Weekend NFL Action
Football Playoffs
The 2023 NFL playoffs have gone from 14 teams alive for Super Bowl 57 to only eight. The first set of six games during wild-card weekend had predictable results for the biggest favorites, with two having narrow escapes. The trio of tossup games went in a different direction with the underdogs all winning.
That leads into four exciting and tighter matchups for the divisional round. The two bye-week teams at the top, the Chiefs and Eagles will be in action as hosts. The Jaguars, Giants and Buccaneers all will look stay hot, while the Bengals and Bills get the game they didn’t in Week 17, only this time in Buffalo.
Weekend Picks:
Jaguars vs Chiefs – Over 52.5 Points @10/11
Jaguars had to pull of a major comeback to win at home and now face the Chiefs on the road. Chiefs have the 4th best 1Q offense, but shockingly, they only average 3.8 points at home in the 1Q. Jaguars have the 19th best 1Q offense, but they average 5.1 points on the road, which is 7th best in the league. Chiefs have the 6th best defense in the league and have the best 1Q defense in the league at home, holding teams to 1.3 points per game. Jaguars defense is in the bottom of the league, but their road defense is ok, giving up 4.5 points per game. So knowing how low these teams score early on were going for the big finish.
Eagles -7.5 @10/11 vs Giants
At the beginning of the season, we looked at the Eagles/Cowboys game on Christmas and saw that it was going the be the 3rd road game in a row and that it was going to be on a short week (only by one day since it was on a Saturday, but still a short week). It’s hard for teams to win that 3rd road game in a row.
The Giants? This is their 3rd road game in a row.
As far as sides go, facts are facts. The Giants are great at covering this year. They’re 11-2 as dogs and they’ve covered 8 of their last 10 games. However, one of those games they didn’t cover was when they got hammered by the Eagles in week 14. Take from that what you will.
Bills vs Bengals ML @41/20 – Dog Of The Day.
The Bengals like to be a passing team, despite having Joe Mixon. The Bills like to be a passing team, despite having a strong traditional rushing attack at times. That means this game comes to down to a classic QB duel between Joe Burrow and Josh Allen.
Burrow has been more on point of late spreading the ball around and not forcing the ball deep when plays aren’t there. Allen has been ripping his big arm and also flinging around his big body on scrambles. This game comes down to which QB protects the ball better with two offensive lines that struggle at times.
SF 49ers -4.0 @10/11 vs Dallas Cowboys
The 49ers and Cowboys were the only teams to enjoy blowout victories in the wild-card round, with San Francisco delivering home and Dallas doing it on the road. Brock Purdy and Dak Prescott are the hottest QBs going into the divisional round. Nick Bosa and Micah Parsons also were respective leaders of nasty defensive performances.
The 49ers are riding an 11-game winning streak and have the greater depth and diversity of offensive weapons around Purdy. They also have a key home-field and rest advantage. Christian McCaffrey and the running game give San Francisco the edge, to the point of taking comfortable control in the fourth quarter.
The National Football League is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference.
The National Football League (NFL) playoffs are a single-elimination tournament held after the regular season to determine the NFL champion. Currently, seven teams from each of the league’s two conferences qualify for the playoffs. A tie-breaking procedure exists if required.
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