If any team’s due some play-off luck it’s the Saints, who lost out to the ‘Miracle in Minneapolis’ a couple of years’ ago and to a woeful no-call against the Rams last season – and this year they get to exact some revenge on the Vikings.
It’d be easy for Saints fans to get the hump with the play-offs recently – those last two defeats have been real sucker punches. A 61-yard TD on the final play of the game like in Minnesota just does not happen.
There’s also the fact that they’ve been unlucky again this year not to get a bye with 13 wins – it’s just the third time a 13-win side hasn’t got a first round bye, and two of those have been New Orleans!
Touchdown tip:
The final game of wild card weekend and the closest one to call in terms of the market with the Seahawks just 1.5 point favourites to win again in Philadelphia as they did earlier in the season – and it’s clear the Eagles are still struggling hugely with injuries.
They do, though, have history on their side as 9-7 or worse teams playing home play-off games against 11-win opposition are 6-2 in the current play-off format despite being underdogs. Philly also have a perfect 5-0 record as home underdogs in the play-offs in the Super Bowl era.
So don’t underestimate a side that has made it to the post-season despite Carson Wentz (who is finally making his play-off debut) not having any decent receivers to throw to and having his best target, tight end Zach Ertz, being a big injury doubt.
Two unfancied teams hoping to make a splash in the play-offs meet with both the Texans and Bills having rested plenty of players in defeats last week in order to arrive fresh into the post-season. Not many expect either of these to go much further than this game but then again they’ve both been underrated all season.
Buffalo are desperate for a play-off win to end the third-longest stretch without one – they’ve not won a post-season game since 1995 just after their famed but ultimately flawed team of the 1990s that reached four consecutive Super Bowls only to lose every single one of them.
Could this be Tom Brady’s farewell? The great man is being written off again and one of these years they’ll all be right! And after a sloppy loss to Miami last week condemned the Pats to a first wild card game in a decade he’s got it all to do to make a third straight Super Bowl.
A well-rounded and dangerous Titans team arrive with the NFL rushing champ Derrick Henry the clear and present danger to the usual Patriots’ game of clocking up home play-off wins for fun. They’re up to 12 post-season wins on the spin at Gillette Stadium.
The Pats had gone out to 20/1 in America to win retain their Super Bowl crown, that’s the longest they’ve been at any time during the last decade and the biggest price ever under Brady and Bill Belichick entering the play-offs. They’ve limped into the post-season but that doesn’t mean they can’t win this one.