the Chargers did a pretty great job—as good a job as anyone—in limiting that passing game during their Week 15 win in Denver.

Contrast that with the Chargers who have won games in every possible way this season; on the arm of Philip Rivers, with the legs of Ryan Mathews and with (at times) a stifling defense. The Chargers are just so much more multiple, flexible and adaptable, and that means a lot in a one and done scenario. Consider that last weekend the Chargers walked into Cincinnati (who had lost exactly zero games at home all season) and won the game in a very convincing 17 point drubbing (in the second half), and did this with Philip Rivers completing all of 12 passes. The Broncos simply could not win a game in which Manning completed even the number of attempt Rivers had at Cincinnati last weekend (16). Maybe that doesn’t matter, because there’s a very good chance Manning will put together another incredible quarterbacking performance, but if John Pagano and that Chargers defense put up any sort of legitimate resistance at all, it’s going to be very difficult for the Broncos to win this game.

Given the fact that the Chargers are officially what Bill Simmons refers to as “the Nobody-Believes-In-Us” Team of the 2013-2014 NFL playoffs, and Peyton Manning is almost as famous for blowing big playoff games as he is for glorious commercial acting (and his ungodly passing statistics and records I guess), I would not feel good laying the points for a double-digit Broncos victory.

Chargers 30, Broncos 28.